Tag: Dr. Nicholas Lubchenko

The Amazing Dr. Nicholas E. Lubchenko

Plan A:  The Ida Nicholson

I wanted to blog about the sinking of the Ida Nicholson, a schooner that sank off Ocracoke Island, North Carolina in 1870, but I was unable to find sufficient information about the incident. It was hauling 101,600 of the one million bricks needed for the construction of the Hatteras Lighthouse when it went down in a gale in the infamous “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” The entire cargo was lost.

Plan B: My chance to introduce you to Dr. Nicholas E. Lubchenko

The amazing Dr. Nicholas E. Lubchenko was a topic I kept on the backburner to use when I didn’t have another blog subject calling my name. Today is that day!

In case you’ve wondered why I end my blog posts by asking you to remember the people of Ukraine, in addition to my heartfelt belief that Ukraine deserves to remain an independent nation, it is my small way of honoring the memory of a country doctor who served so many in my community for decades, regardless of their ability to pay the small fee he charged.

A black and white photo of Dr. Nicholas E. Lubchenko
Dr. Nicholas E. Lubchenko

Those are Dr. Lubchenko’s people in Ukraine, and they yearn to remain a free nation not under the thumb of Vladimir Putin.

Dr. Lubchenko’s Early Years, Military, and Medical School

Nicholas E. Lubchenko was born in Bulai, Zerkov, near Kiev, Russia (now, Ukraine) in 1882. One of ten children of a leather worker, he graduated from an agricultural college in Kharkov. Kharkov, Ukraine is familiar to us now since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war.

By 1906, Lubchenko was in the Russian army. His dream was to get to America, which he called “the greatest country in the world.” He concluded that if he did not escape from the army, he would never make it to America.

Quoting from my book, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1: “One day in 1906, while still in the arm, he walked out of Russia and crossed into Austria, with a ‘samovar (a Russian urn with a spigot made for boiling water for tea) under his arm and one change of clothing.’ He could speak French and German but not English.

“He got a job working on a ship bound for New Orleans. After he arrived in America in November of 1906, an eastern Louisiana family helped him until he saved enough money to travel to South Carolina where his brother, Alexis, lived.”

He worked on a cotton farm in Ridgeway, South Carolina, saved his money, and after five years was able to borrow money to attend the North Carolina Medical College in Charlotte, NC. He had $69 when he arrived in Charlotte.

He put himself through medical school by working for various doctors in his spare time. During World War I, the North Carolina and Virginia Medical Schools had to merge due to the economy, so Lubchenko moved to Richmond, Virginia, and graduated in 1915.

Dr. Lubchenko’s Medical Career

Dr. Lubchenko served as a medical officer in the Merchant Marine on a transport ship in World War I and then started his medical practice in Newell, NC. He married a nurse from Cabarrus County, NC.

During the 1918-1919 Spanish Influenza Epidemic, Dr. Lubchenko made house calls from morning and into the night.

Dr. Lubchenko became a naturalized American citizen on April 2, 1923. He moved his family to Anson County, NC, but then they moved to Harrisburg and he resumed serving the people of eastern Mecklenburg County and western Cabarrus County.

He tried unsuccessfully to enlist in the US Army when World War II started, but age and the vital medical service he was rendering in the Harrisburg area prevented that. It is said that he stayed angry about that for a long time.

Dr. Lubchenko operated his medical practice out of his home in Harrisburg, NC, but the majority of his work was probably done through house calls. He practiced medicine in Harrisburg until his death in 1960.

Dr. Lubchenko, the Humanitarian

In a 1989 newspaper interview, one of the Lubchenkos’ daughters said he did not send bills to his patients. As stated in my book, “She quoted him as saying, ‘If they don’t want to pay, they won’t. If they do, they will, and if they want to pay and couldn’t, it would embarrass them.’” A 1944 ledger indicates that his usual charge for services was $3.00.

In addition to being a physician around the clock, 365 days a year, Dr. Lubchenko loved his adopted community and worked  to make life better for the residents. Harrisburg was a small community of just 300 people in 1950, but Dr. Lubchenko wanted the best for the wider community.

He donated the land for and was the driving force in establishing the Harrisburg Volunteer Fire Department in 1954. It was the first volunteer fire department in Cabarrus County and served a wide area. For instance, we lived five miles from Harrisburg, but my father was a charter member of the fire department.

In 1955, Dr. Lubchenko helped organize a post of the Ground Observer Corps in Harrisburg. These were the days of the Cold War before radar was in place to detect enemy aircraft.

Reflections

As a child, I was scared of Dr. Lubchenko. I could not understand his heavy Russian accent and he was somewhat gruff. It was only as an adult, many years after his death, that I gained a true appreciation for him.

Although Harrisburg started growing rapidly a few years after Dr. Lubchenko’s death, it would be 30 years before the town had another doctor. His death left a great void in the wider Harrisburg community.

You can read all about Dr. Lubchenko, his medical practice, his house, the Harrisburg Volunteer Fire Department, the Ground Observer Corps, and many other aspects of local history in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1. The book is available in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg and in paperback and as an e-book from Amazon.com. (By the way, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 is also available.)

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 169 roads in North Carolina are still closed due to Hurricane Helene, including Interstate 40 near the Tennessee line. That count consists of 1 interstate, 11 US highways, 20 state highways, and 137 state roads. That’s a decrease of two roads over the report two weeks ago. More heavy rain, wind, and icy conditions hit over the weekend with more of the same predicted for midweek. Repairs are made slow under such conditions.

There has been some good news about I-40. It is thought that by March 1 one lane of I-40 in both directions will open. The speed limit will be 40 mph on that stretch just east of the TN-NC line. I have not read whether commercial vehicles will be allowed, but my hunch is that they won’t.

News about the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is not good. The flooding and wind from Hurricane Helene last September caused 48 landslides in one 38-mile section of the parkway. There are no estimates for when those 38 miles will be completely rebuilt or if all of it can even be rebuilt. That section between Asheville and Linville will not reopen in 2025.

Until my next blog post

I believe most people want to see a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, but I don’t want Ukraine to have to do all the compromising.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

I’ve Made it Around the Sun 71 Times

Photograph of a large seventy-one in numerals
Photo credit: Metin Ozer on unsplash.com

There’s a popular saying now: “Being in my 20s in the 70s was more fun than being in my 70s in the 20s.” There is a lot of truth in that, but I’m glad I’m in my 70s now and not in my 20s.

My parents always made my siblings and me feel special on our birthdays.

Mama always made a buttermilk pound cake and decorated it elaborately for our birthdays. She made a “doll cake” for my birthdays for many years. They were things of art I didn’t fully appreciate at the time.

There were no cake molds then for making such a cake. Mama had to make the cake in several layers of different sizes and then do some trim work to make a perfect full evening gown-shaped cake.

Everything was made from scratch. She took no shortcuts with a cake mix or store-bought icing. (I don’t think that was even a thing back then.) I wish I had a photograph of one of those doll cakes that I could share on my blog.  

Mama’s hand and fingers must have been sore for days after painstakingly decorating the doll’s evening gowns with ruffles and flowers of stiff homemade icing. I had no idea how difficult it was to use her metal cake decorator gizmo until I was old enough to try to use it myself. The operative word is “try.”

Daddy only made home movies on the following special occasions: Christmas morning, our birthdays, and sometimes on Easter morning. Film and its developing were expensive, so he usually managed to get our birthdays and those two holidays on one roll of 8mm movie film.

It was always a great day when a roll of film was developed. Daddy would set up his movie screen and movie projector in the living room, thread the projector, and alert whoever was appointed to then turn off the lights. It was fun reliving the events as many of the occasions projected onto the grainy white screen had happened more than a year earlier.

It was even more fun years later to look at those home movies. At least, it was fun until sometimes when the film would get stuck and the heat from the projector light would immediately burn a hole in the film. But I digress.

It was a special time to be a child in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a good time to be a child. At least, I can say that because I was a white middle-class child in the United States. It wasn’t as good of a time if you were a black child in the United States.

Until all the public schools were racially-integrated and black citizens secured the right to vote and receive equal service in restaurants, hotels, and in public transportation and employment opportunities, it was not a great time for them. I’m aware of that now. I wasn’t back then.

We weren’t bothered by social media and the only drugs we knew about were the ones prescribed by Dr. Nicholas Lubchenko, the family doctor who made house calls when we were sick. If you had stayed home from school because you were sick, you’d better be in bed and not on the couch watching “I Love Lucy” on the black-and-white TV when he came to check on you!

The years I spent in school dragged by slow as molasses, but the rest of my life has passed in a split second. That’s an impossible concept for people under 30 years old to understand. They cannot imagine how fast their next 40 years are going to fly.

So Happy 71st Birthday to me! I can’t believe I’m this old, but many of my friends and relatives were not so fortunate. Therefore, I try to value every day God gives me. I have been blessed beyond anything I deserved.

Since my last blog post

Finally feeling like I had recovered from having Covid in December, I thought last Thursday would be a good day on which to get my second dose of the shingles vaccine. I guess it was as good as any. I don’t want to cause anyone not to get the Shingrix shot, but that second injection laid me low for the entire weekend. I’m just one of those people who often has ill effects from vaccines, so the aches and fever were not a surprise. That they lasted for more than three days was. (Postscript added January 31, 2024: I should have also said that I had Shingles in my right eye a few years ago and it felt like there was a knife in my eye for weeks; therefore, I was eager to get the Shingrix vaccine as soon as it was available free of charge to Medicare patients. The discomfort of the side effects of the shot pale in comparison to the pain of having Shingles!)

I took advantage of my down time by reading a very good historical novel.

I admit that I had a “senior moment” when I typed the title of this blog post. Just before pressing the “publish” button, I realized I had typed the title as “I’ve Made it Around the Moon 71 Times.” Thank goodness I caught that mistake! I never would have heard the last of it! After a rough few days, it was good to have something to laugh about.

Until my next blog post

I hope you are reading a book that’s so good you didn’t want to put it down long enough to read my blog. (I read a book like that over the weekend – The Woman in the White Kimono, by Ana Johns.)

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet