{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/0g3gx46f9h/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Ted Lancaster"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2016-02-24 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["rural family medicine","family physician","Arkansas","family doctors"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Ted Lancaster, MD (personal name)","Arkansas Academy of Family Medicine (corporate name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/288/306/small/TedLancasterM.DDVD2.mp4_1755709006.jpg?1755709009","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Ted_Lancaster_M.D_DVD_2.mp4"]},"duration":7147.51538,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/288/306/small/TedLancasterM.DDVD2.mp4_1755709006.jpg?1755709009","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/288/306/original/Ted_Lancaster_M.D_DVD_2.mp4?1755708956","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":7147.51538,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306/transcript/83181","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Ted Lancaster Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306/transcript/83181/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Ted Lancaster\n\nGood morning….it is 2/24/16.   This is The Arkansas Physicians Oral History Project.  I am Sam Taggart and I am here with J. P. Bell and we are here interviewing today in Jonesboro, Dr. Ted Lancaster and his wife, Deanne Lancaster.  Dr. Lancaster practiced his professional life in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.  Thank you for welcoming us into your home.  \n\n“Well, you’re welcome.”\n\nLet’s start in the very beginning: Where were you born?  \n\n“I was born in 1941 on June 12th in a small town in Missouri called Qulin, southeast Missouri just across the Arkansas border.”\n\nIn the Bootheel?\n\n“It’s kind of Poplar Bluff, southeast of Poplar Bluff, almost in the Bootheel.  I was born out in my grandma’s house; it was back when you didn’t go to the hospital, you were just born where you were born.”  \n\nWho was that doctor that delivered you?\n\nI don’t even remember or even know if there was a doctor.  I wasn’t aware of it.” \n\nWhere were you in your family?  Were there other children in your family?\n\n“Yes, there were other children.  I have a sister who is 8 ½ years younger than I am, Carolyn, and she lives in Fort Worth, Texas and is married to a very nice brother in law there and has lived there for some time.”\n\nWhat kind of work did your family do?\n\n“Our family was all farmers and truckers.  We lived in a rural area.  My dad owned several trucks and hauled cotton seed, cotton bales, soybeans, and wheat during the fall and the fertilizer, seed, and gen parts to several gens in the Bootheel, Poplar Bluff, Qulin, Broseley, Fisk, and Campbell.”\n\nWhat kind of crops did your father raise?\n\n“Cotton was the main crop, but also farmed soybeans and wheat.”\n\nThere’s a bunch of hog farmers in that region weren’t there?\n\n\n\n“Yes; actually when I was a young man, I lived with my grandma and grandpa a lot because they were older and had hogs, and chickens, and cows and we fed the hogs, chickens, and cows                and gathered eggs and all that in the mornings and evenings and went to the field during the daytime.”\n\nBefore we get too much farther; Mrs. Lancaster, when where you born?  If you don’t mind telling us.  \n\n“I do not, I’m proud of every year that I have. I was born 2/15/47 in Little Rock. I graduated from Central High School.” \n\nWe are going to get around to you all’s marriage and children and all that stuff a little bit later, but I didn’t want to leave you out there. \n\nTell me a little bit about your family. Do you know much about how your family ended up in Southeast Missouri? \n\n “Well, I don’t know a lot about my father’s family; except his dad, my grandfather, and an uncle, their mother died when they were young during the flu epidemic back in the late teens or early 20s.  As far as I know, they were just from that area in general, the family was. Now, my mother’s family was from northeast Arkansas, the Corning area.  They moved from the Corning area to Qulin, which was just about 45 miles, and she actually spent her childhood and everything in Missouri, there at Qulin.  She had seven brothers and sisters and my dad had seven or eight brothers and sisters.”\n\nWere you a close family?\n\n“Oh yes; at the family reunions that we would have every year at my grandmothers Wright’s, my mother’s mother, and grandfather’s house, there would be great aunts, great uncles, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.  I mean literally maybe 80-100 people that come.  A little funny story about that; my wife, when we first got married and she came to the first family reunion, everybody was talking in every direction and she had never been around anything like that.  She was a city girl.”  \n\n“It was quite an experience for a Little Rock girl.”\n\n“She said, “How does everyone know what everybody else is talking about?” Because, we were talking over here, and over there, and it was a shock to her.”\n\n“He had a big family.”\n\n“It was always a real close knit family. I lived with aunts and uncles during the fall and then my grandparents and rode horses to work.”      \n\n\n\nDid you have split season schools for picking cotton?\n\n“Yes, split season, yes sir.  A school year was a break in the spring to plant the crop, went to school for six weeks, then get out for six weeks to gather the crop in August and September, and then back to school. I guess that’s the reason the quality of education wasn’t quite as sure, the continuity was lacking.”\n\nNow you mentioned the little town of Qulin; how big was Qulin?\n\n“Oh 400-500.”\n\nOh, a small town.\n\n“Yes; when I graduated, we were the largest class to ever have graduated from there and it was 22, or 24, or something like that and the class before us was 18.”\n\nIs it still a town?\n\n“No, I graduated in 1959 and in 1960, they consolidated schools up there.”\n\n“But, it is still a town.”\n\n“The town wasn’t even incorporated when I lived there.  It was only in the early 60s that they finally incorporated and had a sheriff, mayor, and all that.”   \n\nOutside of the family reunions; what are some of the memories you have of your childhood of growing up in Qulin, or growing up in the country at your grandparent’s house, or of your aunts and uncles homes?  \n\n“Well my childhood was, I would say, quite eventful in the fact that we were all workers, every kid had a job, every kid went to the field; we played hard and worked hard.  We had very little as far as toys; we would whittle out our own little guns and swords out of a piece of wood, or take a tin can and wrap it around a stick, or roll a metal wheel down the road, or something we would play with, maybe kick the can, a completely different lifestyle than what most people this day in time.  Three or four kids would spend the night at somebody’s house at night and nobody worried about anything.  We were just real communal because it was very small and everybody knew everybody.”       \n\nWhat jobs on the farm did you like the least?  \n\n“Getting up at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning and having to eat breakfast.  My grandmother said, “You have got to eat a big meal if you’re going to work the field, so eat, eat, eat.”  I was always like everyone else and a little lazy I guess and I wanted to sleep an extra thirty minutes to an hour.”\n\n\n\nOutside of the family and cousins, obviously you had a lot of cousins; did you have close friends when you were growing up outside your family?\n\n“Yes, oh yes”\n\nDid you stay close to them?\n\n“Not really because they moved off as there wasn’t anything there in the community.  They went out of the area to find employment.  Now, I have gone back to the class reunions and have long time friends that are there.”\n\n“There are some that we stay in contact.”\n\n“Some we stay in contact with, but physical contact; no.  What was amazing was of the numbers that graduated how successful that particular class was.” \n\nLet’s talk about that.\n\n“Well I had a cousin, that would be easier to find a cousin, he and I both graduated high school in 1959 from Qulin High School and after a couple of years, I decided that I couldn’t farm and drive a truck, because I got kind of an anxiety disorder associated with driving that truck afraid I was going to kill somebody because people pull out in front of you and thinking you’re going to hurt somebody; it’s a long story how I got that way but anyway, my cousin was a farmer with his mother, dad, and brothers and he decided after two years he was going back to school.  I didn’t know he was going and he didn’t know I was going and he went to Rollas’ School of Mines there in Missouri and got a PHD in Mechanical Engineering and I went off to medical school. We were the first students from Qulin to ever have a doctorate degree of any kind.  There were other successful people in our class, there was a superintendent of a school, but it was just amazing out of that little bundle of kids of about 20 of the professional people that ended up coming out of that class.  It was a very work ethic community; we worked and just knew that you had to work.  It wasn’t much about education at the time, but later on it was important.”\n\nTalk a little bit about the schooling: elementary schooling, high schooling in Qulin, some of the teachers.  Did you have any teachers or coaches, not necessarily teachers, which stood out in your mind?\n\n“Yes, the teachers from our school were all very sweet to us, of course they knew everybody and everybody knew them.  We had a principal that was a very strict disciplinarian; you went in, he didn’t ask questions, he just paddled you, and then asked questions.  You didn’t speak in his class, you didn’t chew gum in his class, you raised your hand to be noticed, and that was the way it was and everybody knew it.  Mr. Thompson was his name and we didn’t like him, but later on in life you realized that was really a good thing that he was so strict and constructive.  He taught you that you couldn’t get your way you had to follow the rules.  Then, we had a Ms. Watts who was the English teacher and of course she taught us English from the time we were\n\n\n in the 7th grade every year, that was the only one you had through high school, so you didn’t have but one English teacher.  She was a real sweet lady, but I think that she failed on me.”\n\n“Isn’t she still alive?”\n\n“She was still alive at the last class reunion; she was almost 100.  Then the basketball coach, Coach Crane, he was actually from Greenway, Arkansas a little community here up just north east of Rector.  He was a big influence on my life.  He, again, didn’t put up with any foolishness.  He didn’t talk very nice to us at times, but we would’ve fought a bear for him.  I enjoyed that constructive lifestyle that they gave you, you know you didn’t get by with saying things or go home to my mom and dad and they come up and talk to us.  I was always told, “If you get a lick at school, you get two when you come home and no questions asked.” It made for you to not want to get into trouble.  It was a very pleasant situation, I enjoyed all of it, and hated when I graduated because I enjoyed the activities.  I wasn’t ready to go; but when you get through, you get through.”                 \n\nDid you play baseball?\n\n“I played baseball.”\n\nFor high school?\n\n“Yeah, high school.”\n\nAmerican Legion?\n\n“No, no, no.  We had some boys that were offered scholarships in athletic programs; they didn’t want to and they went to St. Louis and went to work and things.  Education was not a priority in the community, it was high school education, ok, but who needed to go to college.  It was a different environment than it was for she in Little Rock and it’s kind of sad, but it worked.” \n\nDid we get in the interview your mother and dad’s name?\n\nMy mother and dad, Chill was his nickname, Wilbur was his name, but he was given the nickname of Chill when he was in school because he had malaria and had chills all the time, so they started calling him Chill.  He went to school there in a little rural area of Qulin out in one the little parochial schools and it went through the 8th grade and he was going to have to ride a horse five miles to go to the high school, so he dropped out as that was the closest.  My mother never finished high school either.  Iolene Wright was her name.  They were both very intelligent, or I would think so, very intelligent people; not educated book-wise, but very knowledgeable of doing things.”\n\n\n\nWhen did your mom and dad pass away?\n\n“My mother lived to be 93 and my dad passed away just two years ago.  My dad died at 78 from lung cancer, he liked his cigarettes.  My sister also did not graduate high school.  She dropped out when she was in the 10th grade and got married.  Again, when you live in that environment, it’s all you know.”  \n\n“His mother got her GED.”\n\n“My dad became disabled at 43 and then she had to go back to work; so, she ended up getting her GED.”\n\n“So did Carolyn, too.”\n\n“And Carolyn, my sister, at a later date did that.  Everybody was good workers and very knowledgeable of what to do to make things work.”\n\nDid religion play a big role in your life as a child?\n\n“Yes; my mother, when I was a young boy before my sister was born so I was around 5 or 6 years old, she started to look into changing her life and she started looking for a church.  We traveled to many different churches, I remember her dragging me along, and then we ended up in one church and of course I had to go on a regular basis, I had to, as you know how that goes when you’re a kid.  So, yes, and mother was always very faithful to her church and expected me to be that way.”\n\nWhat was your father’s response to that?\n\n“My dad was agnostic; he didn’t belittle her or put her down for that.  He didn’t mind that she drug me to every one of them and every revival in the area.  He actually was not involved in any form of religion until later in life and then he was converted.  He would always read the Bible and his comment was always, “If this is not real, it is a good way to live anyway.”\n\nWhen did you graduate from high school?\n\n“1959 is when I graduated from high school.”  \n\nWhat did you do immediately after high school? I believe that you said you went to work? \n\n“Actually my senior year in high school, I farmed about 80 acres and back then that was about all you could farm with one tractor.  Then, I continued to farm and when I turned 18, a month or two after I graduated high school, I drove one of the trucks that dad owned.  So, I trucked and farmed for a couple of years.”\n\nI think I heard you say earlier that at some point you ended up over at Blytheville.\n\n\n\n“Yes, my journey to Blytheville came through St. Louis, as I mentioned earlier that I was driving a truck and farming and I decided I needed to be doing something else because my dad’s trucks had two employees, one got killed and one that killed somebody else, and I became very emotional when I had people pull out in front of me.  I couldn’t do that, I would have anxiety reactions and just have to pull over and stop to get myself calmed back down.  I ended up having a cousin that was a lab technician in Poplar Bluff at Lucy Lee Hospital.  He was from Corning.  I said, “Well, I think that I would like to try what he does.” Gradwohl School of X-ray and Laboratory Technique there in St. Louis was a year program and it was affiliated with the Barnes Hospital and so, in 1960, I went back and spent that year in lab school.  On the bulletin board, you start looking at “where am I going and where can I get a job?”  Well, Blytheville was the closest place to Qulin at the time, so I ended up in Blytheville in 1960.”    \n\nLet’s back up, how did you pay for that?\n\n“What’s strange is, it cost me about $5,000-6,000 a year for that one year and you could go over here at LU for $35.00 a semester.  I borrowed the money.  My dad was disabled and my mother worked at a bakery in a store and so, I borrowed the money.”\n\nSo, you went to work at a lab in Blytheville?\n\n“Yes.” \n\nHow far was that from Qulin?\n\n“Oh about an hour or forty-five minutes.”\n\nYou could drive back and forth.\n\n“On no, no, no, I lived in Blytheville.”\n\nI think you mentioned that you looked around and said, “I can do what some of these people are doing.”\n\n“I know that this day in time, it’s all about technology, testing, and the electronics that you have available, all the computers, MRIs, CTs, etc; but in the 40s and early 50s, x-rays was about all they had.  Lab testing: your enzymes, sodium, potassium, sugars, all of that was very archaic how they tested for those.  So in the late 50s, they started developing techniques for measuring sodium, potassium, and actual chemical testing for blood urine nitrogen, and sugar that was more accurate.  When I went to school, one of the professors that taught there was the doctor at Barnes hospital that actually founded the SGOT, serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase, and it was an enzyme released with tissue damage that was used for the liver, heart, and everything else.  We got real in depth about the technique for running it, the reaction, the indication, and what it meant, etc, but that was the way old school went; when you study hematology, you didn’t just look at white blood cells and red blood cells, what did they do, what \n\n\nwas the function? So when I got out, the people that I was working with, the physicians had been trained in the 30s and 40s and the young guys were trained in the early 50s.  They would come by the lab and I was not the lab director, but I was working there with an older guy who didn’t know as much as I did and not that he was a dummy, it was just that he hadn’t been trained, and they would come by and ask me, “Ted, if I think so-and-so is wrong, what test do I need to order?” In that day and time, they may order the whole lab basically, they would just order a bunch of lab studies and then come by and say, “Now, I have all of  this, what does it mean?” I know it sounds, “Oh no, that didn’t happen”, but of course it did.  You know, you worked with people when you were young that were trained in the 30s and 40s who were maybe our age at the time and they were a little farther along, but yes.  I was married to a different woman at that time and I went home one day and I said, “You know, I can do what these doctors are doing and I’d like to go back to school, if that’s ok with you.” So, that’s how that developed.  In 1962, I started looking for a job, as I had to have a job to go back to school and I had two little kids already.  I had two little kids by the time I was 22 years old. I looked over at St. Barnard’s and they didn’t have any opening and I was going to go to SU.  I went back to Missouri, but because I had lived in Arkansas for almost two years, I was going to have to pay out of state tuition and I couldn’t afford that.  Baptist Hospital in Little Rock had an opening for a night supervisor in the lab, so that’s how I ended up in Little Rock and went to LRU at that time.”\n\nLet’s back up just a little bit because I got beyond this: let’s talk a little bit about health and disease problems that were prevalent during the time you were growing up.  There was still some malaria, certainly the polio epidemics were going on, what do you remember about all that? Diphtheria and Typhoid?\n\n“What I remember mostly that was striking to me was that, and I didn’t understand it then, but after I got into medical school, people were dying of acute indigestion.  You say, “What in the world, they didn’t die of acute indigestion. No, they were dying of heart attacks.”  I remember that there were people in town that were dying of acute indigestion.  We all had kids with polio, in fact, one of my neighbor kids in Blytheville, the polio vaccine came out in the late 50s, I can’t remember exactly when that came out but it was available, and this kid had not gotten it yet and he developed polio.  The “iron lung” was the thing that everybody stressed about and what have you.  Yes, those things happened.  My grandparents and my great grandparents were old people in my opinion, they were 40, and I had a great grandfather that was 60 and all the grandkids would go around and he looked like we do now, grey headed very distinguished man about 6’1, and we would all sneak around being afraid of him because he looked different and he was our great grandfather.  So, old age as not a problem back then; there was not a lot of people that lived into the 60s and 70s.”\n\nUsing some hindsight, you know the progress of things as they’ve came down through the last 60 or 70 years, was there anything specific about southeast Missouri or northeast Arkansas that you think maybe didn’t occur in other places? You have already mentioned the \n\n\nfact that your wife was raised different because she was in the city, but were there other things around here that had an impact?\n\n“Yes, the difference in health care in rural southeast Missouri and I’m sure northeast Arkansas are different than what it was in the big cities.  It was that, we didn’t go to the doctor.  If you had a laceration, they slapped some coal oil on it, wrapped it in rags, and said, “It will get well.” If you had a skin tear from a cut, your daddy whipped out his pocket knife, cut it off, and put some coal oil on it and said, “It will be better next week.”  We had a doctor there in Qulin that would come periodically, I can’t remember how often it was, that you only went to him when you were very, very, sick and of course everybody got a shot of penicillin whether you needed it or not.  One reason I have trouble hearing is that I had frequent ear infections when I was a kid and it would always be 1 or 2cc, I’m sure it was 2ccs of Procaine Penicillin, but 2ccs would just cure everything.  But, you just didn’t seek health care.  It wasn’t even available.”                       \n\nLet’s talk a little bit about more home remedies, root or herb doctors, or family people who provided services.\n\n“Well, the home remedies were, my mother for instance gave me a product called “Triple 66” and I had to take it every summer and it was real bitter.  I think it was a quinine product, because she thought I had malaria because I was kind of lazy and wanted to sleep late.  I sure enough would get up because I did not want to take that stuff.  But that was one of the things and kids just got that.  If you stepped on a thorn or you had a cut that was infected; there was what we called “carbolic salve,” which was a big jar that was put on everything.  It was to draw out thorns, if you had a thorn in your foot, as we ran around barefoot all the time, if you stepped on a thorn and it had come to surface; that would get it and pull it out.  We didn’t go to the doctor.  The school system, you got your immunizations in the school system.  Everybody lined up and once a year or every two to three years, I forget which, and I’m sure it was a county nurse and a group of people who would come to your school and vaccinate the kids.  I suspect that it was for the diphtheria and tetanus and the DPT-type injections.  I just know we all stood in line and the smell of alcohol was tremendous and I can remember that one time, I passed out.”\n\n“You did?”\n\n“It was just more than I could handle and I was just a little kid about seven or eight years old because I was out of first and second grade. It was things like that; they had public immunizations and things like that.”\n\n“I’ve never heard that story before, it was good.”\n\n“It really wasn’t anything except just home remedies and you just treated everything.  You just lived and times were just different.”\n\n\n\nSo by the early 6o’s, you were going to UALR, you were married and had two children, you had some debt?\n\n“In 1962 and yes, yes, and yes. I had debt from three years previously, so I did the same thing; I worked and borrowed money to go through that four years.”         \n\nI think you said you worked at Baptist in their laboratory?\n\n“Yes, Baptist Hospital.”\n\nHow long did it take you to go through college?\n\n“Four years. I worked 38 hours a week and graduated in four years.”\n\nWas there one day that you can remember, maybe in the lab in Blytheville or when you were talking with your wife, that you said, “OK, I really want to go to medical school, I really want to do this, that’s what I want to do the rest of my life.”\n\n“I can remember that conversation when I was in Blytheville.  I just really enjoyed what I was doing, I enjoyed farming as well, but I was just enthralled by healthcare.  I just really enjoyed it and the doctors there in Blytheville were nice people and they kind of took me under their wing, as I was just a kid not even 21 years old yet, when I went to work there. The director of nurses, she just babied me to death and took care of me.  The people were nice to me.  I enjoyed the environment, and what they did, and I enjoyed what I was involved with; so I just decided that, “If I can, I’m going to do this.” \n\nWhen you moved to Little Rock, where did you live?\n\n“Do you know where the Florence Crittenton Home is? I lived across the street from it, which was right up off 12th Street a little ways from Baptist Hospital. You would go out from 12th Street to University and then turn left to go to the Little Rock University.  By the way, it was a gravel road when I moved here.  One side was paved and the other side was gravel road, University Avenue was.”\n\nTell us a little bit about the atmosphere at the old Baptist Hospital when you worked there, what it was like?\n\n“It was an all inclusive hospital.  It did everything much different than what it was at Blytheville.  Just a big family, everybody knew everybody.  The nurses were all identified by the uniform they wore, the hat they wore, the lab technicians were lab technicians and you could tell who they were, etc, etc.  The doctors all wore suits.  There were a lot of family physicians, though they didn’t call them family physicians, they called them GPs, and they delivered babies still.  We had people in the hospital and the lab was a system that we were still doing everything manually.  We had very little automation when I first got there; they got into some automation later in the four years that I was there.  They drew their own blood for transfusions.  If you got a \n\n\nunit of blood, the lab would draw three units to replace it and it didn’t cost you anything except for the processing of the unit of blood.  So, the families would come in and Red Cross was where you got your blood and Red Cross supplemented you, but you got your own processing of the blood products and what have you.  I worked from 6 till we got through, which was sometimes at 11 or sometimes 12.  It was a lot of work and very time consuming.”\n\nDo you remember any specific physicians, or surgeons, that stand out in your mind at Baptist?\n\n“I remember that there was, I can’t say any particular one, but I just remember that they all seemed to be very dedicated and worked hard.  They were kind to the help; the atmosphere was good.   There was an older gentleman that lived in Clinton that was a doctor up there and Dr. Hall, that died just here recently who was a family physician, and he came to the hospital to visit a little kid that was a patient that he had in the hospital who had Leukemia on several occasions.  The doctors were very caring people.  They took care of their patients. It didn’t make any difference that he had to drive from Clinton to see this boy.  Everybody loved their doctor; it was just an environment that you knew who he was.”                 \n\nWas Carl Wenger and David Chairs there when you were?\n\n“Yes, Dr. Wenger.” \n\nHoward Swander? Joe Buchman?\n\n“Yes, Joe Buchman was the surgeon and Joe was a vascular surgeon by the way too.  Back then, that was sort of the elite surgeon, but he was the general surgeon and did a lot of artery work.  When I was there, actually, the family physician did surgery. Dr. Brinkley was the internist and he was a nice young man.  Dr. O’Neal was an internist and he was a very caring. I assume their quality was good, because they cared about their people.  The residents and interns coming through there, they worked with the staff people.” \n\nSo, how did college go?\n\n“Well, college started out ok, but I knew I was weak in my English skills, writing and etc, so I put off freshman English until my first six weeks between my freshman and sophomore year. I never will forget, I had a lady from North Little Rock, a high school teacher that taught that course there, and she came in there with zero compassion to start with.  I know this is terrible, but this was a six week course; my first nine papers were “Fs”.  I said, “I will never make it through, I can’t have any “Fs.” and she got to feeling sorry for me and one day after class she said, “I need to talk to you.”  She said, “I don’t understand you.  Your content is great, you know what you’re talking about, you can’t spell and write.” I said, “Yes maam, I know that; I know I can’t spell and write.”  She said, “I tell you what, I’m going to have to start grading you differently.  I’ve got to give you credit because if we had a book report, your content is excellent.” So, I started getting \n\n\nsome “Ds”.  At the end of the year, I passed the course and it was the only “D” I ever made in my life, but I got a “D”.  So, that was my first year in college, it was pretty tough. But things cranked up and I got going and thank God she didn’t flunk me out.”  \n\nWhat you your favorite subjects in college?  What did you enjoy the most?\n\n“I always enjoyed the biology courses that I took. I was a lab technician, so I was pretty knowledgeable in a lot of the stuff that was already being taught, bacteriology, cytology and etc., but then I took as electives some business courses, money and banking, economics, and I always enjoyed that as well.  It was something that I enjoyed.  I took art appreciation and a country bumpkin like me, I was surprised that I even enjoyed that; so, I guess maybe there was something to me that I didn’t even know I had.”\n\nWere there any of those courses that surprised you in how much they helped you once you got out in practice?\n\n“I think one thing that I have done all through my medical career is that I think, I had a unique ability to apply what was even taught in college, or what I was taught in lab school, or what I learned in all these assertoric things that people said, “I don’t want to know about that, because I’m not going to do it.”  I think all that I was able to apply in my practice, the crib cycle, the pulmonary functions, cardiovascular functions, the neurological, all that stuff and I was always able to remember even back when I went through histology in college that the migration of the dermal layers, etc.  I just always had a unique ability to remember that and apply to what was happening even though you might not see this particular illness or condition but two or three times during your whole medical career, and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s what…” \n\n“You know your Latin; this helped tremendously.”\n\n“Oh, I took Greek and Latin Roots so I could understand what terms were being used and how to use them, because I had no earthly idea about that kind of thing and it really helped me through medical school.  In college take Greek and Latin Roots because the prefixes and suffixes described what was going on even, that’s what we do in medical school, all your terms are post and pre.”\n\nOther than your English course crisis, were there other crises during your college years that might have turned you one way or the other or had an impact on you?    \n\n“I didn’t make straight “A’s” but I didn’t really have trouble with anything except in two areas: one was physics and the other was organic chemistry.  These two courses I thought I knew it; but at test time, I didn’t do very well.  But only after my senior year in college, there was a guy who got into medical school that had been a lab assistant in chemistry and physics and had an inside; well, this gentleman was stealing the test and he would set the curve.  He would make “As” and everyone else made “Bs and Cs.”  And then the light came on, “Well no wonder.”  I \n\n\nthought I knew this and then I’d come in and get a “B’ in physics and “gawlee,” and then of course everybody else, and then one guy was getting an “A.” This rascal was making 98% on physics tests and you don’t do that, or organic chemistry; and I figured him out.  One time, I knew something was going on because, not that I knew it all, but in bacteriology course that I took microbiology, basically I knew as much about microbiology as the guy that was teaching it.  I knew all about bacteria, and the chemical reactions, and the sugar fermentation, and whether it was grand-positive or grand-negative, and what that meant, and all that; so, the professor started trying to make the test harder and harder and he started to say, “What organism was discussed on page 68 of your workbook?” Well, nobody got that; but this rascal did.”\n\nThe original question was: we all have crises in our lives, were there any crises in college that almost kept you from going to medical school? Can you talk about that?\n\n“Yes, probably one of the most devastating times of my life, actually at that time anyway, was my senior year in college, I was met by my first wife at Christmas break with my suitcase and said that I was to leave because she was kicking me out. So, here I am just finishing up my first semester in my senior year and my grades suffered a little bit, but not enough to cause any major problems in my academic status; but between that time and the first nine weeks, I was under a lot of emotional stress and lost a lot of weight.  I actually moved into the dormitory over at the medical center and was on the floor with the pharmacist because there was a room there and that’s where I stayed.  I got this nine week report and low and behold, I was really burning it up; I had one “D”, one “C”, and three incompletes, and here I am trying to get into medical school.  Well, about that time, I had sent in an application to medical school with a check and I had recently gone through the divorce, my checking account had been deactivated and I had set up a new one.  Well for some reason when the medical center sent my check in, it was rejected for insufficient funds, and I had to go to the Worthing Bank.  To make a long story short, they told me to just send it back through and I said, “No, I want a letter” and I was given a letter stating it was the banks fault and not my fault.  So, I sent it back with the letter and had a meeting with Dr. Marvin, the Dean of Admissions at the time.  We discussed my situation, my grades, and I promised him that I wasn’t going to fail any of the classes as I felt that I could get the grades back up, and he was very understanding. I explained to him about the check and I had the letter and he said, “Hey, that’s ok.”  He was just real kind to me considering that I was just another applicant of 500 or 600 that applied to medical school.  So, I was stressed out to say the least.  Here I was trying to get into medical school with flunking grades and a bouncing check.  I wasn’t real happy with the divorce recently and was under a lot of stress.  So, I had my doubts that I was ever going to make the admission list, but then shortly after that, I get a notice of induction into the army in 1966, the Vietnam War was heating up pretty heavy, I was a 25 year-old who would graduate the middle or later part of May and on the 12th of June, I would be exempt because I was a 26 year-old, so they had about 2-3weeks there to get me into the service.  I had an induction physical scheduled in St. Louis, because I was from St. Louis originally, to show up for an induction physical into the army and here I am sitting here in March, or whenever you get your first acceptance letter from medical school that you’re \n\n\naccepted, and I had about all the emotional stress that I could take.  I was just about at my end point.   That Friday afternoon late, I called Dr. Marvin again and told him what my situation was and he said, “Well, I’m not in the office right now; I’ve been off for the day and won’t be there until tomorrow,” but he said, “Now, tell me what time you’re supposed to be going to St Louis,” and I said, “I have to be at Poplar Bluff by 7 o’clock to catch a bus on Sunday morning.”  He said, “Well how long does it take you to get to Poplar Bluff from here?” and I told him, “three or Four hours.”  He said, “Why don’t I meet you up there between 1:30 and 2:00.” On a Sunday morning, can you imagine this.  He said, “I don’t know whether you got in or not, the list has already been made out and you will know whether you got in or not.”  He said, “You have been through enough already, I’ll find out for you.”  Dr. Marvin met me up there, it was dark and there was nobody around, he unlocked the door, we go in, and he goes through this file being as it was all on paper and not on computer, and he looked up and was smiling.  I thought, “Well, that looks good.”  He said, “You tell those guys not to worry about it, you’re not going to be in the service, you’re starting medical school.” So, that’s the way I found out.  Things were pretty stressful and I had my doubts and I think that I ended up with not a good grade point because of my final year in school.  I didn’t have a 2 point, but I didn’t have a 4 point either.”\n\n“They didn’t know about that yet, did they?”\n\n“They knew I had flunked because to get in, you had to send your mid-term grades in; well back then you did, I don’t know what you have to do now.” \n\nWhat I would guess is, is that it probably reduced your stress level knowing that you had been accepted.\n\nDid you go to Poplar Bluff?\n\n“No, that was an order. I didn’t have any option, but to go to that; you could not get out of it.  So, I went up there.  When I was a kid, my mother and dad took an orphan boy, or a boy that didn’t have a home as his mother died, and he spent his senior year in high school living with us.  He was in St. Louis; so, I called him and we partied all night.  When I got up there, we partied all Sunday night and I just barely showed up in time to get to the thing.  But, I went though it and what was funny about it was that I went to sleep in the middle of the exam because I was a little bit hung over.  I still was in the top 10 or 15% and didn’t even complete the exam.  As I walked through, I called them super sergeants as there was a bunch of these guys with a bunch of stripes, they said, “Young man, we’ll see you in a few weeks.” and what I recalled is that I must have had a grin on my face and he said, “What, do you think this is funny?’ and I said, “Oh no Sir, I don’t think it’s funny.” He was after me; he’d looked at my qualifications and saw that I had a college degree and six years experience as a lab technician, and he was eager to get me as a private no less in the Vietnam War.  It was quite a stressful time in my life.”\n\nSo you made it to medical school and you were in medical school from 1966 to?\n\n\n“1970.”          \n\nDid you enjoy medical school?\n\n“Yes.  I just, basically guess as an old country germ, I ate it up and I loved it.”\n\nDid you make good grades?\n\n“All I know is that I graduated in the top third of the class, I don’t know.  I got an extra diploma and didn’t know what it was, so I asked, “What’s this?’ and they told me, “if you graduate in the top third of the class, you get an extra diploma.”\n\nIs there any part of that first two years that you found particularly interesting? You talked about the fact that you found some substance in all the courses you took in college that carried you on through the rest of your life.  What about some of the courses you took that first two years in medical school?\n\n“Well, yes they were drooling, and a lot of studying, and stressful; but I don’t know how in the world you could ever make it through unless you took that, that was your basis.  I mean if you knew physiology, neurology, gross anatomy, and pharmacology; I mean if you didn’t know that, how could you’ve gotten through?  So to me, that was just part of it and I enjoyed it.  I didn’t necessarily enjoy the long hours, the stress, etc, and Dr. Suzuki coming up and chewing you out at the gross anatomy table, but…”\n\nWere there any teachers who impressed you during all four years of medical school, not just the first two year, but all during medical school?\n\n“One of the people that impressed me more than anything was a Chief resident that I was under in my junior and senior year,  I guess maybe my senior year, and hey, I’m almost 75  and my mind just went blank, he is the cancer….”\n\nIt’s alright.\n\n“Yeah, at UAMS,”\n\nKent Westbrook?\n\n“Yes, Kent Westbrook.  He just so impressed me for the surgical service. You were asked to be here at 7 or 6 or something ungodly, real early, and he would’ve already been there two or three hours and done everything.  He would have everything and you were just there to learn, but he wanted you there.  But when you left at 7 or 8 o’clock at night, he was still there.  He worked hard and always had the answer.  He was not just the surgeon; he was trained medically as well.  I always thought, “This is the guy, Kent, he’s just kind of a special guy.”\n\nSo at what point did you decide I’m going into general practice/family practice? When did you start thinking about that?\n\n\n“When I was in medical school, I continued to work in the lab.  I worked at the VA Hospital with people and then my senior year, I went down to Cummins Prison and worked on weekends.  I dealt with general people and was as impressed as when I worked at Baptist Hospital and when I worked with the people at Blytheville, I was impressed with the knowledge of the general practitioner.  These guys, they have fun, they’re in there doing everything.  I was not real thrilled about surgery.  I thought that that was a technical thing that you learn to do and you were doing it.  You were doing physicals, and you were doing procedures, and I like the thought process that was put into the challenges of general medicine and family medicine.  There were a few people in my class, Shot Rogers who was a neuro-anatomy teacher at the University, he taught neuro-anatomy and was in my class.  I had a PHD biochemist graduate from the University of Tennessee that was at my gross anatomy table that went into primary care. A lot of people that were in the upper third of the class were very interested in family medicine and it was being talked about, not necessarily at the Med Center, but in your people that you were in contact with, other physicians, about how interesting that was going to be to have residency in family practice.  I think that 1970 was the first time that you had an option of doing a family practice residency.  There wasn’t a family practice residency in Little Rock area at the time, but I did a year of internship, two years of service, and three years of practice and that gave you your three credits, and that’s how I became eligible for Board Certification in 1976.”\n\nSo, you had to give the Army your due after all?  \n\n“Yeah, but that’s a little bit different position, flight surgeon is a little bit different than out there in middle of  hand to hand combat.  Vietnam War was still going on pretty hot and heavy.”\n\nDid you have to borrow a lot of money to get through medical school?       \n\n“Oh yes, I borrowed every loan that I could get; and then I remember and appreciate this very much, the Grundfest Foundation, the people that owned the Associated Foods or something like that.”\n\n“I think that’s what it is.”\n\n“The Grundfest family had a grant program for medical students.  The people that took medical school kind of took care of me little bit.  I was just kind of struggling the whole time financially and they recommend that I go down and meet with those people.  My sophomore year, I went and they provided me with $500.00 a year and when you weren’t making but very little, that meant something. I got probably $2,000.00 worth of help from them.  When I got out of medical school, I owed a ton of money.”\n\nWere there any rural house loans available at that point?\n\n“No, nothing like that.”\n\n\n\nNone with low interest rates?\n\n“Yeah...”\n\n“There was low interest.  As long as I was in the service, I didn’t have to pay back.  It was a very low interest rate that accumulated, but I didn’t have to make payments.  In fact, that was the reason I didn’t stay in the service, I was making $20,000 a year and I was going to get promoted to Major after two years and I was going to make $24,000, well I couldn’t even pay my school loans with that amount of money.”      \n\nSo, you finished medical school, obviously proud of that, and then went into the Air Force?\n\n“Yes, after my internship at Baptist Hospital.”\n\nTell about your internship at Baptist Hospital.  So, you have been to Baptist for at least two levels now. \n\n“Yes.  The internship at that time at the Baptist Hospital, we were also Children’s Hospital interns.  The interns that went through the Baptist system served in the clinics at the Children’s hospital.  Obviously, the Children’s Hospital wasn’t near as big then as it is now and we would do the ENT physicals and admissions and take care of the little kids in the hospital, so that was part of the rotation.  Obstetrics was always the department that was hard to keep covered, so you could work extra on weekends that you weren’t on call for something else and cover the obstetric.”\n\nWas Bill Floyd working there at that time?\n\n“I love Bill Floyd.”\n\n“Yeah, Bill Floyd is who delivered our two kids.  Deanne and I got married our freshman year in medical school; so, by the time we got through four years of college, we had Shawn and then I went into the Air Force and the second one was born, and Bill Floyd delivered both of them.”\n\nBy the way, we’re going to interview Shot Rogers sometime late next month. \n\n“Are you? You will have fun with that one.”\n\n“Shot was very active in the academy and Shot was a very sharp financial and a sharp physician.  He was good.  In fact, I spent three rotations in that clinic.  I spent three different rotations there because of their business operation.  I didn’t go there to see patients; I went there to observe how the clinic was run, how they took care of patients, and their insurance program.  They ran such a good ship.” \n\nYou brought up the fact of your time working in Cummins Prison; let’s talk about that a little bit.\n\n\n“Ok.  In the 70s, if you remember you could get a temporary license.  If you had passed your test and the state test, and go to Joe Bursar, and if your grades were good enough, he would give you a temporary license.  So, I had a temporary license.  I applied for a job down at the Cummins Prison.  There were three sets of physicians that would go down there every third weekend and we would arrive Saturday morning, stay through the night, and leave late Sunday afternoon and during  that time, we took care of all the prisoners.  We took care of the infirmary and the people in the infirmary or hospital.  We had a key to the pharmacy.  We took care of all that and go see the prisoners in the prison itself and do the pre-assignment physicals for the new prisoners to determine their work level, etc; that was quite an experience.  Deanne, my wife, even went down with us. She never did go down into the prison, but we stayed there in a nice home on the prison grounds.  We were the only civilians in the prison, or infirmary, or all that at that time, because everything was run by trustees.  There were no civilian guards or anything; they were all trustee guards.  One story that sort of got my attention was that, there was a small gentleman that I would say was in his 50s at the time, who was a trustee and he had a revolver pistol that he carried all the time.  I asked him one time, I got to thinking and said, “What if one of these guys try to do something? There’s nobody but prisoners around here.” and he just stopped me right there and said, “Doc, don’t you worry about this. They’re not gonna touch you.” I said, “Well, what do you mean?” and he said, “Well, I’ll kill them.” I said, “Well, what do you mean you’ll kill them?” and he said, “Well, I’m in here for murder three, a life sentence,” and he said, “I used to work out in the field riding a horse and carrying a rifle. I’ve killed several prisoners trying to escape, so it doesn’t bother me to kill somebody.”  Then he said, “As good as you are to us, they’re not going to lay a hand on you.  Just let them try.” And I thought, “Hmm, what am I doing here?” but the money was good, so I continued to come.” \n\nThe foolishness of youth.\n\n“Ignorance is bliss.”           \n\n“And, we needed the money.”       \n\n“By the way, we got paid $100 or $125 for that weekend, more than I made all week as an intern; you got paid $600 as an intern.”\n\n“It was a lot of money.”\n\nWhat did the Air Force do with you?\n\n“I volunteered my senior year, at that time the draft was on, and everybody that hadn’t served in the service was drafted immediately after their one year whether they were a pediatrician one year or whatever.  I did not want to go into the Navy.  I couldn’t ride in a boat across the lake without getting seasick; so, I certainly didn’t want to be in the Navy.  I did not want to be in the Army; so, I volunteered to be in the Air Force.  The recruiter when I did this, he said, “When \n\n\n\nyou get your transcript and everything in, what do you want to do?” I said, “Well, what do you mean what do I want to do?” he said, “Well, do you want to be a flight surgeon or a GMO, or where do you want to be? We can give you some choices if your transcript fits.” I told him, “I don’t know, what is a flight surgeon?” He explained it to me and said, “By the way, it’s $150.00 a month more pay.”  Then I said, “I want to be that.”  When it all came in, I wanted to be in Little Rock because that’s where we lived.  I did not want to leave Little Rock if at all possible.  So, I got assigned to Little Rock, I got to be a flight surgeon, and I was one of the fortunate ones assigned to the SAC division, out there where the missiles and KC-135s were fueling the jets, the B52s out of Blytheville.  So out of all the flight surgeons, I was the only one that was stable.  I did not get sent to Vietnam.  I did not get sent overseas during my stay because I was attached to the SAC division.”\n\nSo at some point during this process, during the process of being in the Air Force, you had to start thinking, “Do I want to go back to Southern Missouri or go to rural Arkansas? What do I want to do?”   \n\n“I had intentionally started out thinking, “Well, I want to stay with some of my classmates.”  Jock Cobb and Don Lorenzoni were in North Little Rock in Family Practice.  While we were in the Air Force, we built a new home in Indianhead Lake Estates.”\n\n“It’s in North Little Rock.” \n\n“In North Little Rock, back there on the lake.”\n\n“Because, we like to fish.”\n\n“Our daughter by that time was 5 years old, or becoming 5, and we got to checking into the school system.  Because we were quite a distance from where the schools are and she was going to be picked up; she was born in September, so, she was just barely the age to be in kindergarten, and they were going to pick her up at day light around 6 o’clock.”\n\n“This was when they started bussing.”    \n\n“When they started all this bussing and they were going to take her to Booker T. Washington and she would get home about 5:30pm.  My wife and I just said, “Hey, you know, I don’t have to stay here.  I’m not going to put my baby on a bus, have her ride a bus, and be in school all that time, and come back that late.”  That’s when I met my future partner, Seb Spades who was a GMO, and we got to talking and started traveling around the state looking for a place to land.  We thought we’d be partners.  We went to Camden, England, Russellville, Clarksville, obviously Walnut Ridge, and Salem.  We traveled different places and talked to people there.  Dr. Spades happened to be from Walnut Ridge and said, “Well, they need doctors at Walnut Ridge.  I got a friend up there that’s by himself; let’s go up and talk to him.” So, we came up and talked to our future partner, Dr. Joe Hughes.  He just, “Oh, yes, I need you, I need you, I need you,” so that’s \n\n\nhow we ended up in Walnut Ridge.  That was about an hour from my home up in Missouri and that was Seb’s home, and at the time, the school system was excellent.”\n\nHow did you feel about moving to North East Arkansas?\n\n“That’s a good question.”\n\nDifferent?\n\n“We had met the Spades and loved the Spades.  It was because my family was in Little Rock, but it really wasn’t that far.  It was ok, until we got there; the first year was absolutely horrible, because we were in mosquitoes.  We had not had that there in Little Rock. So, he’d be on call, at that time every third night in the emergency room, and he would come home hardly able to get into bed and we’d be swatting mosquitoes all night long until we learned to deal with that later on.  But, he was so tired.  One of the funniest stories that I love to tell is that at night, we would put plastic water on the nightstand, you know to drink from at night, and he would see a 100 patients during the day plus be on call and I mean it was not even like it is now, and in the middle of the night, he got a call from the emergency room and he reached over and picked that up and said, “hello;” that was about how tired he was.”\n\n“We were seeing 100+ a day in the office, 8-10 a day in the emergency room, we’d have 15 or so in the hospital a piece, and had nursing home patients.  So, you can imagine how much time.”\n\n“It was unreal.”\n\nHow long did you practice like that with that many patients?\n\n“Obstetrics was part of it.  We did that for about 3-5 years and Medicare and the government did a great thing starting a regional review program to where people in the hospital had their records reviewed.  For some reason, I was on that Board.  We met in Batesville, but that covered all the way down to Helena, Marianna, Blytheville over to Harrison, all over this northeast corner of Arkansas, and they started insisting that better records be kept.  When they did that, you couldn’t go in and not have an adequate record; so, things started slowing down.  I always wrote a big record anyway, and I guess that was one of the reasons they picked me to be on this review board; I always had good records.  It was very difficult to see that many and have an adequate note.  We started developing our clinic into a lab, and x-ray, and be more inclusive.  We did minor surgeries and all of this stuff; so, we were a real true family physician; we were doing a lot of things than just seeing people for sore throats.”   \n\nHow big a town is Walnut Ridge?\n\n\n“Walnut Ridge is little over 4000; the county was about 18000.”\n\n“How about back then?  Even back then? Yeah, the county has grown a lot.”\n\nHow many other physicians were in Walnut Ridge besides the three of you?\n\n“At the time that I went up there, there was Dr. Elders, Dr. Ralph Joseph, and Dr. Joe Hughes.  When I came, it made four.  The next year, Seb came and made it five; but Dr. Elders was no longer part of the hospital staff; so, it was four people rotating call and seeing all these people.”  \n\nNow the hospital was?\n\n“Lawrence Memorial Hospital; it was a 40 something bed hospital.  We’d have two people in rooms that paid for one, they’d have them out in the hall; you’d have 45-50 people in it at all time.”\n\nDid you do general surgery?\n\n“I did some, but we had a general surgeon that came out of Pocahontas. He was trained in Louisiana, spent time in the Air Force, retired, and came back.  He would come out of Pocahontas and he ended up using our hospital as a surgeon.  So, we didn’t have to do that long.   But, at that time, every case had to have two physicians at the table; ya’ll probably remember the surgeon doctor couldn’t be in there by himself even regardless of how minor it was, there had to be another doctor at the bedside.  Every case that we had, we had to be there early that morning and spend as an assistant.  So for all practical purposes, we had just as much time involved as the general surgeon did; so yes, we spent a lot of time and we did surgical co-night.  I spent some time in Mountain Home learning how to do laparoscopic tubal ligations and thank God I didn’t have to do that long because it tied you up some much. We did our own breast biopsies and our own skins lesions and OB.  We had OB for about two or three years after I got there and what happened was, the hospital was struggling to maintain that service.  I don’t know what the statistics are now; but at that time, the statistics were for you to maintain an obstetrics service and a nursery.  It was about 200+ babies a year you needed to be delivering to make that service not cost the hospital.  When I first came there, they didn’t have a nursery that was manned by a nurse.  Her comment to me one time was that she was a grandma, so that qualified her to be a new nursery nurse.  I’m not trying to be a know it all, but Seb and I when we came, started insisting that, “We’re not going to do this, if you don’t have a qualified person to take care of  these people.”  They realized that if they’re going to have to get all these places supplied with adequate care, I mean qualified people and everything; so, they realized that they could not do it like it had been done for years.  It was cut out probably in the mid 70s; 76 or 77.”\n\nWhere did the patients come from?\n\n\n\n“Well, we were 30 minutes from Jonesboro and we had a real good relationship at the time with people from Pocahontas.  Remember Albert Baltz?  Senior and junior was there and there were some other doctors there and they were still delivering babies. I would just call them and my obstetrics care was sent to them.”   \n\nIn your first few years of practice, did you have any real scary moments?\n\n“I don’t know that I had any real scary moments; now, I had a lot of stressful sick people and we were at cross roads of three major highways and we had car accidents.   I recall one time, you heard the ole cliché, “a bus load of Mexicans” well, we literally had one where there were several killed at the scene and two or three died in the emergency room; of course; there were only three of us doctors there trying to manage them and that was a pretty scary time.  We couldn’t communicate with them and they couldn’t communicate with us, just stuff like that.  You would have your friends that would come in and you have young people that you knew and I don’t know if this happens anymore, but I’d ride with them to Memphis to the cardiologist as they’d be having a heart attack because EMS was just a way of getting you there.  If you had a sick person, you’d ride with them to their destination and the destination for cardiac care was Memphis or Little Rock and of course, it was closer to Memphis.  Just things like that.  You’d have to be there for their erythema, arrest, and etc.  We had a coronary care unit and an intensive care unit at our hospital.  Then until the late 70s,  ya’ll probably remember you would put people in for 12 to 15 days for a heart attack and then maintain them with your drips and anti-erythema drugs and hope that they would live through and the cardiologist did not want to see them until they were three months out and all that stuff.  We had them on respirators.  The hospital was a true intensive care.  We managed people on respirators and took care of all their erythemas and put in transthoracic pacemakers.  You’d say, “You did that? No, you didn’t.” “Yes, we did.”  That wasn’t any fun; to me, that was scary and stressful times; particularly living in a small community because you knew some of these people. Now, I‘ve got to tell this story, this was a real kind of a life changing thing for me; one night, I showed up about two o’clock in the morning and there was an old gentleman that came in and they put him in the coronary care unit as he was having chest pain and was in heart failure.  He was about 80 something year old and an Assembly of God Minister over across Black River into the hills, Lynn and Strawberry area, and I had had him in the hospital for heart attacks before and he’d been in and out of there a few times.  I went in to see him and he was really stressed.  They had him up, keeping his head elevated, and everything and I went in and started talking to him.  I asked, “What happened?” and he started telling me this story. Well, one of his church member’s wife had a problem and actually died in the home while he was there.  He was there at midnight, or so, with this family member because the wife had just passed away.  Well you know I know everything; so, I was blessing him out, “You can’t do that anymore, you get in trouble when you do that.” and I never will forget, he took my hand between his hands with his oxygen on, having trouble breathing, and he said, “Doc, now just relax; you know why you’re here, I can depend on \n\n\nyou.  My people in my church know that I will be there if they need me and they depend on me.  Now if I die doing my job, that’s the way I want to die.” He said, “Now you can worry about me whenever I come in here, but don’t you worry, I am going to do my job.”  This always stuck in my mind; this old man, an Assembly of God Minister, and I thought, “You know, that guy is working for the Lord.  If it costs him his life, he was going to be there for his people”.  It changed my whole idea about people, you know.”\n\nWhat year was that?\n\n“Oh, I had probably been 4, 5, or 6 years; so probably late 80s when we still had that CCU, ICU, and all that stuff.”             \n\nNot talking about technology, or not talking about tests, and scans and things; but as you got a little older in practicing medicine, obviously that kind of thing changed the way you approached being a doctor.  What other kind of things changed the way you approached as you got a little older in your mid 50s and early 60s?\n\n“Changes of how you practiced obviously was governed by what the government required.  We later had, for the first time, specialty people in our area.  When I came to Walnut Ridge, Dr. Hughes, Dr. Spades, and I in 1976 or middle 70s, we were one of four Board Certificated Family Physicians in northeast Arkansas.  We were, I’m not bragging or anything but, we were trained just as good as anybody in Jonesboro in cardiology, because a cardiologist was an internist that was the cardiologist, and they didn’t have cardiologists.  They didn’t have a neurologist; so what happened is as time developed, we became less of a do it all and tended to utilize the cardiologists when they became available.  We stopped doing gynecological work, because we had gynecologists in the area.  That part, of being an all inclusive physician, changed.  Now, that does not mean that we were not knowledgeable of what needed to be done, but it was very difficult; for instance to be assisting surgery and somebody come into your office sick with a heart attack.  Now, they came to your office that way; they didn’t come to the emergency room, they came to you our office.  Or they came with a gross laceration or they came in with a broken bone.  So, what you did was try to be more available at all times to the people in your office rather than being tied up in procedural things that had you where you couldn’t get out of it, like an obstetric delivery.  We were trained that you had to be there with that woman for a period of time before to check the babies’ status, the accelerations and de-accelerations and all of that, and the mother’s progress, etc.  So, we stayed with them, but the people in your office didn’t understand that.  The whole concept was that the patients that you took care of in your office wanted you to come see them when they were in there sick. “ Why would you be over there taking care of someone else in the hospital, or surgery, or obstetrics, when I’m in here with pneumonia or I’m having a heart attack.”  It was hard for us to do it; so, things began to slow down and you became less all inclusive, because you just physically could not spread yourself out that way.  Particularly, we did colonoscopies for instance, if you had a GI guy or a general surgeon that was doing colonoscopies, we started referring those out.  We actually had a \n\n\nsigmoidoscopy scope in the office and did all that stuff; but what it did was you decreased the scope that you were taking care of.  You didn’t do breast biopsies anymore in your office, because nobody else was doing them.  You didn’t put in PEG tubes, because now you had an ENT guy that would do that.”                   \n\nWe’re going to go off in a little slightly different direction here; just a couple of things I want to ask you about.  You touched on in it briefly, about medical records; what kind of medical records did you keep when you first went into practice?\n\n“Well let me preference this with an example of the records that we got from the other doctors in town to give you an idea of what the record was and then my records.  Again, I kept an extended record; for instance for a simple visit, it would a quarter of a page.  But, I would get records for someone I was seeing from some of the local physicians and it would be a whole family with two or three kids on a 4x8 card and it wasn’t one visit; it had be there for the last five or six years.  It was sore throat, 2cc penicillin; urinary tract infection, sulfa; that’s all was written in the record and it was little bitty and had the patient’s name out in front of it to separate it, Mary from Joe and Sandy.  It was terrible.  And two, when I was on this original review board, people would come in to ICU or CCU and it would say, “admit with heart attack to CCU” and that would be the history and physical.  Now, you think I’m joking.  The next note would be, “discharged from CCU, patient stable.”  The next note would be, “Send home.”  Three to five notes in an acute heart attack patient. I mean, we did atrocious medical records.  I don’t know if that’s what triggered the need for these electronic things where you create something that is not even readable to anybody but somebody that created that conglomerative stuff. So yes, the records were very sparse at that day and time.”\n\nTalk a little bit about the level of office staff that you had, primarily in your office.  The level of office staff that you had at the beginning and the level of office staff that you had as you got to the end of your practice.\n\n“Ok, the office staff versus the whole staff, you’re talking about just the in office?”\n\nYeah, in office.\n\n“Ok, it went from a receptionist, an insurance girl, and an office manager to now; two girls as the receptionists, one a cashier, and one doing insurance, one doing workman’s comp, one doing Medicare/Medicaid, one involved with referrals which is a full time job getting prior approvals and etc, as well as you nurse being occupied with a constant harassment of prior approvals, then you had office managers, assistant office managers.  I mean, we probably went from three, with three doctors now as there was no difference in doctors, to probably ten or twelve.”\n\nWere you well compensated for what you did?     \n\n“Just a matter of, I made more money than I ever made in my life.”\n\n\n“That’s relative for sure.”\n\n“But it was $5.00 an office visit and you collected about probably 60%; I don’t think that we collected much of what we charged; because people just couldn’t pay.”\n\nObviously for the first couple of years at the rate you were working with 100 patients, hospital, OB; you couldn’t be involved in the community to any great extent.  Well, you could have, but it would have been very difficult.  As that changed some, were you involved in the community at all?  Church, community groups, those kinds of things. \n\n“Later, yes.  The Lord’s blessed us in many ways.  He sent us to a place where the people were nice, we made long term friends, I was not a Christian at the time; we had some friends that we started attending church with, so my baptism and everything took place later in life.  We were members of various organizations.  Our social life was friends our age, country club of people, and we’d all gather and play volleyball on the weekends or baseball games, the doctors would play the lawyers, and all that stuff; a real social community. ”\n\n“He’s always been good to try and better the community, even when he didn’t have time to.  I’ve been real proud of him.”\n\n“I was involved in the Chamber of Commerce, had been on church communities all the time, or chairman of this and that.  I was on the Hospital Board and was actually Chairman of the Hospital Board of Directors for a short period of time and I was on the Medical Review Board for the Industry, out at the industrial park for a big corporation out there.   I just felt that that was part of being in the community was being involved in the community and giving back to the community.” \n\nWhat prompted you to get involved in the State Medical politics; into the Academy of Family Practice that kind of thing?\n\n“I don’t know why, but I’ve been involved for a real long time.  I had friends, Shot Rogers was involved in it, and we interned together, and I heard about it.  Then I just, I don’t know how long, but I’ve been on the Board for a long time, but I have been a member of the Academy.  They had a scientific assembly and that’s the way you’d get, back then for years the way you’d get your accreditations was through scientific assemblies and etc…you’d have to have so many hours and so, I just over time became more active and involved in the Academy.  I always thought that the academy was more a voice for us than the AMA.  I have never been a member of the AMA, because I felt that the AMA represented, not now but it did then, it was always a specialty driven program and the academy was family and patient oriented.”       \n\nHow did your family adapt to this life?  I mean we talked about this or just around the edge of it, and you can let your wife answer if you want to.  Your children, how did they adapt to it?\n\n\n\n“That’s all they knew, you know. Out of ignorance, you just kept going with it.”\n\n“Well, she had to adapt; we had $35.00 when we got married and paid the preacher $25.00.”\n\n“That’s a true story.”\n\n“That’s the honest to God truth.  We had $10.00 left over.”\n\n“When we got married, I got to honeymoon in Qulin.” \n\nOh Wonderful.\n\n“You know, the older kids, Dana and Ellen, they just always knew that was what you did and then our two came along, that’s just..”\n\n“I have always been a physician to the other two.” \n\nNow, you have a daughter that’s a physician?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhich child is this?\n\n“Our oldest, Shawn Peyton.”\n\n“Yes, Shawn Peyton, she’s in with Lawrence County Clinic.”\n\n“She came in and what was kind of a surprise about this was when she was going to medical school; I was always interested and wished she’d go into family medicine, but I never insisted that she come back to Walnut Ridge as you know most kids don’t want to go back to the small town, and she was doing her residency.  She started going to various places for practice opportunities and she would always come to me to ask, “Well dad, this is going on, what do you think about it?” the economics, and the practice, and the environment, etc... And she said, “Well, no one knows about this, you’re the only one who can tell me what’s going on.”  This went on for a while and low and behold, “well dad, I think I might come over to Walnut Ridge.”  I said, “Well, Dr. Hughes is about to retire.  We have an agreement that when he leaves, we got to pay him so much money to buy his share of the practice.  You could just pay that and come in.”  God bless that that’s how that happened; there wasn’t any pressure.  She said, “I said all along that I would never ever come back to Walnut Ridge and here I am.” \n\nWhen did all this transpire?\n\n“She graduated in 1996.  She was born in ‘66. So…”\n\n“Sounds about right.  She was born in ’68.”\n\n\n“She was born in ’68, I mean, and”\n\nShe’s been at the clinic forever now.  She did four years AHEC in Jonesboro at St. Barnards.”\n\n“She graduated in ’96 or something.”\n\n“She’s been there a long time.”\n\nSo, she’s been up there practicing almost 20 years.        \n\n“Yeah, she’s 47.” \n\nWhen did you retire from active practice at Walnut Ridge?\n\n“About three years ago.”\n\nSo you shared the practice?  How did that work?\n\n“Fine.  Our structure to our clinic when we first set it up Dr. Hughes, Spades, and I, we all did it with a hand shake and what we did was structured it not to be a disadvantage for some new guy coming in, back then it was guys, but I should say a new person, but we structured it to where it wasn’t going to be a burden on the people that stayed if someone left.  So, we had a set fee, besides the brick and mortar, and a very nominal fee that you will get paid, but I won’t mention what that is, but it’s very nominal, nothing. If you leave you get “x” amount of dollars and of course you still own the building.  You can still draw rent or still own the building.  So, that was all a predetermined figure.  When Shawn came, I told her, “Well, this is what’ll cost you; the clinic will have to pay what we got promised, but the building, brick and mortar, is that you’ll just pay him that and we won’t have to pay him for that brick and mortar and you’ll be the third partner.  You’re not going to buy his practice, you’re not going to buy his patients; when he is gone, those patients have no obligation to come see anybody.  They’re not his patients anymore.  They’re not our patients, because we pay a dollar to get that.”  What happened is that she is going to have to buy into everybody else’s practice big time.  Well, that’s discouraging to what it was when she came in.  Now, it’s everybody goes in with a guaranteed salary.  She went in with not anything guaranteed.  She borrowed money the first few months to keep her salary intact, to keep an income to live on.”\n\n“She hit the ground running, I guess.”\n\n“She is a go getter.”\n\nIs she married?\n\n“Yes, she married after she was over there in practice.  She’s been married about 15 years.”\n\n“About 15, maybe 16 Years”\n\n\n\nIs her husband a physician?\n\n“No, he was a drug rep at the time and now, one of the executive officers over at Mid South Health Care.  Mid South is that the name of it, the rehab hospital over here in Jonesboro?”\n\nDoes she have children?\n\n“Yeah, she has two; a 14 year old and a 10 year old.”\n\nWould you encourage them to go into medicine?\n\n“I would.  I have always had a, when people come and want their kids to come talk to me about being a doctor, “a doctor, you know, that’s the cat’s meow.”  I always tell the mother and the kids and the father, “Hey, this individual needs to enjoy what they are doing, be it: in the middle of the night your plumbing pipes explode and water is two inches in the floor, you’re not worried about calling a doctor, you’re worried about a plumber coming.  If he enjoys plumbing, he is very badly needed at two o’clock when your floor is flooded.  If your car is broke down, you need a mechanic.  If your air conditioner is out and it’s 100 degrees outside, you want the air conditioner guy.  He is just as important as that doctor is and if he enjoys doing it, don’t be a doctor; because if you don’t enjoy that, it is too hard, and too much stress, and costs too much to be a doctor.  Do what you want to do that you enjoy.  If you want to a doctor, don’t worry about the government, don’t worry about the pay, don’t worry about the way everything is controlled.  Enjoy doing it, because you enjoy doing it.”  I said, “I would have done it, if I made $50,000 a year or I made half a million I’d still been a doctor, that’s how much I enjoyed that.”   \n\nWhat did you think your life would be like when you finished training?\n\n“Well, I had been so burned out from working so many hours, my sob story coming out again, but I’d worked extra going through medical school and during my residency that when I got through, it was just a blessing to be out and making more than $600-700 a month, well in service I got paid more than that but, I was just eager to get out and start paying off bills and having a life.” \n\nWhat do you think the future of medicine is going to be?\n\n“I think there will be a future in medicine.  I think there is always going to be a need for physicians, obviously.  I think that you can be happy in the practice of medicine, be it whether for the government, or the local hospital, or whatever.  If you enjoy it, do that.  I think that the physician will never know how much fun it was and the rewards that I’ve had in my lifetime practicing medicine.  I just think that that era is gone and completely different.  We took care of patients.  Our motto was, “The patients need and services are dependent on what that patient needs, not whether he is on Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, or whether he is an executive at \n\n\n\nthe bank, or whether he is a guy who’s poor and not going to pay.  You’re taking care of that patient.”  Now you’re not, you’re taking care of the institution that you’re working for.  They’re directing whether you can see this patient, whether you can put a certain devise in a hip, this brand or that brand, it’s all controlling and if you’re seeing patients for free, the people you work for don’t like that.  We would just send a ticket back as no charge for that poor person.  Why would you want to charge somebody that you know can’t afford it?  Now if you did that, the CEO would come in and say, “Hey, you can’t not charge those people.”  It’s just different.  The patient was all important and now you’re doing what the government regulations say, what the employer says, you’re controlled by the anxieties of a lawsuit, if you don’t order all these tests or do all this stuff.  Three of us practiced for so many years and I think since my daughter now practicing, we have never had a law suit.  We kept the patient informed, we gave them a loop on where to call or who to call, we’re taking care of you, we love you, we love your family; we didn’t have any trouble with law suits.”\n\n“I think we have been real blessed and we had Christian doctors, too.”\n\n“We have been blessed to live in that time.  Yeah, all our doctors were good Christian people.  Medicine and God have been good to us.”            \n\nOne last question and you can pretend that we are all not here; you are talking to one of your great, great, grandchildren because that is where this is going to go.  This is going to go so that your great, great, grandchildren can know what their great grandpa, the country family doctor, did.  What do you have to say to them?  \n\n“I hadn’t thought about this, but I’d want them to know that God has been good to me and blessed me in many ways.  He put me in a profession that he chose for me, or I chose myself, but I feel that he chose for me and I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything else.  I’ve always done it with the upmost integrity.  My character was always unquestionable and my ethics were always unquestionable.  I hope that they know and felt that I gave to the community and gave to the profession, everything that I could.” \n\nThank you, sir.  I appreciate it.  This has been an absolute delight.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/158023/file/288306#t=0.0,7147.51538"}]}]}]}