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She's jusl "Grandma Travell" lo Gordon Street.
SPECIALIZATION in medicine is fairly
commonplace. But there's nothing
commonplace about the area in which
Dr. Janet Travell specializes. It is her
job to see that the President of the
United States remains in good health.
This is not to suggest thut President John F.
Kennedy is Dr. Travell's only patient. Quite the
contrary is true. Dr. Travell also ministers to
the health and medical needs of the President's
family, although the Kennedy children have
their own pediatrician; the larger White House
family of about 500 maids, valets, secretaries,
chauffeurs, garage workers, Secret Service men,
the Signal Corpsmen; and, "if we can save them
time," as Dr. Travell puts it, cabinet officers and
other high-ranking Federal appointees.
The President is averse to too much medical
supervision, but it is virtually impossible for
him to escape Dr. Travell's sharp eye. His pri
vate elevator is directly opposite the doctor's
office in the White House, and he must pass her
door every time he enters or leaves the elevator.
Her keen diagnostic eye can assess the state of
his health from the way he looks and walks.
Even more than most men, Mr. Kennedy is a diffi
cult patient who does not take easily to the rocking-chair
routine or the tepid swimming pool.
He has never given top priority to taking care
of himself. Rejected by the Army in World War
II because of a football injury, Jack Kennedy
trained until he was accepted by the Navy.
In 1913, when a Japanese destroyer rammed
and sank his PT boat in the Solomons, slamming
him against the deck, he nevertheless directed
the rescue of his crew and swam for miles tow
ing a badly burned crewman.
After a lumbar disc operation in 19-14, he em
barked on a political career and was elected to
Congress in 1946 and to the U.S. Senate in 1952.
By this time, his crippling back pain forced him
to use crutches. In 1954 a second back operation
was tried. Infection set in and his condition was
so grave that he was given the last rites.
In 1955 a third operation removed the plate
but not the pain. That April, he hobbled on
crutches into Dr. Travell's ollice and a new
lease on life.
I first met Dr. Travell at the 1957 convention
Family Wef kill. April it. IX2
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Family Weekly April 29, 1963
Meet Dr. Janet Travel!, White House physician,
grandmother with amazing interests and achievements
of the American Medical Association in New
York City. Hurrying to her exhibit booth on
"How to Give Painless Injections," I stopped for
a quick look at an orthopedic back-rest display.
The only other visitor was a large, amiable
woman who was as easy to talk to as your next
door neighbor. She was full of fascinating facts
about backs and chairs. Suddenly, realizing the
hour, I said I must rush to catch Dr. Travell.
"You already have," the woman said with a .
wide smile. "I am Dr. Travell."
Long before she became a public figure, I had
heard people turn emotional, almost reverent,
at the mention of her name. Many, including
President Kennedy, called her "a genius." One
man, crippled for years by low back pain and
already scheduled for major surgery, told me,
"She studied my X rays and vetoed the opera
tion; she gave me a couple of treatments with
some needles, and I haven't had a pain since.
That was eight years ago. I'd die for her."
Public Service at a Sacrifice
Immediately after the election, the Se
cret Service put her on call for whenever the
President was out of Washington as a general
physician in case of accidents. She fitted easily
into the Kennedy routine as a genial friend, at
tracting little attention from the press.
After her appointment as official White House
physician, I asked Dr. Travell when she had de
cided to accept the post.
"There never was a decision," she replied.
"After all. I'd been taking care of Mr. Kennedy
for years. When the Secret Service put me on
call, I knew I would be here all the time or run
ning back and forth from New York, so I didn't
accept any new patients after mid-November.
Right after his inauguration the President told
me, 'You'd better stay. It would make it a lot
easier.' Of course, it was hard to leave New
York and all my friends and patients."
There was no mention of the financial sacri
fice, but at $50 a visit against this $20,000-a-year
appointment, it must be considerable.
In many respects. Dr. Travell is an extraor
dinary woman. She is Associate Professor of
Clinical Pharmacology at Cornell University
Medical College; physician to outpatients at
New York Hospital; associate physician, Car
diovascular Research Unit, Beth Israel Hospi
She Guards the
tal; a research scientist and author or co
author of 85 scientific papers; a 60-year-old
grandmother who skis, rows, rides, and plays
smashing tennis.
She was born in a brownstone house on New
York's West 11th Street, the second daughter
of Willard Travell, a successful young doctor,
and his wife, a Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley.
On Janet's eighth birthday, Dr. Travell gave
each of his daughters a tennis racket. In the 40
foot yard he laid out half a tennis court, paint
ing the net on the back wall and teaching them
to hit strong, swift strokes. When they got to
Wellesley, no one could beat them.
Dr. Willard Travell had played on his college
team and continued until October, 1959. He died
Aug. 14, 1961, at 91.
Medicine was mysterious, yet familiar as
bread and milk in the Travell household. Both
girls decided to be doctors, Janet arriving at
that decision at age seven. Like their mother,
both girls made Phi Beta Kappa at Wellesley.
A classmate characterized Janet as an "ener
getic, vivacious, unassuming girl . . . with a
capacity for doing 10 things at once . . . and
doing them well." Her brilliant record at Cor
nell University Medical College won her an in
terneship at New York Hospital the second
woman to achieve the post.
She lightened her labors by dancing through
her nights off. At one dance she met John
Powell, a young banker who had been the best
college pitcher in the South but had refused
several big-league offers.
All Set for Two Careers
In June, 1929, they were married and moved
into the Travell house. Janet, on part-time serv
ice at the hospital, divided the remainder of the
day between her new home upstairs and her
new practice in her father's office.
They worked independently, yet cooperative
ly: "My father was a pioneer in physical medi
cine. I learned a great deal from him."
Dr. Janet continued doing 10 things at a time
and doing all of them well: teaching, re
search, hospital clinics, private practice, de
signing seats for planes (the tilt-back seat on
the Electra airliner among others), tractors,
telephone switchboards, ollice chairs, even toi
lets. "All in the interest of preventive medi-
medical trail blazer, and
By LIN ROOT
cine," she says about the latter endeavor, quot
ing a Greek proverb: "The mind can absorb no
more than the seat can endure."
Her daughters are both mothers and artists:
Janet, 28 (Mrs. James McAlce), is an operatic
soprano. Virginia, 25 (Mrs. Edward Street), is
a prize-winning painter.
Honors and high ollice have not changed
Janet Travell. Her classmate's characterization
applies just as accurately today. When the Pres
ident .warned her shortly after his inaugura
tion that he was going to be so healthy she
would "get bored to death and had better find
something to do," she associated herself with
the teaching and research departments of
George Washington University Hospital and
Medical School.
A Matter of Watchful Waiting
After the President strained his back in Can
ada while heaving a few spadefuls of dirt at
a tree-planting ceremony, Dr. Travell saw him
every day. But the President feels that, at 44,
he does not need daily observation or a personal
physician wherever he goes. So Dr. Travell did
not accompany him to South America and Ber
muda, nor did she go to Palm Beach with him
in December. Instead, her chief assistant, Navy
("apt. George Burkley, M.C., accompanied the
President, and Dr. Travell spent the holidays
with her family in Florida, joining the Ken
nedys specifically for a year-end examination.
For all her trail blazing, she is essentially
conservative and in some ways as old-fashioned
as her highly publicized rocking chair.
She and her father were lifelong Republicans
until Kennedy was nominated. Then Dr. Janet
worked on the "Doctors for Kennedy" campaign
and Dr. Willard flaunted the flashiest "Kennedy
for President" button made.
I asked Dr. Travell how she manages to work
everything in and still seem so relaxed. She told
me, "I've learned to utilize the minutes. Driving
a car, I always have a magazine handy for traf
fic stops I prop it on the steering wheel, and
when the traffic moves I move. My husband says,
'Ask her what she does between midnight and
morning.' I'm really a very good sleeper, but if
I happen to wake up I always read something
quickly. I never lie in bed just waiting to fall
asleep again. There are too many things to do."
President's Health
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Dr. Trove) sits on porlico of the While House
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in the rocking chair she designed for Prcsidunt Kennedy
Family Wrcfclv. Airril 29. 1562