Miracle in Charcoal Alley

Even in an affluent middle-class suburb, the modern, modular, $1,500,000 medical building would stand out. Along its cool white corridors hangs a collection of paintings that phase from photographic realism to violent impressionism. But many of the paintings, done by artists living in the neighborhood the medical building serves, are tinged with bitterness against white authority and the Government. For the building is the new Watts Health Center, smack in the middle of "Charcoal Alley," scene of the fiery Negro riots of 1965.

That the building exists at all is no less a miracle than Watts's riotless history in the two intervening years. Perhaps even more of a miracle is Dr. Elsie Giorgi, the dark-haired, 56-year-old dynamo who conceived the center and fought it through--despite threats of violence--to fruition.

Bronx to Park Avenue. The tenth child of an Italian immigrant family in The Bronx, N.Y., Dr. Giorgi (pronounced Georgy) decided in grammar school that she wanted to become a doctor. Penniless when she finished pre-med courses at New York City's Hunter College in the depths of the Depression, she toiled twelve years as a white-collar worker in a trucking company, saving $12,000 while helping the firm increase sixfold in size. Then, after four years at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, she spent ten years as intern, resident and ultimately chief of clinics at the Cornell Division of New York City's Bellevue Hospital Center, and built up a flourishing Park Avenue practice.

"I wasn't comfortable with it," she says. "Eighty-five percent of the people had nothing wrong with them physically. They were simply troubled." In 1961 Dr. Giorgi moved to Los Angeles for a year's residency in psychiatry at Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in turn taking over the center's clinic and establishing its comprehensive home-care program--and a movie-star-studded practice of her own. In July 1965, she volunteered to examine Watts children who were beginning the Office of Economic Opportunity's Head Start program, and was appalled.

"The ratio of doctors to patients in Watts was 1 to 2,900," she said, "The infant-mortality rate was almost double the overall U.S. rate. Sixty-eight percent of the children I examined had something wrong with them. Ninety percent had never seen a dentist."

"Your Clinic Will Burn." Furious, Dr. Giorgi stormed into the OEO's offices in Washington with a plan for a medical center outlined on a piece of note paper. OEO bought the idea, and within a year, through the University of Southern California's medical school, had funded the new Watts Health Center. Built on land leased from Los Angeles for $1 a year, the center was opened last month. At the dedication ceremony, a young firebrand of Watts's Black Power movement introduced Dr. Giorgi to the crowd. As she mounted the podium, the young man threw his arms around her, kissed her, then whispered, grinning, "I hope you didn't mind, Doctor, but I know there are TV cameras here and I wanted them to see that in Mississippi."

Not quite so welcoming were threats of violence Dr. Giorgi was subjected to through anonymous telephone calls. "You're just a matchstick away from nothing," warned one Watts doctor. "Your clinic will burn yet." But patiently building confidence and trust, she won the community over. The Health Center that emerged embodies Dr. Giorgi's progressive medical philosophy. "We must put the physician back into his community, using all the paramedical services--especially the social worker."

Reaching into Homes. At the Watts Health Center, unlike most clinics, the first person a patient sees is a doctor. He is given a medical examination by another physician who can call in a specialist in almost any field of modern medicine. The doctor becomes the patient's personal physician, controlling treatment regardless of the number or stature of staff members and specialists brought in on the case. "If the patient is simply troubled," says Dr. Giorgi, "the physician sees him a few times, then begins sending him to the social health team--to the nurse, social worker, or whomever he relates to best."

This care extends to the patient's entire family. Health agents, who are actually Watts laymen trained and briefed at the center, visit the homes of their neighbors, explaining the Health Center's operation and following through on its recommendations. They teach sanitation and nutrition, report on the needs of individual families. Sometimes the patients who initially come to the clinic need less medical attention than the ones who stay on at home.

OEO is now paying all medical care costs of the center, estimated at $90 per patient per year. Ultimately, the center plans to serve 32,000 Watts patient --free of charge--with a probable annual operating budget of $3,900,000, including dental and preventative medicine and training programs. When complete it will provide a staff of 334, including 20 full-time physicians, 40 part-time specialists, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and twelve dentists, plus administrators, lab technicians, dental assistants and hygienists. Forty-one similar OEO-supported health centers are now being built across the country. Dr. Giorgi is now "training together" with a Negro physician who will run the center when she "phases herself out." When she leaves, there is little doubt that the community, circumspect and distrustful with most whites, will be swept by a deep personal loss. "If she goes," said one Negro social worker at the clinic, "she can never really be replaced."

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