In 1954 she gained national recognition from television producer Ralph Edwards and the NBC program This Is Your Life for inspiring the "Million Penny Parade", to raise funds for a new hospital.
She completed an externship at the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children (later the Lower Manhattan Hospital) on New York's lower east side, where she attended the home deliveries (Pelham would deliver some 800 children here)[2] of the Italian and Armenian women who had come to the infirmary for prenatal care.
[5] During these years Pelham met and married auto plant worker William Ferman (Bill) Newcomb (1886-1961).
After Bill Newcomb was diagnosed with lung disease, in 1922 the couple moved to Boulder Junction in northern Wisconsin in search of improved air quality.
Noting the well-made bandages Newcomb had applied following a small mishap involving her young son (her second child, William Thomas, born 1928), Torpy suggested she consider returning to medicine.
[7] Late in 1931, unable to reach a remote patient during adverse weather, Torpy asked Newcomb to make an emergency call on his behalf.
The only physician serving a population of about 7,000,[8] Newcomb's practice extended to Manitowish Waters, Winchester, Winegar and Spider Lake, which meant hundreds of miles of travel every week.
[9] She is well-remembered for walking miles in snowshoes to get to patients who lived in remote areas; her Model T Ford was fitted with skis.
Told she was being flown to a medical convention to honor Sir Alexander Fleming, a London physician who had improved penicillin, Newcomb found herself the subject of the popular show.
[13] Host Ralph Edwards described Newcomb's plans to build a hospital and encouraged viewers to donate, and that week, some 274 pounds of mail arrived in Woodruff, containing more than 1.3 million pennies.