{"id":452,"date":"2006-05-18T19:49:44","date_gmt":"2006-05-19T00:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/joe-carl-patrick-spontaneous-white\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T20:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T01:41:12","slug":"joe-carl-patrick-spontaneous-white","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/about\/joe-carl-patrick-spontaneous-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Carl Patrick Spontaneous White"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Joe<\/dt>\n
Not Joseph, but Joe. I was named for my grandfather, Joe Plettman, who was also ‘plain’ Joe…or so I thought. When going through old documents, I found his naturalization papers…he changed it from Josef when he became a citizen.<\/dd>\n
Carl<\/dt>\n
My great-grandfather was Odo Carl White; my grandfather was Jacob Carl White; my father was\u00a0Jerry Carl White.<\/dd>\n
Patrick<\/dt>\n
When I was born, I was very sick (they think I might have swallowd some of the amniotic fluid, but they never really figured it out). I was rushed from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Beaumont to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. A nun rode in the ambulance with me, and since she thought I was going to die, she baptized me. She didn’t know my name, so she chose Patrick.<\/dd>\n
Spontaneous<\/dt>\n
I spent a week at TCH under the care of Dr. Murdina Desmond<\/a>, the head of neonatalogy. I then, in her words, made a “spontaneous recovery.”<\/dd>\n
White<\/dt>\n
A name that has been handed down from father to son for generations in my family.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

 <\/p>\n

Coda to the story: My dad’s Aunt Polly, who was a nurse here in Houston, drove Dad and me back to Beaumont when I was released (Mom was still in the hospital in Beaumont). When they stopped at the light at Main and Sunset, in front of the entrance to Rice University, Dad held me up, pointed me at the gate, and said, “That’s where you going to go to school.” I was not told this story until after I had been accepted (Rice was the only school to which I applied).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Not Joseph, but Joe. I was named for my grandfather, Joe Plettman, who was also ‘plain’ Joe…or so I thought. When going through old<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"parent":487,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-452","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PekNN-7i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1339,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/452\/revisions\/1339"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joewhite.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}