My dad, the air force doctor
The nooks and crannies of my parents’ red-brick house in Halifax held many secrets and, as a child, my insatiable curiosity took me into closets, drawers, attic and basement, most often in search of my father’s past.
Edward Lefferts (Ted) Thorne III was born on Friday, June 13, 1913, and some might say he was cursed. He’d likely tell them otherwise.
He had survived tuberculosis, and lost his mother—a First World War nurse—and brother to the same dreaded disease. He had seen his father lose all in the Depression and his first wife drop dead from a brain hemorrhage. He would lose a daughter to breast cancer.
But in his 90 years on this earth, Dr. Thorne—my dad—delivered hundreds of babies, saved hundreds of lives and, by the time he retired from general practice at 87, he had cultiv...