This is an excerpt from the book, Mother of Courage, an inspirational true story about Margaret Chanin, who despite the loss of both arms earned her dental degree, married and raised two boys, taught preventive dentistry for more than 20 years, and became nationally known for her advocacy of people with disabilities. Her journey through physical challenges and adversity is a testament to the power of determination, resilience, and faith.
Photo: Margaret at Meharry
In the summer of 1963, after a series of short-lived teaching stints in Memphis, Clemson, S.C., and Florence, Ala., Marty Chanin moved his family to Nashville, where a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology at Vanderbilt University awaited.
After finding yet another church home, Margaret Chanin immersed herself in volunteer work as a substitute Sunday School teacher, and as a substitute teacher at three of Nashville’s
still-segregated public high schools. Substitute teachers were scarce at the time. “You know they are desperate when they call an armless character to teach sewing and boys’ gym,” she wrote with characteristic humor in the family’s annual Christmas letter.
Then, shortly before the 1964–65 school year began, she got a phone call. “Is this Margaret Chanin? Dr. Margaret Chanin?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“You may not remember me, but we were at school together at Michigan. I’m Eugenia Mobley. I’m chairman of the Department of Preventive Dentistry and Community Health at Meharry Medical College.
“You’ve heard about Meharry, haven’t you? Talk to any Black doctor or dentist in the South and most of them are graduates of Meharry. But we’re not exclusive. White, brown, black – the color of your skin doesn’t matter to us. We take the best talent where we can find it, in our student body and in our faculty. That’s why I’m calling you.”
Mobley chuckled. “I’ve been looking for you for a year,” she continued. “I heard you were in Nashville, but I didn’t know your married name. I’m setting up an oral cancer detection program, and I would like it very much if you would come work with us.”
Mobley explained that while deaths from oral cancer among white men had been declining since 1950, they were rising among Black men. Tobacco use was a major risk factor. The problem was that few of them received regular dental care. “We’ve got to find them,” she said, “in the factories, in the nursing homes, even in the prisons – wherever they are. Will you help us?”
Years later Margaret Chanin recalled the conversation. “This was a direct answer to a prayer,” she said. “For 20 years, I had been praying that some way, somehow, I would be in a town that I could use my dental education. And now the prayer had been answered.”