I can vouch from my own obstetrician/gyn's history that a doctor may retire from practicing but move on to such things as Hospital director, medical directors, etc. Mine retired from practice (I had to find a new doctor) after delivering my 3rd child in 1985 by becoming the Medical Director of Obstetrics at a local women's hospital.
“a doctor may retire from practicing but move on to such things as Hospital director, medical directors, etc.”
Right. An OB/GYN has to pay for malpractice insurance every year. To be covered by that insurance, they obviously have to have paid the premiums, which essentially means committing to practice for an upcoming year. Because they have to pay the premiums regardless of how many babies they actually deliver, no sensible OB/GYN is going to maintain their insurance on the off chance they might deliver a baby in 1961. Likewise, the annual premium relative to the cost of one delivery would make it prohibitively expensive to pay just so one could provide an insured delivery for a friend.
So my interpretation of the West bio-sketch is that he stopped delivering babies in 1955, meaning he didn’t pay malpractice premiums after that year and hence would have been an idiot to deliver a baby in 1961 and risk a bad outcome that could put his entire life savings at risk.
1961 isn’t 2009, so the risks of “going bare” when delivering a baby would have been smaller. But it would have been very imprudent, especially with a mom who essentially got knocked up by a black man while she was still a teen. Why would a doctor of West’s stature go out on a limb in this fashion? Yes, Stanley’s mom eventually became a bank VP and probably eventually moved in social circles that could easily have included West. But at the time of BHO’s birth, they had just moved to Hawaii, so it doesn’t seem likely that they had magically become good family friends with Dr. West, and certainly not good enough friends for them to ask (or him to offer) for delivery services for a potentially risky birth.
I think the fact that Dr. West later became president of medical society and had Kapiolani Hospital connections is significant. This lady would have remembered that he was connected to the hospital in the right time frame (she obviously DIDN’T waste time researching Dr. West’s actual bio, else she might have had some “’splainin’” to do) and his prominence would have helped ensure she’d remember that he’d died recently (and hence her account was essentially “bullet-proof” from the standpoint of being contradicted by a diligent reporter’s (or factchecker’s) follow-up with Dr. West.
Long story short: this account seems to have a generous dose of BS embedded in it. People will do all sorts of things for their 15 minutes of fame; this lady probably views it as a harmless white lie.