Year Honored: 1991
Birth: 1925 - 2014
Born in: Norristown, Pennsylvania
Biography
Katherine “Kitty” L. Esterly received her medical degree from Temple University in 1951. She completed her internship and residency at Delaware Hospital in 1954, before going into practice with the pioneering children’s doctor, Margaret Handy.
The Medical Center of Delaware was founded from the three community hospitals in Wilmington, and in 1967, Esterly realized there was a lack of specialization in neonatal care. She became the first neonatologist in Delaware and in 1975, the Director of Neonatology at the Medical Center of Delaware. She greatly expanded the division, and inspired and trained numerous medical professionals in pediatrics, family practice, and emergency medicine for newborns. Esterly came to be known as the “mother of Delaware neonatology.”
Aside from her work at the Delaware Medical Center, Esterly served as the chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Christiana Care Health Services; was the attending neonatologist at AI DuPont Hospital for Children; a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia; a consultant for St. Francis Hospital and the Delaware’s Child Development Watch Program; associate in pediatrics for the Children’s Bureau of Delaware, a group that served adoptive and foster children; and promoted, supported, and contributed to many other programs and clinics dedicated to baby care and teenage-parenting classes.
Esterly was awarded the Trailblazer Award (1989) for “contributions to the field of neonatology, for research, for leadership on the perinatal board, and for her tireless commitment to protecting the lives of Delaware’s smallest citizens.” She also received the University of Delaware’s Medal of Distinction (1997) and has a scholarship funded in her name for students in the College of Health Sciences at UD.
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Sources and Additional Readings
Delaware Commission for Women. (2006). Twenty-Fifth Anniversary: Hall of Fame of Delaware Women: The Legacy Endures.
Dr Katherine L. "Kitty" Esterly (1925-2014) - find... Find a Grave. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/139916786/katherine-l.-esterly
Katherine L. "Kitty" Esterly M.D. Obituary (1925 - 2014) The News Journal. Legacy.com. (n.d.). Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/delawareonline/name/katherine-esterly-obituary?pid=173442527
