One Smart Cookie

While there is much debate lately as to the pros and cons of “tiger” parenting, author and Long Branch native Yvonne S. Thornton, M.D. is proof that pushing your child towards excellence in all endeavors can result in a remarkable career and inspiring life.

Thornton, 64, who will appear at , continues in her latest memoir, Something to Prove: A Daughter’s Journey to Fulfill a Father’s Legacy,to chronicle her climb from the projects in Long Branch to breaking the glass ceiling of the medical profession.

Her first book, The Ditchdigger’s Daughter: A Black Family’s Astonishing Success Story was published in 1995 and made into a motion picture and brought Thornton to Good Morning America and Oprah. The New York Times bestseller was written with the help of author Jo Coudert and focused on Thornton’s childhood and education, with a pit stop at the Apollo Theater performing as a member of the Thornton Sisters.

Thornton credits much of her success – including becoming the first African-American woman to be board-certified in maternal-fetal medicine – to her father, a laborer who placed a premium on education and excellence for his six daughters who all became physicians.

“My father was the wisest man I’ve ever known,” said Thornton and added that he would encourage her to persevere by saying, "You already got this far, Cookie."

Something to Prove tackles not only Thornton’s rise to the top of the medical field but the juggling act required as a wife and mother of two accomplished children.

“I didn’t let up,” Thornton, who co-authored the memoir with Anita Bartholomew, said of her parenting strategy, which she described as “lovingly strict.”

“The stiletto heel was always on their neck,” said Thornton who earned her medical degree from Columbia University. Her son, also a physician, was a cum laude graduate of Harvard University, and also received his M. D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and plans to become a neurosurgeon.

Because she said she experienced more prejudice in her career as a woman than as an African-American, Thornton said she pushed her daughter even harder that her son to achieve.

“I explained to her that whatever men do, women have to do twice as well,” she said, and added that her children refer to her as the “Terminator.” 

So, while her son was a national chess champion, Thornton’s daughter became a classical pianist on top of competing in chess. A Stanford University graduate, Thornton’s daughter earned her Master's degree in sociomedical science at The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia and is now a medical student.

Thornton said her father prepared them for life outside the cocoon of their community.

“Excellence is the only answer to racism,” Thornton said her father taught his children.

“It was like Leave it to Beaver,” she said of her childhood in Long Branch, which was touched by teachers who believed in her dream to become a doctor, no matter what her skin color or gender.

One day during her teen years, there was a knock on their front door of their Ludlow Street house and Thornton found it was her Long Branch High School biology teacher. His uncle had just died and left him a slew of medical books and he knew Thornton aspired to attend medical school.

 “He believed in me,” she said of the teacher who helped carry the books into the house for her. “He validated me.”

After graduating from Long Branch, Thornton attended what was then Monmouth College in West Long Branch and found the most rigorous of all her medical training waiting for her there until she graduated in 1969.

“It wasn’t considered a ‘real’ college back then,” said Thornton, who explained that it became another stigma, along with being a black woman, which she carried with her early in her medical career.

“But that little college that was laughed at … it was better than Columbia,” she said, describing the challenges of dissecting and rapid-paced histology slide identifications that helped her “ace” courses at Columbia University and graduate in 1973.

But it was the letters of recommendation that her Monmouth professors wrote for Thornton to attend medical school that still makes her emotional today.  Thornton was accepted to all 13 schools she applied to and she said the letters were so impactful that admissions officers expected her to walk into an interview “with a halo on my head.”

When asked how she was able to juggle her career and family, Thornton quickly replied, “You have to be married to a wonderful guy.”

For 36 years, she has been married to Dr. Shearwood McClelland, an orthopedic surgeon, who easily pitched in with hair braiding and carpooling and didn’t balk when his new bride did not want to change her name.

“It was a team effort,” she said. “I didn’t do this by myself.”

 Looking back on raising her family and trying to time her daughter’s piano lessons with patients’ contractions, Thornton said,  “It was fun, like being a fireman.”

 “The alarm went off and you had to fly down that pole,” she said.

 Dr. Yvonne Thornton will appear this Saturday at the Springfield Barnes & Noble on Route 22 at 2 p.m. to sign copies of her new book, Something to Prove: A Daughter’s Journey to Fulfill a Father’s Legacy.