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Drs. Joe and Alice Holoubek sent letters to each other in the 1930s that will be donated to the McGoogan Library next week. Dr. Joe Holoubek was a UNMC alumnus who, along with his wife, Dr. Alice Holoubek, played a key role in the establishment of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport. |
“The Holoubek-Baker Letters, 1937-1939: An Annotated Collection,” edited by veteran journalist Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald of Shreveport, La., presents first-hand accounts of doctors in training in Nebraska and Louisiana. She will present a copy of the collection to the archives at the UNMC McGoogan Library of Medicine on Friday, Aug. 15.
One of the letter writers, Joe Holoubek, M.D., of Clarkson, was a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and UNMC. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and later led the drive to establish a new Louisiana State University medical school in Shreveport.
The collection comprises nearly 800 letters and 24 pages of research aids, including biographical sketches, a guide to medical terms and symbols, and a timeline. Mayo Clinic Historical Archives, LSU Health Sciences Center-New Orleans, and LSU Shreveport’s Noel Memorial Library also will receive copies of the collection.
“Our family hopes this will prove of value to historians across the country,” Fitzgerald said.
Joe Holoubek and Alice Baker of New Orleans met during a summer fellowship program in pathology at Mayo Clinic. They courted long-distance before their marriage in 1939, writing twice a week during their senior years of medical school and daily during their internships.
Their letters recreate the medical era before antibiotics, when radiation was applied liberally and sulfa compounds were the latest miracle drugs. Public hospitals were crowded, tuberculosis was rampant and interns were easy prey for serious infections. Medical training differed widely from school to school and women doctors encountered prejudice.
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Veteran journalist Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald of Shreveport, La., with “The Holoubek-Baker Letters, 1937-1939: An Annotated Collection,” which chronicles the lives of her parents, Drs. Joe and Alice Holoubek, in the late 1930s. |
During his internship year, he caught scarlet fever and was confined for several weeks in the city isolation hospital.
After their marriage, the Holoubeks (later known as “Dr. Alice” and “Dr. Joe”) were fellows in medicine at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans. Their research on the health risks in hospital training led to LSU’s first health program for medical students.
Dr. Alice, one of the first women to graduate from the school, helped fill a critical staffing shortage during World War II. She was also one of the first physicians to use massive doses of antibiotics to treat subacute bacterial endocarditis, which eventually led to a cure for the disease.
In 1946 they moved to Shreveport, where they practiced medicine together for more than 40 years. Dr. Joe led the drive to establish LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport in the 1960s. Dr. Alice, named one of three Shreveport “Women Who Made A Difference” in 1993, became a role model for many local young women in balancing family, home and work.
Fitzgerald, their daughter, spent more than a year footnoting and annotating their courtship letters. She served The Times of Shreveport as associate editorial page editor and columnist, assistant managing editor, business editor and features editor. Fitzgerald holds history degrees from Loyola University-New Orleans and Louisiana Tech University. She now is a writing and editing consultant.
Dr. Joe was a proud alumnus of UNMC. After retirement, he became an award-winning writer. His 2004 gospel-based novel, “Letters to Luke: From His Fellow Physician Joseph of Capernaum,” won the Writers Digest Award for Inspirational Literature and the Independent Publisher Award for Religious Fiction.
LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport established the Joe E. Holoubek M.D., Professorship of Medicine in 2006. The New Orleans medical school dedicated the Alice Baker Holoubek M.D. Professorship in Medicine on June 14.