Alice ‘Nainie’ Weems Weaver holds a painting of her father,
Dr. Nathaniel Marion Weems Sr., Boynton Beach’s first doctor.
Town Clerk A.U. Peterson (left), Dr. Weems Sr., vice mayor, and Mayor Marcus A. Weaver
at the dedication of the shuffleboard court at Southeast Fourth Street and Ocean Avenue in 1938.
Photo provided by family
INSET BELOW: Dr. Weems received a ring as payment for a $25 bill.
Photos by Tim Stepien/ The Coastal Star
By Ron Hayes
On Nov. 7, 1925, a Model T Ford rattled to a stop in the newly incorporated town of Boynton and delivered that tiny community’s first doctor.
The town that welcomed Nathaniel Marion Weems almost 90 years ago had one bank, one newspaper and 1,500 residents who traveled up to Lake Worth whenever they needed a cold treated, a bone set or a baby delivered.
Forty years and 7,500 babies later, “Dr. Nat” retired, for a while, and when he died in 1978, the city of Boynton Beach had acquired nearly 36,000 people, a hospital he helped landscape, a nursing home where he spent his last years and a new police complex named in his honor.
In his time, he had been a charter member of the city’s Rotary Club and a vice mayor. He had raised mangoes and oranges in his 2-acre yard on Northeast Third Street, planted about 2,600 melaleuca trees around town, simply because he liked growing things, and he had been stabbed seven times by a man who went berserk in his office.
Dr. Nat also raised seven children of his own, six of whom are still living.
In 1927, his son, Nathanial Marion Weems Jr. was born, and in 1931, he delivered a daughter named Alice, called “Nainie,” who grew up to marry a man named Curtis Weaver, whom her father had also delivered.
“Well, Daddy was born in 1898 in Lawrenceville, Ala., which was a wide spot,” Alice Weems Weaver recalled recently, “and when he was just a boy they moved to Clopton, which was no better.”
Weems’ father was a doctor who made calls by buckboard. The boy earned his tuition to Auburn University by teaching school when he was 17.
“Later he transferred to the University of Alabama,” Weaver said. “He told me his roommates used to tease him that he baked biscuits with oil from all the cadavers he worked on.”
At Emory University in Atlanta, where he earned his medical degree, Weems met and married a nursing student named Truly Fain. The two were completing their residencies in Mobile when he received a letter from another former Emory student. Dr. Alva Leo Rowe, who had opened a practice in Lake Worth, was writing to say that a town called Boynton needed a doctor.
And for 26 years, Dr. Nat would be its only doctor.
Early years in Boynton saw much difficulty
The couple’s first home was a porch rented from Richard Newlan, the town’s pharmacist, and his first office was in back of the pharmacy. Later, he had offices in the Oyer Building, above what is now Hurricane Alley.
Dr. Nat had arrived in time for the 1926 hurricane that devastated Miami, and then the 1928 storm that flattened much of Palm Beach County, including his office.
He volunteered with the Red Cross for three months, while the storms burst the real estate bubble and Florida sank into the Great Depression.
The doctor served both black and white patients.
“There were two separate entrances, one for blacks and one for whites, and in between was his office,” his daughter recalled. “There were no appointments. People just came in whenever they came in.”
He never refused a patient, and they paid however they could. If they didn’t have money, they paid with vegetables, even animals.
“For a while there, he got four chickens every Sunday,” Weaver remembers, “and that’s a lot of chickens. I know because I was the one who had to cook them, until they got the bill paid off.”
In their home in suburban Boynton Beach, the Weavers still have a wedding ring.
“He felt she should keep it, but the woman wanted the bill paid off,” she says. “The bill was $25 and the ring was probably worth $15.”
In 1935, he opened the Weems Clinic on what is now Southeast Fourth Street, where Drs. Jorge Macia and Rosa Marin still practice medicine.
A second family and temporary retirement
Truly Fain Weems died in 1947, and three years later he married Margaret Dudley, with whom he had two children.
His son, Nathaniel Marion Weems Jr., joined the practice in 1952, and five years later, on June 8, 1957, the lead story in The Palm Beach Times reported “Dr. Weems Attacked By Berserk Man.”
Dr. Nat had delivered a baby in his clinic late one night, the paper reported, and when he inquired about payment, the father made “some smart remarks.” Ordered to leave, the man pulled a knife and stabbed him seven times.
“The police report said all the stab wounds were in Dr. Weems’ chest,” The Times went on. “However, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist from West Palm Beach was among doctors summoned.”
Alice Weems Weaver shakes her head at the story.
“He got a tetanus shot for the stabbing and had a reaction,” she explains. “The tetanus paralyzed his lungs and he lost his sight in one eye.”
In 1965, when Dr. Nat retired to work in his garden, the Rotary Club presented him with an oil portrait to mark its silver anniversary and honor him as a charter member. In the portrait, by fellow member Bernard Thomas, he is surrounded by the faces of children he delivered.
The retirement, however, did not take, and for several years Dr. Nat returned to work in the emergency room at Bethesda Memorial Hospital, until failing vision forced him to leave medicine for good.
Building named for inspirational doctor
On Saturday, Dec. 30, 1972, about 100 people gathered to see the city’s new, $300,000 police complex dedicated in his honor. A bronze plaque adorned the door and the day was proclaimed “Papa Doc Weems Day.”
Circuit Court Judge Hugh McCracken said the new building would inspire police officers to serve the community as Dr. Nat had served it.
With 90 percent of his vision gone, the doctor spent his final years in the Boulevard Manor nursing home.
He died, age 80, on Sept. 19, 1978.
“Daddy and I got along,” his daughter said. “I admired him. He was fun some of the time, but Daddy worked like a dog, all day and all night, if it came to that.
“Mostly he was loved.”
In 1988, the police complex was remodeled. The jail cells were moved, and the plaque that honored “Papa Doc” disappeared.
“We looked for it,” Nainie Weems says, “but I think it went off in the cement, with the debris.”
Now Boynton Beach is planning to build a new complex at Gateway Boulevard and High Ridge Road.
“We have an architect on board right now,” reports Jeff Livergood, the city’s director of public works. “We’re looking at the space needs assessment, and the next step is to determine the preliminary floor plans.”
The new complex is estimated to cost between $20 million and $25 million.
The bronze plaque is gone, but there are still memories of Dr. Nat to be found in town.
In the city’s library archives, a manila folder holds copies of his diplomas from the University of Alabama and Emory University, a few photographs and, easily missed, a barely legible copy of a receipt made out on April 17, 1952, to a patient named Joseph whose last name is illegible.
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