The author, Steve Bailey, is outreach coordinator at the Anson County Historical Society.

Dr. Esta Joyce Levy Kress and her husband Dr. Jack Kress arrived in Wadesboro in 1940. She was a “baby doctor” and he was a physician at the old Wadesboro Hospital on Morven Road. 

“Dr. Esta,” as she was known by the children and women who came to her for care, was in private practice in Wadesboro for 25 years. She was actively involved in the community and was a member of the PTA and the Wadesboro Garden Club.

Dr. Esta’s parents and grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. She was born Oct. 5, 1910, in Suffolk, Va. She was the first woman from Suffolk to complete medical school and was one of only two women in the 1935 graduating class of the Medical College in Richmond. After completing her internship, Dr. Esta was a pediatrician on staff at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.

Dr. Jack (Jacob Himi) Kress (Dr. Esta’s husband) was born in High Point, N.C., on Aug. 13, 1907, and died Jan. 16, 2001, at age 93 in Potomac, Md. They were married Aug. 11, 1938, in Suffolk.

They lived in Wadesboro for 25 years and moved to Gainesville, Fla., in 1965 where she worked for the University of Florida Student Health Service and also the Department of Health & Human Services.

In 1995 in Gainesvillle, Dr. Esta was recognized by her Synagogue B’nai Isreal as “Woman of the Year.” When she died at age 87 on Jan. 6, 1998, in Gainesville, she had been married to Dr. Jack Kress for 59 years. She was buried at the Hebrew Cemetery in High Point. Her children were Dr. Sidney Kress of Staten Island, N.Y; Miriam Avrunin of Potomac, Md.; and Dr. Steven Kress, a pharmacist in Gainesville.