{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/0p0wp9vz3z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Morgan Collins "]},"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":["2016-07-13 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video file"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["family medicine","family physician","Arkansas","Rural family medicine"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Morgan Collins, MD (personal 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/000/291/701/small/MorganCollinsM.D.DVD.mp4_1758128013.jpg?1758128016","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Morgan_Collins_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":6304.54825,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/701/small/MorganCollinsM.D.DVD.mp4_1758128013.jpg?1758128016","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/291/701/original/Morgan_Collins_M.D._DVD.mp4?1758127958","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6304.54825,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701/transcript/84361","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Morgan Collins Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701/transcript/84361/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Morgan Collins \n\nGood day; today is 7/13/16.  My name is Sam Taggart and I am the interviewer.  Today, we are in the home of Dr. Morgan Collins and his wife, Virginia, of Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Dr. Collins, one of his names to fame is the fact that he practiced in Forrest City, Arkansas for an extended period of time.  Thank you for inviting us into your home.  We will try not to be too intrusive, or any more intrusive than necessary.   We are here interviewing for the Arkansas Physicians Oral History Project.   This interview is only a format.   Let’s just start: Where were you were born and what were the circumstances of your birth? \n\n“I was born in Marianna, Arkansas on Pearl Street at home on December 12, 1933.  I don’t recall the doctor’s name and I don’t remember much more than that about my birth.”\n\nWere you the first child?  Do you have several siblings in your family? \n\n“I was the first child and was the only child for six years.  After that, I had a brother, then a sister, another sister, and then another sister.  There were five of us siblings and we lived in Marianna until I was about five.”\n\nWhat kind of work did your family do?   \n\n“My dad was a merchant. He had a department store.  He actually ran a department store for another company when we lived in Marianna and he bought a department store in Forrest City; that’s when we moved to Forrest City when I was about six.”\n\n So between Forrest City and Marianna, that’s where you were raised.\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nDo you remember much about living in Marianna?\n\n“Not much; I remember the water was horrible. It was very sulferish water; but I don’t remember much else really.”\n\nDid your mom work?\n\n“No, I think she just stayed home and kept me and dad was at the store.  She worked later; after we moved to Forrest City she worked for dad at the store.”\n\nDid you have an extend family; aunts, uncles, grandparents around you?\n\n“A little later we had grandparents that lived next door to us.  Then later than that, we had an uncle that went to work for my dad as well; but no real relatives close, except my grandparents early on.”\n\n\nDo you have any knowledge of where your family came from or how they came to live in Marianna?      \n\n“Yes; my dad was from Louisiana and he was managing a store for a group in Louisiana who had a store in Marianna.  He came here to manage it and then my mother’s folks were long term residents.  They had been there; well actually, my great grandfather fought in the Civil War and settled in Marianna sometime either just before or just after the Civil War in Phillips County.”\n\nDo you know much about the genealogy of your family; Scotch, Irish, German?  \n\n“Mainly English; they came from England primarily in the early 1700s and settled in North Carolina.  They then moved to Tennessee and then to Arkansas.”\n\nWhat was your mother’s maiden name?\n\n“Greer.”\n\nNow, it sounds like when you described your siblings, that there was some separation in there; at least between you and the brother.\n\n“Well, there was; the last four were not as much a separation except for the very last. My brother was six years young and my two sisters were only a year apart; but they were three or four years after my brother.  Then, another sister who was 17 years younger than me.”\n\n“She was 17 years younger than him.”\n\nWere you a tight knit family?\n\n“Oh yes.  We still are pretty much”\n\nWhere do your brothers and sisters live now?\n\n“Well, my brother and two sisters are still in Forrest City.  My other sister lives over on the mountain close to Harrison.”\n\nDo you have many memories about your childhood?  You said you don’t have a lot of memory about Marianna, but what about memories of your childhood?  What was it like to grow up in Forrest City or Marianna?\n\n“Oh yes; it was quite rural when I was growing up.  I have great memory of all the cotton gins, cotton wagons, and the mules; a long line of mules waiting to get to the gin in the daytime.”\n\nYou said you were born in 1933, so when the flood of ’37 hit, do you remember anything about that?\n\n“Not really; I remember my dad used to go to the wholesale house in Memphis and we would drive to Memphis.  I remember how much water there was between Forrest City and Memphis; almost the entire area was flooded.  About the only that was out was the railroad track; that was about all you could see.”\n\n Do you remember much about the roads?\n\n“Not much; 70 hwy was the main thereofare across the United States and it came right through Forrest City downtown; but, it was a two lane highway all the way across the country.”    \n\nWhat about elementary school and high school?\n\n“All in Forrest City.  The elementary school that I went to is in the process of being demolished at this time.  It was built in 1908, I think, and used up until two or three years ago.  The high school is the same.  It was just down the street.  It has been remodeled and added onto, but it is the same building that has been there since the ‘40s at least.”\n\nDid you live up on the ridge or down in the flat part?\n\n“In the early days, we always lived in town on the flat part.  Then, we moved up on the hill and lived there until I went off to college.  Dad then built a house out of the farm, which we never really lived in because we were married about that time.  We lived up on top of the hill after we moved back.”\n\nThere are a couple of things that were brought up about the name of the commercial retailer that brought your father to town, Forrest City.\n\n“Dad was born in a little place called Sugartown, Louisiana.  Actually, he was born out in the country from Sugartown, Louisiana, which is close to DeRidder.  In DeRidder, there was a family called “the Westbrothers” and they owned some of the department stores.  Dad went to work for them in DeRidder and they were impressed with him abilities and sent him to Marianna to manage the store there in Marianna.”   \n\nWhat kind of supplies did the Westbrothers sell?\n\n“Well, the Westbrothers, as well as the store that my dad owned, were general mercantile stores.  We sold everything from dress shoes to cotton socks, suits to clothes, work clothes to fabrics, dresses, ladies panties, just whatever.”\n\n“Everything, but watches.” \n\nSo when you were in school, we’ll start with elementary and go on to high school, were there any really important people, teachers, who had an impact on you?   \n\n“Absolutely; the first teacher I really remember was Ms. Patterson.  She taught writing; she taught me cursive, particularly; which they don’t teach anymore, I don’t think, in school.  \n\n\nShe was a very impressive lady; very strict.  Two other ladies; one lady who taught math, Ms. Propter, she was very good and taught me a good basis in mathematics and Ms. Geraldine Mosley who taught music and probably was the most influential to me over the years of all of those.”\n\nWhy?\n\n“Every time I hear “Griggs, Fear Again Sweep” I think of her.  She was just the lady who played the organ at church and music instructor.  She is frequently in my thoughts.”\n\nYou really enjoyed music?\n\n“Oh yes.”\n\nAnd still enjoy music?\n\n“I still enjoy music; yes.  We, both of us, played in the band in high school.  I played the saxophone, after that I played on a recorder a little bit, as well as a cello a little bit.  Jan played the bassoon.”\n\nReally?  Now that’s not comforting, that’s ……\n\n“That makes me unique.”\n\nDid you continue playing the bassoon?\n\n“Well, I was offered a scholarship.  I had a scholarship for college; Arkansas State Teacher’s College, UCA, and also up here at the University; so I played.  I don’t play anymore.  I play piano now, but only for me.”\n\nWell given that there is no actual formal structure to this, let’s start back with you a little bit.  You are going to be very much a part of this interview; where were you born?\n\n“I was born right here in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the old City Hospital.” \n\nAnd your father, what kind of work did he do?\n\n“My father was at the University of Arkansas and worked himself through college during the depression.  He worked at my grandparent’s boarding house, which was at the other end of Arkansas Avenue from the campus house and married the Madame’s daughter.  Mother had one year in college and daddy had graduated.  Daddy then became an \n\n\ncounty agriculture agent and we’ve lived all over Arkansas until we got to Forrest City when I in the 9th grade.   So, that’s the story of …”\n\n“So, he kind of moved around where they needed him.”\n\n“I was the eldest; I was the first born in our family of four.  We moved an awful lot until we got to Forrest City and daddy said then, “That’s as good as it’ gets,” Forrest City, for him; then he retired from Baylor.”\n\nDo you mind me asking how old you are?\n\n“I’m 83.  I was born May 14, 1933.”\n\nSo, y’all are almost exactly the same age.\n\n“I’m a little bit older; seven months older.”\n\nAnd you moved to Forrest City when?\n\n“When I was in the 9th grade from Clarksville; we lived in Clarksville for five years and that when we got to know each other.” \n\nSo by this time, you have been living there for five or six years?\n\n“Oh, I lived there from every since I was five years old.”\n\nOh good.\n\nWe were talking about music; the music teacher; somebody who taught you math, and somebody who taught you cursive; did that play to any of your interests in school?\n\n“I was always interested in music.  Math always came easy; I like math and science.”\n\n“Being a doctor, he forgot his cursive pretty quickly; I had to say that.” \n\nNow today, you don’t have to worry about it; it’s all on computers and all you need is a keyboard. \n\nNow, just a couple questions back on the situation of your family; your father was a merchant, he worked for a mercantile.  Did you ever think whether you were poor, rich, or middle class?\n\n“We were never poor; I never thought of us as poor.  I just thought of us as average, I guess most of my life, and then it occurred to me that we had more than most people did.”               \n\n\nDid you have a really close knit group of friends when you were in school?\n\n“Oh yes; I still do.  I still meet with the same group from time to time.  We try to get together in Eastern Arkansas, Memphis, or West Memphis, or somewhere.  Quite a group of us still live in Memphis and Forrest City.”\n\nDo you ever think about how lucky you were to have that?\n\n“The older I get the more I realize how lucky that we are and were; absolutely.”\n\nWhat do you remember about the city, or town I guess, of Forrest City itself?  Obviously, it was a pretty safe place to grow up.\n\n“Yes, just a typical small town; let the kids out in the morning and expect them home at dark and not worry about them otherwise.”\n\nNow you were about seven or eight years old when World War II broke out.  What do you remember about that?       \n\n“I barely remember Roosevelt’s speech after Pearl Harbor, but it was not long until I was very aware, particularly of air craft; I could name all the air craft and could see them flying over and identify them.  We followed the news.  I had an Uncle who was very active in the Pacific; he was actually on McArthur’s staff when they signed the Peace Treaty in Tokyo Bay; so, we were very well aware of that.  I had Uncles on the other side of the world in the service.  Yes, we were very accomplished in the War.”\n\nDuring the War, I think a lot of people weren’t aware of this but there were a number of aviation training schools strips around Arkansas; Lonoke, Walnut Ridge, Stuttgart; do you remember seeing planes flying around here?\n\n“I remember seeing a lot of planes flying over; absolutely.  Occasionally, a glider or two; C-47’s pulling a glider over; but as far as the training places, I wasn’t too aware of that at the time.  I ultimately certainly acquired that knowledge.”\n\n Were you aware that there was both an Italian and German prisoner war camp just up the road of Wynn?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nDid you have any contact with them or do you remember people talking about them?    \n\n“Not really; there was a CCC, civilian conservation core camp as well close by Forrest City and then the closest I ever we had was when we first moved to Forrest City and bought a house, it had a little rent house close by and the German prison who had become a citizen lived there.”\n\n\nReally?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\n“That was not his parents; that was us.”\n\nAnd how long did he live there?\n\n“He didn’t live there too long; in fact, he moved out shortly after we were there.  I still have a M3carbine that he sporterized that I bought from him when he moved.”      \n\n Was your family religious?\n\n“Yes, my dad was a Chairman of the Board of Deacons in the Baptist Church for a long time.  We were at church every Sunday, perhaps morning and evening, and occasionally on Wednesday nights.  Yes, we were very much so.”\n\n Did that play to your music at all?\n\n“Yes, we were all involved in the choir all our lives.”\n\nIncluding now?\n\n“Including now.”\n\nOK.\n\n“Well, Morgan has a beautiful voice and he has sung our way through college through the student entertainers at the local A\u0026M and has done solo work everyplace.  So, he is awesome.”\n\nAre you a tenor or baritone?\n\n“Baritone.”  \n\nDo you still sing?\n\n“Yes; I primarily sing with the senior choir at church, but do an occasional solo.”\n\n“He is a senior saint; can’t you tell by looking?”\n\nYes; yes.  Where do you go to church here?\n\n“We go to the…Central Methodist Church.”\n\n“The Methodist Church.”\n\n\nWe hear the chimes every afternoon about 6:00 o’clock.\n\nDid you do well in school?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhat kinds of things did you excel in school?\n\n“Well, the best instructor I had in high school was the gentleman, Mr. Bratton, who taught second year algebra and trigonometry, chemistry and physics.  He was a terrific teacher and good enough that I cleped out of freshman chemistry when I got to college, which is kind of an index of how well you did, I guess.  But, I did well in math and I liked history a lot.”   \n\nWere you involved in sports at all?\n\n“No.”\n\nThat was not something you liked?\n\n“Sports were never my thing.”\n\n“Because….”\n\n“I didn’t like it mainly, but I had an appendectomy when I was six and almost died from a rupture appendix back in those days.  I was one of the first civilians I think to have Penicillin.  I think they gave me about 10,000 units a day.”\n\nThat would have been in about ‘39?\n\n“Yeah; dad never would let me play football because the doctor had told him not to let me play football, so I didn’t.”\n\n“Sports; he was a music rat.”\n\nSo you mentioned the teachers; you remember the teachers, particularly the mathematics teacher in school; do you remember any of the non-technical lessons they taught you?   Things they might have said or things your father might have said?  Anything adults might have said that might have turned you or pushed you in one direction or another?  \n\n“Not specifically; no, I don’t.”\n\nDo you remember thinking about what it was that you would like to do when you grew up?              \n\n “Well, my folks always said that I talked about being a doctor ever since I was a little kid.  When I was in high school, we moved when my dad bought a farm.  He had always said that when he \n\n\n\nwas 45, he’d like to retire from the business world and go back to the farm where he was raised.  So, he pretty well did that and he bought a heard of Angus, a heard of polled herfords, all sorts of tractors, and leased some land and liked to have lost his shirt.”\n\nIt’s not funny, but it is funny.\n\n“Yeah, it wasn’t all that funny to him; but that did happen.  Then, he went back into the business world and a few other things later.  He didn’t want me to be in retail, I did know that.”\n\nWere you close to your father?\n\n“Yeah; pretty much.”\n\nHow about your mother?\n\n“Not as much as my dad; it took me years to decide that she was a lot smarter than I thought she was.”\n\n“She was busy; you know, he had four brothers and sisters.  She was really busy being a momma and raising all those babies.”\n\n“I was half raised when the rest of them came along.”   \n\nSo, when did you graduate from high school?\n\n“1951.”\n\nAnd again, you said your parents said that you talked about wanting to be a physician ever since you were a little kid.  \n\n“Well, they said that I talked about it; I don’t remember it all that well.  Then with all the cattle and all that, I became the herdsman for the cattle and I decided that I thought I might be a good veterinarian.  That’s why I ended up going to Oklahoma State as that was the closest Veterinary school.”\n\n“A\u0026M back in those days.” \n\n“Yes, local A\u0026M.  I went out in a pre-vet program and changed my senior year to pre-med.” \n\nDid your family help you through school or put you through school?\n\n“Oh yes, absolutely.”\n\n“We had no debt.”\n\n\n\n“We were fortunate that we didn’t have any debt.  We both worked in college and we both worked in medical school.  The help was mainly with just the school fees and that sort of thing, but they sure absolutely helped.”\n\n“We were very blessed; both of our families; yeah.” \n\nSo when did your relationship turn from casual to “we are a pair”?  \n\n”We might even say the same thing; we had Spanish together in high school and I thought that he was the biggest smart-aleck when I first met him; new in Forrest City, but then that kind of changed as we took more Spanish so.  We were in high school together, in church together, our families were best friends, our little sisters and they were all good friends.  Every one of our siblings had a matching sibling in the other family and we are still really close like this today.  We are just really blessed with wonderful families.” \n\n“Our parents played Rook together.”\n\nSo you graduated from high school at the same time?\n\n“No, no, no, no; I made two grades in one year when daddy was a county agricultural agent in Huntsville and we moved to Clarksville.  In those days, you had an “A” section and a “B” section.  Well, I got to skip the third grade for some reason, so I graduated a year ahead of myself.  I was a year older than him and finished first.”\n\nThen you went to Oklahoma State as well?\n\n“No, no; I went to Arkansas State Teachers College because it was closer to Forrest City where he was; for two years.  Anyway, he transferred and then I transferred to the University.” \n\nSo, you were high school sweethearts.\n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\n“Oh yeah.”  \n\nThat’s what I was getting at. \n\n Married your high school sweetheart.\n\n\n“Uh huh, we went steady for four years, nine months, and three days before we eloped and got married.  I transferred to the University so that we could elope and we did.” \n\nDid your parents know that?\n\n“Heck no; we always managed our own life really well.”\n\nLet’s see if I got this straight; you went to Arkansas Teachers College, you went to Oklahoma State the next year, how did you find college?  You go from Clarksville, Forrest City or you go from Marianna, Forrest City to a bigger town off to college on your own.  How is it different?\n\n“Oh my gosh, my family; the University of Arkansas.  My momma and daddy were crushed that I didn’t come up here as a freshman, but I wasn’t leaving Forrest City.  I wanted to stay as close to Forrest City.  Eight or nine from my class became teachers together and we had a great, great time.  My daddy graduated from the University of Arkansas.  My mother went to the University of Arkansas.  Their names are on the senior walk. All my sisters went here; this is the only place to go.  I broke the mold for going to Conway for two years; which I loved.”     \n\nHow about you Morgan?  How did you find college or think about college? \n\n“My dad was pretty strict about being home at","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701#t=0.0,660.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701/transcript/84361/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"o’clock and all that sort of thing and I found the freedom of college to be wonderful.  The first years and a half or so, I had a good time.  I found college to be ok; it wasn’t that hard if you studied, you know.”\n\nSo, you had a good time, but you studied as well?\n\n“The first year or so, there wasn’t much study; but a lot more good time.”\n\nDid you ever have one of those meetings with your parents where they said, “Son, you going to have to settle down”?\n\n“No, no; I really didn’t have that, but….”\n\n“We wouldn’t dare do that with our parents; we were another generation.  You didn’t do that where we came from; you towedthe line.” \n\nWhat did you enjoy the most about your first year or two of college or getting into college?  Especially when you first started settling down in your academics; what did you enjoy?\n\n\n\n“I think what I enjoyed the most was the variety of people that you were associated with.  You know being from a small town, I didn’t have much opportunity to meet people from anywhere else.  My best friends were from Maryland and Illinois.  My first roommate was an Indian.  I think that was more exciting to me than anything else.”\n\n“He was in an out-of-state dorm. He didn’t go through rush and was in an out-of-state dorm and to this day, our best friends are always the people who were in that dorm with him.”\n\n“That’s right.”\n\n“We just got back last week visiting one of them.  It was a wonderful…” \n\nAny of them particularly close?\n\n“Oh yeah; unfortunately, two of my very best friends have died in the past couple of years.  We went to see a lady in Breckenridge, Colorado last week who was one of the people we were close to.  My best man was from Austin, Texas and we go down there fairly regularly to see him.”\n\nAt what point did you make the transition from veterinarian to medicine?\n\n“Well, there really wasn’t much transition to it, because pre-med and pre-vet were the same courses; all the requirements were essentially the same.  It was a decision for one reason of it was very difficult to get into vet school.  It was harder to get into vet school than it was to get into med school.  All the Korean War veterans had preference and they were coming into it about that time.”      \n\nThis was ’55 - ’60; somewhere in that range?\n\n“Yeah, we were in school in ’55; so, it had been in ‘54.”\n\nDid you ever have to worry about the draft or going into war?\n\n“Later on; of course, I had a student deferment as long as I was in college and that worked ok.  About the time I graduated from medical school, the Korean War was going on.”\n\nVietnam?\n\n“No Korea.  All the guys that were a little younger than I was that were not in college was getting drafted to go to Korea.  The war was winding down about the time that we were getting out of medical school, but they were still drafting people to go to the Army.  Well, I didn’t want to go into the Army and I thought, “Well, perhaps I’ll just go ahead and get a commission.”  So, I \n\n\n\nhad a commission for the Navy ready to sign and then I heard about the Public Health Service.  The Public Health Service was the physicians for the Coast Guard and for the Indian Service.”\n\nThis was about what year?\n\n“1959; so, actually we ended up with commission in the Public Health Service and I went to the Indian Service.”\n\nWhere did you go?\n\n“Arizona.”\n\nWhich reservation?\n\n“I spent the first year on the Navajo in Tuba City, Arizona, right up close to the four corners.  The second year, I went down to Yuma to the Quechan.  The hospital in Tuba City was about a 105 bed hospital, or so, and we had a really good staff there.  We had a pediatrician, a good surgeon, a guy who did anesthesia, an excellent pharmacy; I had enough really good mentors there that I learned a lot from them.  I ended up being the OB guy; so I delivered lots of Indian babies.  I did a good bit of surgery and that’s there I learned how to do tonsils.”\n\n“And you carried the mail. He was a mail carrier.”\n\n“I was also the field help officer, so I got to put on my boots and khakis and get in a 4-wheel drive to drive all over the reservation.”\n\n“With an interpreter.”\n\n“With a nurse and interpreter; as they had clinics at the different chapter houses.” \n\nWe’re going to come back to this as I want to hear a lot more about this; but we’re jumping ahead a little bit.  I just didn’t want to stop you.  But after your first two years at Oklahoma State you transferred to Fayetteville?\n\n“No, she did.”\n\n“I transferred to Oklahoma State from Fayetteville.  He got his degree from Oklahoma.”\n\nSo, you graduated from college when? \n\n“In ’55.”\n\nAt what point during your process of going to college did you start making some concrete plans about, “I’m going to medical school; I’m going to do this”? \n\n\n“Not till late; it was 1958 or ’59, I guess.”\n\nJunior-Senior?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nAre there any of your classes, and I know I keep pounding on this, but did any of your classes or teachers really stand out to you in college that had a big impact on what you did?\n\n “I’m not sure they had an impact on my life, but my favorite instructor of all times taught Senior Mammalogy at Oklahoma State named Ryan Glass.”  He was a terrific teacher.  An “A” in there was a 100 and a “B” was a 96; that’s what kind of a teacher he was.  He was a wonderful teacher.”\n\nLet’s talk a little about other extracurricular activities in school; either high school, college, medical school, or that type of thing.  Where you involved in things like organizations or groups?\n\n“Oh yeah; you know, Spanish club, Latin club, choir, band, National Honors Society, student counsel, all those things.” \n\n“High school fraternity.”\n\n“Yeah; high school fraternity.”\n\nWhat about getting involved in politics?\n\n“Not really; not really, my wife always wanted me to.”\n\n“I mean he was president of his freshman class at A\u0026M and that was larger than the whole student body at Arkansas when I was here that year.  It was huge and I really thought that he would.”\n\nSo, you graduated from college in what year?\n\n“1955.”\n\nAnd what degree did you end up with?\n\n“I ended up with a BS in zoology.” \n\nWhen did you guys, I think that we have already gone over this partially, get married and start having children?\n\n“We got married in December on my birthday, my sophomore year of college, in 1952.”\n\n\nSo you started having children when?\n\n“The next year.”\n\n“About a year later, we had our first child.”\n\nTell us about who your children were, when they were born, and what their names are.\n\n“The first child was Karen; she was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma on 11/09/53.”\n\n“We always check with her on these dates; she always keeps us straight.”   \n\n“The second was a daughter who was born when we were in medical school, our sophomore year.  She was born 9/29/56 and her name is Cheryl Lynn.  She lives at Paragould.  Then, our son was born when we were interning at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Little Rock in 1960.”\n\n“And his name is?”\n\n“His name is the same as mine; he is the III, Ellis Morgan Collins, III.”\n\nNow let’s talk about some of the factors that went into you deciding to go to medical school and where to go to medical school.  Or r was there any question about where you would go to medical school?\n\n“Well, I was fairly naive at that time; I’m not sure that I knew there were very many medical schools.”      \n\n“You know, we were the eldest of large families and we kind of wanted to come back to Arkansas.  We liked Arkansas.  We loved Oklahoma.  We loved Stillwater and loved the college, but I think we realized early on that we wanted to live in Arkansas and be here most of our life.  This is where we were meant to be.”\n\n“They didn’t have medical schools in Oklahoma A\u0026M, so I’d have to go to Norman and I didn’t really want to do that; or Oklahoma City or where ever it was.  We just wanted to come back to Arkansas.”\n\nWhat made you decide to choose medicine over veterinarian medicine?\n\n“As I said before, one reason was that it was more difficult to get into veterinary school at that time.  So, I applied to both and ended up getting into medical school.”\n\nDuring the process of leaving Forrest City for the first time and going to Oklahoma State, going off to school and making the decision on veterinary school or medical school; were \n\n\nthere any crises along the way that changed what you did or changed the direction that you would go in?\n\n“I don’t think so; I’ve thought about that before.  I don’t think so.  I think that we had a very singular and straight forward drive to where we were going….”\n\n“We’ve never had a crisis; knock on wood.  We’ve never had a crisis that made us change.  We have been really blessed in planning and executing and it’s worked out.”\n\nLet’s talk a little bit about life in the 1950s in general.  You became of age in the ‘50s; college, medical school, those types of things.  Were you aware of Brown versus the Board of Education in Kansas and the impact that it would have on life, were you aware of any of that? Or what about Polio; the Polio epidemics in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s?\n\n“I remember the Polio.  I remember them closing the public swimming pools and all that.  I remember everybody being frightened to death over Polio, yes.  As a matter of fact, I think that I saw one of the last active Polio cases in Arkansas when I was an intern at St. Vincent’s in 1959 or ’60.  I think that was one of the very last ones right before all the vaccines came out.”\n\nDo you remember the iron lungs lining the halls?\n\n“I remember the iron lungs, but I don’t remember…..I remember the pictures of the long lines of them; yeah.  But as far as personal experience, I did not see them.”\n\nSo you go from Forrest City to Stillwater, now you’re married with children, and you get unleashed at the Med Center to go to medical school.\n\n“The old Med School; we started at the old med School for one semester.”\n\n“With Jeff Banks in the old med school.”\n\nLet’s talk about that; tell about your experiences in those first two years in medical school about what that was like.  What you thought about it; was it what you thought it was going to be like when you got there?\n\n“When I first got there, I had no idea of what it was going to be like.  I don’t guess any of us do. I had heard stories about Jeff Banks for years about how tough he was, how much he knew about you before you got there, and that sort of thing.  I do remember sitting at the cadaver table and having Dr. Banks walk up and say, “Collins” and getting the pitter pats.  But, he was a good instructor and taught us a lot of anatomy.  I thought that some of the course structures were terrible and most of them were pretty good.  I met a lot of really sharp people and a lot of \n\n\n\ninteresting people.  The first day of medical school, I happen to see as I was sitting on the stairs and thought, “That’s Bob Linear.”  I hadn’t seen him since the third grade when he moved away from Forrest City.  Sure enough and of course, we became fast friends all through medical school.”\n\nWhere did he move to?\n\n“He went to Parker; you mean after Med School?”\n\nNo, I mean where did he move to after Forrest City?\n\n“I’m not sure where he went.  His dad was a physician in a little town, Roundpond. But, I’m not sure where they moved after that; I think down in Mississippi.  Yeah, it was; it was down in Mississippi. Like I say, I never saw him.  He went to Ole Miss and I never saw him again until the first day of medical school.”\n\nDo you have any other memories about that first two years of medical school?\n\n“I just remember how I hated biochemistry.  I remember an old mnemonic that we made up about the creb cycle; I still remember that, but I won’t repeat it here.”\n\nI think I know, it was about pulling somebody’s pants down.\n\n“No, this was “old cars carry idiots over a kangaroo ship from Melbourne.”\n\n“Oh gosh.”\n\n“It wasn’t on ole Olympia’s towel.”\n\nDid you get a lecture from Jeff Banks about “Look to your right and look to your left, one of you won’t be here in a year”?\n\n“Yeah, yeah; the first day, absolutely.”\n\n“The funny thing is Jeff Bank’s family lived next door to my grandma and grandpa, but we put  this all together too late.”\n\nFor most of us who came along 10 years after you, as I started in ’69, Jeff Banks was just a name of a building. \n\n“That’s right.  Everybody knows there’s a Jeff Bank’s building there.”\n\nSo, let’s talk about your clinical years in medical school.  Tell me a little bit about that and how it had an impact on what you ended up doing in medicine.\n\n\n\n“Well, the clinical years were, rather than being didactic, more hospital based and I always thought that that was what medicine was; practicing in a hospital mostly.  You learned a lot in outpatient clinics.  I have a little antidote about clinics; one day we were in a urology clinic and my friend, Vernon Carter who you may remember was a dermatologist here for a while and was killed in a plane crash down at Auburn several years ago, came over and said, “This guy’s got some medicine that I never….I don’t know what he’s talking about.” So, we went over to this guy and his history was like this: “Have you ever had gonorrhea?” He said, “Oh, yes sir; I’ve had it many times.” I said, “Well, did you go to the doctor and get some medicine, some Penicillin?” He said, “Oh, no Sir; I went down to the doctor at the drug store.”  I said, “Well, what did he give you?” He said, “He gave me some Boston Comp Peterson Sweetspison Ivy.” I said, “What?” He said, “He gave me some Boston Comp Peterson Sweetspison Ivy.”  Well it took me two years to figure out what he was taking; it was Boson copaiba and Sweet Spirits of Nitre.  I’ll never forget Boston Comp Peterson Sweerspison Ivy.  The outpatient clinics were good and taught a lot; taught a great deal.  I thought that the OB was also really good.  Dr. Willis Brown was Chairman of the OB at the time and he was a strict guy.  We had two or three other people that were excellent in that department.  I learned a lot of OB and thought my OB training was excellent.  As it turned out, it proved to me in good stead when I first got out in the Navajo race.”                           \n\nSo, we’re going to go back over some of the information about how you ended up in the service and the Indian reservations, but what point did you start thinking about what you wanted to do once you got through medical school?\n\n“Well, I really liked orthopedics and I really liked ophthalmology, but I had three children and a wife who needed feeding.  I just couldn’t quite see continuing education any further until we could make a living.  So, I had always kind of wanted to do general practice anyway; I thought I would like that and indeed, I did.  I think that we had always planned that.”\n\n“And going back to your home town.”\n\nThat was the next question; was the idea that you would go back to Forrest City?\n\n“Well, yes it was; but at that time, medicine in small towns was pretty competitive.  Forrest City, for instance, had three small hospitals and eight or nine doctors.”\n\n“Owned by the doctors themselves.”\n\nThree hospitals; is that right?\n\n“Three little bitty hospitals and they were pretty jealous of their territories.  When we got out in public health service, we looked around for a place to go and there wasn’t any place that seemed to handy.  I actually had a spot picked out in Forrest City and that didn’t work out.  So, \n\n\n\nwe were kind of stuck for a place to go.  Well, it’s a long story about how we ended up in Clarendon, Arkansas; but, that came from meeting a guy on the interstate in California.”\n\nTell us the story; I’d like to hear the story.\n\n“Well, we tried to travel a little bit when we were in Arizona and we ended up traveling on a credit card, a big jar of peanut butter, and a bunch of crackers.” \n\n“We were really traveling, too.”\n\n“We were driving down the interstate in Los Angeles, one of those six lane jobs, and that was back in the day when the license plates had the county number on them.  San Francisco County was 12 and we were driving along about 60miles per hour and this car drives up beside me.”\n\n“This was coming back from San Francisco remember.”\n\n“This car drives up beside me and the guy says, “Roll your window down” so, I roll my window down and he says, “Hey, Forrest City.”\n\n“Forrest City”\n\n“He said, “Next time you’re in Clarendon, we own the whiskey store at the end of the bridge.”\n\n“Can you believe it?”                 \n\n“So, we came back looking for a place to practice and I was going down to Wilmont, as they were in need of a physician, and as I was going to Wilmont I went through Clarendon and I was driving down the street and I saw this liquor store.  I thought, “Liquor store, end of bridge, Clarendon.”  So, I went in and there was a lady behind the counter.  I asked, “Have you been to California lately?” and her eyes got about that big and so, it turned out…..”\n\n“Hiney and June Weagle.”\n\n“Hiney and June Weagle.”\n\n“Of Clarendon, Arkansas.” \n\n“They found out that we were looking for a place to practice and they got together with a bunch of folks and we ended up moving to Clarendon.”\n\nIn what year would that have been in?\n\n“That would have been in ’63.”\n\n Did you ever think about staying in public health service?\n\n\n“I thought about it.”\n\n“I had moved around a lot.”   \n\n“She didn’t like Arizona very much.”    \n\n“I loved Arizona; that’s not so.  I had moved around a lot as a child; he had never moved and I thought, “I don’t think I want my children moving quite like I moved.”  But, I mean, you have to do that when you’re in the public health services and I think we both decided that we wanted to go to Forrest City.  Other than the fact that all our vacations were going back to our little brothers and sisters marriages and graduations, and just live there.  That’s our vacations; but, we just loved to travel and we traveled an awful lot.”\n\nDid you hike the Grand Canyon?\n\n“No, a bunch of the docs did; yeah.”\n\n“We were going to do that the next year when we moved.”\n\nSo how long did you live in Clarendon?\n\n“11 months.”\n\n“I saw in Clarendon that I was not going to make a living there.” \n\n“And the hospital was in Stuttgart and there was no cooperation.”\n\n“If I had anybody in the hospital, I had to drive twice a day to Stuttgart; 25 miles away.”\n\n“It was just awful; always on call.”\n\nI don’t mean to interrupt you, but we are getting a little ahead of ourselves because I want to find out something.   There was something that you brought up earlier about your time in the public health service; you were talking about doing OB and doing surgery and obviously you were pretty independent, it sounds like.  Did your time in medical school, or your internship, which we need to go back and talk about your internship, and public health service prepare you for going into practice?  Did you feel pretty well prepared when you hit the ground running?\n\n“I did.  The time in the public health service, particularly, was essentially to me the same as going into a family practice residency; it was much like that.  I had experience in just every part of it.” \n\n\nDid you have much backup?\n\n“Yeah, I had plenty of backup.  You know, it was an unusual situation; we had medicine men trying to make a fire in the middle of the floor in the pediatric ward, but....”\n\n“OBs coming in to deliver, so they’d get the layette; but they’d deliver on the potty by themselves.  But you know Tuba City was the eastern end of the Navajo reservation.  We had a boarding school there; everyone who was there had a reason to be there.  It was a wonderful community.  Then when he went to Winterhaven, California right across from Yuma; Marvin tell them about that, that was such a totally different experience for us all the way around.”\n\n“Well, it was a one man hospital.”\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nAnd you were the one man?\n\n“And I was the one man; I got to be the Administrator, the physician, the clinic director, and all that together.”\n\nAnd you were on call all the time?\n\n“Yep, but there was coverage.”\n\n“But I liked that particular part of it; the independence of it rather than being in a larger place.”\n\nTalk a little bit, as we passed over this a little bit; we didn’t talk any about your internship at St. Vincent’s.  Tell how you decided on St. Vincent’s versus Baptist versus some other place.\n\n“They paid $275 a month.”\n\n“And we didn’t have to move.”\n\n“And we didn’t have to move.”\n\n“And they had a wonderful house.”\n\n“And I started to say that you guys don’t really remember, but there used to be between the St. Vincent’s building and Markham on the corner of University a big two story house and then a big one story house there.  Those were all units reserved for interns and we were fortunate enough to get the house; we thought we had gone to heaven.”\n\n“Died and gone to heaven.”\n\n\n“It was a big house with lots of room and we had two and a half children by that time.”\n\nWhere did you live when you went to medical school?\n\n“Oh my goodness; let’s tell the whole story.”\n\n“Well when we moved back from Stillwater, we hustled around as we came back in a 4x8 trailer pulled by _______.”\n\n“All our earthly processions.”\n\n“Everything we owned was in that 4x8 trailer and we hustled around and had a hard time finding any place to live.”        \n\n“We didn’t have a place to live; I didn’t have a job.  We were just coming from med school.”\n\n“We didn’t have anything; we just came.”\n\n“We were coming from med school; it didn’t bother us at all.  We knew we’d do fine and we did.”\n\n“So, we ended up with a little apartment close to McArthur Park and it was more than we could afford; but we knew it was when we got it, it was just all that we could find.  After we had been in medical school a few weeks, we got to talking to folks and said, “Well, where do you live?”  “Oh, I live out in the housing project.”  I asked, “Housing project; what’s that and how much is the rent out there?”  I paid $24.00 a month; so, we investigated that and finally got a place at the housing project where we paid $17.50 a month.”\n\n“Based on my salary.”\n\n“Based on her salary.”\n\n“That shows you how much I was making.”\n\nWhat did you do while he was in med school?\n\n“I went to work at Websman and East Insurance Company and worked there a year. Then, we had another baby and I was going to stay home with my two little girls.  My OBG man was Hartman Gillespie and I just loved Dr. Gillespie.  He called me after our second child was born and asked, “Would you come to work for me as a receptionist?”  I said, “No, I’m staying at home with my little girls” and he called back and said, \n\n\n“Will you come to work until I find someone?”  Well long story short, I quit six hours before our son was born three years later.  He was our sugar daddy as he was so wonderful to us.  That was a dream job.”\n\n“Hart had a red ’59 or ’60 convertible Thunderbird and when he would go out of town, he would leave it with us.”\n\n“Well, he would go to Canada for July and he would leave the car with us.  Of course living in the housing project, we thought that was just as good as it got.”\n\nHe also had a red tuxedo that he wore to black tie affairs.\n\nNow we have a couple of things that we need to pull ourselves forward on; one was to talk about the University of Arkansas Men’s Glee Club.\n\n“I don’t know if you recall, but there was Dr. McCullough, who taught neuro-anatomy micro, and he was the reason that everybody had to get a new microscope when you came to medical school.  He was a little bitty short man, very short, whose nickname was spider; of course, nobody called him that to his face.  He was a very vindictive and vengeful fellow as a matter of fact; there’s another story about that, but he was also the Director of the Men’s Glee Club.  It seems that most folks in the Men’s Glee Club had a really good grade from spider.”\n\n“If you had a voice.”\n\n“So, that was one of the reasons, but the other reason was because you enjoyed it.  It was a little diversion from that.  The other story that goes with that is the old medical school….”\n\n“The one at McArthur Park.”\n\n“Had a serious parking problem; it was hard to find a parking place.  One of the guys in our class had this Chrysler Old Town and Country type with the wooden……, but it was a convertible.  He parked his car out front one morning and another good friend I mentioned before, Vernon Carter, parked right behind him and because it was so close there was just no room between the bumpers hardly and he had to park close to the car in front of him.  So when he got ready to leave, there was no room to get out.  So, he proceeded to write this note that said, “You SOB, if you ever park your GD car this close to mine again, look out for what’s going to happen” and stuck it on the windshield of Vernon’s car.”\n\n“He signed his name.”\n\n“Yeah, he signed his name to it.  Vernon came out and he saw this sign; he looked at it and went and stuck it on Dr. McCullough’s car.  He failed the class and had to repeat the year.”\n\n\nOh my; did he ever speak to Vernon again?\n\n“I don’t think he ever talked to Vernon again; but, it provided a lot of amusement.”\n\nTalk a little bit about Clarendon; a little bit about setting up a practice in 1963 by yourself: hiring staff, how you decided about what you were going to charge, the kind of records you kept, those types of things.\n\n“Well, we were still living in ________, Arizona and at the hospital in Winterhaven, California when we decided to do this, which was I guess was right after Christmas time when I came back and we talked about it with the folks from Clarendon.  The fellow I talked about, Hiney Weagel, was an amateur radio operator.  We got to talking about this and whatever we needed to do and decided that we would rent this building that was vacant.”\n\n“Right across from the Court House.”\n\n“And the folks in town were going to build up the inside of it for us while we were gone.  We made some plans and this sort of thing and I had a little office, a front waiting room, my office, and an x-ray room on this side with two exam rooms.  I actually had a little surgery room in the back.”\n\n“It was a big space.”\n\n“And I had a hospital bed in the very back.  Every morning when we were in Yuma for about three months or so, the phone would ring and it would be an amateur radio operator in Winterhaven.  He’d patch me through to the folks in Clarendon and we’d talk about what they were doing that day on how they were putting the office together; so when we got there, it was all done.”\n\n“We were just welcomed with open arms; the whole town was just so glad to have another physician; they had one physician, but they hadn’t had another one.  The paper was full of welcome and they could not have been nicer as a whole town; Clarendon was wonderful to us.”       \n\nDid you have to borrow money to open?\n\n“Oh my goodness, yes; I didn’t have a dime, so we borrowed enough money to….”\n\n“We bought a house.”\n\n“I know; but we still didn’t have a dime.”\n\n“I didn’t know we didn’t have any money.”\n\n\n\n“My dad came over there while we were repairing it and found a house; we bought that over the phone.  Then we went to the medical supply house there on Main Street for many, many, years; Stovers.  Stovers came by and furnished the office.”\n\n“See, I had worked in a medical office and he had run a hospital; so we really had some good experience up our sleeves to get into this kind of thing.  I don’t think we broke the bank borrowing anything; did you?  We went in on a shoestring and it didn’t kill us.”\n\n“Well, we went in on a shoestring.”\n\nDo you mind telling how much you borrowed, or about?\n\n“I don’t remember.”\n\n“I don’t remember how much.”    \n\nDid the banks welcome you with open arms?\n\n“Oh, yeah.”\n\n“Yeah; everybody.”\n\n“Absolutely.”           \n\n“They could not have been nicer.”\n\nWhat was your staff composed of?\n\n“Well, Virginia operated as a receptionist part of the time, except when somebody would up chuck in the office; then she’d have to leave.  I had found a lady who had done some; well, she was a practical nurse probably, from Clarendon whose name was Lila and she was my nurse.  We did usual office practice and delivered a few babies while we were there as well.”\n\n“My friend from college was the football coach, Buddy Hardy, and we had all the football injuries; so, we did well.”\n\nWhat about surgeries?\n\n“I did minor surgery there in the office and I had hospital privileges in Stuttgart.”\n\nHow long a drive was that?      \n\n“Twenty Five miles.”\n\nPretty good distance.\n\n“Well that was back in the days where everybody made rounds twice a day, so that was 100 miles a day.”\n\nYou don’t have to say a name, but you indicated that there was another physician in town and there was a lot of territorial stuff going on.\n\n“Yes, he was not very cooperative and I always thought that surely we could arrange to share call; but he wasn’t interested in doing that at all.  That was one of the reasons that I wasn’t interested in staying, because there was no cooperation and the long drive; plus the fact that we weren’t making any money.  The office calls, I think, were probably $3.00 at the time and after we moved to Forrest City, they were $5.00, I think; but you got a urinalysis, blood pressure check, weight, temperature; all that for $5.00 before the doctor ever got there.”\n\n“I’m not sure it was $5.00, I think it was $3.00.”\n\n“It was $3.00 and $5.00 if you got a shot of Penicillin; I think is what it was.”  \n\nWhat about your records; what kind of records did you keep?\n\n“I think, as I remember, it was 5x7 cards in Clarendon; we didn’t have very big records.  I guess we had probably just notebook paper sort of records and that’s what we had in Forrest City as well.”\n\nTalk a little bit about going out on house calls and some of the kinds of things you confronted when you got there or night time calls.\n\n“Well, I particularly remember an old gentleman with a chronic lung disease in Clarendon who had a terrible cough and also a minor bird.  All the minor bird heard all day, because he lived by himself, was the old man coughing. The minor bird could cough just like an old chronic lung disease.  I had one lady who was pretty much house bound, bed bound, and she had extremely loose shoulder joints and every couple of weeks or so, she’d reach up to turn the light off the head of her bed and dislocate her shoulder; so, I’d have to come put those back in place.  It was not too unusual to have somebody say, “Doc I know this is an imposition, but my horse got something in his eye, or lacerated his eye, and I can’t put this horse in a trailer; could you come look at it?”  I did; of course; I did a little veterinarian medicine at that time.”\n\nHow long after you’d been there as you said you made it 11 months…..\n\n“You know why we decided for sure to leave there; the crowning blow….Morgan’s sister was getting married in Forrest City and we had no one to cover for us; so, he did not even get to go to his sister’s wedding.  If we were on call, we were there; we didn’t ever leave when we were on call.  So, he didn’t get to go to his own sister’s wedding and I said, “This is just the end of this.”   You know, the hospital was just so far away and \n\n\nwe had no coverage with no hopes of getting a partner in a little town like that.  By that time, we had someone wanting us to come to Forrest City; we had an invitation to come into a clinic.  So, it all came together beautifully.”\n\nI know I have asked you this question before; but this is slightly different; any patient care crisis that you stepped off into and said, “My goodness; this is not good”?\n\n“Well, you see an occasional coronary as we know it; what to do with and how to get; but of course back then and even years later, the only transport was in the back of a hurse as there weren’t any ambulances at that time.  Getting somebody somewhere for definitive care was an ordeal and of course back then definitive care for a heart attack wasn’t very definitive anyway.  It was kind of “Hope you live.”\n\nTreat the pain and put them to bed?\n\n“Yeah; treat the pain and support the best you can, so, that sort of thing.  I saw a few severe farm injuries from time to time and to transport somebody to an orthopedist was like to Little Rock or to Memphis.”\n\nI was going to say Memphis is pretty close right?  Not close, close; but closer?\n\n“Well, it’s about….”\n\n“Thirty minutes from Forrest City.”\n\n“From Forrest City, but not from Clarendon; Clarendon was farther than that.”\n\nWhat’s the distance between Clarendon and Forrest City?\n\n“Seventy miles?  Sixty five to Seventy miles; bad two lanes, not good.”\n\n“Fifty to sixty miles.”                    \n\nSo you had an offer in Forrest City; talk about that a little bit.\n\n“Well, we had an inattentive offer in Forrest City before we went to Clarendon.”\n\n“With another physician.”\n\n“That didn’t work out and we went and talked to this older physician who was perhaps the oldest guy in town.”\n\n“George Pruitt-McFail.”\n\n\n“George Pruitt-McFail; George was an old fashion doctor.  He had been in the service in the Second World War and he had done a lot of surgeries.  He still does a lot of surgery in his little; he was one of the guys that had a hospital of his own and he did lots of surgery there as well.  Of course, they all did a lot of surgery back then.  He offered me a job; $750 a month, which was a little bit more than I was making in Public Health Service, but not a whole lot.  It was more than I was making at Clarendon, so….”\n\n“And there was a better future.”\n\n“Oh yeah, the future, of course was much more promising there.”\n\n“And it was home.”\n\n“Yeah; of course, we knew everybody in Forrest City.  It wasn’t had to get acquainted or develop a practice either; it came pretty easy.”\n\nOK by this time, you’re 29 or30?\n\n“Probably.”\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nHow did it feel going back home and taking care of people who you grew up with or people who were your teachers; that kind of thing?    \n\n“It really wasn’t that bad.”\n\n“We loved it.”\n\n“Yeah, I loved it.”\n\n“They loved it.  Yeah, we loved it.”\n\nWhat kind of response did you get from the other physicians in town?\n\n“They were….”\n\n“By this time, we had a county hospital and that made a big difference with the climate of the medical community; it wasn’t “dog eat dog” so much.”\n\n“The Hill-Burton Hospital opened about two years before we moved and so, the docs had all closed their little hospitals and made clinics out of them, or outpatient hospitals out of them.  There was still a good deal of not very good cooperation at that time, but that got better over the years just like you would expect it to.”\n\n\nHow many total physicians were practicing there when you worked there?\n\n“I would imagine that there were 8 or 9.”\n\n“I’d say 12.”\n\n“No, it was more than that.”\n\n“I’d say 12.”\n\nHow big a town was it?\n\n“14-5.”\n\n“Town was fourteen thousand or so.”\n\n“Dr. McFail had graduated from Ole Miss Med School.” \n\nIs his son Jasper McFail?\n\n“Cousin.”\n\n“Jasper was his nephew.”\n\nI knew Jasper.  \n\n“How did you know Jasper?”\n\nJasper had been to Saudi Arabia and came back and started the cardiovascular program, or really got the cardiovascular program at Baptist started around 1970 or ’71.”\n\n“In Little Rock?”\n\nYeah; in Little Rock.\n\n“That’s interesting.”     \n\n“He spoke of Jasper.  At any rate, he was an old fashion physician and didn’t, in many ways, take to new things all that well; although, he was not too bad of a guy.  He did a lot of surgery and taught me a lot of surgery; we did a lot of surgery.”\n\nHow long did you practice with him?\n\n“Oh until he retired; about 15 years.”\n\n“20 years; I’d say, maybe 30.”\n\n\n“A long time.”\n\n“You know, our practice in Forrest City involved something that we had not been involved in before; that was plantation practice, you kept the records all year and when the crops came in the fall, they paid it all at one time.  That was all new and different to both of us; interesting.”\n\n“But that was kind of going away just about the time that we started.”             \n\nWhat did you call this?\n\n“Plantation Practice.”\n\nShare-cropping.\n\n“Share-cropping; sort of thing.  Everybody that worked on a farm for somebody, they usually had a physician that they would send folks to.  The doc would treat them and put it on the book and then in the fall when the crop came in and everybody had some money, the owner would come in and pay the bill for everybody on their plantation.  Of course every once in a while, the plantation owner would buy some insurance and when somebody would come in with a headache or some problem, they’d say, “Here, take these two aspirin and call me in the morning and if that didn’t help, you can go to the doctor.”  So at the end of the year, the plantation owner would come in with these little slips and want the doctor to sign them.  They could send them in to the insurance company for treating them; that didn’t work to well.”\n\nSo Clarendon or Forrest City, was practice what you thought it would be or did you have any idea what to expect?  You had been in public health service.     \n\n“It was pretty much what I thought, because it was the same sort of little bit of everything.   We delivered a lot of babies, did surgery, saw a big outpatient clinic every day.”\n\nFive or six days a week?\n\n“Early on, it was five and half days a week and then later on was five days a week.” \n\n“You never did work five days a week.  You never did work on Thursday afternoon.  Sometimes, you worked four days a week towards the end.”  Then it got down to three and two before he retired.”\n\n“I went to work for Baptist Hospital after that.”\n\n“Yeah.”\n\n\n\nWhen you first started your practice in Forrest City, you had other things that you did; such as TB.  \n\n“When I was on the Indian reservation of the Navajo, one of the internist was a guy who had been a resident at Arkansas when I was a student, Paul Reagan.”\n\nWhat about Paul Reagan?\n\n“And his wife Elzabeth.” \n\n“Paul and Elzabeth were on the Navajo and we got to know them every well out there.  Of course, he did some of the primary work on outpatient treatment of tuberculosis and I was involved in some of that research with Paul. After we came back to Forrest City, he called me one day and asked, “Would you do a TB clinic for me?”  So, I did TB clinics for several counties for about 20 years.”\n\n“On his day off he’d do that.”\n\n“On my day off, I’d do that.  So, one day we were having a meeting, I forget where; Little Rock, I think maybe, and as we were leaving Paul stopped me at the door and says, “You want to go to Bolivia?” I said, “Sure.”  So, we ended up going to Bolivia for six weeks with the Alliance for Progress.  Arkansas had been paired with the eastern-side of Bolivia and I went down.”\n\nThat’s still going on; isn’t it?\n\n“No, I don’t think so.”\n\n“No.”\n\nThere is still something in Ecuador, or something, with around here that’s still going on.\n\n“I don’t know anything about it anymore, and it kind of; I don’t know how long that last.”\n\nWas this in ’63 or ‘62?\n\n“No, no; this was late ‘60s.  It was when Kennedy was President, during his time.”\n\nHe died in ’63.\n\n“In ’63; ok, I guess it was right about that time.” \n\n“I think he had died.”\n\n“He had died because they….”\n\n“They had statues of him all over Bolivia.”\n\n“They had statues of him every place in Bolivia.  I’d say mid ‘60s.”\n\n“That was a really interesting experience.  Virginia had come down and stayed, as well, for a while.”\n\n“We lived with a doctor in his home and it was a wonderful experience.”\n\nDo you have any over-seas experiences?\n\n“Not medical-wise; no.”\n\nHow did your family adapt to this life?  You were on call every night for at least a long time. \n\n“They were adapted to it by the time they were born.”\n\n“They were born into it, so there was no problem.”\n\nThere wasn’t any thinking about it.\n\n“No, there wasn’t any adaptation; it was just the way life was.”\n\n Were you involved in community activities?  Your wife mentioned that you had been involved in organizations in school and things like that.\n\n“I was on the School Board.”\n\n“He was drafted onto the School Board.”\n\n“And happened to be lucky enough to be there when the real integration problems happened; we among other things had a cross burned in our yard and a….”\n\n“He was acting President of the School Board.”\n\nWere you there for the Prom of ’68? I think it was the Prom of ’68 that I read about.\n\n“No, this was way before that; there wouldn’t dare have the problems we had; we were ducking bullets.”\n\n“And had a bomb in our yard.”\n\n“Our yard …..and then on Sunday morning after those two things had happened, I went out and we had a huge home with a three and half acre yard.  We had a little front yard with a drive in and I went out to get the paper on Sunday morning and there were three ducks with their necks wrung as close to me as you all are now; we had three children at that time and that just kind of put me over the edge.”\n\n\nThis was in Forrest City?\n\n“In Forrest City, yeah.  The night they bodied, they needed to integrate because that’s the way you got Federal funds; you didn’t have any choice.  But any way, that was….”\n\nThat was about ’64-‘65?\n\n“Yeah.”  \n\nThe prom that I was talking about was in ’68; it was the first integrated prom in that part of the state.\n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\nThey cancelled them.\n\n“Cancelled them prior to that.”\n\nCancelled them and then they held them again; but that was going on all over that part of the state.   Did you get off of the School Board at that point?\n\n“No, I stayed on it for about nine years.”\n\n“Until our children were out of school.”\n\n“I stayed on it as long as our kids were in school.”\n\nWhat did you do with the bomb?\n\n“It exploded.”\n\nIt exploded!\n\n“Oh yeah, boom.”\n\n“The bomb exploded in our front yard after a School Board meeting.  There was another couple there and he was on the School board too; we were sitting in the living room when the bomb exploded in our yard.”\n\nDid it hurt your house?\n\n“No.”\n\n“No it didn’t hurt our house, but we had FBI there.”\n\n“We thought it was a sonic boom at the time.”\n\n“We were so dumb.”\n\nDid you find out who did it?\n\n“No.”\n\n“Naw, the FBI was all over it.”\n\nI want to change courses here for just a minute or two; I want you talk a little bit about how life has changed and the kinds of things that has changed.  You made a comment earlier when we were talking about charges; talk a little bit about the charges that you charged when you first went into practice and how that changed after Medicare.\n\n“Of course in my opinion, Medicare was the biggest change that has happened to medicine ever.  It was more important that Thiazides and Penicillin, as far as I’m concerned.  It changed everything.  Back prior to Medicare, charges were very low and it was based on pretty well what folks could afford to pay or not afford to pay.  Many times in Clarendon, we got paid in chipped beef and commodity cheese.  As time went on, Medicare started paying billed charges and charges gradually accelerated until we are where we are now with uncontrolled, or for a while it was uncontrolled; it is very controlled now.  Charges were too cheap back then, they really were; they were driven by competition and not by ______.”  I did remember hearing that one of the doctors in Forrest City, one of the old docs who had been around for a long time who treated me when I was a kid, his comment was, “Boys, we are going to milk this cow until she goes dry.”  That pretty well summed it up, because it was charged and charged and charged and charged; prices went up and up and up and services went down and down and down, as far as I was concerned.”\n\nCould you see a difference in accessed care; people coming in who might not have come in before?\n\n“Of course; of course, there was that and there still is that.  People that couldn’t access care, or get care otherwise, certainly were better cared for; there is no question about that.” \n\nYou practiced through a time, so far in your life, where it’s just almost too _________ how much things have changed; medicines available, technology is available.  What one thing has it been that you think has changes things more than anything else?\n\n“That is a very difficult question; I don’t know if there is any one thing.  Communication has changed, transportation has changed, drugs have changes, and financing has changed.”\n\n“Education has changed.  I want to insert this as I think that it is hard to believe even that I lived through it; Morgan called me one day to come to the clinic because he wanted me to take a patient to the store and show them what baby milk looked like in a can and what baby food \n\n\nlooked like in a can.  She could not read and did not know what to buy.  So, I went down and took her and showed her exactly what she needed to get for her child; she couldn’t read.”\n\n“Of course, that’s just a matter of education.”\n\n“Education.”\n\n“That certainly is better now than it used to be.”\n\nI give a talk on literacy where I hold up a small pill bottle of Lomotil and I say, “If you can’t read, you don’t know whether this is Lomotil or Digitalis.”\n\n“That’s right; absolutely.”\n\n“You’re exactly right.”  \n\nDid you find, or have you found, the practice in medicine gratifying?\n\n“Absolutely, we have had a very good life.”\n\nWere you very compensated for what you did?\n\n“Yes.”\n\n“If we weren’t, it was our fault.”\n\n“You could always work a little harder, I guess; but yes, it has been a very satisfying life.  I was in Forrest City the other day and I wanted to cash a check; I went to the bank and of course at the bank there is nobody there that I used to know, I handed my check to the teller and she says, “I know who you are, you delivered me; my momma was so-and-so.”  I find that particularly gratifying when I go back.  Almost every time we go into a restaurant, or somewhere, the time before we were there, the waitress comes up and says, “You’re Dr. Collins, aren’t you?”  I say, “Yes, I am” she says, “Do you remember me? I’m so-and-so and there’s my daughter; you delivered her.”  There is just a lot of that.  All those families that I’ve known two, three, and four generations of and treated, I wouldn’t swap that for anything.”  \n\n“It was really a cradle to the grave practice; it was total family.”\n\nDid you do a lot of nursing home work?\n\n“Yes; a fair amount.  We scheduled rounds at the nursing home on regular basis and the old hospital, actually Hill-Burton Hospital was closed; it was a county facility.  Baptist Hospital from Memphis built a new hospital in Forrest City.  The old hospital was right across the \n\nstreet from my office; so, we could be from seeing a patient in the office to the delivery room in a minute and a half, which made it very convenient.  But, Baptist built a nice facility out from town and the nursing home became right across the street where the hospital used to be.”\n\nWhen did you retire?\n\n“I retired on my 66th birthday, which was in 2000.”\n\n“I’ll tell y’all one funny story that I think is very interesting; Morgan did do a lot of OB and we didn’t live but about a block from the hospital, but it was up a hill and down a hill to the hospital.  We had three children and they were all very mobile; but one time, Morgan got a call to go to the hospital to deliver and he could get there in about a minute.  Well, he got outside and there were no cars available, our three children had taken every car off and there was not a vehicle that he could use.  You being a bicyclist, this won’t mean as much to you as it did to us; he had to grab a bicycle in order to go the hospital to deliver a baby.  I’m telling you when he got home, those three children never again left without daddy having one car left to go to the hospital.” \n\nDid you encourage your children to go into medicine?\n\n“No, I left that to them.  My son thought that he might want to go into medicine; but after I think about a semester, he decided that was not his cup of tea.”\n\nWhat did he do?\n\n“He’s in the advertising business.” \n\n“We have one granddaughter and one grandson that are RNs.”\n\nWhen did you start thinking about, or the idea of, retiring start jumping into your mind?\n\n“Well, we had always thought that we would retire sometime; we just didn’t know when.  Several years ago, a fellow came in who was with mental health and he said, “We’d like to buy your office.”  I thought, “Na, I’m not ready to quit practicing just yet.”  I went home that night and we talked about it and we decided we don’t need this building to practice medicine; so, we made an arrangement for Baptist Hospital to buy the practice.  They bought all my equipment, all my charts, all my nurses, and we sold the office building to mental health.  We moved my records, my equipment, and my nurses down the street and went to work for Baptist in their building.”\n\n“Three or four days a week.”     \n\n\n“We did that for three and half years, I guess.”\n\n At that time were you working by yourself; had the other doctor retired?\n\n“I had a PA.”\n\n“And he was retiring; he was getting ready to retire.”I worked at the clinic; I was the manager of the clinic for the last 20 years.  We worked together.”\n\n“We had a PA, three nurses, and two office staff.” \n\nAt some point, you said you started slowing down; you sold your practice to Baptist and went down to three days a week to two days a week.\n\n“And, then I retired.”\n\nAt what point did you say, “OK, it’s time”?  What was the trigger that triggered you to say, “I’m quitting, I’m going to stop now”?\n\n“I don’t know; I really don’t.”\n\n“I think it was just a natural…”\n\n“I just felt like I wanted to quit while I had all my faculties; while I was still competent.”\n\n“On top of the world.” \n\n“At 66, I thought I had time to have a good time for a while.  We thought we were financially independent enough to do that.  It was just a combination of things.”\n\n Did you have a variety of avocations; I know you said you play cello a little bit, that you sing, you read; what other kinds of things have you done during your retirement an did you do what you thought you would do after you retired?\n\n“We traveled a fair amount.”\n\n“But, we always traveled; always.”\n\n“We like to travel.”\n\n There are a whole lot of questions that I could ask, but there is one last question for both of you;  just pretend that we are not here and you’re talking to your great, great, grandchildren about the people in the future who will have known you as Dr. Collins.  I had one of my great, great, grandparents who was a physician, he and his wife.  What do you have to say to them about your life, life in general, or what you hope for them in the future?\n\n\n“Life is good.  Get all the education that you can, be true to yourself, and true to your God.  Be true to your wife; find a wife who has grandparents and whose parents are not divorced, and do the best that you can.”\n\nAnd you; Virginia?\n\n“I just think you need to make wise choices; you know, we all have this gut instinct.  You’ll be raised right, because we believe in the spank spoon. I don’t care how old you get; we believe in the spank spoon.  You’ll be raised right and you’ll make wise choices, because you are blessed with wonderful genes; wonderful genes.  You just take care of those, make the right choices, and you will have a marvelous life.   You make your own luck mostly in this life and you can make sure that you will be most likely to succeed in your class too.”     \n\nWell, thank you for inviting us into your home and do you have anything else that you would like to make a part of this interview?                            \n\n“I want to say one thing; we always laugh and tell our children, “Now, you got to remember, we live on almost $3.00 house calls and $3.00 office visits; so when you expect an awful lot and Christmas is coming; you remember, it’s $3.00 office visits.”  It always works.  We have been so blessed; medicine has been a marvelous life.  I wouldn’t change a single day; maybe some of the School Board times, but other than that, we are so blessed in so many ways and appreciate it. Thank you for coming.” \n\nThank you for inviting us into your home.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160210/file/291701#t=660.0,6304.54825"}]}]}]}