In grammar school she usually made 98s, 95s or sometimes 100s. They gave those to the best students before and after World War I. Hilla Sheriff learned early to go in her and her sister Ralda’s room and concentrate on the next day’s lessons. Ralda was no slouch either, eventually becoming president of the S.C. Education Association.

After their father, a lumber mill operator, moved the family from Pickens down to the Lowcountry, they lived in the old Wolfe house (still there on North Boulevard). Seven children, Eva (Mrs. Andrew Gramling), Doyle, Ralda, Ceil, Hilla, Myron (Mike), and Jane (Mrs. D.C. Shirley), filled every room.

The Sheridan Grammar School stood only a 15-minute walk up to Ellis Avenue then down three blocks. Orangeburg had been expanding in that “new” side of town since 1900.

In the afternoons, Hilla enjoyed her paper dolls, and often went into their large backyard to play “doctor” for the chickens. Every family had a coop.

“They were my first patients,” she said. “I had compassion for the little biddies who hurt themselves; or needed broken wings mended.”

This strong desire never left her and even increased during high school, even though her parents thought it a childish fantasy.

“She’ll probably be married to a med student before she finishes her first year,” her mother said.

n Shaving a cadaver

It was not to be. In September 1920, she enrolled in pre-med at the College of Charleston. Two years later she entered the Medical College of South Carolina, a single building on Barre Street just two blocks away. The class numbered 35, but amazingly, three of them were women! Eleanor Townsend of Charleston and Leora Perry of Ridgeland shared Hilla’s ambition.

Imagine yourself as one of them, facing chemistry, anatomy and minor surgery classes for the first time, AND hearing open discussions (albeit carefully phrased discussions) on parts of the body. Which sex blushed the most?

Surgery offered cadavers for practice.

“Our class on the second floor held one for every two students,” Hilla said. “The professor asked us to bring a straight razor. Having visited the class before, I was not shocked, but it was my luck to draw a man with a long beard. He’d probably been floating in the vat for months, and shaving him was terrifying – all the hairs just flopped about. In minutes the sophomores crowded around to see the show, and by the time I halfway finished one cheek, my clumsiness had the boys howling.”

Between these nerve-wracking experiences, there were beaus. One wrote to her in January 1924, “Yet, as I have often frankly told you, our medical course does not harmonize with my ideals of a woman, I admire your spirit and am ever so happy you were not influenced by me to forsake the goal you have set for yourself.”

n A dark night call

The goal continued to bring big challenges, even in her fourth year. Seniors were required to deliver ten babies outside the hospital. Keep in mind the still-primitive medical conditions of eighty years ago. Students went out in teams of two to homes where they had no former contact with the mothers. If called out after midnight when the street cars had stopped, they had to walk.

One night Hilla and her partner entered a room lit dimly by a burning pine knot. Her male partner cautioned, “Don’t step there!” Hilla looked down to see a baby on the floor, just born. Uneducated mothers thought they could give birth easily in a sitting position. Some museums still display these low seats, open legged designs.

Late in May 1926 came final exams. Students waited at house parties at the beach, then outside the library where grades were posted. Thirty passed including Hilla. Her mother, father and several brothers and sisters came down for the graduation of Orangeburg’s first lady doctor.

This was the beginning. Entering the world beyond South Carolina, she completed an internship and residencies at the Hospital of the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia, the Children’s Hospital of Washington and the Willard Parker Contagious Disease Hospital in New York City. Not even 10 percent of local citizens had been to those long train-ride places.

n Fight pellagra

An internship at the Spartanburg General Hospital came in 1926; a year later she joined in a private practice with Dr. Hallie Rigby, a 1917 graduate of Johns Hopkins, and Dr. Rosa Hirschman Gantt, who had been the first female graduate of the Medical College.

Hilla volunteered to conduct a clinic for the County Health Department and found her lifetime avocation – public health. From 1913 to 1936 she was director of the American Women’s Hospital’s unit in Spartanburg and Greenville counties conducting campaigns against preventable diseases, especially pellagra.

Known as the disease of the 4Ds – diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and death, Spartanburg County reported 2,348 pellagra cases, a third of the state total. Hilla’s approach to combat it was the South’s first “healthmobile,” a truck with an examining room, a cooking demonstration area and three medical professionals who taught the women how to cook vegetables in less water. Also to drink the pot liquor instead of using it to slop hogs. Nurses taught mothers how to can fruits and vegetables. Milk cows were loaned to mountain families who showed symptoms.

Appointed director of the Spartanburg County Health Department, from 1933-1940 she dealt with hundreds of patients out of work because of the closings of the huge textile factories across the Piedmont.

Such hard times inspired a poem called, “The Mill Mothers Lament”: “We leave our homes in the morning; We kiss our children good-bye, While we slave for the bosses, Our children scream and cry. And when we draw our money, Our grocery bills to pay, Not a cent to spend for clothing, Not a cent to lay away.”

n The doctor

gets married

In 1940, she married Dr. George Henry Zerbst, her former teacher at the Medical College. The next year came an appointment as director of the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health at the State Health Department in Columbia, and the couple moved there. Her final annual report on Spartanburg noted a successful campaign against pellagra, a decrease by half of cases of tuberculosis, an investigation by staff nurses which reduced the infant death rate, and approval of the installation of 1,445 new privies.

Many new child and maternal health programs began during her 28 years as bureau director. Many awards came to her. In 1967, she rose to deputy commissioner of the department as well as control chief of the Bureau of Community Health Services. She retired in 1974 and lived until 1988.

Only one of her Orangeburg family still lives here, D.C. “Dickey” Shirley. His “second mother,” Aunt Hilla, brought him into the world. Leaving all her staff and duties for three days, she came down and oversaw his safe and scientific birth. Dicky, now 76, is still a healthy fellow.

Note: Much of this material came from a paper on Dr. Sheriff by Dr. Allen Stokes, director of the Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. Other facts were garnered from talks with D.C. Shirley and his materials.

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