Dr. and Mrs. John Stone and Family
While a student at Meharry Medical College, Dr. John Stone met Mrs. Holiday Stone. They married in 1956 and had three children, Faith, Enid Karen, and John.
After Dr. John Stone graduated from Meharry in 195?, he completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at . Following his residency, the family moved to Houston, Texas where he established a practice. Dr. John Stone helped launch the St. Elizabeth Hospital Foundation and is a past president of the Houston Medical Forum.
Mrs. Holiday Stone’s family has a long history in Houston’s medical community. Her great-grandfather was Dr. Franklin Robey, an 1883 graduate of Meharry Medical College who became one of the first black physicians in Houston in 1887. He died unexpectedly in 1904. Dr. Robey, who had been born a slave, had married Theodora Marinier who moved to the United States from Nice, France. Franklin and Theodora had two children, including a son, Zebulon.
Zebulon Robey’s daughter was Ella Robey. Ella Robey married Robert W. Holiday. Robert Holliday was born in Richmond, Texas in 1904. Although Robert was the family’s seventeenth child, his parents managed to send him to Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College, now known as Prairie View A&M University. Mr. Holliday often commented that his parents had to sell the cattle in order to send him to Prairie View. After leaving Prairie View, he settled in Houston’s Fifth Ward.
During World War II, Mr. Holliday drew on the knowledge he gained growing up in rural Texas and launched a poultry business to help provide food for Houstonians while the federal government rationed meat. He had access to nearby poultry farms. Mr. Holliday soon sold cooked poultry at his restaurant and inn located at Lockwood Drive and Farmer Street in Houston and stands in the Fifth Ward, Third Ward, and Sunny Side. He later owned a washateria and a machine shop as well.
Ella Robey Holliday was an educator with the Houston Independent School District. She and Robert stressed the importance of education to their only child, Gertrudejane Holliday Stone.
In turn, Dr. and Mrs. John Stone emphasized education to their children. They brought their children to the annual meetings of the National Medical Association where the children had an opportunity to learn more about medicine and to meet children from similar backgrounds. Inspired in part by their father’s career, Faith Stone and Enid Stone chose medicine. John Stone, their brother, works in property management, investment, and mortuary science in Houston.
Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Houston, the Stone children were at the forefront of school integration. Faith Stone, for example, received numerous honors for her scholarship, such as the American Legion Award. She was the first black cheerleader to complete her term at Lamar High School in Houston. After completing her undergraduate work at Vanderbilt University, Faith Stone chose Meharry Medical College because of the educational opportunities it afforded, but also because the school allowed her to connect with both African-American history and her family history. She graduated from Meharry in 1983, on the 100th anniversary of Franklin Robey’s graduation. Like her father, Dr. Faith Stone is an obstetrician and gynecologist.
Dr. Enid Stone remembers the annual meetings of the National Medical Association as a “feeding ground of inspiration.” Enid Stone followed her sister to Vanderbilt and Meharry. After graduation, she became a general practitioner and continues to practice medicine in Houston. As a teenager in Houston, Dr. Enid Stone had a regular feature on a local television news show. She has maintained an interest in the intersection of medicine and art, and helped to create the documentary film, Medicaid Queens, which was shown at the Black Filmworks Festival of Film & Video in 1996 and received its second place award in the Education Category.
The Stone family has been instrumental in launching the National African American Museum in Houston. Located at 4816 Main Street, in an old theater building in Houston’s Museum District, the museum joins other institutions that work to correct the frequent omissions of Black history and culture in the education establishment.
Next Biography: Dr. Virginia Stull
Return to: Old Challenges, New Successes
Return to: Continuing Importance