DATE: Sunday, July 6, 1997                  TAG: 9707030512

SECTION: CAROLINA COAST          PAGE: 2    EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: SONG OF A SAILOR 

SOURCE: Ronald Speer 

                                            LENGTH:   65 lines

WHILE MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL, WOMEN HAD TO STRUGGLE FOR STATUS

When my daughter was seven, a gust of wind slammed a heavy door on her index finger, nearly severing it.

Blood was everywhere and she was screaming in fear and agony when we arrived at the hospital emergency room.

I carried her in, told the receptionist what had happened and was delighted when a woman in a white uniform rushed up.

``Here's the nurse, Barbara,'' I said. ``She'll make it better until the doctor comes.''

The woman took my daughter in her arms, told me to wait, and carried Barbara into another room.

``I AM the doctor, Barbara,'' I heard the woman in white say as they disappeared. ``You're going to be all right.''

When they returned in half an hour, Barbara was beaming.

``She's a wonderful doctor, Pops,'' Barbara said. ``She sewed my finger together, and got rid of all the mess, and it doesn't even hurt anymore. I feel fine.''

I felt sick. This was in the early '70s and women were no longer relegated to the back of the bus of life, although medicine had adopted equality rather slowly. I considered myself part of the movement to open America's doors to its poor, to its minorities, to its women.

But in crunch time, I had reverted to the Neanderthral era, chauvinistically assuming that women are nurses, doctors are men.

``I apologize,'' I told the doctor. ``I know better. I'm sorry.''

She smiled a sad little smile, and told me how to take care of Barbara's wound.

``Goodbye, Doctor,'' my daughter called. ``When I get big I want to be just like you.''

This time the smile was big on the doctor's face.

That scene still haunts me 25 years later, although I wasn't a lonely chauvinist, of course.

A riddle those days was about a father and son involved in a car crash. The father died and his boy was rushed to a hospital where the doctor came out and said, ``I can't operate. This is my son.'' Who is the doctor?

Hardly anyone responded correctly, ``His mother.''

All these painful memories came up while I was revisiting the Declaration of Independence, which said all men are created equal. But the declaration didn't call for equality for women. Neither did the Constitution.

Not for another century and a half were females allowed to vote. And the elderly women among us today can recall being the first to cast ballots in 1920.

Since then, women have come a long way. There are women police officers and firefighters and Marines and journalists. Females are astronauts and jet pilots and round-the-world singlehanded sailors.

And more and more of them are doctors. In fact, my eye doctor is a woman.

And the adventurous ophthalmologist - an experienced sailor, a Plainswoman, a wife and a mother - makes it clear that women doctors no longer put on a wan smile and turn the other cheek when they encounter a male chauvinist.

After our first meeting, when Dr. Melody Morrow had examined my right eye and told me that she was preparing to take a sharp knife to a cataract, I asked her if it was OK in this age of enlightenment for a patient to tell his doctor she was a handsome woman.

``You would be a lot better off, Mr. Speer,'' she replied, ``to find out if I am a good surgeon.''

Ouch!

My daughter would love her.

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