Episode #339 1954-02-10 "A Search that Saved a Life," Virginia Marmaduke and Joseph Kordick, Chicago Sun-Times
Virginia Marmaduke was a Chicago newspaper legend. The Chicago Sun-Times digital files for the era do not exist, but the column on which this episode is based can be found in Virginia Marmaduke: A Journey in Print from Carbondale to Chicago by Cary O'Dell (2002). Her column and articles were not usually picked up by other newspapers. But this story was so large, it did receive national news coverage through the major wire services, without attribution to Marmaduke.
The plotline was the difficulties a family was having in deciding whether or not to have risky and experimental surgery on their young child. Marmaduke and her photographer, Kordick, found another family who made the decision for the surgery and their child was thriving.
The Big Story editors changed so much of the original story to fit its plotline and format that it did not give any insight into the particular operation that the child needed. Marmaduke was constantly working for causes for medical advances for children. Among them were the correction of heart defects. That condition seemed like was a possible candidate for the broadcast story, but that was not the case.
The key to identifying the correct news story is the parents' marital tension over the riskiness of the surgery. None of Marmaduke's other columns about medical care for children had this detail. Her column of August 15, 1948 in the Chicago Sun-Times, replicated in the book, was different. It explains the birth defect involved, and it is one that the Big Story editors probably did not want to include: the child's bladder partially formed outside her body. The condition is called "bladder exstrophy." Today it is considered a 1/40,000 chance of this defect occurring (0.0025%). It is easy to understand why the scriptwriters did not want to go into details about the condition because it is complicated.
Marmaduke's role was to get parents of a child, Christine Ulrich, who had successful surgery, in touch with Pamela Lamphere's parents. Pam was two years old, with only a few years to live unless she had the surgery. The surgery had three phases, and was dangerous. Though the newspapers make it seem like the surgery "cures" the patient, it does not. It saves their lives but they have to manage aspects of personal health and care for the rest of their lives... but outsiders are not aware, and most importantly, the patient survives and can have a very normal life. The other good news is that the marriage of Pam's parents survived, too.
It all played out well, but the process was grueling. The decision ended up in court with a judge forming a panel of leading physicians to advise the separated parents about their decision. The father wanted the surgery, the mother believed it was too risky, and that she would lose her child in the process. She would rather have the two nearly guaranteed years of survival compared to the risk of immediate loss of a surgery that had a very small chance of success. The father, Fred, was so upset, he separated from Pam's mother, Irene. Marmaduke's coordination of a meeting with the Ulrich family and their little 19-month-old daughter helped the Lampheres reach the decision to have the operation.
The courtroom events, the two successive surgeries, and the family dynamics all made the news for weeks and months after the initial Marmaduke column of August 1948. Pam survived, and thrived, and so did the marriage.
After Pam's first surgery, singer Peggy Lee mentioned her on her radio program broadcast of November 25, 1948:
"I know, friends, you've heard Mañana a lot of times. And to tell you the truth, we hadn't planned on doing it tonight, but we have a request. It's from a little girl in Chicago. Two-year-old Pamela Lamphere. Maybe you recall her picture on the front page of your newspaper some time ago. She had a very serious operation -- and, I'm happy to say, a successful operation. Someone asked her, not long ago, what she wanted. She could have anything her heart desired. Little Pam asked to hear Mañana. Well, here's your Mañana, Pam, and Andy Russell is going to sing with me -- with some special Thanksgiving lyrics."Marmaduke eventually worked for the Chicago Tribune before she retired from newspaper work, and offered an overview of the circumstance and the aftermath in an extended November 13, 1955 article. Pam was due to have some minor follow-up surgery when she was about nine or ten years old, and this surgery was just weeks away. Marmaduke only wrote five articles for Chicago Tribune before she retired to move on to television and radio and other jobs, and this was the final print piece. Her choice to make this her farewell effort is probably a sign of how much the events and their happy conclusion touched her. Her November 1955 article is also the last time any newspaper searches or other research methods have yielded any information about Pamela Lamphere or her family. We have learned by non-traditional research that she did have a family and that as was recently widowed and is retired.