"Dr.Thelma-Coffey" (February 9,1911-June 21,1991)

She was one of  two daughters born to John Joseph Coffey & Ann Hattie Fournet.John worked for a shoe manufacturer and was an active member of several Catholic lay organizations.Thelma graduated from Xavier Prepartory School in 1927.Just what inspiration  to enter medicine is not certain.


The first woman of color obtain a medical degree in Louisiana was Dr.Emma Wakefield Paillet,a native of  New Liberia,who moved San Francisco after she married and never practiced. The second African American female doctor was Dr. Ella N.Prescott who practiced briefly in New Orleans and then in Franklinton,where she died in 1925.Thelma lived with with cousins in Chicago while she studied pre-med at Crane College.Thelma graduated from Crane in 1930.Afterwards,she traveled to Nashville,Tennessee,where she was accepted to Meharry Medical College.Founded during Reconstruction in 1876,Meharry ranked  alongside the Howard University College of Medicine as the top producers of  African Americans doctors in the early twentieth-century.While the first woman to graduate from Meharry had done so in 1893,the number of women students was very small.During Thelma's four years of study,there were never more than five or six female students in the school of medicine at any given time.This must have proved an interesting experience for Thelma.During her time at Meharry,she boarded at the home of  Mrs.Clara Booth,a widow,and her family.Thelma graduated in 1934.


Dr.Coffey returned to New Orleans to complete her internship at the newly-opened  Flint Goodridge Hospital.At that time,many expecting mamas utilized the services of  midwives due to their inexpensive cost,despite the fact that many midwives did not have knowledge of the best practices  in maternity care.The young Superintendent Albert W.Dent convinced the governing board to allow him to offer a flat maternity rate of ten dollars which covered care,the costs,of medicine,and any necessary procedures.This brought a steady stream of obstetrics cases to the hospital and many mamas received the patient and attentive care of the pretty young lady intern.She subsequently completed her residency at the famed Provident Hospital in Chicago.


Appeasing her mama,Dr.Coffey who was one of two daughters,came back to New Orleans in 1937,when she began her private practice and served on the staff of Flint-Goodridge.In those early days she could not afford a car,Dr.Coffey could often be seen on the streetcars or buses in the course of making house calls.A member of Alpha Kappa Sorority,Dr.Coffey and nine other sorors from throughout the south were doctors or nurses,spent several summers in the 1930s volunteering  in the sixteen clinics set up by the sorority in the Mississippi Delta and centered around Bolivar County.Over the courses of their visits they served over fifteen hundred family groups.


Dr.Coffey married Benson Meade Boutte, a popular public school teacher  (d.1969),whose brothers Armand & Belton were popular druggists.To their union was born one son,Benson Virgil Boutte,who was born in 1947.Over the course of  more than thirty years of private practice in New Orleans and in conjuction with Flint-Goodridge  Hospital,she delivered several thousand babies,according to one estimate about four to five hundred each year.One interesting incident in her practice is that when the infamous Lee Harvey Oswald traveled to Mexico just two months before the Kennedy assassination,he listed his address on travel documents as 640 South Rampart Streest instead of 640 Audubon Street.This sparked an investigation by the FBI into the building,which in actuality had no connection to Lee and housed The Louisiana Weekly,Dr.Boutte's office,and that of an African American real estate agent.If nothing assured Dr.Boutte a place in the files of the FBI and several conspiracy investigators.


After she retired from her medical practice,Dr.Bouttecontinued to work as an instructor at Xavier University in the Health and Science department.She represented her branch of the American Medical Women's Association at the Medical Women's International Association Meeting in Paris 1973.Dr.Boutte was honored by the National Council of Negro Women with its Mary McLeod Award in 1983.Dr.Boutte fully retired in 1985 after a long and successful career.She was survived by her only sibling,Edith Louise Coffey King,a retired schoolteacher and her son,Benson.