Dr. DeMaurice “Bucky” Moses – A pioneer of pediatric medicine in the Puyallup Valley, retired after 34 years of practice in 1999. Families in the area remember him as the kind and talented physician who cared for their children. His colleagues called him unusual, a real old-fashioned doctor who made night calls and house calls, always putting good medical treatment first and his bank account and personal needs last. He is described as a soft-spoken man with a reputation for treating young patients and their parents with great kindness and dignity. Even when x-rays and laboratory reports failed to provide answers, he calmed parents, listening intently to children in ways that often enabled him to make a correct diagnosis.

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     Dr. Moses achieved success and enormous stature in the community with his efforts. Deeper understanding of the obstacles he faced being black and as a physician in the 1960s adds another dimension of appreciation for the man.

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     Moses was born in 1933 in Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C, a hospital built by the U.S. government to care for former slaves. It was a time when segregation was still enforced in the South. Moses attended segregated, all black elementary schools, in Washington, D.C. Childhood experiences included, not being permitted in any public park, church, or restaurant where white people gathered. If he went beyond his home in the District of Columbia, he rode at the back of the bus and used restrooms marked for "colored" people. To improve “Bucky’s” educational prospects, the family moved to Jamaica Queens, New York. Due to the efforts of his mother, who was a teacher, he was able to attend superior quality white schools. Moses attended the same elementary school as general Colin Powell. He was four years ahead of Powell and remembers being the only black kid in the school. In eighth grade, Moses began attending Horace Mann Lincoln High School in New York City with very well-off white children. There, he began to do well in the sciences. While comfortable with white children, he had black friends and lived in a black neighborhood in Jamaica, Long Island.

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     At age 15, his mother sent him to the Mt. Hermon School (for boys) in Massachusetts. It was a highly competitive prep school with great athletic programs. His science grades were very competitive, and he was selected to the All-American Prep School Swim Team for 1950. You could go onto Yale from there, which he did in 1951 at age 18. While attending the Yale University, he continued swimming and swam fast enough to break IVY League and Naval Academy pool records in the 200-yard breaststroke. One photo (above) shows him wearing his Yale lettermen sweater as a college student. Another photo, taken last summer, captures his pleased smile that at the age of 88 he still fits into the same sweater. Dr. Moses graduated from Yale in June of 1955. 

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     While Moses was a bright young graduate of Yale, two-thirds of the nation's medical schools at the time refused to accept black students. Moses gained acceptance and entered Case Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland, Ohio in the fall of 1955, earning his medical degree, partly funded by ROTC scholarship in 1959. Following completion of his rotating internship, at Case, his first wife, Grace Moses, gave birth to their first child, Belinda Moses, at University Hospital where Dr. Moses worked as a medical resident. Grace was a negro and not allowed to share a room with a white woman. The family was given a room with empty beds to themselves. Dr. Moses left Cleveland in 1961 (with his young family) to serve our country as an army captain in West Germany for three years. Dr. Moses became chief of pediatrics at Wurzburg Army Hospital in his first year abroad. Dr. Moses returned to Cleveland to complete his residency in pediatrics which had been interrupted by military service. Racial barriers, thwarted his efforts to establish a private practice. He discovered racial segregation in the private practice medicine presented problems for him that had not existed in the Army.

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​            Escalating civil unrest, drove Dr. Moses’ decision to move to pursue opportunity to own property and his own medical practice and move his family to the west coast. He wrote to Dr. Paul Gerstmann, a longtime Puyallup pediatrician, seeking work in his practice. The letter made a big impression on Gerstmann, who was at the time the only pediatrician in Puyallup. Gerstmann immediately wrote back inviting Moses to come quickly to Puyallup. Gerstmann cleared a space in his living room for Moses to see patients, and the two doctors set out to fight illness and save lives.

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     Gerstmann went on to say "He (Moses) saved my life. I was a very busy pediatrician at that time. We didn't have 24-hour emergency rooms in those days. We didn't have 911. So, we were the 24-hour emergency room for over 100,000 people."  Moses recalls, "Literally, there wasn't anything. It was you and whatever you could do to save the patient."  Dr. Moses made his own ambulance with a station wagon and a mattress thrown in the back, where twice he crouched over a child to extract blood from the brain and ward off death.

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     Upon arrival in Puyallup, Moses and his family rented a home next to Good Samaritan Hospital. Then hospital administrator, Paul Teslow, had interceded with the neighbors to facilitate approval of the rental to the Moses family because Puyallup had a reputation for housing denial to negroes. Moses said, "He and his family never felt a trace of discrimination from anyone" while they rented the home near the hospital. Several years later they purchased farm property in Puyallup and Grace realized her dream of running a small horse farm with a menagerie of animals. 

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            In 1967, Moses founded the Hilltop Children's Clinic and after five years facilitated its turnover of responsibility to Mary Bridge Children Hospitals in 1973. In the first five years, Moses saw 5,000 patients at his Hilltop Children's Clinic, where patients were not charged any fees and the doctor was not compensated. After one year of operation, there were 308 indigent (poor) children seen. Ten years later, at Mary Bridge Clinic, 4,000 children were enrolled. In 1967, immunization deficiency was 60%, and 30% of children seen had received no immunizations. By 1977, all were immunized, had received complete standard well childcare and had their own doctors in Pierce County. President Richard Nixon initially approved federal funding of the eventual Mary Bridge based clinic under the WIC program. It continued to receive federal funding for at least 35 years. The WIC program started as a law written by Washington Senator Warren Magnuson and was based on the summaries of information Moses collected at the Hilltop Clinic.

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    Moses also served as the first medical director of the now well-established children's therapy unit at Good Samaritan hospital in the late 1960s. In the 1980s, he teamed up with his wife, Grace, to create a program called Equest, providing free horseback riding for disabled children at the couple's farm, the Right Spot Ranch. The program was turned over to the Puyallup Fair and their new indoor arena in the 1990s.

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     Initially, Dr. Moses practiced alongside Gerstmann in the "house with the big porch" at the corner of Pioneer and 5th St. S.W., which was originally built by Ezra's brother, John Valentine Meeker. His next office was located on East Main in Puyallup. He built his last office in partnership with local automobile dealer, Armand Moceri. It was a 4,800 sq. ft. building located at 338 Second St. S.E., behind the Forbidden City Restaurant. There, his new waiting room boasted large wall size murals of farm animals, vegetables and farmers painted by his daughter, Belinda, to appeal to his pint-sized patients. Children looked forward to the candy suckers handed out after their doctor’s appointment. The office has since been torn down and the site is now home to Puyallup’s new City Hall.

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     Moses' practice was characterized by his indifference to the "business" of medicine. Not only did he routinely provide free medical care to patients, he also provided follow-through care and attention to patients and their families well beyond the category of reimbursable "procedures" of today's practice. While Dr. Moses earning the love and respect of thousands, he overcame the obstacles black professionals face in a largely white community. Jan Bustad, a registered nurse employed by Dr. Moses off and on for three decades, described him as "a man of great integrity and the highest moral character".

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     With over 200,000 patient visits to his credit, Dr. Moses closed his practice in the spring of 1999. After his wife, Grace, passed away in 2007, he returned to his roots in Washington, D.C. He remarried a childhood friend at the age of 80, Dr. Charlene Drew-Jarvis, daughter of African American, blood banking pioneer, Dr. Charles Drew. Dr. Moses and spends time in Puyallup each summer visiting family and friends.

 

     During our interview with him last summer, Dr. Moses emphasized that we communicate his appreciation of the Puyallup community. "I enjoyed my time in Puyallup and am extremely appreciative of how my family was welcomed and supported in the community."  

 

     On behalf of the Puyallup Historical Society, I want to thank Dr. Moses for such a candid interview. Conversations regarding race and equity are important to document as we collect information to pass on to future generations. Ezra believed that to be true, and we strive to continue his efforts of preserving and sharing history of the Puyallup Valley. 

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Shelly Schlumpf, President

Puyallup Historical Society at Meeker Mansion