The Group For Women Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary By Barbara L. Kersey, Ph.D. When William Andrews, M.D., recently attended the annual American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology conference in San Francisco, he couldn’t help but think of his father. There he sat, viewing a live telecast from Norfolk, VA of Jon Crockford, M.D., and Dwight Groves, M.D., of his own Group For Women, performing a laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy. The OR was equipped with two flat-screen monitors, as well as voice-operated robots to control the operating table, lights and cameras. During surgery, there was two-way communication between the surgeons and a moderator in San Francisco. After surgery, the physicians moved from the OR to a nurses’ station, where they entertained questions from their distant audience. One hundred years earlier, Andrews’ father had to open the doors of his medical practice as a “general practice” before he could even specialize in OB-GYN. 1905 – 1965: The Andrews Years In 1905, 29-year-old Charles James Andrews, M.D., returned to his hometown of Norfolk, VA. He had recently completed medical school at the Medical College of Virginia, an internship at St. Vincent’s DePaul Hospital in Norfolk (now Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center) and a six-month residency at The New York Lying In Hospital for Obstetrics. “At that time, an OB residency was six months long,” son William Andrews, M.D., said. “Later, for [my brother] Mason and me, it was five years.” “C.J.,” as he was known to friends and family, and his wife, Jean, had three sons: Jim, Mason and William. Jim studied pre-med for awhile, but decided the theatre was his passion. At Yale Drama School, he became friends with Clare Booth Luce and Thornton Wilder. After, he volunteered for the American field service and was killed at age 27 by a mortar shell in Italy. Mason and William were left to fill their father’s shoes. C.J. had definitive plans about where Mason and William should study medicine. He had decided on Princeton University for their undergraduate education and Johns Hopkins University for medical school. Mason was five years older than William, so he was first to leave home for Princeton. After he experienced its academic rigors, he phoned his father and told him to “send Billy to prep school, so that he’d be better prepared.” With the exception of about a decade when he had an associate, C.J. Andrews ran his practice, originally called Obstetrical & Gynecological Associates of Tidewater, solo until 1950. “We’d hear the car back out of the driveway in the middle of the night, over and over,” Mason said. William recalled his father’s O.R. schedule. “He’d call one day ahead and schedule two operating rooms. Then, on Wednesday and Friday, he’d work back and forth between the two rooms, performing surgeries most of the day.” C.J. Andrews’ contributions to his specialty were recognized by his election as President of the South Atlantic Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1949. (Mason Andrews, M.D., and Willette LeHew, M.D., were also elected to the same office in 1971 and 1992, respectively.) By the time Mason Andrews, M.D., joined his dad’s practice in January of 1950, C.J. was in poor health, having suffered a stroke. In October of 1950, C.J. passed away, and Mason worked alone until his younger brother William could finish his residency at New York Hospital. (William’s residency had been interrupted by Naval service in the Korean War from 1950 to 1952.) During the years when Mason ran the practice alone, his wife, Sabine, has recalled that Mason would come home after a day at the office and comment, “I’m trying to get as many patients as I can, so there will be enough to share when Billy comes … I think we’re going to make it. I saw eight patients today.” Mason also remembered that, during this period, there was another local physician, Mallory Andrews, who would sometimes receive Mason’s midnight calls by mistake. Mallory would tell the answering service, “Send the patient to Labor and Delivery. Let Mason sleep another 30 minutes, and then call him.” Sabine also shared the story of a woman in labor who was dozing in her hospital room and woke to find a man asleep on a stretcher near her bed. It was Mason! Those years saw little sleep for Mason Andrews, whose family could not travel without his turning the practice over to someone else. When asked what he did on his always-on-call weekends, Mason gestures out the window of his river home to the stately live oak trees that dot the perimeter of his yard, “I pruned trees.” Relief came when William finished his residency and joined the practice in July of 1953. Then, for more than a decade, the brothers shared the practice with a 36-hour-on, 12-hour-off rotation. Mason and William both practiced with the philosophy that “if the patient is in the hospital, we are in the hospital.” On one occasion, the brothers were dining at the Norfolk Yacht Club and received a call that one of their patients was in labor and was bleeding. They left together, before dinner was served, and arrived at the hospital before the patient even arrived. By 1965, the Andrews were anxious to include another partner in their growing practice. Assistance arrived in the form of Dr. Willette LeHew, who practiced with them for eight months, then was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War and sent to Fort Campbell, KY. William described the relief at being able to be on call every third night, only to have to go back to every other night eight months later! In March of 1968, Dr. LeHew’s Army commitment was complete, and he came back to the practice to stay. An Exacting Partner Joins the Team The practice continued to grow, and more help was needed. In June of 1971, James D. Via, M.D., was finishing his OB-GYN residency at Norfolk General Hospital (a program Dr. Mason Andrews had worked diligently to create). Mason had
