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SOMETHING TO PROVE:
A Daughter’s Journey to Fulfill a Father’s Legacy
By Yvonne S. Thornton, M.D., MPH
With Anita Bartholomew
“There is nothing like a dream to create the
future.” – Victor Hugo
 President Bill
Clinton and Oprah Winfrey counted themselves among the
thousands of ardent fans of Dr. Yvonne Thornton’s beloved
bestseller, THE DITCHDIGGER’S DAUGHTERS (1995), which
eventually became a movie. Now she continues the remarkable true story
in SOMETHING TO PROVE: A Daughter’s Journey to Fulfill a Father’s
Legacy (Kaplan Publishing, January 2011) as the first of the
Thornton sisters to become a physician and the first African-American
woman in the country to become a double-Board Certified specialist in
obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine.
Dr. Thornton tells the story of her amazing father who moved his wife
and daughters from the tenements in Harlem to a small house in New
Jersey that he built with his own hands from materials bought on a
ditchdigger’s salary. Donald Thornton cherished a mighty dream –
that all of his daughters would become medical doctors, respected
professionals in white coats and “scripperscrappers” (stethoscopes) – a
designation he believed would shield them from the pernicious specter of
prejudice. To pay for their educations, he began the all-girl Thornton
Sisters band and taught them how to work hard: his girls went to school
during the day, studied at night and played gigs on the college circuit
every weekend.
SOMETHING TO PROVE picks up where the first memoir left off with the
passing of Yvonne’s beloved father, Donald Thornton, and the beginning
of Yvonne’s career as an assistant professor at The New York
Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. It was there that Dr. Thornton
established and developed the program for a new form of early prenatal
diagnostic testing known as CVS (chorionic villus sampling) that is in
common use today. As Director of Clinical Services at Cornell, Dr.
Thornton was consigned to the sub-basement with no operating budget and
expected to teach, run the clinic and establish a private practice.
Remembering her father’s teachings never to give up and to “build her
own house,” Dr. Thornton found ways to improve the clinic and bring
better care to her patients. She handled the most difficult – and often
frightening – medical cases, including a baby born outside the womb,
while dealing with a prejudiced and stifling bureaucracy. Turning to her
orthopedic surgeon husband for support, Dr. Thornton pushed herself to
her limits to be there for her patients, her husband and their two
children.
After years of being passed over for promotions and opportunities, Dr.
Thornton left Cornell to establish one of the first prominent centers
for Perinatal Diagnostic Medicine at Morristown Memorial Hospital under
her beloved mentor. It was an ideal position until her mentor’s
retirement, which led her to an appointment that finally shattered the
glass ceiling of medical academia and made her one of only 12 percent of
female physicians to attain the academic rank of full professor.
Interweaving the challenges and triumphs of family life with her
professional joys and sorrows, Dr. Thornton paints a vivid portrait of a
woman who exceeds her father’s dreams and sees that dream live on in her
own son and daughter as they extend the family legacy by entering the
fields of neurosurgery and reconstructive surgery, building upon the
bedrock foundation Donald and Itasker Thornton built with their very own
hands.
SOMETHING TO PROVE:
A Daughter’s Journey to Fulfill a Father’s Legacy
By Yvonne S. Thornton, M.D.
Kaplan Publishing, January 2011
$24.99; 272 pages
ISBN: 978-1-60714-724-4
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