During the 20th century, the village of Cumberland was blessed with a trio of medical practitioners whose work spanned 84 years. Two of those practitioners were the mother and son combination of Eva and Bus Kennedy.

I.F. ‘Bus’ Kennedy with his mother Eva after he returned from the war. FILE PHOTO

Eva Kennedy was a registered nurse who served as the chief medical practitioner in the village from 1921 to 1961, when her son Irving Farmer “Bus” Kennedy took over as the village doctor.

Before she became the chief medical practitioner in Cumber-land Village, Eva assisted Dr. James Ferguson, the town’s first resident doctor in his practice. She married her sweetheart, Robert Kennedy after he returned from serving in the First World War.

R.J., as he was known to his friends and neighbours, would go on to serve as clerk and treasurer, as well as tax collector and registrar of births and deaths for several decades.

After Dr. Ferguson passed away in 1921, Eva took over as the village’s chief medical practitioner.

At the time, the nearest doctor was over six miles away in Navan. Today, the two villages are just over 10 minutes away by car. In the early 1920s, very few people had cars and during the harsh winters the dirt roads were often impassable. At those times, the only transportation was a horse-drawn sleigh.

Eva would be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for the next 40 years. The Kennedy home would become a medical clinic and birthing centre.

Hundreds of babies were born in the Kennedy house. Eva helped give birth to hundreds more in the patients’ homes. The St. John’s Ambulance organization made the Kennedy home an official highway first aid post, which meant that the OPP would often bring accident victims to Eva to be treated for everything from cuts and bruises to broken bones.

Among Eva’s most frequent patients were local farmers who would often pay her in fresh produce or eggs.

On one occasion in the dead of winter, a local farmer arrived at her door in a horse-drawn cutter. His wife had gone into labour and he needed Eva to come back to his farm to assist in the birth. On the way back to man’s farm, the horse collapsed from colic and Eva and the anxious father had to walk the rest of the way to the man’s farm where his wife gave birth to a healthy bouncing baby.

In February 1922, the nurse became a patient. Dr. David Irwin was called had to make the trip to help Eva give birth to her second child, “Bus”.

Before becoming the village doctor in 1961, Bus served as a fighter pilot during the Second World War.

As a Spitfire pilot, he flew more than 30 missions over North Africa and later the European theatre and was one of Canada’s leading aces with 10 solo and five shared aircraft destroyed.

He was eventually shot down over France, but was able to make his way back to England with the help of the French Maquis. Once back in England, Bus found out that his younger brother, Tot, was training at a nearby bomber base. When he arrived at the base, he was told to report to the base commander who unfortunately had bad news. Carleton “Tot” Kennedy was killed the previous day when the bomber he was assigned to crashed just during the approach to the runway.

With the death of his brother, Bus was able to muster out of the air force and return to the family home in Cumberland.

After returning to Canada, Bus enrolled at the University of Toronto where he studied medicine. After earning his degree, he interned at the Ottawa Hospital and would eventually set up a practice in Lanark.

When his mother was consid-ering scaling back her own practice, Bus made the difficult decision to close his practice in Lanark and hang his shingle over a new practice in his home town.

During the next 26 years, Dr. I.F. Kennedy served his community faithfully. He drove all over the township mending broken bones, treating injured farmers, helping give birth to countless babies and tending to patients with everything from pneumonia to diabetes.

On Christmas Day in 1943, he received an urgent phone call from Montana. His sister Joyce had been in a terrible skiing accident and was suffering from massive peritonitis, which is the swelling of the inner lining of the belly, after going through a botched operation. Despite their best efforts, the doctors in Montana were unable to treat her properly.

When he arrived at his sister’s bedside, Bus called on his years of experience to properly diagnose the problem and bring Joyce back from the brink of death.

She would later right a book about her mother entitled Just Call Me Eva.

After he retired in 1987, Bus would write his own book, entitled Black Crosses Off My Wingtip, about his experience during the war. He was also a regular participant in the village’s Remembrance Day ceremonies where he would read out the names of Cumberland’s war dead.

Bus and his wife Fern lived out the rest of their lives on their Sarsfield Road property, affectionately called Chickadee Wood.

One of Bus’ proudest moments came in 2004 when the French government awarded him that country’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour.

Irving Farmer “Bus” Kennedy passed away in 2011 at the age of 89. Fern survived her husband by five years before passing away in 2016 at the age if 91. The couple is survived by their four daughters Nancy, Martha, Ann and Carol, their son Danny and nine grandchildren.