SCHLEY MARION COUNTY, GA - BIOS Dr. Boyce T. Rainey Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Martha Rainey. RAINEYM968@aol.com Table of Contents page: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/schley.htm Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm The following was taken from the Sears family history compiled by Lynward Lightner in 1985. It is contributed by Martha Rainey. RAINEYM968@aol.com "On March 27, 1958, a Mrs. Robinson, the wife of another Buena Vista physician, wrote an outstanding article for the Medical Journal on the life and works of Dr. Rainey when she was chairperson of the Research and Romance of Medicine Committee of the 3rd District Medical Auxiliary. Excerpts from the tribute she deservedly paid to Dr. Rainey are quoted below because they really tell the story of this splendid man loved by so many." Tribute Deservingly Paid to Dr. Rainey by Mrs. R.S. Robinson, March 27, 1958 In Marion County if you mention two certain things--the marion Drug Store and the bench in front of it, the third one automatically comes to mind--Dr. Boyce T. Rainey. For this, so to speak, is Dr. Rainey's office. In Dr. Rainey's forty-four years of practice, he has never but once set up an office in which to practice. That time he furnished an office above the Marion Drug Store, but not one patient came into the office the first day. After one day of "trying to stay in the office," he just gave up and continued making house calls and soon completely closed the office. The people of Marion County wanted him to come to the home, and they were reluctant to go to the office. In Mauk, Ga., during his first year's practice, he delivered 98 babies, attended 56 thyphoid cases, and handled epidemics of children's diseases--one following right on the heels of another. All this in addition to the general run of chopped toes and fingers, broken ribs, black eyes, and the stitchery attendant upon "cutting scrapes" among the colored bretheren gave Dr. Rainey as thorough an initiation into the variety of human accidents and ailments as a doctor in his early twenties has ever had. When Dr. Rainey came to Buena Vista, there were 22 more doctors in his territory than there are today. In those days each tiny rural settlement had its own medical man who generally admitted to a second distinction, that of being the owner of the hardest worked buggy horse in the section. Dr. Rainey soon purchased his first car, a Model T and promptly broke his arm cranking it. "Crank half a day and ride half an hour," Dr. Rainey quotes an old saying of that day, but even at that, it revolutionized life for the doctor and the patient. A single doctor became able to cover an infinitely larger territory. Hours of agony were miraculously shortened and lives saved by the speed of the still crude invention. On a cold, freezing day, Dr. Rainey crawled under this same car to drain the water out of the radiator when he noticed the battery was loose. He reached up and tapped it, and it spilled battery acid into his eye. It was burned so badly that the eye ball had to be removed, and the burn was so great that the muscles to the eye would not revolve an artificial eye. Thus, he practiced more than forty years with just one eye-- which Marion Countians call his "x-ray eye." They say, Dr. Rainey can just take a look at you, and his "x-ray eye" can see what is wrong with you without his having to examine you. This tall gentle man with the ready sense of humor and sensitive hands has brought over four thousand babies into the world--he quit counting twelve years ago at 3, 726. And the remarkable thing is that out of those 3,726 mothers only two lost their lives through causes attributable to childbirth. There is no hospital in Buena Vista so the great majority of those thousands of babies were born at home--some in the very room and beds in which their mothers and fathers first saw the light of day. Most Marion Countians would rank Dr. Rainey right up there with top pediatricians. Everyone is quick to tell newcomers of Dr. Rainey's untiring service and devotion to the people of Buena Vista, Marion County, and adjoining counties; for he has served them from the days of the horse and buggy. The fact that they truly love him and are grateful to him is quite evident, for the county is full of children with the first name of Rainey. Dr. Boyce Tucker Rainey was born 2 Feb 1889 and died 7 Oct 1960. He was one of nine children of Mr. and Mrs. R.M. Rainey, an Ellaville, Schley County, faming couple. He was born schooled and reared in Schley County. He attended Mercer University and it was while he was a student that he married a Brenau College student of Ellaville, Imogene Sears (1890-1979), the third of the children of Dr. William David Sears and Emma D. Battle. He graduated from the Atlanta School of Medicine (later Emory) in 1914. His first year of practice was in Mauk, Taylor County, Ga., where their only child Boyce Tucker Rainey, Jr. was born. Following a bout of thyphoid fever, he moved his family to Buena Vista, Marion County, seventeen miles from Mauk, and began his practice there. He died at age 71, and is buried in the Sears family plot in Ellaville Cemetery.