Senior medical students Joe Holoubek and Alice Baker wrote weekly and later daily letters to each other in the 1930s as they built a long-distance relationship that resulted in their marriage in 1939.
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UNMC alumnus Dr. Joe Holoubek and his wife, Dr. Alice (Baker) Holoubek played a key role in the establishment of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport. |
How they met
Joe Holoubek, M.D., from Clarkson, Neb., was a graduate of UNL and the UNMC College of Medicine, receiving his M.D. in 1938.
He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and later led the drive to establish a new Louisiana State University medical school in Shreveport. Joe Holoubek had met Alice Baker of New Orleans during a summer fellowship program in pathology at Mayo Clinic in 1937. They courted long-distance before their marriage in 1939, writing twice a week during their senior year of medical school and daily during their internships.
A prolific collection
Their collection comprises nearly 800 letters, which present first-hand accounts of doctors in training in Nebraska and Louisiana.
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.
Daughter recounts parents’ stories
The Holoubeks’ daughter, Martha Holoubek Fitzgerald of Shreveport, has for years compiled and annotated her parents correspondence and recently published as “The Courtship of Two Doctors: a 1930s Love Story of Letters, Hope & Healing.”
Fitzgerald will be in Omaha to tell the story of her parent’s personal and professional relationship. She will be at the Bookworm in Countryside Village on Oct. 17 and will meet with the UNMC Medical Humanities group on Oct. 18.
Contact John Schleicher at the McGoogan Library at jschleicher@unmc.edu for more information about Fitzgerald’s appearances.