Be sure to read the first part of this piece, the story of Dr. Herman W. Alexander of Mokena, posted last week to this page.
While the story of Dr. Herman W. Alexander is firmly one of the days following the Civil War, a far-off epoch when Mokena was but a young railroad town, that of Dr. Ernest G. McMahan is one that belongs to the 20thcentury. While the two men had much in common, not only both being Mokenians, they were both war veterans and shared impeccable backgrounds in medicine; they never knew each other, nor did they even live at the same time. Nevertheless, Dr. McMahan proved himself to be a hero and healer to countless people in our community.
His story begins far from Mokena. Ernest G. McMahan was born November 30th, 1892 at Newport, Tennessee, a modestly sized town nestled up against the border with North Carolina. Possessed of an impressive Tennessean lineage, he was the son of a county judge and deacon in the Baptist church, and was raised with seven siblings. Growing up in hill country, the young McMahan finished high school in 1910, after which he pursued a course of study at the Baptist Carson and Newman College in the eastern part of the Volunteer State, ultimately receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1914. After graduation, he spent two years working as a teacher both in Oklahoma and his hometown, before coming north to Chicago where he once again became a student, this time at prestigious Loyola University.
Ernest McMahan’s studies were interrupted by World War I, and in June 1918 he enlisted in the army’s Medical Corps. It’s hard to tell after all these years if he ever made it overseas, but doesn’t appear to have, instead spending his enlistment in the service in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He left the army in the first days of 1919, and would go on to marry Miss Mae Krusemark that year. With the dust settled after the war, Ernest McMahan went back to Loyola, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1920. He spent the next year as an intern at St. Mary’s Hospital in Chicago, and during the next two years worked at St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island. In 1923, the twists and turns of fate brought Dr. McMahan to Mokena.
Their first June in town, the McMahans bought the historic Moriarty residence on the northwest corner of Mokena and Second Streets. Aside from moving home and hearth into the old house, Dr. McMahan also set up his office there. A mere three years after their arrival in our midst, he was visited by disaster. On the night of November 15th, 1926, the McMahans were jarred from their slumbers by the frantic barking of their dog, who alerted them to the fact that their home was in flames. The couple was able to get out of the burning house in time, but the domicile turned out to be a total loss, for despite the valiant efforts of the Mokena Volunteer Fire Department, it burned to the ground. In the aftermath of the conflagration, Dr. McMahan opened a temporary office in the Lizzie Moriarty residence on Front Street, where he also had rented some residential space.
Mokena Street looking south from St. John's Church, as it appeared in Doc McMahan's day. The McMahan residence is at right.
The McMahans got to work rebuilding, and in the fall of 1927, their new home was ready on the site of the old one. As was the case previously, Doc, as he affectionately came to be known, kept his office here, in an area in the southern part of the house, or to the left open entering his front door. From this vantage point, one could peek into Doc’s living room and catch a glimpse of him sitting in his rocking chair, waiting for the next patient. In 1928, a contemporary called him “one of the foremost of the younger physicians and surgeons of Will County”, in which year he was also on the staff of Silver Cross and St. Joseph Hospitals in Joliet. Upon visiting Doc at his home office in Mokena, (which would run a patient $2.00) he or she could count on being given medicine in a little paper envelope, whereupon some curious residents would later ask what color pill he gave. He was even known to make some of the medicine himself. Times being what they were, Doc also made his share of house calls, (including delivering babies at home) no matter the time, day or night. In the era when bad weather turned our roads to quagmires, he’d be shuttled to the patient by Mokenians Harold Cooper or Barney Hostert. In the years after Mokena Public School opened on Carpenter Street in 1929, Doc McMahan and his loyal nurse, village resident Florence Niethammer, would set up on the stage to dispense vaccinations for diphtheria, smallpox, tetanus and even polio, which could be had for 25 cents.
Over the decades, Doc McMahan came to be firmly established in Mokena, and became one of the pillars of our community. A former patient, now senior in years, states that he was “way ahead of his time” and “right on pretty much everything.” After Mae McMahan passed in 1951, Doc took as his second wife Rose D. Moriarty, in a ceremony performed by Rev. William Riemann of St. John’s Evangelical and Reformed Church at her residence two doors south of Doc’s. Like her husband, the new Rose McMahan enjoyed a very prominent spot in the village, having been president of Mokena State Bank for two decades previous. The daughter of founding father and former mayor Christian Bechstein, Mrs. McMahan had been a teacher in her youth.
Pinning down the exact date of Doc’s retirement has proven to be easier said than done. When former patients of his were surveyed by the author, memories were foggy and conflicting; however, it can said with certainty that he was still active in Mokena as late as 1959. After Rose McMahan passed away in 1974, Doc moved to Texas in the sunset of his life, with his third wife, Olive Patterson, in tow. A mere two weeks after he settled there, he departed on December 8th, 1978 after having reached the admirable age of 86 years. Dr. Ernest G. McMahan was not only a fixture in town for decades, but also a true healer, one who is fondly remembered by many in our community despite the passage of time. Even today, one patient of years past, an honored Mokenian of some decades standing, recounted to this author that when she is at her wit’s end, frustrated by contemporary physicians, she woefully looks back and sighs “Where is Dr. McMahan?”
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