Terre Haute Living Winter 2022 | Page 90

At home : The Wiedemanns spent most of their lives in Terre Haute at this home on South Sixth Street . ( Courtesy of Vigo County Historical Museum )
A doctor ’ s handwriting : A typical page from one of Frank Wiedemann ’ s travel notebooks . ( Courtesy of the Vigo County Public Library )
American automakers should manufacture cars that would travel no faster than 65 miles an hour . His life spanned the entire automobile age , yet Wiedemann , who owned the first electric car in Terre Haute , and one of the first to be powered by gasoline , was never involved in a single automobile accident . And , at least three times , he generously forgave all outstanding debts owed to him as a way of giving back to his community .
Dr . Wiedemann retired just seven months before he died at age 89 . Fittingly , he once wrote a paper called “ What the Layman Should Know About the Heart .” In it , he said that postponing death is every physician ’ s goal and recalled the ancient Hippocratic aim to “ Relieve pain and prolong life ,” but he also said that something he once saw inscribed on a stone in a little cemetery between Terre Haute and Sullivan had stayed with him for much of his life . “ Anything so universal as death must be right ,” the epitaph read . His own life was not without tragedy : divorced from the mother of his three children , he outlived two of his sons , who died in separate accidents in 1949 .
Dozens of professional papers and publications aside , it is Wiedemann ’ s personal creed — preserved with so much more in the Vigo County Public Library ’ s Special Collections — that , perhaps , defined who he was better than anything else he ever wrote .
“ We know how far short we may be of being good men ,” he said , “ but Dear God , make us good doctors .”
90 Terre Haute Living • January / February 2022