{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/4f1mg7hk3q/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Robert Weaver"]},"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":["2016-06-03 (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":["family physician","family medicine","American Academy of Family Physicians"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Robert Weaver, 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/000/291/680/small/RobertWeaverM.D.DVD.mp4_1758120800.jpg?1758120803","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Robert_Weaver_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":4493.61413,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/680/small/RobertWeaverM.D.DVD.mp4_1758120800.jpg?1758120803","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/291/680/original/Robert_Weaver_M.D._DVD.mp4?1758120757","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4493.61413,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680/transcript/84347","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Robert Weaver Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680/transcript/84347/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Robert Weaver\n\nToday is 6/03/16 and my name is Sam Taggart and I am the interviewer.  I’m here interviewing Dr. Bob and Molly Weaver in the Gentry Medical Center in Gentry, Arkansas almost in Oklahoma.  We are here interviewing for the Arkansas Physicians Oral History Project and you can go off into any direction that you want to wander off into as our interview is only a format.   Let’s begin: When you were born? \n\n“I was born June 22, 1935 at Portland, Oregon.  \n\nAnd you ended up in Gentry, Arkansas.\n\n“That’s correct.”\n\nThat’s interesting.  I think your brother ended up here as well?\n\n“Yes, that’s correct.”\n\nHe was here at least for a while.  How long ago did your brother practice here?\n\n“We were together for 15 years.”\n\nAnd your brother is still alive?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nAnd where does he practice now or where is he?\n\n“He retired and lives in Walla Walla, Washington.”\n\nLet’s start back; you were born and raised in Oregon.   What kind of circumstances were you raised in a town, city, or country?  \n\n“Born in Portland, Oregon; my parents were teaching school at Laurawood at that time, which is a suburb not far from Portland.  My dad was a teacher with a Seventh Adventist background and he taught in Seventh Adventist Schools. There was one south of Portland there and that’s where we lived when I was born.”\n\nJust from somebody who is not really familiar, but only vaguely family with Seventh Adventist; how are Seventh Adventists secondary schools different from public schools?\n\n“They are a private school with a Christian orientation.  Basically, they follow the same format in terms of studies and so on and they have or go all the way through to Seventh Adventist Medical School.  They go all the way up and all the way down.”\n\n\nSo, you lived in the city.  You didn’t live in the country.\n\n“Now, Laurawood is a very small town.’”\n\n“Country, I’d say.”\n\n“Yeah, you know maybe a 100, no more than that.”\n\nDo you know anything about the events of your birth?\n\n“I was born in a hospital and I know the doctor who delivered me.”\n\nWho was that?\n\n“Dr. Rippey.  I don’t know anything; I had a pretty good delivery.  My mother didn’t have any problems during her pregnancy or delivery.”\n\nYou weren’t sickly as a child?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhere were you in the family constellation; oldest or youngest?\n\n“I have a brother who is older; it’s just the two of us.  He’s a year and a half older than I am.”\n\nSo, did you grow up in a relatively small community?\n\n“Yes, pretty well most of the time.”\n\nSo, how old are you now?\n\n“Almost 81.”\n\n“Yeah, almost 81.”\n\nTell us about the history of your family.  How did your family come to be in Portland, Oregon?\n\n“My aunt was living there and my dad…….how did he get to Portland; help me out with that.”\n\n“Well, your family came from Sterling, Illinois.”\n\n“Yes.”\n\n“And your grandfather moved to Union, Oregon and bought a farm.  He was a farmer, but he was very adamant that his children should have an education and so, Monson was the youngest son and he finished college and, at that time, that was an accomplishment.”\n\n\nWas this during the ‘20s?\n\n“This would’ve been like in probably 1920 or somewhere in there.  He taught high school most of his life.”\n\nWhere you close to your father?\n\n“Yes.  Dad was fun.  We went to the school that he was teaching in and he was a well liked teacher.  He had fun with the kids and had fun with us.  So, we had a good time growing up.”\n\nApproximately how old were your parents when you were born?\n\n“Dad was a little older than mother.  He was close to 30.”\n\n“He was probably 34.”\n\n“Yeah, he was a little over 30 and mother was around 11 years younger than dad.”\n\nWho do you look like?\n\n“He looks just like his dad.”\n\nDo you look like your father?\n\n“He was bald too.”\n\nSo, when you started to school, it was a fairly small school I assume?\n\n“Yeah; yes, when I started school there were, I think, four grades in one room.  My mother taught my brother; my mother was trained as a school teacher and she taught my brother at home his first year and then he started school.  Well, I was supposed to do that too, but I cried and cried because I couldn’t go to school; so they finally let me go to school and I went to school in the first grade instead of staying home for a year.”\n\nSo you have fond memories of your childhood?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nTalk a little bit about things you did as a child, where you went to play, the kind of things you were particularly interested in.\n\n“We lived in a small town.”\n\n“Cars.”\n\n\n\n“Yeah, I always played with cars; I’ve always liked cars all my life and still do.  We just played a lot and had a good time.  We played with our tricycles and learned how to ride our bicycles; we did a lot of that type of thing.”\n\n“Tell him about who were where and who your brother was in your play.”  \n\n“We did a play and I was Dr. Rob and my brother was Dr. Dean and we played like we were doctors.  The doctor that delivered both of us in Portland, Oregon lived behind the Portland Hospital in what part of Portland was that?\n\n“I don’t know.”\n\n“Anyway, there were two doctors there, Dr. Holden and Dr. Rippy.  We pictured us being on Doctor’s Hill.  These two doctors were brother in laws and lived next door to each other; we admired them a lot.  I got to know the doctor that delivered me.  He had a son about my age also.  My aunt worked for them, for one of the doctors.”\n\nSo, you’ve kept fairly close contact with this man who was your family doctor or was at least the family’s doctor.\n\n“Yes and then when my folks moved to the college place, the Granger area, they got very well acquainted with another doctor, my folks did, that took us camping and fishing and that type of thing.  So, he helped us learn to enjoy the outdoors; just a fun loving character.” \n\nSo, when did you move to granger and how far is that from where you were originally?\n\n“Granger, we moved there in 1940, I think.  We lived there until about 1945, I think, were moved to Spangle, which is out of Spokane.  We stayed there for two years and then moved to Codge Place, in the Novella area.”            \n\nWere you old enough to remember the beginnings of WWII?\n\n“Oh yes; yes, I remember where I was.”\n\nTell us about that.\n\n“I was on the sidewalk between where we lived and our neighbors lived; interesting enough this was in Granger.  The neighbor to the north of us was a Pontiac dealer, in a small town but he could order a car for you, just along that sidewalk I got the word that we were in a war and I didn’t know what that meant really, but I heard about it.”\n\nHad anybody close to you or your family involved in the war?\n\n\n“No, my uncle was in the coast guard and that was probably about the closest; my mother’s brother.” \n\nDid you do well in school?\n\n“I did ok; my brother was a very good student, top of the class.”\n\nHe preceded you by about 18 months.\n\n“I had some goals and I had to study.”\n\nDid your parents kind of push behind you?\n\n“Yes, they encouraged us.  My mother was a school teacher and she helped me a lot. Without my mother, I wouldn’t have gotten down the road as far as I did.”\n\nDid your extended family, I know you originally said that you were from Sterling, Illinois and your grandfather had moved; did you have a fairly extended family around you when you were growing up; grandparents or your uncle that you mentioned?\n\n“Yes’”\n\n“Yeah, my aunt that worked for these two doctors in Portland; she was around us.  We would go to visit.”\n\n“You had a grandma in Seattle.”\n\n“Yeah, my grandparents on my dad’s side; well my grandmother on my mother’s side lived in Seattle, which wasn’t too far away from us and then my dad’s parents lived in Portland with my aunt there.  They were both there until they passed away.  So, yeah we were around both grandparents.”    \n\n Was there anything in particular about school that you enjoyed?  Any particular kinds of subjects or areas that you excelled at where you would go find a book and open it up or go to the library and get a book and open it up? \n\n“I basically enjoyed playing more than anything else, of course; but, I did find probably in grade school that I enjoyed mathematics.  I enjoyed arithmetic and I excelled in arithmetic and mathematics. “\n\nDid that help you as you went along? \n\n“That was certainly a blessing to me and helped me with chemistry and some of that type of thing.  It didn’t help me in my history classes, my English classes, or my anatomy classes.”\n\n\n\nWhat about high school, were there any people during your high school years, teachers or any people out in the community, preachers, ministers, other than your family who had an impact on you, who you kind of looked up to.   You already mentioned Dr. Rippy, but other people who had an impact on you?\n\n“My teachers particularly in high school lever were, I’m trying to think who; I got along well with them and got along well with the school.  I had some good ones and some not so well.  In college, I probably had more mentors.  I’m trying to think of whom some of those were.  She didn’t come along until college days; towards the end of college.  Just was blessed with the Christian community around us most of the time.  I mentioned this one who taught us to go camping and fishing, he was a big impact; he was a doctor too and I admired him.”\n\nDo you remember what you called him?\n\n“His name was D.E.; I don’t remember what we called him.  He was very relaxed and had a lot of fun with us.”\n\nI was interviewing a man yesterday and he said that some of the people in his family called him “Uncle Doc”.  I thought that was interesting; I’ve never, that thought had never occurred to me.\n\n“Now, with my brother and me practicing together and I may have already told you this, we went by our first names.  We knew when we came to Gentry here that we would be confused, so we decided to go by first names, Dr. Bob and Dr. Don; it worked well and we were very comfortable with that and enjoyed it.”\n\nSo, when did you graduate from high school?\n\n“I graduated in 1953.”\n\nAt that time when you graduated high school, did you have any idea what you were going to do with your life or had you started thinking about that; what you wanted to do?\n\n“Well yeah, I wanted to take medicine.”\n\nWere there any other professions that you looked at, thought about, or considered?\n\n“The other would be high school teaching; high school level teaching in math and chemistry.”\n\nWhat made the decision about where you were going to go to college?\n\n“Well my parents; that’s where my parents lived.  We’d been in Spangle close to Spokane and move down to College Place, which is down close to Walla Walla; so it was the logical thing to stay home and go to college.”\n\n\nSo, Loma Linda was where?\n\n“Well, Loma Linda was down in California.”\n\nSorry, you went to medical school there.\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhat college did you go to?\n\n“Walla Walla College, which was part of Walla Walla.   There’s Whitman College in Walla Walla and Walla Walla College is the Seventh Adventist College 3 or 4 miles away.”\n\nWhen did you start college?\n\n“In well….”\n\n“1953.”\n\n“1953.”    \n\nDid you start with this; you know, people always talking about “I’m going into premed,” did you start with this series of things that you were going to do in college; this idea of what you were going to do?\n\n“Yes, I did.”\n\nDid you carry it out?\n\n“Pretty well, I got distracted towards taking dentistry because of a girlfriend for a couple of years, but that didn’t last long.”\n\n“It wasn’t me.” \n\n“Dentistry just didn’t appeal to me.”\n\nWhen did you guys first come in contact or first start dating?   \n\n“I went to Walla Walla after having been at La Sierra University in Riverside, California because my parents lived in Los Angeles.  His mother was my counselor that set up my schedule.  When she got home that night she said to Bob, “I found just the girl for you.”  And he thought, “Oh Mercy.”\n\n“Yeah, you can kinda picture what your mother has picked out for you; you know.”\n\n\n“But, he took a second look and decided maybe she was kinda of right.”  \n\nHow long did y’all date before you were married?\n\n“A year and a half.”\n\n“Yeah, a year and a half.  My mother was teaching and secretary duty, so she registered Molly when she came there and put her in a class that she knew I was taking.”\n\n“She was abrasive.”\n\nShe was working on this.\n\n“It was a class where you would go out and give sermons to small churches and I didn’t want to take the speech from the speech teacher, because my brother had done that and he was so gifted at that type of thing; speaking and so on.  The lady was a very close friend of the family, so I didn’t want to do that.  So, I wanted to go out to little churches where I’d never be seen again or heard of before and try to talk to them.”\n\nDid the ministry ever have any appeal to you?\n\n“Not really; I was really focused towards medicine.  At one point; she comes from a missionary family, but at one point, we almost went to the mission field but then we decided to go to Arkansas instead of the mission field.”\n\nWhere would you have gone?\n\n“We’d have gone to West Pakistan.”\n\n“East Pakistan.”\n\n“It remote and was one of those things were you’d be gone for seven years and supposed to take clothing and diapers for the kids for seven years.”\n\nReally?\n\n“Long term and we got scared.”\n\nWhere did you grow up?\n\n“I was born in Peru.”\n\nYou were?\n\n“Arequipa, Peru in South America.  My parents were missionaries from Argentina, so when he married me, I was a foreigner.”\n\nSo, do you have dual citizenship?    \n\n“No, I don’t because my parents were from Argentina.  I chose to become a US Citizen after I married.”\n\n“I took her down to be sworn in.”  \n\nDid you work your way through college or did you need to work your way through college?\n\n“Yes, I worked through college.”\n\nWhat kind of work did you do?\n\n“Mostly, I worked in a service station more than anything else.  Oh, I was a janitor from the time I was in grade school.”\n\nSo, you worked all the time you were a kid?\n\n “Yeah, I always mowed lawns and washed and polished cars, swept sidewalks.  I had a sidewalk that was less than a block from the house that I got 20 cents a day for sweeping the side walk every morning.” \n\nDid you end up with much debt after college?\n\n“My folks pretty well got me through college and I didn’t, well I got some help through college too.  I missed a year; they thought I had rheumatic fever my freshman year in college.  I got real sick with swollen joints and they thought it was rheumatic fever.  They gave me a round of ACTH IV for 30 days.  You can imagine what I looked like after that, moon faces and… but, it wasn’t rheumatic fever at all, I don’t know what they were doing; but anyway, I missed most of my junior year I guess in high school.  I missed most of my junior year from illness and that would surface off and on and flare up.  The truth is I have ankylosing spondylitis, but didn’t know that until I was 40 something years old.”\n\n“You’re now 81?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nAnd you know you don’t look; you’re not very _____.\n\n“No, no; you’re right.  I’m very blessed.  I mean I have a decreased range of motion, but I am very blessed.  I have symptoms of it, but I have a mild case.”\n\nI missed over this and apologize; the rest of your childhood, this is going back 18-19 years ago, did illness or disease play any role in your childhood in your family or your extended family that had an impact on you?\n\n\n\n“Well, that certainly affected me; although most of the time...that’s one of my downfalls, I don’t...I’m a goer and a doer.”\n\n“A triple A-personality; almost.”\n\n“I kept it under control or try to; but yeah that affected me.  I was never a tough or I never would’ve made it doing physical work all my life.  What little physical hard work I did, I’d go out and pick cherries, hole beets, and pick tomatoes; that was killer work.  Every time I spent time out there doing that, I was determined to go back to school and study harder.  I tried selling pots and pans too; that was a disaster.  I worked in a box factory for a few months; you know, I was going to go to school and get an education.”\n\nPolio was a big deal in the ‘40s and ‘50s.\n\n“Yes; oh yes.”\n\nDo you remember much about that? The fears of polio or did anybody in your family or friends have polio?\n\n“Yes, a real good friend had polio; you know, it was a bad scary disease.”\n\nWe recently interviewed a gentleman, just a delightful man, who had polio as a child and developed a persistent swallowing difficulty and then a post-polio syndrome based on it; it was just very, very, interesting.  He and I came along obviously after polio.\n\n“Yeah, it was a scary thing.”\n\nSo in college, we hit on this briefly a few minutes ago, you said there was some mentor type people in college; some teachers who had an impact on wither your study habits or what you were interested in.\n\n“I can’t remember who affected me in college.”\n\nAlmost everybody remembers their organic chemistry teacher.\n\n“Yeah, freshman chemistry was an interesting class.  I guess my…I enjoyed school and most of my teachers; I got along pretty well with them.  I had this chemistry teacher, all pre-med students you know, and you get up there the first day and he’d scowl around and arch around and said, “Half of you are going to flunk, the other thirds going to get a “D” or “F.”  he was just on e of these, you know, scare everybody and I used to go and see him as I knew who he was and he knew who I was; but, I went in to see him one time and his head was down and he never looks up and says, ”What do you want?”  I said, “I need some help.” He said, “Well, why don’t you read the book?” I said, “I did read the book and I need teachers help.” He looked up and grinned and said, “Come on in.”  He was one of those guys who tried to scare everybody off.”\n\nI’ve had a few of those.\n\n“Talk about teachers; Charlotte and that’s probably the reason I ended up in mathematics; I thoroughly enjoyed the freshman mathematics’ teacher and calculus and algebra; for two years, I had her.  She was a very good teacher, kind of a family friend; I really enjoyed her.”\n\nWere you active athletically?\n\n“I was never very good at anything; but, I enjoyed doing things.  I played volleyball some.  I didn’t play tennis much until we got older.  I did a lot more activities, but never was good at any of that stuff.  I was never the first one chose at baseball, football, or anything; but, I did all those things.  I just did it poorly, but had fun with it.”\n\nI think you have already commented on this a little bit; I think logically it seemed reasonable.  What was some of the factors that went into making you decide which medical school to go to and when did you start thinking about that?\n\n“Well, Lola Linda was the Seventh Adventist Medical School and in California.  They would come around every year to the college and interview students for Lola Linda.  It was a logical place to go and it’s down in California, which is nice warm weather.  That’s where most of the grads who wanted to go to medical school went.  Private school, a little more costly than state schools; but that’s where the majority of the physicians would go.  Of course, it had an emphasis towards missions too.”\n\nWhat made that part of Washington kind of a nucleus of Seventh day Adventists folks in the Christian faith?                 \n\n“I don’t know; that’s where the college was and the college dates back to…..”  \n\n“Well, it’s because of the education.  A group of families to begin with just got together and started an elementary school and pretty soon the kids were older and they started the high school and then college; it just grew from there.”  \n\n“Yeah, Whitman College was in Walla Walla and Walla Walla College; both of those schools got going about the same time in the late 1800s.  There’s kind of an interesting history in that too.”\n\n“They were both basically Christian schools.”  \n\nDid the early folks from Walla Walla come across by wagon train or how did they migrate?\n\n“Yes, we were very…we lived there in College Place and it was very, very close to when the Whitman’s came.  The Whitman’s came from Siloam Springs and right down John Brown University is a place where they……what’s that building?”\n\n\n\n“The Sagar family.”\n\n“The Saga family who went with the Whitman’s out to Whitman area, where Whitman College is and it’s just right beside College Place there.”\n\nHow about that.\n\nSo, did you have any crises either during high school, college, or early medical school that pushed you in one direction or caused you to do something different than you might have done otherwise?  Death in the family, sickness in the family, the ankylosing spondylitis, or rheumatic fever that they presumed you had, that had an impact on the direction that you went?\n\n“I didn’t enjoy my studies in medicine.  I did it because of the goal I had in mind.  At one point somewhere in my sophomore year, I guess maybe the end of my freshman year, I was not enjoying it.  We hadn’t got much into clinical and I went out to _______Air Force Base and applied for a job as a mathematician.”\n\nWhat kind of degree did you have at this point?\n\n“It was a Bachelor’s degree.”\n\nBachelors in Math.\n\n“Yeah; yes.  I applied for this job as a mathematician at the Air Force Bases as that’s where my wife was working at the time.  So, I passed the test and computers were just coming in.  The room that they had me in had a computer in it about as long as this table here.  So, I went in to interview with the guy and he sat me down and said, “First of all, I want you to know the job is yours.  You passed everything; the interview and everything.  The job is yours, but you are crazy to be stopping what you are doing to come here.  I’ve got a dozen guys out there that are very good and they’d give their eye tooth to be where you are.”  I don’t know who the guy was, but I went home, kinda of ducked my head, and decided I better stay where I am.”\n\nHow did you feel about all this; him quitting or not quitting?    \n\n“Well earlier when you asked him about sports, he said, “That he was never very good at it; well, he was very good at it and in fact he is very humble about it.”\n\n“That’s right in med school, we did.”\n\n“In med school, they would go out and play two men volleyball instead of studying.”\n\n\n“We’d get bored in anatomy lab.”\n\n“I would come home and he would have huge blisters on the bottom of his feet and he could hardly walk from having played volleyball all day.”\n\n“I tried to overcome depression.”\n\n“But, I knew that he hated what he was doing and I was concerned not to come home one day and he’d say, “I’m done, I quit.” But, thank God that he didn’t.\"         \n\nWhat year was this?\n\n“1959 or ’60, because he started med school in ’58.”\n\nWas it the first or second year that you went through this little….?\n\n“It was my second year; first couple of years.  Loma Linda at that time had basically basic science as the first two years, anatomy, physiology, and all the basic sciences and then they moved you into Los Angeles into the county hospital there and that’s when we would begin seeing patients. So, I stuck it out until then, but for the first time in my life when I got into my junior year in the county hospital seeing patients, I went home and got out the books with enthusiasm.  Because, I had seen a patient and I wanted to read about him and learn about him.  I enjoyed every minute of it from then on.”\n\nYou commented on some of your concerns, worries, and being depressed as a sophomore and maybe as a freshman in med school and how much you enjoyed it at Los Angeles County Hospital; talk a little bit about your time in the clinical aspects of your junior and senior year.  Talk about some of the things that you really enjoyed and what you enjoyed about it.\n\n“Well, one of the things; you know as medical students to be able to do something is really rewarding.  By the time that we finished our junior year, most all of us delivered at least 100 babies and of course that was fun; that was doing something.  The obstetrics of it was really fun, I really got into that.  Just seeing the patients in the clinic and trying to work them up; but particularly, the obstetrics was the fun, fun, things we did.  Scrubbing in surgery was fun; interesting, as a junior student you’re kind of way down there trying to see what was going on up there.  Most of that; there was always something new going on.  I enjoyed the meetings. I enjoyed the discussions, what did we call them, grand rounds? And so on; that type of thing.  Just basically enjoyed all of it.   I did some lab tech between my sophomore and junior year and learned how to do blood tests and got a lab license.  I did some call at a small hospital and all of it just kind of seemed to come together and fun at that time. ”        \n\n\n\nWhen did you guys start having children? \n\n“At the end of his junior year.”\n\nSo you’re a young man, married, have a child, and going to medical school.  Did you have to borrow money?\n\n“Oh yes; yes.”\n\nDid you end up with a lot of debt after medical school?\n\n “At that time it cost about $10,000 a year; pardon me, pardon me, I’m sorry, my whole four years of medical school cost about $10,000.00.  So, my parents were able to help me with that.”\n\nWhen did you finish medical school?\n\n“1962.”\n\nWhen did you start thinking about or what part during that four years, or maybe even before that, did you start thinking about what you wanted to do; thinking about going into general practice, family practice,  a specialty of some sort out of the country?\n\n“Family Practice is probably what appealed more.  The specialties were good, but I just really kind of enjoyed people and the whole bit.  You could do obstetrics and scrub in for surgeries; not a lot of surgery in those days, but early on we did some.  It’s just the variety of it; little orthopedics, all of it. ”\n\nDid you have any inclination about where you were going to end up?\n\n“Initially, we talked about going into the mission field because her family was missionaries and so on; we had plans to do that and as it got closer we got a little cold feet on it and just wasn’t sure we wanted to do that because it was seven years and our kids enough diapers for that long and toilet paper; it was just overwhelming to us and we couldn’t.  I was going to this place where they didn’t have any lab work, x-ray, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do out there, you know.  So, we kind of began to get cold feet and that’s when the Army called us to come in and that seemed like it would be the most socially acceptable way to get out of our mission appointment to go to the Army; so, we decided that that was what we were going to do. I remember they called us up, woke me up one time, and they wanted to fight it and I thought, “No, we kind of decided we just wanted to let it go, you know and see what happened.” \n\n“I think the good Lord had a plan.  We would’ve never ended up in Gentry, Arkansas otherwise.”\n\n“My motivation was much more adventure than it was missions.”\n\n\nSo you graduated medical school; did you do an internship there at Loma Linda or through the school, or what did you do?\n\n“We did the internship in Spokane, Washington.”\n\nAs a part of just a general internship?\n\n“Yeah, it was a big general hospital.  Yes, as a rotating general internship.”\n\nAt that time around the country there were spotting general practice residencies.  There were a few, not a whole bunch, but a few residencies around the country.  Did you ever think about doing that?\n\n“Not at that time, no, no, never.  I wanted to go into practice and in fact did not; we grandfathered in later.  I got my boards later by grandfathering in.”\n\nNow your brother also had gone; you had followed a very similar path to what your brother was doing right?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nHe went to medical school as well.\n\n“Yeah, he went to medical school in Spokane and from Spokane, he went ahead and went to Coulee Dam to start his practice, which is 50 miles away.” \n\nTalk a little bit about how again, and your wife was grinning about this a minute ago, how you guys ended up in Gentry, Arkansas.  Talk a little bit about what you saw in the AMA Journal and those types of things. \n\n“Well, we wanted; I had grown up here around Seventh Adventist’s Academies and we wanted to keep our kids at home, so we didn’t have to send them away to a boarding school in the high school level because we had always been able to stay at home as my dad had taught in secondary schools.  So, we had been out to Loma Linda and we had, as I mentioned, learned how to water ski and we also learned that the water was warmer in the mid west than it was in the north west; so, we had a criteria of what we wanted.  We wanted a place where we could both practice together, to be kind of rural, where there was a lake available, and quite a little list of things we wanted to do.  We began looking and I had been out to Loma Linda to their annual, kind of refresher, course where everybody comes back and told them what I was looking for and about a week and a half after that, or two to three weeks, I was sitting in my office in the Army there in Granite City, Illinois, which is right across from St. Louis, and the AMA newspaper came out every two weeks, I think it was, and down on the front page, there were offices opening and it had this office in Gentry, Arkansas and I thought, “Arkansas, that rang a \n\n\nbig bell to me,” maybe because there was a Seventh Adventist Academy there, but I didn’t know that to begin with.  It was just the fact of my Adventist background that I had heard of Arkansas and Gentry.  Of course, we had all heard of Arkansas in those days because the blacks were a big deal and faubus down in Little Rock was _______ with the blacks and were talking about it.  So, the same day, I get a letter from Loma Linda telling me all about Ozark Academy and that there was an office there being built by Sears and Roebuck’s Foundation.  It was under construction at that time; so, we began to look into that and that’s where we ended up at.”\n\nThere seemed to be one gentleman here in town in the Chamber of Commerce who was particularly involved with that and I didn’t write his name down.\n\n“Well, Ray Barnett was…”\n\nThat’s who it was.                             \n\n“Yeah Ray Barnett has big, big, family.  His kids have been very prominent in the state. Jonathan Barnett has a highway named after him out here in Siloam.  They are a very prominent family; a big, big, family and very delightful.  They really nurtured us when we came.” \n\nOzark Academy is here in Gentry?\n\n“Yes, just south of Gentry.”\n\nIt’s a Seventh Adventist School?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nIt is a college?\n\n“No it’s a secondary school and still there.”\n\nYour brother, my understanding was from what I had read is that the building wasn’t finished when I guess your brother first came?\n\n“We came down and looked at it and it was under construction.  They finally finished it and opened it the 15th of November of ’64.”\n\nIs that the building that we are sitting in right now\u003e\n\n“No; it’s right down there on Main Street and we can go by there if you want to.”\n\nSure\n\n“Sears Roebuk had this foundation and they would help survey the community to see if they could support a physician.  If they met the criteria, then they helped them organized to raise the money to build a two doctor office.  The tie with Sears was that they would buy some of their \n\n\ncabinets from Sears; it was a very unique set up.  So, the community was looking for a doctor and it was a very positive way to go.”\n\nDid they have a doctor at that time?\n\n“No, no; they were building and Sears thought if they had an office there you could tempt somebody to come.”\n\nThere had been a Dr. Peacock here for a long period of time.\n\n“Oh yes.  He worked out of a house just a half a block from our office.”\n\nI want to get in on record; which year did you graduate from medical school?\n\n“1962.”\n\nAnd did your internship in ’62 and ’63?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nThen started work with the Army in ’63 for two years.\n\n“Yes.”\n\nYou were granted ______.\n\n“Just a minute, I mean I graduated and I spent a year in Spokane.”\n\n“That’s right; that’s what he said; internship and then the Army.”\n\n“Then two years in the Army.”\n\nYour internship was in…….\n\n“It was just a rotating internship.”\n\nIn Spokane?\n\n“Yes; Deacon’s Hospital in Spokane.”   \n\nSeventh Day Adventist or no, there is a little bit of a culture shock between Oregon and Arkansas; even if it is northwest Arkansas. \n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\nDid you experience any of that when you came in ‘64?\n\n“Oh my.”\n\n“Can I put in my two cents here?”\n\nAbsolutely.\n\n“We were in the Army and for the first time we felt like we could enjoy a little bit of a life because he was getting paid quite well; internships, you know didn’t.  Anyway, he said, “Let’s go visit.  Let’s go see what country is like.”  I said, “Okay.”   We were going to come down for the weekend.  We came on highway 44 and down through Neosho and Newel.”\n\nYou probably came up 66.\n\n“Well, up above I mean.” \n\n“Well, no; it was a freeway then.  And here we come by the cliffs there in Newel and I thought….and the road gets narrow and narrow and then we got here to Gentry;”\n\n“We stopped to see Ray Barnett; he had real estate out on the highway; that was our first visit.”\n\n“That’s right.  And then, he wanted to go see what the economy was like and all that.  We turned off on Sleepy Hollow Road….”\n\n“Gravel.”\n\n“And it’s a gravel road; we come to the creek and it’s a flat bridge that we go in the water…”\n\n“The bridge was washed out; it was washed out all the time.”\n\n“And I said, “Bob, where are you taking me to?”  I had never even lived in the country let alone….”\n\nCalifornia girl moved to Arkansas. \n\nHe did take you to a mission field.\n\n“He did; he did.  The other thing that was so shocking to me was if you didn’t order it from the Sears Roebuk catalog, you didn’t have it.”\n\n“Just a side light, we didn’t come here because of the money; my brother went from a $5.00 office visit in Cooly Dam where he was practicing to a $3.00 office visit in Gentry.  We’d give a $2.00 Penicillin shot and make it $5.00.”\n\nRight.\n\nSo let’s talk a little bit about that and this all just follows through.  You come here and go into practice.  Most people when they first open the doors there is a little cautiousness on the part of the people so they don’t flock to your door initially; but this is a town without a physician.\n\n‘Yes.”\n\nHow long did it take for you guys to start getting busy?\n\n“Ok; I was still in the Army when my brother was actually starting.  We had a grand opening.  Carl Jim and Senator J. William Fulbright were here for the dedication or big grand opening.  He was the Senator of Arkansas at the time.  The next day, my brother started the clinic and started seeing patients.  He saw 11 patients the first day.  We were blessed with the community in Siloam Springs.  Dr. Puckett, Dr. Huscombs, Dr. ……..; the one that was kinda of retiring; they were so supporting of us.  When we met with them, they encouraged us to come and said, “We’ll help you in any way we can.”   The medical community welcomed us with open arms and couldn’t have been nicer to us.”    \n\n“And so did the community in general.”\n\n“Yes, because you start with “the community wants you there.”\n\nI’m going to clear something; I thought there were no physicians here when you came.\n\n“We’ll there was Dr. Peacock and I’m not even sure what….but he was…...”\n\n“But, he was not practicing though.”\n\nHe’s talking about folks in Siloam Springs.\n\nOh, Dr. Huscombs was in Siloam Springs.\n\n“Yes, Huscombs and Dr. Puckett were in Siloam Springs; they were our closest competitors every since.”\n\nBut, they were probably working harder than they knew what to do.\n\n“Oh yes; that’s right.  But, they were just so helpful and so encouraging. They’d come and say, “Anything we can do to help” and did.”\n\nDid you live in Siloam?\n\n“No, we actually lived in Gentry; initially, we lived right in Gentry.”\n\n\n\nSo, tell us a little bit about the nature of your practice.  Obviously, you stepped in and your brother was already here for a year and kind of got of got things going.  You jumped in; tell us about the nature of your practice on how did you start? Did you have a hospital or did you do hospital work?  \n\n“Yes, there was a hospital at Siloam Springs; a community hospital.”\n\n10 to 15 miles away?\n\n“About 10 miles.”\n\nWhat time of day did your day start?  \n\n“Oh, I usually tried to make hospital rounds and try to get there about 8:00am and be at the office by 9:00am; depending on your load”\n\nHow many patients were you seeing a day in general?\n\n“I used to see 20-25, 30 was a busy, busy, day.”\n\nDid you make many house calls?\n\n“Oh my, yes we made house calls.  Gravel roads; driving too slow is not one of my problems and at that time I’d go through double eagle good year tires at least once a month; I’d blow one.” \n\nHow far did your house call business range?\n\n“How far is highfall?  I mean we’d reach….particularly there was a doctor in Decatur in Siloam, but we’d go the other way towards Clockward, Oklahoma and towards Highfall; those two directions.”\n\nDid you have any unusual experiences during your days doing house calls that you can still relate?\n\n“Very interesting ones.  One of the ones that I was reminiscing about; one on my patients…first of all when you make house calls, you learn a lot about their family.  You’re sitting in the living room examining or whatever and they had just finish supper, you look out into the kitchen and here’s the cat finishing up the supper on top of the table; that was pretty standard.  This one patient that they had called, he was an alcoholic and was depressed.  He had crawled underneath his trailer and had a shot gun with him.  He wanted to kill himself and they didn’t know what to do with him.  I’d seen him as a risk for his depression and knew him pretty well, so they called me.  I go out there and Molly went with me and stayed in the car.  I got out of the car and crawled under the trailer house and laid there and talked to him for about 15-20 minutes; I just talked to him for a while and finally got him convinced that he was not going to kill himself then.  Some of those things are kind of scary; you kind of say your prayers before you \n\n\ngo; but you kind of get down on their level.  I had a nice relationship with him and eventually several months, maybe even six months later, I read one day that he burned himself down in the trailer that he was living in; it caught on fire and by the remains, they found him.  That’s just some of the things that kind of……”\n\nDid you have any scary moments, besides fear; any scary moments in your practice?\n\n“Well, twice I’ve had my life threatened.  One time was in the ER and this lady was overdosing all the time and trying to control them and so on.  She’d been brought in and was overdosing on something, I don’t remember for sure, and I had come into the ER to see her.  Her daughter was sitting there and she just when she saw me; she just screamed out, “You killed my mother” and jumped to go after me.  There was plenty of policemen right there and they restrained her of course and I backed out the door in a hurry.  The other time was a very similar episode; a patient from Decatur.  I knew the whole family quite well and the man was sick; I’d seen him and he refused to everything that I wanted him to do.  So, she’d called at 3:00pm and the waiting room was full of people and she wanted me to make a house call to Decatur; 5 or 6 miles away.  I knew he wouldn’t do what I wanted him to do as he never did anything I wanted him to do; so, I didn’t go.  When I got done, I was going to a meeting somewhere that evening; so, I called them back and asked if they wanted me to come up then.  They said, “No, that’s ok, don’t worry about it.”  The next day, I think I went ahead and went by there; I went by there the next day because I knew the family and I just wanted to go by and just talk to them.  I knew he was doing very poorly and I think maybe he had died; I’m kind of forgetting.  Anyway when I got to the house, it was lined with family all around it and I knew it was a rough family.  Some of the sons had killed people.”\n\n“Wasn’t one of your son’s in law with you?”\n\n“Yeah, I’d left him in the car and told him what was happening there; they were there so I could run.  Anyway, one of them asked, “Why did you kill my daddy?” and just lunged for me.  Some of the others around there restrained him and they said, “You better get out of here” and I was happy to get out of there.  I was headed out of there and had my son in law out in the car down the road just a little ways so I could get in and get on the way out of there.  Those are kind of scary moments.”\n\nWhat about warm unexpected moments?  Things you weren’t expecting like all of the sudden you’re in a very emotional moment and somebody say’s “thank you” or you do something with no expectations of anybody ever noticing.\n\n“I’ve been blessed and given an honor in a number of different situations, which is really neat.  The Lion’s Club, the Eastern Star; several of those organizations honored me at several different settings, which was very delightful.  I was trying to think of how another one…..and it might come to me in a bit.”                                     \n\nWhich year did you retire?\n\n“Well actually, I quit practice then continued to do a nursing home until about a year and a half ago.  What I would do in my retirement is have a fax a machine and a phone and I was phoning my patients. I would come home and fly to see them every month.  I had good back up guys here and so on.”\n\nSo, you quit practice in which year?\n\n“2008.”\n\nThen you moved to California?\n\n“Just winter.”   \n\n“We wintered in California.”\n\n“We don’t like winter here anymore.”\n\nWas the practice of medicine what you thought it would be?\n\n“I think so; I really enjoyed it.”\n\nDid you do OB; you talked about delivering babies.\n\n“I did OB until it finally got to the point where we weren’t doing that much of it.  It was a pain to keep up with; so, we got out of OB when we realized it wasn’t really our main thrust.”\n\nWhat about surgery?\n\n“I did some surgery for a while, but we realized we weren’t really cut out for that.  I did a few hernias and one gallbladder, which got along ok; but I decided that that was a little too much.”\n\nDid you do your operations in Siloam? \n\n“Yeah; see the other primary care, particularly Dr. Puckett and Dr. Huscombs, were very good surgeons.  In fact, they’d even had some surgical training.  They’d help us and did our surgery for us, but they kind of also taught us how to do stuff.  They did hernias and appendectomies.  Finally, I quit doing all that stuff.” \n\n“May I interject something here; he delivered three of his grandchildren.  Even though he had not been active, the hospital allowed him to do that; that was very nice.”\n\n“Well, it was kind of a tradition in our community.  Many of the doctors got to deliver their grandchildren.”\n\n\nSo, let’s talk a little bit about your kids. How many children do you have now?\n\n“Four children; two boys and two girls.”\n\nThe first child was born when?\n\n“My junior year.”\n\n“His junior year and that would have been 1961.”\n\nI’m kind of curious; who were they and what were their names?\n\n“Rob, our oldest son was born in 1961 and then Bob wanted twins, so we did the next best thing, and Sherry was born a week before Rob turned one; his senior year.”\n\n“She was born at White Memorial, which was the hospital where much of the training was done.  My GYN doctor who delivered the first one also was there and delivered her too.”\n\n“Then I got a little break and Russell, our third child was born in St. Louis while Bob was in the Army.  Sandra came a year after that and she was born at Siloam Spring’s Hospital after we moved here.”\n\nWhich one of these kids did you deliver their babies?\n\n“Sherry’s two boys; he delivered her and then Sandra’s.  He delivered her youngest child.”\n\nI bet that was a thrill.\n\n“Yes, yes it was.  My kids; I had some very good friends in St. Louis who’s dad had been a doctor and he told me that if I came here and worked by myself, I wouldn’t even know who my kids were after a short length of time.  I vowed that that wasn’t going to be the case; so, having those four kids; they were very important to me.  One thing I taught my help, everyone, was when the kids called, get in touch with me because I wanted to talk with them and know what’s going on.  They didn’t abuse it, but I wanted them to know that they had a dad who cared about them and was involved in their lives.  The nurses used to try to kind of fend them off, but I stayed in touch with them.  The kids would make rounds with me, house calls with me, sometimes sleep at the ER with me; they were just around and part of what we did.”          \n\nThat’s one of my questions I have and we’ll talk about this now; how did your family contend  with the idea of you being the only physician, or one of two physicians, in town; meaning sometimes they take the bench so to speak.  I’m curious; how did y’all tolerate that? \n\n\n“Bob was so intentional about being a good husband and a good dad that it was kind of a given that he would not abuse his part and we would be very tolerant of what we had to put up with, which occasionally, obviously, it was a matter of life and death that he had to be there.  But even in surgery or a delivery, if the children needed something, they knew that they could call their dad and the nurses would give information and pass it on to them with whatever it was that they needed help with.  They have always known that they could get in touch with Bob.”\n\n“When my brother and I worked together, we didn’t make a lot of money; but, we had a delightful life.  We’d both work on Monday, one of us on Tuesday, we both worked Wednesday morning and the other would work on Thursday; so, we had a full day and a half off every week.”\n\nAnd you set that up from the beginning?\n\n“Yes when we were together; though, it didn’t last.”\n\n“After he left; 15 years, they were in practice together and then he left.”\n\nWhere did your brother move to?\n\n“He moved back out to California.  His marriage got on the rocks, which kind of changed the whole dynamics of our situation.  So, I being more the workaholic type and the kids were of course growing up to a major degree, but still, I took it by myself for quite a while.  I had some partners off and on for a long time and it finally developed into more than that as we got into this building.”              \n\nTell us about your brother and your arrangement on how you worked the schedule.\n\n“We both wanted to keep in touch with our families.  We both worked together on Mondays and made rounds together on Monday.  One of us would take off on Tuesday and then we would both work Wednesday morning and one of us would take Thursday afternoon.   The bottom line is that we would be off a day and a half every week and have a day together in between.”\n\nWhen did your brother leave Gentry?\n\n“1981.”\n\nHe moved to California you said?\n\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nFor 19-20 years, you practiced by yourself or had some partners come in.\n\n“Yeah off and on I’d try to get somebody in that didn’t quite pan out; here and there.”\n\nSo, when was this building built?\n\n“1999 is when opened.”\n\n“I drug my feet on doing this but finally decided that I was going to do it.”\n\nAt that time, how many partners were here or was it just you?\n\n“I was by myself, but had another doctor with me at that time that moved in here with me.  But then, her husband ended up finishing at the University of Arkansas Law and they moved to Missouri.”\n\nTalk a little bit about the practice of medicine itself, actually in your office; your office staff and how you kept medical records when you started and when you finished.\n\n“Well, the electronic medical records itself is part of what got me out of medicine.  I would dictate but I never got into using the computer, even though we wired this building for computers.  Of course, then wireless came about and we didn’t use the wires we put in.  So, anyway, basically, written records were very high ______.  It was tough scribbling all this stuff you do and remembering a lot of it.  It wasn’t easy all the stuff you were to write out and I hated it, but still you do it because that was the only way to do it.”\n\nHad you abandoned the 4x6 cards or did you use to 4x6 cards by the time you got here?\n\n“Yes, we didn’t have the cards.”\n\n“You used the dictation machine.”  \n\n“Yeah, I used the dictation machine; but then I had a transcriptionist that would type it out.  That’s how I got away with it.  Medicare would have been breathing down our throats too, word-wise if they couldn’t read your writing, you were in trouble.  So, I went ahead and started dictating and had good transcriptionists.”\n\nSo what kind of office, when you joined your brother, did you have?  How many people did you have run the office; nurses, aides, that kind of thing? \n\n“We had a receptionist, we each had a nurse, and usually had one other person for lab and x-ray; that was how it was most of the time.”\n\nDid it grow?\n\n\n“Oh yes, but it stayed about that while in the old office; we didn’t have any room for more than that there, you know.”\n\n Where was the old office located?\n\n“Down on Main Street; right there on Main Street next door to the Arvest Bank.”\n\nDowntown is interesting to me.  We always go downtown and we video.  \n\n“You better do it quick, it’s not very long.”\n\nNo, it’s not very long, but it’s fairly typical downtown. \n\n In terms of the practice of medicine, itself; what you did with the patients, what you did each day, and the kinds of things you used, did medicine change a lot during the years?   \n\n“Oh my, night and day.  We didn’t even have intensive care units.  Cardiac necessitation was unheard of almost.  ICU is a…... we had Penicillin; you know very limited antibiotics.  It’s so drastically different; I remember the first time I ever went to or heard about an intensive care units and cardiac resuscitation; all of that stuff us totally……..” \n\nDo you remember the first patient you ever intubated here at this hospital?\n\n“Boy, it was challenging I do know that; I don’t remember the specific event of it.  I do know one thing, I had a patient that did have an allergic reaction in my waiting room and I never done this before, but I was prepared if I needed to.  She just couldn’t breathe and I finally we ahead and stuck an 18-guage needle into her neck.  I resuscitated every way we could; that was a scary moment.”\n\nIf you can identify the one invention, change, or series of changes; and this is not just medicine just in your lifetime; that has changed things more than anything else or changed the nature of your life, is there one thing or one series of things that has changed things for you?\n\n“Let me just mention one thing that I thought about earlier when we started talking; when I first bought my medical equipment for my bag, they had just brought out Velcro and they told us Velcro and vinyl wouldn’t last; that the old hooks that they had is what you need to get. Well, I got Velcro and it’s still around.”\n\nThat instrument may be even still around and still working yet. \n\n“Oh yes; in fact, I still got the thing.  I have to hold it pretty tight, I’m older.  Now you mentioned major changes; they’ve all been so gradual, the antibiotics, the whole thing has just been continually evolving.”\n\n\n“Bob was good at staying up with what was happening. We would go to meetings; I didn’t attend, but I enjoyed going with him.  He was always doing all the little testes that would come in his magazines and all the things.  He did a lot of _______digest and all of that.  His rides to the hospital and back, he was always listening and keeping up.  He tried very, very, hard to maintain his understanding and knowledge.”\n\n“Well, I grandfathered into family practice and kept up my hours to do that and I grandfathered into geriatrics as well, which was good for me to do; that made me get in and stay up with medicine than I would have done otherwise.  Major things, I supposed are cardiac care that is the most major thing that comes to my mind; resuscitations and shocking hearts.”\n\n“Major changes in our lives in general; I’d of said was communication.”\n\n“Cell phones.”\n\n“Cell phones, computers; you know, being able to send a message to my daughter who is in Argentina on a mission trip.  Last night she sends me a message and I sent her a message back; that is awesome.”\n\nThat is interesting and it has changed things.\n\n“The cell phone; you travel somewhere and you used to have to call into somebody to tell them an update on where we were going and what we were doing.”                                 \n\nIf you had to do it over, would you do it again and would you have done it differently? \n\n“Yes, I’m sure I would make some better turns along the way, but overall, I think it would be a very similar route; a very similar route.  To me, I just live life to the full.”\n\nDid you encourage your children to go into medicine?\n\n“Yes, I did, but they didn’t enjoy the books at all hardly.  My oldest son could’ve, but he just didn’t.  My youngest son didn’t at all, but he is in healthcare.”\n\nWhat does he do?\n\n“He manages healthcare and is Vice President of Hugley Health Care Situation.  He ended up getting a Masters at Baylor out of healthcare and works in healthcare.  He was my x-ray technician when he was in high school.”\n\nWhere does your youngest son live?\n\n“Youngest lives in Burlington, Texas.”\n\n\nAnd your oldest son?\n\n“He lives in Waco.” \n\nAnd your two other children live here?\n\n“One girl is a nurse at the hospital here in Siloam and very, very, well liked and enjoys it.”\n\n“She was the employee of the year this year.”\n\n“My other daughter took nursing, not because she wanted to but because I pushed her to, and she made a living in it, but she dropped her nursing and is kind of a small business on her own.  She lives in Dallas.  She wanted to take psychology and I didn’t encourage her to.”\n\nWhat was the most gratifying part of your practice in medicine?\n\n“The people and their families; family gathering when you were part of the family.  You’re just part of them and they invite you in; that’s part of what I really enjoyed.  We became so well acquainted with Gentry Scott, quite a number of Assembly of God people and Methodists, Baptists, Christian Church and we became part of those families that we felt very comfortable going to any of their gatherings that they invited us to.  We just thoroughly enjoyed our multi-religious association of the different protestant churches here.”\n\nHow long we you a part of active practice in medicine?\n\n“Basically by the time we got here.”\n\n“50 years.”   \n\n“Actually, almost 50 years; 49 1/2.”     \n\nAt what point did you start thinking about retirement?\n\n“My wife talks about it a lot.  I enjoyed what I did so much that I didn’t want to quit.  When I was still doing the nursing home and quit the office practice, I would get kind of tired of something and then I’d get to the nursing home and I would just feel a spring in my step as I went down the hall to see some patients.  I just loved it.” \n\nWhat do you do in your spare time now?\n\n“People ask that and you know you learn to kill a lot of time not doing much.  I had a knee replaced a year ago and spent a lot of time in rehab with that. I read a lot.  My wife and I just have a good time together and we travel some.  I go to town with her to get groceries and push the cart around or I wait in the car and do Sudoku.”\n\n\n\nWhere do you go in California?\n\n“We’re in Palm Desert.  We rented in Palm Springs for about six or seven years; it’s just directly east of Palm Springs.”\n\nWhat is your life style?  Which months do you leave and come back?\n\n“Well, we come back here in mid May and head back out there towards the end of September.” \n\nI think you lived in Garfield?\n\n“Yes, we lived at Garfield at Beaver Lake.”\n\n That’s why I was confused; I was thinking you practiced in Garfield originally.\n\nDid you do medical mission trips while you were in practice?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhere did you go?\n\n“Went to Peru at one point with her.”\n\n“Vienna for four or five weeks.”\n\n“I went to Vienna; I took all of our four kids to Georgetown, Vienna and spent a month there.  They needed a doctor there.”\n\nWhen was that?   \n\n“1970.”\n\n“Our kids were little and that was fun.”\n\n“It was quite an adventure.” \n\nWere you ever involved in politics; medical politics or worldwide politics?\n\n“No.”\n\n That is not part of your interests?\n\n“No, it really didn’t.”\n\nAre you active, physically active?\n\n\n\n“I have been since I had my knee redone.  I have severe osteoporosis and have broken so many bones.  I would still be riding a bicycle, but I’m afraid I might fall and I just don’t want to break anymore bones.”   \n\nYeah, does the ankylosing spondylitis affect you?\n\n“I’ve got severe osteoporosis and most of that I compressed snow skiing and fell; T9, 10, and 11.  That has slowed me down more than everything else.  I broke hips and you know that affects everything you do.”\n\n“He broke his neck in a car accident with his brother.” \n\nHow long did most of these things hold you down; days, weeks?   \n\n“Well, I didn’t know that my neck was broken unit I went back to work the next day.  After I broke my hip, I missed the rest of that week and then went back.”\n\n“You can’t keep this down.”\n\n I understand.\n\n“Well, when you enjoy what you do and likewise, nobody pays you for sick leave.”\n\nThat’s true; that’s absolutely true.\n\n“You don’t work, you don’t eat.” \n\n“You’ll have to tell my help that; they get a vacation day; nobody paid me for vacation.  They didn’t feel that sorry for me.”\n\nA couple of questions about Gentry itself; the town of Gentry; it’s hard to think about people’s lives without putting it into context.  I know that at one point Gentry was a big area of fruit; apples, strawberries, and those kinds of things; in the ‘80’s these little Debbie McKee’s cakes came here; did that have any impact here?  With fruit farming or did you see anything unique or unusual about practicing in Gentry based on a lot of this stuff?\n\n“Not particularly; some of those things did not have the impact that it should.  Gentry did not respond like it should have when McKee’s was coming.  They gave them plenty of warning, but Gentry could have been built up and really turned into an excellent community from McKee’s; but they didn’t.  People who worked for McKee’s came from all over northwest Arkansas.  There was some that do live here, but it didn’t really step up to the plate and welcome them like they should and could have to build and really upgrade our town.  They lived in Siloam and Westville, Rogers, and all over the place.”\n\n\n\nHow big a plant is it?\n\n“Well, it’s at least 1000.”\n\nOh, it’s a big plant; a really big plant.\n\n“Oh Yeah.”\n\n“Oh, it’s huge.”\n\nI had no earthly idea that Little Debbie cakes was a Gentry product.\n\nI thought it was from Tennessee.\n\n“Yeah.”\n\n“It is; this is a satellite plant.”\n\nI know most of the orchids had disappeared probably by the time you guys got here, but what did most of the people that you saw what kind of occupation or work did they do?\n\n“Chickens.”\n\nChickens?\n\n“Chicken is real big; big, big, big.”\n\nDid you see any diseases in your practice based on skin problems, lung problems, or anything like that related to the poultry industry? \n\n“Not, probably; of course they have continued at working to cleaning up the air.  Not that I’ve got or caught onto otherwise.”\n\n Was the chicken industry big when he brought you here; when y’all drove down that gravel road?\n\n“We didn’t know. We found out though.”\n\n“It began picking up about that time, but continued to just grow, and grow, and grow.  Now one thing about the fruit; what fruit that does come out of Arkansas is very, very, good fruit.  It would’ve never been good enough to be able to market it far and wide and produce it.  Our strawberries are fantastic, our blueberries are fantastic, peaches and apples are all very, very, good.”\n\n\n\nWhen you moved here, you’re on the Oklahoma border and what 25 miles from Fayetteville and Springdale and Rogers; this is out in the country and you really were a rural doctor.  But by the time you quit, this was not quite as rural; is that fair to say?\n\n“Oh absolutely; it’s Metropolitan.”\n\nSo when you went for entertainment, took your family for entertainment, where would you go?  \n\n“Mostly to Fayetteville.  We used to go to Tulsa some, but Tulsa is a long ways away really; the turnpike kind of helped it, but Fayetteville mainly.”\n\nWhere did refer patients to?\n\n“Fayetteville, yes.  Fayetteville or Bentonville was our main referral centers.  Tulsa a little bit, we got into Tulsa some because Tulsa had a good residency program and they would feed the doctors over here to work in our ER in Siloam; so they were quite helpful in heading doctors this way.  They didn’t have a family practice residency in Fayetteville for a number of years.”            \n\nI have one last question and this is for both of you;  just pretend that we are not here and you’re talking to your great, great, grandchildren,  or young doctors who will be in this community in 50-60 years, what would you say to them about your life or the life you’ve lived here and what you expect of them? \n\n“Well I would say, I’ve encouraged my grandkids and my own kids to go into medicine; none of them have so far, some of them could have; but I’ve loved it.  I’m not quite sure why they haven’t because they’ve admired me in many aspects, but haven’t chosen to pursue that.  I was asked how I would have lived my life differently and I just have done most of the things I wanted to do and I loved life and have just had a good time.  I guess part of my prayer from my kids is that they will have as good a marriage, have as much fun in life as we have had.”\n\nAnd you?\n\n“I probably…..my initial thought is…”Love God with all your heart and make him number one, then everything else does fall into place.  It’s not perfect as long as we are on this earth, but if you honor him, he’ll honor you.”     \n\nGreat answer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/159744/file/291680#t=0.0,4493.61413"}]}]}]}