[Brown Deer]

I don’t recall the names of any of the patients I delivered, either.

In 1900, the population of Hawaii was 154,000 with only 233 (0.15%) black residents. By 1950, it's population had increased to almost a half million and over two thousand (0.5%) black residents. The 1960 census does not show a breakdown for black people, but in 1970, Hawaii's population was about 770 thousand with 7517 (1.5%) blacks. Extrapolating from that, you can estimate that in 1960, Hawaii's population was about one percent black.

The birth rate in the United States in 1960 was 23.7 per 1000 people. Given Hawaii's population of 632,772 that year would mean that about 15,000 were being born each year in Hawaii at the time of 0bama's birth. Out of those 15,000 births only about 150 were black children. Given that only 0.126% of married couples in the U.S. in 1960 were interracially mixed black and white, the odds that any of those 150 black children born were of such a marriage is only about one in every six years!

I find it hard to believe that any doctor with a brain that made it through medical school, could possibly forget such an event.

[sometime lurker]

You may find it hard to believe, but as someone who has practiced medicine, I don't. I saw many many odd things during my career; certain circumstances may stick in my mind, details about the patient almost never do unless I had a longer term relationship with that patient. A woman I delivered and then saw the next morning before going off shift? Forget it.

As for those who thought the unusual name would make it memorable, I had a colleague who collected odd patient names and wrote them down because she would otherwise forget them.