Obituary: Doris Carson was a city pioneer in women's reproductive health

The physician was an avid promoter of family planning.

August 9, 2008
By Jessie-Lynne Kerr, The Times-Union

"My greatest concern is to see that every child is a wanted child," she said in a 1992 interview with the Times-Union. She fervently promoted family planning and said she was uncomfortable with abortion.

There will be a memorial service at 2 p.m. Friday at Riverside Presbyterian Church, 849 Park St., where she had been an elder and Sunday school teacher.

During her lifetime, Dr. Carson was known for achieving several firsts. In addition to being the first woman to practice her specialty in Jacksonville, she was the first recipient of the Times-Union's EVE award in the employment category in 1969, the first woman appointed to the Florida Board of Medical Examiners in 1975, and the first woman elected president of the medical staff at any Jacksonville hospital.

"Doris was one of the most wonderful, happy, intelligent and exciting leaders I have ever known," said longtime friend Bill Mason, former administrator at Baptist Medical Center, where Dr. Carson was on staff.

"She was tough enough to command the respect of her male colleagues and they held her in awe," Mason said. "She was very solid and thoughtful and not at all reckless, yet she was charming and gracious and even in the toughest of times could find something funny to say."

Dr. Carson was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood of Northeast Florida in the late 1960s, and she was elected in 1972 to the national board of directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1992, the Community Foundation of Jacksonville established the Doris N. Carson Family Planning and Women's Health Foundation as a component fund to benefit women's health issues.

In 2001, Dr. Carson was one of five women who organized the Women's Giving Alliance, administered by the community foundation, to pool their philanthropic giving for the benefit of critical community services for women and girls.

In April, another honor was bestowed on her when The Bridge of Northeast Florida, which she helped found in 1972 as Family Health Services, named its original building in Springfield for her. The Carson Building houses the agency's administrative staff and its clinic.

"Dr. Carson was a mentor and an inspiration to us all," said Davy Parrish, president of The Bridge.

"She was a woman who championed and pioneered so many causes related to the health and well-being of women and children, in particular all medical issues that would help with reproductive health," Parrish added. "She was deeply interested in the issue of teenage pregnancy and was so proud of The Bridge as a model for prevention of teen pregnancy and our success with the young people we serve."

Although Dr. Carson retired from her medical practice in 1992, she continued until several years ago to work with community clinics and as an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Florida.

Her husband of 54 years, former Sheriff Dale G. Carson, died in 2000.

Dr. Carson grew up in the small farming community of Carrollton, Ohio. When she was just 16, she attended college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and got married when she was 19. That same year she entered medical school at Ohio State University, from which she graduated in 1950.

In interviews with the Times-Union over the years, Dr. Carson said her interest in family planning was spurred by her experiences as a medical resident at a Memphis, Tenn., hospital where she tended to a floor of women who had been injured giving themselves abortions. When she came to Jacksonville in 1954, it was illegal to give contraceptive information to women at the county-owned hospital, now Shands Jacksonville.

She was a trustee of Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., and a longtime volunteer for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Dr. Carson is survived by three children, Dale Craig Carson and Cynthia Carson Jackson, both of Jacksonville, and Christopher L. Carson of Keystone Heights; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Memorials may be made to The Bridge of Northeast Florida, 1824 Pearl St., Jacksonville, FL 32206; Planned Parenthood of Northeast Florida, 3850 Beach Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32207; or the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, 4237 Salisbury Road, Jacksonville, FL 32216.

jessie-lynne.kerr@jacksonville,com, (904) 359-4374