Ready to Make a Name for Herself
5/10/2007
By Micheal Kelly
Her name is Mudd, not mud.
Pamela Mudd is a great-greatgreat-granddaughter of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated the broken leg of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Tonight she receives her M.D. from the Creighton University Medical School.
Of someone who has angered people, it's often said: "His name is mud." Though some say the expression predates him, many associate it with Samuel Mudd.
The new Dr. Mudd, a 1999 graduate of Bellevue West High School, is proud of her name. But, although people don't react negatively to her family, "I think we all hope to clear the bad connotation of the name."
It's a high-achieving family, and she is doing her part in training to become a head-and-neck surgeon.
"It's a huge honor to have the responsibility of caring for patients at their most vulnerable state," Pamela Mudd said. "You are their physician -- they trust you wholly and completely, and it's your responsibility to honor that trust."
Her father, Joseph F. Mudd Jr., formerly of Offutt Air Force Base, is a brigadier general. His father, a decorated pilot, died in a 1973 training crash.
His father, Dr. Richard Mudd, who died in 2002 in Michigan at 101, spent a lifetime trying to clear Sam Mudd's name.
A military tribunal convicted Mudd of conspiracy, and he spent four years in prison. While there, he helped save prisoners and guards during a yellow fever epidemic and was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson.
Still claiming innocence, Mudd wanted not just a pardon but also exoneration. He didn't get it, and died in 1883.
In modern times, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan supported the claim of innocence but said there was nothing more that they could do.
Scholars still debate Mudd's involvement. One book was titled "His Name Is Still Mudd," but another, "Manhunt," concluded that Mudd was not involved in the assassination, though he helped Booth escape. (He was later shot and killed.)
After Booth shot Lincoln in Ford's Theater, he leaped to the stage and broke his leg. He rode a horse to the farmhouse of Mudd -- a Confederate sympathizer who had met Booth but said he didn't recognize him at first that night because of a disguise.
Said Pam Mudd, noting that physicians take a Hippocratic oath: "If somebody comes to my door, whether he assassinated a president or not, treating him is my responsibility as a doctor."
A graduate of Colorado State, the new Dr. Mudd was accepted to medical school at Georgetown University but said Creighton and Omaha were a better fit.
When not studying, she has seen U2, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Matthews Band and others, as well as the symphony, opera, touring Broadway plays and Jazz on the Green.
She became interested in otolaryngology -- ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgery -- from working under Dr. Ann L. Edmunds at the Boys Town National Research Hospital, which Mudd calls "a mecca for ENT."
After tonight's med school ceremony and Saturday's graduation, Dr. Mudd will head to Denver for her residency. She said she would consider Omaha again.
"It's really a great city," she said, "with lots of cultural diversity. Anything you need is near."
Wherever she ends up, Dr. Mudd undoubtedly will make a name for herself.
Reprinted with permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
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