Article Photos

WHEELING - Dr. John Battaglino has counted about 320,000 fingers and toes during the past 47 years.

He's also gazed into 32,000 pairs of eyes and swaddled a total 64,000 tiny arms and legs, all belonging to the 16,000 babies he has delivered during his career.

That's nearly an infant for every day he's worked as an obstetrician/gynecologist at Wheeling Hospital. And now Battaglino, 78, is retiring.

"That's almost the population of Wheeling," Battaglino said of his deliveries. "All of them are memorable. ... It never gets boring to do a delivery. Every day a baby is born, it's a miraculous event.

"I used to complain about getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning, but it was always a happy thing. But there's nothing sadder than a stillbirth and to go through it with the parents. There's nothing you can do but cry along with the parents. God gives and God takes."

Originally from Bluefield, W.Va., Battaglino is the son of Italian immigrant parents, the late John Sr. and Filomena Pastor Battaglino.

He attended medical school at West Virginia University and the medical college of Richmond, Va. He interned at a hospital in Wooster, Mass., did his residency at the Mayo Clinic and his fellowship at the University of Minnesota. Battaglino also served in the U.S. Army in Berlin, Germany.

"I was there when they put up the wall," he said of the structure that was built to separate East and West Germany and since has been demolished.

Battaglino conducted his first delivery at St. Phillips Hospital in 1953 when he was a medical student in Richmond, Va. He was more nervous than the mother.

"She told me everything to do," he added.

Eight years ago Battaglino decided to phase out his obstetrics practice because of the rising cost of malpractice insurance premiums. But he continued gynecology.

Battaglino's final delivery held an ironic twist: the father had been a baby that he delivered years earlier, marking the second generation of that family that had come into this world under his care.

"There are seven or eight doctors now in Wheeling that I delivered," Battaglino said, noting he also taught them as medical residents. "They were very at ease, very respectful. They were all good students and good doctors. They've all done well - some of them are the most prominent in town."

Battaglino himself never married or had children.

"I thought no woman would put up with that life," he said of being a doctor. "Although I did come close a couple times. ... I have missed out not having my own children. I do have regrets. God's plan was for me to be a doctor."

Battaglino never ceased to be amazed in his job.

"To think they start out as a microscopic egg and nine months later there's a perfect human being," he said. "How a person could ever be an atheist, I don't know."

Battaglino said after vacationing in Florida, he plans to come back to Wheeling and continue serving as medical director at the Good Shepherd Nursing Home and Welty Home. He also plans to continue working with the Wheeling Hospital's cancer commission and teaching program. He may also do some volunteer work.