Not long after our arrival in Kansas City, we realized we would soon have our fourth child. Of course that was long before you knew the sex of the child prior to delivery. She had a difficult time with her pregnancy, but there was a silver lining. Ann contacted our gynecologist in Jamestown. He knew a highly competent obstetrician who happened to be working on an additional residency at the KU Medical Center. He agreed to see Ann and take care of her prior to giving birth. He was tremendous. He even called Ann pretty regularly to see how she was doing and gave the tenderest care we could have ever asked for.
Gary’s birth occurred on a Sunday night. We had a guest speaker at church that night, but Ann didn’t feel like showing up for church. The song service had barely concluded when she called to tell me that it was time.
Of course there’s no one more useless than an expectant father when delivery is about to take place. Your main job is trying to stay out of the way of the medical staff and the one who is doing the real work – the mother. We met the doctor at the hospital. He told us that he was going home because he thought it would be several hours before the baby was born. He suggested I go home too. I wasn’t so sure, so I stayed put. He barely got home when a resident called him and told him he needed to return to the hospital..
KUMC is a teaching hospital, so Gary had to face an audience of onlookers when he made this entrance into the world. Most of the students had not seen a breech birth, so they all wanted to observe. Gary came into the world without a hitch, but I don’t think he bowed to the audience, and thanked them for their applause. He didn’t tip his hat because he wasn’t wearing one.
It was rare for fathers to be allowed in the delivery room at that time. When I saw Gary for the first time he was in the nursery. The doctor stood by me as I looked in the window. He said, “Oh, I wish I had thought about it. I would have arranged for you to be in the delivery room.” I didn’t say what I was thinking. In my mind I was saying, “Oh, great Doc. This is the end of the line, finis, caboose in our effort to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth. Then you think of it after the fact. You’re timing isn’t all that great.”
We had a little bit of family controversy about name selection. If it was a boy, Ann wanted to name him Adam Clyde. The rest of us weren’t excited about that choice of names, but we all finally agreed on Gary. Then there came the problem of selecting a middle name. The Kansas City Chiefs had just won the Super Bown. Len Dawson had been the most valuable player, so we selected Len as has middle name.
To this day Gary is an avid Kansas City Chiefs fan (I am too, except I’m not as avid as he is). When people ask him why he likes the Chiefs he says, “I was born a Kansas City Chiefs fan.” When people ask him where he was born, he says, “Kansassouri.’ The KU Med Center is in Kansas, but it is actually about three blocks from the Missouri state line, so Gary is pretty close to correct on that score. Nevertheless his birth certificate is filed in Topeka, not Columbia.
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