Alpha Omega M.D. – Final Episode
…Alpha O. Campbell, M.D. deserved a better fate. Gwendolyn Hoff has given it to him. Thank you for the privilege of writing this story.
A.O., God rest your soul. It has been one wild ride!…

In chapters 8 and 9 we are introduced to suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, who is an admitted sidetrack.
The company town Blountstown is the Calhoun County seat, but it is mere fodder for the overall story. Company towns can really be like Blountstown.
All the above is a lead-up to our late involvement in WWI, where we meet Sir James
Matthew Barrie, the prolific playwright and cousin to John Ferrell. John Ferrell’s supply ship, the Panama City, never sailed, was not sunk by U-Boat submarines, though the elder Ferrell did indeed die in 1916; such a blue-blooded way to
die, helping your Scottish ancestors through a tough time.
Chapters 10 and 11 encompass that bloody 1st world war, along with the deadly influenza that started in
Europe and traveled back to the US. 30 million people died worldwide and that is about the time that Alpha Omega Campbell began practicing medicine.
After the doctor and Maggie wed in 1918, they both had affairs that produced
children. Maggie’s dalliance produced middle daughter, Laura. That little child was so fair-skinned, right banker Lewis? Alpha, for his part, did father a child; it’s just that whether it was with Camille Diaz is buried amongst the Careless Whispers. Camille is fictional.
Alice Paul did argue for the cause of the right for women to vote, which was a hard fought and contentious lead-up to the Roaring Twenties, but is window dressing for my purposes.
Those Roaring years of flappers and debauchery are bypassed here, as is the Great Depression. It
seems the author does not deal well with hard times, which resurface in the closing chapters, a.k.a. the happy, or rather, calm ending. So From the Ashes emerges the mid-1930’s. We lose great characters Harv Pearson, Herb Love and Phoebe. We’ve already left the Endlichoffer’s behind and the elder Ferrells.
James Ferrell becomes the Dr.’s lawyer and we are (re)introduced to Carolyn Hanes (Constance Caraway – Private Eye) and her lover Sara Fenwick (Fanny
Renwick). Like the incest episode between James and Agnes, this Lesbian relationship is a glimpse into life in the South, as well as real life. This statement is not meant to offend, it’s just that things happen down there that are “different”, perhaps more frequently or just a figment of a fertile fancy.
Chapters, Hospitable, Inhospitable fly us to Area 51 and an alien contact. Good ol’ Newt Swakhammer, what a guy? The government calls him a crank. But the year 1947 harbors UFO’s, as well as the brick & mortar of Laura Bell Memorial Hospital… born of Alpha O. Campbell’s spirit, the building itself is one large lightning rod; meant for good, yet attracting an
onslaught of controversy and hardship.
We look back at Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, along
with the world of Cinderella. And then we are bounced ahead to Michael Rennie and Walt Disney; what an odyssey of entertainment.

As for the remainder of The Life and Times, not so many pages back, your imagination is
the king. My imagination has splattered the backdrop of history from way-back 1896, all the way up to the dawn of John Fitzgerald Kennedy… Just the dawn, mind you, then you are reeled back to 1955.
Isn’t that rude? But look at the payoff. Instead of an old man in jail, we
happen upon a Laura Bell Memorial Hospital with a future. What a shame that this was not the ending to the saga of one of the first Black doctors in Florida. In my rosy reality, we all have access to Alice’s Wonderful Looking Glass.
Alpha O. Campbell, M.D. deserved a better fate. Gwendolyn Hoff has given it to him. Thank you for the privilege of writing this story.
A.O., God rest your soul. It has been one wild ride!

Copyright © 2016 by Gwendolyn K Hoff All Rights Reserved
Alpha Omega M.D.

– Final Episode

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