{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/5q4rj4bk3p/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Pete Carroll"]},"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":["2016-08-24 (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","American Academy of Family Physicians"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Pete Carroll, 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/000/291/682/small/PeteCarrollM.D.DVD.mp4_1758122149.jpg?1758122152","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Pete_Carroll_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":7182.96746,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/682/small/PeteCarrollM.D.DVD.mp4_1758122149.jpg?1758122152","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/291/682/original/Pete_Carroll_M.D._DVD.mp4?1758122110","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":7182.96746,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682/transcript/84350","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Pete Carroll Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682/transcript/84350/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Pete Carroll \n\nGood afternoon; it is 8/24/16.  My name is Sam Taggart and I am the interviewer.  Today, we are in the home of Dr. Pete Carroll, a gentleman who I have known ever since I started practicing medicine in the mid 1970s.  Thank you for inviting us into your home.  \n\n“You’re welcome; I’m glad to visit with you.”\n\nRemember, this is your interview and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about; so, you go off on any tangent you want to and we’ll just keep on moving.        \n\nLet’s just start at the very beginning: Where you born; when is your birthday, what were the circumstances of your birth, who delivered you. \n\n“I was born in Spearsville, Louisiana on November 03, 1931. I was born in the front room of the house; it was the year of the depression of course.  I have to think I was not a planned pregnancy as I was the last of six.  The doctor who delivered me was Dr. O’Neal; that’s what the record said.”\n\nDo you remember him?\n\n“I met him after I was a teenager and stuff like that.  He had moved from Spearsville to Junction City.”\n\nNow Spearsville doesn’t sound like a big town.\n\n“It is very small; sort of like 70-80 people.”\n\nSo, a small town.\n\n“Very small.”\n\n What kind of work did your family do; your father, your mother?\n\n“My dad was a pharmacist and I can show you a picture of his graduated class.  He graduated from the Atlanta College of Pharmacy; 113 years ago.  It was 1913.  My mom was an artist and actually taught some art classes before I was born.  She had given it up by the time I came along.”\n\nSo she painted with oil or water colors? \n\n“Mostly oils.” \n\n\n\nWhat were your mom and dad’s names?\n\n“My mother was Julia Battle and my dad was Charles Allan Carroll.”\n\nAnd the names of your brothers and sisters?\n\nStarting at the first was Joseph Allen Carroll; he is buried in South Carolina.  Then next was Jane Carrol McGray; she is buried in North Carolina.  Next was my brother, Ted who is buried at the old home place down in Spearsville in a cemetery there.  Next was my sister, Mary Greenlea; she is buried just outside of Little Rock and I have a living brother still who in just about one month will be 88 and he lives in Atlanta, Georgia.”\n\nWhat kind of work did your family do?  Your dad was a pharmacist and your mother into Art, but what did your family do?  Were they farmers?\n\n“My dad had a drug store in the little community general store and he worked for the owners of the place; that was Hugh Rockets and later Hugh Bara.  Later dad opens his own store, which was a General Merchandise Place.  I came along and all of the sudden I was the only one left at home and dad even handled sacks of feed and all that for the farms and what have you.  When I went off to Louisiana Tech, there wasn’t somebody there to handle the feed; so he got out of the feed business. But, he had plow implements, canned goods, and all that sort of thing.”   \n\nHow did the family come to end up in Spearsville?\n\n“Well, dad was going back to my great grandfather, a Spanish land rat; Richmond Carroll.  There was quite a bit of property that was there and the land was split up.  In that slit up, dad received 136 acres.  That land was arable , part of it, and part of it was timber.  My dad moved back to Spearsville and we lived on the place.” \n\nHow did he end up going to the Atlanta School of Pharmacy?\n\n“As I understand; there was at that time if you were going into a profession that was the place to go.  There was train traffic from Ruston to there and was easier to go.  Everybody knew the migration across the country came from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas; it was just a natural process that was what was known.  I had an uncle who was a physician, George Carroll, and dad with his help made it into pharmacy school.”\n\nWhere did your uncle practice?\n\n“He was a lumber mill doctor.  At that time through every little place down through all of this timber, there were saw mills and they couldn’t transport these logs any great distances.  So consequently each little town had its saw mill and they had a doctor there to take care of the injuries, because it was high risk work.  So, Uncle George followed the theme of saw mill practice for a long period of time.”\n\nTell about some of your memories of your young childhood that you remember of playing, going to school; particularly in the pre-school era or before school era of time.\n\n“In Spearsville, this was during the depression and so there was no cast thing.  What you remembered was that everybody was poor, but we didn’t know we were.  So consequently, we didn’t have refrigeration.  To have just an old ice box was quite a thing, but you didn’t frequently have ice in it.  So consequently, most of the food was gathered, you fixed it yourself, put in cans or jars, and food was quite well available and you didn’t miss any meals.”\n\nDo you remember if you had electricity?\n\n“I do; we didn’t have any until I was already into grammar school.  It consisted of a drop chord with a light bulb on the end of it in the beginning and then it became a little bit more spread out; let’s put it that way.”\n\nLet’s talk a little bit about the house you were born and raised in.\n\n“It was a 6 room house with a wood burning kitchen cast iron stove; that was just part of the life that we had.  We didn’t know any better; we didn’t know anything about electric.”\n\nDid your flue ever catch afire?\n\n‘Absolutely; that was a regular thing.”\n\nDid your mother cook on wood?\n\n“Oh yes and we had to go gather in the kindle and wood that kept the house warm for the heater as well as the kitchen.  So, all of the wood that went into the kitchen stove was pine because you could slit it easier to put it into the wood burning kitchen stove.  The other was the hardwood; we would take that and bring it in off of the place.  We hauled it in with the mules and the wagon; that was how it got there and then we would stack it up.”\n\nYou were a little bit young to remember the drought of 30-31, but you probably were old enough to remember the flood of 37; don’t you?\n\n“The flood that was big in Louisiana was in ’27 from the Mississippi; that was before my day.  I only knew of that from people that I would run into. I practiced for two months waiting to go into the service in ’57 in Delhi, Louisiana and I lived on a little hill when I was in Delhi that was the only place out of water between there and the Mississippi.”\n\n How far was it from the Mississippi?\n\n“About 40 miles; so, it was quite covered in.”\n\nOn the way in coming from Lake Village, I purposely drove through Montrose; because that was similar.  There is a picture of a train flooded in Montrose in the ’27 flood.\n\n\n“Right.”\n\nSo talk a little bit about your beginnings of education; elementary education and what kind of school did you go to, how big a school was it?            \n\n“To give you an idea of how it was; it was a good school and we had dedicated teachers at the time.  Now you have to remember that this was in Louisiana during the depression and at that time, the teachers frequently were paid with script; are you familiar with that? Script means that they would pay you if they ever got any money.  It was rather on that, but they were dedicated teachers.  They all lived right close by.  Some of the teachers roomed over at my old made aunt’s home across the road from where I lived.  I went through like the 1st grade and then I graduated in 1948 when there were only 11 grades at the time.”\n\nDo you remember any of those early on elementary or junior high levels teacher’s names?\n\n“Oh man, yeas; Ms. Ogden, which later became Ms. Madden, Ms. Epshaw who later became Ms. Rocket, Ms. Eunice Cole who was a science teacher in high school, Ms. Barron who was a wonderful English teacher.  Her son is a doctor in Monroe, Louisiana; Joey Barron an Ophthalmologist.  The high school went through several principals, but that was due to WWII; because they would get drafted and we would have a replacement come in.”\n\nAre there any of those particular teachers you mentioned there who had a special impact on you?\n\n“All of them did; so let’s go with the ones that I credit the most to.  Probably one of them is Ms. Helen Sims.  Ms Sims was off all things the high school home economics teacher.  We had one period per semester in which the boys went over to the home economics building with her and on the other side, the girls came over and learned landscaping and things like that from the guy teacher; it was mutually something very good. In our things, I learned how to sow on a button, make a basic meal, and I even made an apron; it didn’t look too good, but at least some sowing capabilities developed from it.  Then one of the other things that she taught was how to sit at a formal meal and which instrument to use and if you didn’t know to watch the host; that was a skill that was quite valuable.  But then, there was another thing that she had; she had a huge library of her own.  When I got about the age of 13-14, she introduced me to such books as “The Robe”; some of the old classic books.  The naughty ones hadn’t come out yet; like Hemingway, the ones about “Comin Thro the Rye.”  Those we didn’t have, but she introduced me and I developed a real sense and enjoyment in reading.”\n\nSo you enjoy reading then?\n\n“I enjoyed reading then and the thing about it was the pictures that I developed from reading were much better than the movies that were presented.  For that reason, I have always appreciated that.  The other particular teacher was Mr.  and everybody in Spearsville \n\n\nknew the nickname Mr. Slick Far who was the agricultural teacher.  His was a one where not only did he teach us how to raise for a profit a hog or steer; he also taught us how to get in front of people and make a speech.  It was the beginning of things that is instilled that I have used to this day.”\n\nSo you had an agricultural FFA experience while in school; were you the public speaker for the FFA?\n\n“No, Thomas Lane Evert was the public speaker; he was good for the age.  He went into the funeral business; I guess that was a good calling for him.”\n\nI think several of us have had that similar experience of FFA exposing us to public speaking; I had a very similar experience.\n\nDid you have a close knit family? You already mention your old made Aunt, your grandfather, and five brothers and sisters; did you have an extended family that you spent a lot of time with or close relationships with?\n\n“I sure did; of course as I told you, I had two old maids that all the time lived in Spearsville across the road.  There was another one who worked here in El Dorado, but was in Spearsville frequently.  So, I had their influence and love and growing up was so important to me.  On my mother’s side, since she was from Atlanta, Georgia; I didn’t have much exposure to the Battles side.  Her siblings had migrated up to other areas of Georgia and South Carolina.  My oldest brother was about 15 years older than I and by the time I had remembrance, he was already gone.  When he was of the age of 16, he was at Harding University playing football, baseball, and basketball; that was when you could play any of it.  Then during the depression, he joined the Air Force and spent time there.”\n\nWhat is your first memory of life as a baby or as a child?\n\n“I would have to say that such things as being preschool and everybody getting ready to go except me whether it was to the high school, to the brother who was three years old than I who was in grammar school, and then we had a bus that went from Spearsville to Louisiana Tech and I had a brother who rode it.  So, mine was one where there was all of the family except for the oldest two, they had already left home and were living away at the time.”                                   \n\nNow you mentioned that your mother’s family is from Atlanta; did they meet while your father was in pharmacy school?\n\n“It’s a very interesting story on how they met; dad went and lived in a boarding house and my mother’s dad died at a young age.  My grandmother on that side, my grandmother Battle, moved to Atlanta and had a boarding house.  Dad boarded at that house.  His roommate at the time was in dental school, Rex Barrow.  Rex Barrow’s house is about a block and a half around \n\n\nthe corner here and his son lives in it at the present time; Don Barrow.  So, we’ve had a very close relationship there.  I did have a short time with my maternal grandmother, but it was after she was probably my age, or close to it, and she had dementia.  Mom tried to take care of her for a period of time and I was the only child at home at the time.  So consequently, I didn’t have the value of knowing and being able to discuss old history on that side of the family.  There was an uncle, Uncle Odis Battle, who came to live with us for one summer.  Like most families, we have somebody who enjoys a little alcohol beverages and overdo it; Uncle Odis did and he came and stayed with us for a period of time.  I enjoyed visiting with him as he was in interesting person. He’d lost an arm in a cotton gen accident.”       \n\n Was your family religious?\n\n“They were very much.  We were a member of the Baptist Church, which everybody was.  You were either Baptist in Spearsville, Methodist’s did not have a congregation there, the Church of Christ, and then there was groups of Primitive Baptist or a Missionary Baptist; those were the groups that you had.”   \n\nTalking about going to school and eventually after you mentioned “not being able to go to school and everybody else left”; how early in your early grades did you start to have particular interests; you mentioned reading already?\n\n“Oh, I became interested in it.  Of course, I fortunately went through with some very good students who were competitive; boys and girls.  So consequently whenever I got into school, there was always the academic thing; although we thought we were more competitive in baseball than we were academically.”\n\nSo you played baseball?\n\n“I played baseball; Class B Louisiana Second Place in the State Championship.”\n\nWhat position did you play?\n\n“Left field as a junior and third base corner.”\n\nSo you could hit the curve ball?\n\n“I could hit the curve ball and would have loved to play ball.  I have a brother who is three years older than I that was an outstanding catcher at Louisiana Tech and played semi-pro baseball.  I would have loved to play baseball, but by the time I was like a junior in high school I knew that I wanted to try to go to medical school.  With dad being a pharmacist and the old doctor who was there; I admired his brilliant mind.  So, I thought that I could play baseball at the college level, but my problem was that if you were going to play college baseball it and medicine didn’t mix because I had labs four days a week that I didn’t get out of until 5:00.  Well practice was pretty well over with whenever the team was doing its development in February and March.” \n\n \n\nDid you have an extended group of friends; you mentioned a couple of times that you maintained close contact with people who are just down the street from you here; did you have an extended group of friend through your elementary, junior, and senior years in high school that you kept in contact with?\n\n“I did very close and the reason was that I practiced in Bernice, Louisiana for 12 ½ years.  Well, I was in the immediate area and was actually with them; all of them that settled in that area.  We also at regularly class reunions and so, I would also go back to ballgames; like basketball games.”\n\nYou already mentioned this once, “you knew early on that you wanted to go to medical school; when did that dawning occur do you remember?\n\n“Yes, it was about when I was 13-14 years old.   I had mentioned dad being in the pharmacy and my oldest sister, Jane, her husband was a physician from Mississippi, J.T. McCray.  JT and Jane had a tremendous influence on me thinking that I could do this if I could work my way through and make it into medical school and perhaps graduate.  JT and Jane spent five years in the Goza Strip as medical missionaries in 1949-1954.”\n\nThis is a really, really significant time.\n\n“A significant time and what we are still wondering was how to get into this mess.  You know, I met people who are from there who have come this country and received doctorates both in medicine, literature, language, and all that; they were great people.”\n\nDid you ever consider going into medical missionaries, preaching, or anything else with your medical degree?\n\nAs far as medicine and doing it; anytime that I thought of such, I did not feel that I could serve as a preacher or a missionary.  It never felt like there was something that I was, as far as they call it in Spearsville in the Baptist church, I wasn’t “called” to do that.  So consequently, we had enough problems here at home, which made up for it.”       \n\nAt the beginning of WWII, you were 9 years old; what do you remember about that?\n\n“It was on a Sunday afternoon and it had been probably about 2:00pm in the afternoon, we kids were out playing and we had a battery powered radio.  We came in and my folks were very depressed and as a 9 year old, that will impress any 9 year old; because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  We knew, “What is it going to be or where does it go from here?” It was such a traumatic event and they listened to those words from President Roosevelt.”\n\nDo you remember listening to that speech? \n\n\n\n“I don’t remember it as such; I cannot recall sitting by the radio and listening to it on the initial thing.  I only heard it on the radio broadcast.”\n\nAnybody from your close family who went off to war?\n\n“Ted, my brother who is the 3rd born, was enlisted in the Navy.  His thing was something that both of you would be interested in knowing; that was the beginning of sonar.  His job was on a destroyer escort looking for subs; U-boats, I think the Germans and running that sonar.”\n\nAnd he did not get blasted out of the water?\n\n“He didn’t get blasted.  He stayed in until the disbarment.” \n\nSo between ‘40-‘45, you were right in the middle of junior high and high school?\n\n“That’s correct.”\n\nDid you sense a lot of anxiety during that period of time?\n\n“No, I remember the effort.  I remember that something that this country came together and you know when they talk about the world’s greatest generation; there was also a great generation that was at home.  You remember seeing those stars for somebody who was in the service or a gold star for somebody who had gotten killed in the service.  Whenever you went to church and it didn’t matter which church you went to, there were prayers.  There were all sorts of things going around.  We all had a big garden.  You remember in WWII, there was the Victory Garden that you grew on your lawn, but this was everybody had a garden and you grew your vegetables and took care of them.  The other thing that I remember is the school year was quite different; there was no break for Thanksgiving.  I remember one year that we didn’t get a break, but a one day break only, and I don’t remember if it was Christmas or New Years.  I know what I did on that day; there was a big truck that would come to Spearsville to salvage iron and I would go anywhere there was with my mule with an old sled and pick up and carry the old iron, or anything metal, down to there to have it recycled for the war.”          \n\nDid illness, injury, accidents; those kinds of things play much of a role in your childhood?  Like Polio or Malaria.\n\n“Oh not in my childhood.  I can only tell you that I was told by my mother that one of my closest little friends died from diphtheria; but this was when it was, I don’t remember him as such.  Then when I was in high school, Alvin Henderson died of pneumonia.”  \n\n What year would that have been?\n\n“About 1946 or it might have been ‘45.  We’d be playing and we’d see the doctor going by to his house and we’d go and see him every day.”\n\n\nDid you have antibiotics; sulfa or Penicillin, at that time?\n\n“We had Sulfa and the Penicillin that you had was dark.  It was really a Penicillin spore for the description of it.”\n\nTalk a little bit about high school; about your teachers, subjects; what you liked and didn’t like.\n\n“Oh ok; I really enjoyed my math teachers.  Mr. Hollas taught the geometry and trigonometry; I enjoyed those and then we did a little bit of that, but that was as far as we got because we were all graduated after 11 years.  We didn’t get that advanced math, that came after I got to Louisiana Tech.  So in high school, I had that.  As ______, our book prominently displayed that the adam could not be split and this was two years after Hiroshima in Nochisochi; my book said it couldn’t be split.  That was the smallest thing.”  \n\n“Back in the ‘90s, I served from ’89-’99 as the Director of AHEC South Arkansas.  So after I retired from that, they decided that they would honor Susie and I with naming the library after us.  They even have a plaque over at Magnolia at the UAMS South and in that library is all of these periodicals, books, and everything that you might want; the only trouble is my phone has more information on it than what’s in the whole library.  It becomes mute; so when you’re talking about books, I can relate.  I can remember what a trauma thing it was for us to decide to join this new world of getting into computers and I fought hard never to have a cell phone.  I had a bag phone at first.”      \n\nBack in high school, did you do well?\n\n“I did well.  I graduated as the Salutatorian. “\n\nDid you enjoy school?\n\n“I enjoyed school.  We played baseball.  We weren’t any good at basketball because we didn’t have a gym and couldn’t practice.  Of course, all of our games, we played away.  We had no football team because we were too small.” \n\nAt some point you said you knew when you were 13 years old that you were going to be in medicine in a suggestive way.  At some point you had to start thinking of “Where am I going to go after high school?”  How did that happen?  You already said Harding; how did that process end up?\n\n“Ok, my brother went to Harding; I went to Louisiana Tech.  It was within driving distance of home, if I wanted to ride a bus; but I wanted to live on campus.  I worked in the dining hall, worked as a monitor; all of that, which I couldn’t have done if I had been riding the bus in; so Louisiana Tech was my answer.  I never regretted it.  I did have an attitude towards all of the engineers that I had to take all my chemistry and physics classes with, because they took out \n\n\ntheir slide ruler and I was having to do it out of a loan book.”\n\nYou didn’t have a slide ruler? \n\n“I didn’t have a slide ruler.”\n\nDid you think about getting one?\n\n“I thought about it, but then I would have to take an 18 week course to learn how to fix it and work the thing.”\n\n So during high school and during college did you work? \n\n“Oh, I worked all the way through college as I told you in the dining hall and as a monitor.  I did lab assistance in the zoology department.  Then when I got to medical school, the first year I knew I could not work.  Fortunately, my dad and mom helped me out during that period of time.  When I reached the second year, I became a blood boy.  A blood boy was taught how to do the lab tests at night and weekends.  We also had to get up at 6:00am and draw the blood.”   \n\nWhat did you Major in, undergrad?\n\n“I tried; they didn’t have a pre-med, so I ended up with 36 hours of chemistry.  Physical chemistry or what you call, but they did not have a bio-chemistry.  There was a teacher at Sininear and I thought about going over one summer and living with my brother to take the course there, because it was so outstanding for a medical student.”\n\nDid you enjoy chemistry?\n\n“I loved chemistry.”\n\nDid you ever have a thought about being a chemist?\n\n“No, chemistry as far as that is concerned at that time was one where I saw this, people who were into such things as production of sugar and how did you refine it and all.  Then there were the things in the oil industry; there was Petroleum, which was an entirely different thing.  Then mechanical didn’t appeal to me.  So, it did not appeal to me.”       \n\n By the way, did the oil Boone reach as far down as Spearsville?\n\n“Oil Boone started close to Smackover and it extended down a little bit east of Spearsville and down halfway to Farmville; but it did not affect our property.”  \n\nDid you go three years of college or four?\n\n“I went four was Pre-med.” \n\n\nDid having only 11 years in high school slow you down in college?\n\n“Let’s put it this way, I had to study real hard.  What I remember is that age 16, I was living on campus and it was summer school.  I had taken a basic chemistry course with lab, which meant four days a week, and an English course and physical education.  I spent more time studying English, even with a prep that Ms. Barron gave me and I already did; it was well worth it down on through the years.”\n\n Were there any subjects during your college years that you didn’t enjoy?\n\n“I can’t say that there was any that I didn’t.  I took some history, which was good for me; but the only trouble I had with history is that I would memorize the section that the test was going to be on and as soon as I walked out of taking the test, I didn’t remember it.  Which my brother was in physical Ed and history and he knew history and could remember it, but of course he was teaching it.”\n\nSo how about your other brothers and sisters; you said one brother went to college, how about the other three?\n\n“Well, I told you about Joe; he is the oldest who is buried in South Carolina.  Joe during the depression was, thank goodness; he got a deal from mom’s brother and went to South Carolina and my brother was the manager of a Ford Company; Land Ford Motors.  He started in that and Joe was an excellent salesperson.  He sold and had many regular subscribers.  After he got able to make a career at Land; like so many jobs with two people within a company competing for my uncle’s job, they gave it to the shop foreman and after you compete with somebody, the one that loses moves on; Joe moved on.  He stayed in the Ford business in other places even owning a distributorship of his own; so, he’s there and had two children both of whom are alive.  One lives in Columbia, South Carolina and the other lives in Atlanta, Georgia.  They do speak at times; one of them is a South Carolina graduate and the other is a Crimson graduate, they have differences. ”\n\nSo when did you start thinking about where you were going to go to medical school?\n\n“I always thought that since I was from Louisiana, I would haft to have help to do it; so, I only applied to LSU Medical School in New Orleans.  There was no medical school in Shreveport at the time; there was Tulane, but it was private and I knew that I couldn’t afford it.”   \n\nDid you owe a lot of money when you got through with college?\n\n“Surprising, if you would convert it into today’s dollars; I suppose it would equal something.  But it was $10,000.00.”\n\nSo, this would have been what year for the process of you applying for medical school?\n\n\n“1951 was whenever I was getting everything together and taking the pre-med test; I’m not sure that it was called the MCAT at that time, and then getting letters of reference from my teachers at Louisiana Tech.”\n\nDo you remember much about the process?  Were you nervous about it; that you might or might not get accepted?\n\n“Oh your always concerned whether you will get accepted or not.  Of course the thing about it was, I had some people who were such great people; I told you what admiration I had for people at WWII; I went through Louisiana Tech with people with GIs from WWII.  They were getting into medical school and they were much more mature in life than I ever thought I would be.  But, I did have a ________ and I thought, “I can do this.”  I got my grades up and thought they were at least acceptable; so in not trying to court anybody, I did work for different people who were teachers in Zoology and all, but I never did in chemistry; they never needed any help.”   \n\nWere there any crises either in high school, college, or early in medical school that turned you in one direction or another; or had potential in turning you in one direction or another?\n\n“I really during that period of time; there wasn’t a death in the family.  My mother and dad both lived to be ripe old ages; my dad was 91 and my mother to almost 93.  All of my siblings were alive.  My old maid aunts, two of them had died; so there was not a death in the family during that time.  As far as looking at the situation at the time, everybody felt that they had to serve this country in some way; there wasn’t any question about it.  There was the draft; now WWII was over, Korea hadn’t got started until ’52 when I was accepted to medical school; so, the world situation was not what it was.  The Cold War was there, but it wasn’t so pronounced in ’52 until ’56.  I don’t remember an “Ole Come to Jesus” type thing.”   \n\nPolio was a big thing in the late ‘40s and early ’50; did it have an impact on you, your friends, or your family?\n\n“At the time it dawned on me what Polio was, I was accepted to medical school and when I went to medical school.  When you walked into the area of old Charity Hospital, on one side was LSU Medical School and the other was Tulane; we had to walk in because of construction through to other areas. We went through one with infectious disease.  There were two buildings that were two to three stories high of just TB.  Then on the other side, we had a unit that was Polio victims who were paralyzed even on iron lungs.  Consequently at the time, you thought, “This is what life is like” you know, you just felt it was there; because we would all go over and visit with the guys and girls.  So many of them were the cheerleaders, good football players, or what have you; because it hit during this time of the year when they were exhausted.  The more exhausted muscles were the ones that got paralyzed.  So consequently, these young people were just seeing what it was like.  It was such a relief shortly after I got through when the vaccines came out.”\n\n\nDo you remember saving Sundays; people getting vaccinations?\n\n“We did; I worked many one of those and the drug companies were so helpful.  The Jaycees were outstanding; they would make all of the preparations and do a lot of transportation. Dr. Reeves and I, who I was practicing with, would go over and sit in the school cafeteria and we’d have us a long line of people who would come through; first it was shots and then it was the sugar cubes for polio vaccine.  You gave them as a sample at the time, so it was labor intensive.  You had Polio one, two, and three; or something or another.  But they weren’t mixed together; you took one at a time as they felt that there might be some conflict or health issue of the development of the immunity.”         \n\nSo you had been accepted to medical school; what were the first couple of years at medical school like?  What was your impression of that?\n\n“It’s the one that everybody told you about; in medical school, you knew that your first semester, you were going to meet your cadaver and you dissected it.  All the freshman students wore their brown lab coats and everybody tried to stay away from you in the elevator and everywhere else because you smelled of formaldehyde.  But, you knew that there was a day dawning and that’s going to be in the spring of your second semester.  You’d be taking biochemistry and biochemistry was the “knock you out.”  There was a story then that you were accepted to medical school; “Look to your right and look to your left; one of you is going to be gone for the first year.”  We started with 128 and ended up with 95 of us.”\n\nAfter medical school or after the first year?\n\n“After the first year; after you got passed that, everything was alright.  So, making it through the first year was a high priority.”  \n\nSo you’ve already suggested that you really enjoyed your academics while you were in school; enjoyed reading, enjoyed kind of history.  What about that did you enjoy the first year of medical school?\n\n“Oh yes, the human body and the intellectual curiosity of how this works, what’s it like, what’s on the inside.  As much as you forgot about all of that portion of the gruesomeness; all of that is a learning experience that is tremendous.” \n\n While you were in medical school, did you have that question in your mind wondering, “How are they going to make me become a physician”?\n\n“Strange question; I think the thing that I could most relate to is this; that first year you had to know that people were dropping out right and left who couldn’t do it; they realized shortly after they got to medical school “This is not for me” and so, I made it through fine.  I was just so \n\n\n\ninterested in learning; but even with all the trauma and having to prove yourself, you already knew that “If I make it through this year, I’m probably going to be ok.” “If I make it through two years, the clinicals will start and it will be easier”; that’s a different matter entirely.  Consequently getting through that first year just seemed to be “Oh thank God; I made it here. I’m alright now.” \n\nSo at what point did you start thinking during your medical school process “What do I want to do when I get through with all this?  What do I want to be when I get out?  Where am I going to go?  What am I going to do with myself when I get out?” \n\n“The thing about it was; I told you, everybody my age at the time expected to serve this country in some way; I knew that I owed it.  It put me off in the Korean conflict for a draft and that was whenever I got through with basic training.  So, I knew that I owed it and went and volunteered because I thought, “Hey, I think I’d rather be in the Air Force than in the Army.”  So, I went and volunteered in probably January of 1957.”\n\nSo after medical school?  \n\n“I volunteered and they got me all lined up; I asked them to take me as soon after the first year of training as they could, which they took me within three months.”\n\nWhat branch of service did you go into to?\n\n“Air Force; but I was blessed when I did.  When I went along, we were still on the clean health after 1900 years since the birth of Christ and so many years before that.  Women were producing babies without the help of an “MD” and all of the sudden approximately 200 years ago; we got real interested in this birthing process and the development of forceps and all that.  Well if you went to Charity Hospital in New Orleans and you were a student; if you went up into the OB lounge, you got to deliver babies.  I know I delivered 40 babies as a student; just being there. We had rotations, which we had a very programmed learning on toxemias and pregnancies that we didn’t know that much about.  But, I went and studied about how to do forceps and all that sort of things.  You know, now a day’s, it’s a lost art and nobody gets training in forceps anymore; they get trained on how to do a C-section.  So, I went through and they were accrued all of us to go to Nashville, TN because it was the way things were then.  The obstetricians, some of them were just not trained in medicine or general practice physicians who delivered babies.  The house staff delivered most of the babies, because every one of them was done under sedation.  You would never dream of doing that now a day.”   \n\nThis was in the Ari Force?\n\n“No, this was in training in Nashville.  In medical school, nobody got anything.  They didn’t get Demerol except during the rarest occasions.   You could do a pudenda block; we had learned \n\n\nthat and that was about it.  Then whenever I had gone through, a friend of mine who graduated at Tulane was a year ahead of me at Nashville at the Mid State Baptist and he went into the service and was assigned to the place where I ended up; the Air Force Base in Georgia.  I went down there and the two years I was in the service I delivered 342 babies.  It was like heaven more than a residency in OB.  Now in the Air Force, everybody met at a point of time in the morning and you took care of sick bay.  If they were not too sick, you sent them back to duty and took care of the pharmacy and everything right there.  Then you took care of whatever there was.”       \n\nObviously by this point, you’re beginning to look at obstetrics in a very longing fashion; right?\n\n“I would have, but let’s tell you that as far as c-sections went; until we got electronic fetal monitors, the c-section rate was at 3% or something like that.  So, if you knew how to do a normal delivery with forceps, or whatever it took, you were well trained as far as OB at that time.  My problem with it was that I would see the life of the people that went into OB; they’re life was that they spent their time developing a practice and they worked all hours delivering babies and then whenever they got into their mid 40s or early 50s, they quit doing OB and limit their practice to GYN.  So, they were getting some referrals and all the patients that they had through the years.  So, they were doing the GYN procedures.  When I would work with somebody, there were those people who work in surgery that are always just as happy as can be, but there are some that is not; throwing instruments and that sort of thing.  So, I said, “I don’t want to do that.”  I love the OB and loved the experience of delivering the babies as well as the interaction with the family; the whole bit.  I can’t say that I enjoyed the bad scenes; like a bad baby or something like that.  I guess part of that was that my first child was anasympallic; you didn’t know it at that time of delivery to have had a nursery all prepared and then all the sudden, there was no baby.  So, you felt a deep compassion for anybody.  You realize the joy, but you realize there was another side of it and that family sure needed support at the time.”            \n\nWhen you delivered babies in the Air Force, were they under any anesthesia, or low forceps, or anything like that?\n\n“Good question; the way that they did, we could not sedate.  The reason we did not was because we had nobody; I was the newborn nursery.  No more training than what I had had in pediatrics, so consequently we delivered our babies without heavy sedation.  The way we did was most babies were born by forceps delivery.  It sounds crazy to me now.”\n\nSpinals?\n\n“We did spinals; it was called a saddle block.  You used in the time a heavy _________, or something like that with some sort of Tetracaine or one of those.  You did a saddle block and then you could do all the manipulations that you need to and deliver the baby.  It was really a joyful thing.  Now after I came to Bernice, we were still in the same area and delivered a lot of \n\n\nbabies there, which was still similar to that.  When I came to El Dorado, there was gathering at the end of time of sedation….” \n\nGo back a little bit; you got out of the Air Force in what year?\n\n“1959.”\n\n And you went to Bernice, Louisiana for how many years?\n\n“I went to Bernice for 12 ½ years.”\n\nDid you practice by yourself?\n\n“No, I was with a good friend; William Calvin Reeves.  Calvin died about 10 years ago.”         \n\n Was he already there in practice?\n\n“He was already; there was an old Dr. Conley who had retired two years before I got there and I went in with Dr. Reeves and stayed for that period of time.”\n\nDo you remember much about your record keeping during that period of time?\n\n“It’s been a rough regression.  Whenever I got out of training and went to Delhi, Louisiana I would keep on a little index card the patient’s name and medications and what I was working on.  Then I went to Delhi and Dr. Lawrence Teer was the better of the, let’s say, taking care of the adult patients; his only record was a brown bag.  The patients brought in all of their medications in a brown bag and he would go through it and tell them how they were to take it after that; he would set aside what he wanted them to stop and give prescriptions for what he wanted them to take; over there you would understand.  As time went on, I then hired when I moved to El Dorado a transcriptionist. I dictated and developed a skill doing so-notes on every patient; that skill is one that I treasure.”      \n\nHow did you develop that; did you just hear about it or read about it?\n\n“Oh yes, in family medicine.  Remember family medicine didn’t get around until 1970 and I was of the original bunch that took the test.”\n\nYou mentioned Delhi; you went to the Air Force, to Bernice, and then?\n\n“No Delhi was first before the Air Force.”\n\nHow long did you stay at Delhi?\n\n“Two months; Dr. Teers….”\n\nOh that was while you were waiting….\n\n\n“Right; I got through with training and was waiting to go into the service.  They had me come down; they had somebody, Dr. Edwards, who was… ”       \n\nLet’s go back and get some specific dates; you graduated from medical school in what year? \n\n“June of 1956.”\n\nAnd you went to an internship at?\n\n“Mid State Baptist for one year July 1, 1956 and finished in the end of June 1957.”\n\nThen you were in the service for two years.\n\n “I went to Delhi, Louisiana and stayed until I think it was September 7th and then from there went in the service and stayed two years.”\n\nAnd you were where in the service?\n\n“Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia.”\n\nAnd did a lot of OB.\n\n“And did a lot of OB during that time.”\n\nWhen you got through there, at that point you had to make decisions on what you were going to do with your life and whether you were going to continue the rural health standpoint.  Talk about that thought process a little bit.  \n\n“As I mentioned, I knew that I wanted to deliver babies.  That opportunity occurred in Bernice, Louisiana because Calvin Reeves had a practice that had OB and a little proprietary hospital; so I went there and stayed with him as a contract for one year and then a little over a year became partner with him.  I stayed there until 1972 when I moved up here.”\n\nDid you enjoy that?\n\n“I enjoyed it, I sure did.”\n\nWhy did you move?\n\n“Well, I went through a divorce and it was a small town and it just became necessary to change locations.”\n\nSo you moved to El Dorado; the big city.  How did you go about choosing the group that you would join or were you invited to come up here?\n\n“I was not invited as such; there was such an undersupply of physicians when I came.  I knew I wanted to do OB and to do family medicine.  So, the best thing that happened to me was Frank \n\n\nThibault gave me a deal for one year on office space in the diagnostic clinic and had excellent office facility.  Then I went with the people who delivered babies; they watched me for a while and then accepted me.  So consequently, I would trade out call with some of them when I needed to get away; I had coverage always on OB.  It did put you ending up having to have a family medicine co-hart and an obstetrical co-hart; so let’s say it’s confining.”\n\nWhat year was it you moved here from Bernice?\n\n“May 1, 1972.”\n\nYou had already started thinking about family practice; I think.\n\n“I had already passed my family practice.”\n\nYou had already passed your boards; what did you think about all that when it was happening?           \n\n“When it was happening; the whole purpose of family medicine was to have people show that they are willing to continue their education.  So, I was doing such; reading journals, reading books.  But then along came relater reel where that you could have discussions, panel discussion and all this sort of thing.  Next it went to the little cartridge tapes and then from there as time went on, it was still difficult to pass everything; so in 1977, family medicine came out with what was called family practice essentials and family practice audio.  This you took a monthly thing that had a pretest over the subject.  Then, there would be audio and you would listen to it and had a post test, which they recorded for you at the national level if you subscribed to it.  I have been subscribing to that since 1977.  As time went on, you know, family medicine was the first to say, “You’ve got to be certified.”  So, I passed the boards in 1970, 1976, 1982,1988,1994,2000, and 2007.  After a period of time, you wonder, “Was there really any reason for me to take a 7-10 year extension at age 85?” So, I decided that I didn’t see any reason to continue with trying to stay on the boards.”              \n\nHow was practicing in El Dorado different than practicing in Bernice?\n\n“Up here there were some wonderful things that we hadn’t previously had in Bernice; we had an arm’s length relationship with things that you just consider so easy in El Dorado.  Candu Zane and Wayne Elliot are excellent pathologists; Bernice didn’t have that.  Plus they ran the clinical lab.  Then next was that you have x-ray to the ability of what there was at that time.  The third thing was that when I was in Bernice; whenever you ended up with a trauma case and you were the only one there, they were not any fun; up here, you have urologists, general surgeons, and all this sort of thing. It’s not comparable to being in Little Rock where you have neurosurgeons and trauma surgeons and all that.  At that time, there were no neurosurgeons, but all of the sudden practice became so much easier.  Another thing was if you had somebody who came through with a severe illness or injury in Bernice; you had to transfer them to somewhere else; \n\n\nyou couldn’t make rounds on them every day.  Here, even if they weren’t under you care, you can drop by and it’s a bonding thing with the family.”\n\nDid you practice both at Warner Brown and at Union?\n\n“I sure did.”\n\nI know at one point there was some conflict between those two hospitals.\n\n“They tried to compete with each other and all they did was destroyed each other.  Finally what they did was just combine the two to make the Medical Center of South Arkansas.  What happened was in 1964 there was one hospital as such in El Dorado.  Dr. Fincher Senior, the Bear had a hospital, over on Oak Street; but it was mainly one that was run by the sisters.  All of the sudden women’s health became an important thing and the sisters under their religious beliefs would not allow tubal ligations to be done.  This was the driving force that people in Union County got up the claim to build the union Medical Center and whenever they did, all the obstetrics moved over there.  Then Warner Brown was doing an excellent job and had just built a six story building for patient care and was really top of the art on that, but all of the sudden all of the children and all the OB were going over to Union Medical Center.  So all of the sudden, Medicare kicked in and Warner Brown was getting the cut rate thing with Medicare; because so many of their patients were of that generation and there were people who were die hard Warner Brown.  But the pay was not as good in the elderly group as it was in the younger group; it made it worse and worse.  Warner Brown tried to open back up obstetrics and after some several tries just gave it up.  Then, they combined the two hospitals into one.”\n\nWas that a good thing when they did?\n\n“It was; if they hadn’t both hospitals would be gone.”\n\nWhat about the medical society as a whole during that time frame; was there congeniality among the medical staff?                                \n\n“Absolutely; sure was.”\n\nIs it any different now than it was then?\n\n“II’s different now.  In that period of time when you had the medical society meeting, everybody turned up; all the practicing physicians.  We don’t even have one organized.” \n\nHow many physicians were here when you came to El Dorado?\n\n“I think if I just take a big stab at it; approximately 30.”\n\nHow many are here now?\n\n\n“I really don’t know.  A problem comes when this; this hospital was bought out quite a few years ago for a profit and so consequently there is, well you got those disciplines that are now very important to the hospital.  Robert Tommy and ______ Mann are two locals, but the heart program operated by the hospital are completely separate.  We got a pediatrician who is with the hospital.  The internists that are here now are faded out and now there are hospitalists to take care of patients in the hospital; they are employees but not indirectly of the hospital.”\n\nAre there any private practice internists left?\n\n“There was with Scott Hardin, who just retired.  So many of our graduates practice, but they are at an arm’s distance from the hospital.”\n\nDo you mean they are in clinics? \n\n“Well, I’ll just give you one; South Arkansas Medical Associates is a large group out here on Timber Lane and nobody from there goes to the hospital.  They have a “geriatric program” sponsored by the hospital, but it changes regularly in the physicians and the people there.  The concept was great and has a huge building.  Dr. Lipschitz came down and organized it and did a wonderful job.  Then all of the sudden, he was gone and everything just….”\n\nLet’s back up just a little bit.  You came from Bernice to El Dorado and you’re doing OB.  You got an, I assume, pre-active practice and enjoying yourself.  At some point, things started to change; these processes that you’re talking about, the politics of the hospitals and changes.  How did that have an impact on you and what year was that?\n\n“I came in ’72 and everything was rather quiet.  Then, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences under Governor Bumpers came up and tore down the ivory tower walls; let’s put it that way.  With the guidance of the old pediatrician, Roger Boast, they developed AHEC.  Well at the beginning, there was not a residency in all of the AHECs; there wasn’t one in El Dorado.  Jake Ellis was one of the ones pushing towards getting this in El Dorado, but he did not take the job.  Jim Wheatman took the job as AHEC Director and didn’t like it; so, Jake Ellis took it.  During the time there was still no residency and they were having student rotations into El Dorado.  I volunteered to take them into my office; both advanced nurses as well as medical students.  They would come and have a place to stay, eat at the hospital, and would stay the time of a month.  I enjoyed doing that and in 1980 the first residents were accepted to El Dorado.”\n\nThe Med Center was already started; was North West Arkansas already started?              \n\n“Already done and had a residency; so did Pine Bluff and some of the others.  There were only three, I think, I believe Fort Smith.  So as they came in and we had our first initial group of residency come in; I was “sort of a volunteer faculty” and the residents would come to my office and spend their time because they told Joe, “We can learn more with people than we can in our own office.”  So they were coming over and working with me in the office.  As time went on in \n\n\n’82, Jake tricked me and took me to lunch and said, “Pete, I know how you enjoy teaching; the residents are asking for you to someway become a faculty person.”  He already had a residency director, Berrylee Moore.  So, I said, “Well, let me think on it” and I did.  I thought it was going to cause a divorce, but Susie kept putting up with me; thank God.  What I did was slow my practice up to almost no family medicine and just doing OB.  So, I’d go see my patients in the morning and staff the residents in the afternoon.  Then a few years later, I had already gone through the time; Berrylee had a concept of the practice of medicine that was wonderful for his day, his thing was that he thought in his position as residency director it was to train Christian physicians; I thought, “Oh Lord, we’ve got Hindus and everything else in the world into the residency.”  So, he quit and went into his own private practice.  I managed to run the residency for a couple of years and recruited Mark Dixon who was a life saver to me.  He started to work with me in the residency and became the residency directorship and I was the AHEC Director.  I stayed in that position until ’99.”\n\nDid you enjoy that?\n\n“I enjoyed that; the only part I did not like was that whenever you are in an academic environment, there will be conflicts with people who are able to practice and live on “what they kill” as you call it.  It conflicted with what I was trying to do as far as establishing a residency.  You know, you have those conflicts that occur; I’m not going to train my competitive part.”             \n\nWas there ever any conflict between Louisiana trained physicians and UAMS trained physicians?\n\n“No.”\n\nEveryone was collegial?\n\n“There was no problem there.”\n\nAre there DOs here?\n\n“Oh yes, we’ve had Dos.  In fact, we have one in the residency over at UAMS South at Magnolia at the present time.  She’s in her second year.”\n\n Do you have any idea how the osteopathic school in Fort Smith and Jonesboro will affect rural medicine in this part of the country?\n\n“Beneficially, I do believe.  The reason is that as far as my experience with those who are going through osteopathic are just as well trained for family medicine as anybody else.  So consequently, they do quite well going through our programs.  They do just as well on our national testing in medicine and you know, the yearly test compared both within your program within your state and with national just like you do with any other.”\n\n\nDo you see any conflict or what do you see as the role of an APN and family doctors coming out of residencies?  Is there any conflict there that you see?\n\n“Not at all; I have to tell you that I got caught in the middle of that back in the ‘90s.  The reason was because I was very much believing that we had to have practitioners in South Arkansas and we weren’t going to get people who went to medical school to come back.  It had to have some extended way.  My thought was that the advance nurse practitioner would be the answer.  So, I was very much vocal in prescriptive power for the nurse practitioners.  You know, it was going to be limited and steadied to what it was, but I was very much supportive of it.  Some of the people who were practicing medicine said, “No; no, they are going to go out and practice on their own and I’m against that. I want somebody who has to work under me. I would much rather have a physician’s assistant than to have a nurse practitioner.”  So, there is that conflict that comes up between academic and people who go out and practice.  So, I work with three advanced nurse practitioners in Magnolia those two days I go and there are tremendous additions in the number of patients that you can see.  We have a rural training track over there with three residents per year.  Imagine in a medical underserved South Arkansas area, how many under cared patients there are and I have no problem with working with them.  Are they as skilled as somebody who comes out of medical school; by no way, but they come in and are working to help us.  The first thing is that I’m sitting back there in our work area and anything that they have that’s a puzzle to them, they’re asking for help.”        \n\nSince the ‘60s, medicine has changed; what’s available and all the new things.  Talk a little bit about how that has changed the approach to patients and the approach to medicine.\n\n“That is a very good question and I will tell you that the only reason that I think I can survive at this age and the teaching part of it is that I have a PharmD with me.” \n\nWho works with you?\n\n“Well, all of us at Magnolia.  There has always been a PharmD associated with the residents.  So consequently, we all get trained by the things as well as she has at least two times a month of sitting down with the residents and talking about prescription problems.  So, yes; it is a challenge to stay current, but when will be the day that we will probably be where we will make diagnosis and there will be a PharmD who writes the prescriptions with consultation to check for drug interactions and all that sort of thing as the patient is visiting at the office.”  \n\nHow about the use of narcotics from the time you started until now?\n\n“No then you’re going to get me like Calvin Reeves that time when he started preaching.  I detest what happened to the medical profession in this country with Oxycodone and Hydrocodone. We were so, and I didn’t participate because I didn’t believe in it, by treating \n\n\n\nchronic pain with these items because I could see no difference in using opiates, Morphine, or what have you.  So consequently, I have been very discouraged and there are so many people who have chronic pain who need a long-acting something or another, but it is not these medicines.  All we’ve done is addicted a whole generation to pain medicines.  When I started, we did have Demerol and we did have Morphine; both of these which were used extensively and in different areas.  I think that if you looked at it, Demerol is more powerful in OB than the Morphine.  It just seemed to be easier.”\n\nWhat about Talwin; it was a big product for a long time.\n\n“Talwin was started, but it wasn’t felt a favorite.   Every once in a while, you would understand it, somebody who was addicted of opium in some form would go and a resident would go in a give Talwin and whenever they did it counteracted all the Morphine and things went south quick.  So, trying to use these anti-Morphines presented problems that got away from you and that was a terrible effect.   One time whenever the drug companies sold us on using Talwin as a nasal spray for headaches, that went south real quick.”               \n\nWhat are some of the technology things that really changed what you could do as a physician in terms of having an impact?\n\n“As far as improving things; I would like to also give the things that I think are a disaster too.  Let’s start with the ones that made a tremendous difference; In 1976, Susie and I drove up to Memphis, Tennessee with  Fincher Jr and his wife Betty to see a sonogram.  The radiologist had a machine that on an x-ray film, did an echo that was one shot, it wasn’t in real time and that was it; I thought that that was wonderful.  We came home and Dr. George Burton, a radiologist, bought a little Doppler and he decided that he didn’t need it anymore, so I bought it from him.  What I did was use it to transfer from one room to the other to listen to the babies heart beat; all of the patients loved it because you were using ultrasound.  Then came along the real-time ultrasound that just so completely changed obstetrics to where we could tell abnormalities in the baby, you could see how much fluid there was, where the placenta was located which we guessed at before, what position the baby was in; all these sort of things.  So, ultrasonomically was an advancement that was tremendous.”\n\nDo you remember the first time you ordered and saw the results of a CT scan or MRI scan?\n\n“Oh yes; even back to a PET Scan.  Each one of them was just wonders.  The only thing was that most of the times on mine, I wait for the radiologist to make the reading of the CT; you know, you got to be able to focus the different layers out and with the MRI also.  So, I would rely on their reading of those.”   \n\nSo you were here in ’72; did you have a CT scan in either of the hospital?  Do you remember when the first one came in?\n\n\n“I’m not real sure; I’m guessing that it would be, I don’t know.  I was thinking maybe ’80?”\n\n I think it was a little bit before then and the only reason I say that is because in 1977, I was practicing in Smackover and a kid got hit in the eye with a baseball as a short stop.   He started throwing up two hours later and I sent him to Little Rock where they did a CT-scan back in ’76 or ’77 at St. Vincent’s and he had a big hematoma on his left eye.\n\n“Is that right?”\n\nOne time it was said that Arkansas had more CT-scanners than the whole City of London and in order to get a CT-scan, when I was a resident, you had to get a neurology consultation; that’s what I remember.\n\n“Right.”\n\n We didn’t use it for abdomen or that sort of thing; it was for heads.\n\nTalk a little bit about your family; your wife and her full name as well as your children and grandchildren.\n\n“Well now, let’s understand whenever you comment on this; Susie told me a long time ago that when her mom and dad married they decided that they would have a perfect child and when they did, they quit.”\n\nSusie, what is your full name?\n\n“Suzanne Marie Carrol; Copeland, I was a Copeland for years.”\n\nWhere were you born and raised?\n\n“In Bernice, Louisiana.”\n\nHow many children do you have?\n\n“I had a child that I brought into our marriage and she had a daughter; then together we had a son.  So, we have three children.”\n\nTalk a little bit about your children; their names, how old are they, and what kind of work do they do?    \n\n“Our daughter is an RN in Little Rock and our son is a judge here, Robin Carrol, and Pete’s son, Jeff, is…”\n\n“Jeff inherited a certain taste from my uncle; he has an alcohol problem.  We love him and have done everything that we could, but you know unsuccessful.”\n\n         \n\nHow many grandchildren do you have?\n\n“Four.”\n\nDo they live close?\n\n“Yes; two of them do.”Pete Carrol Jr. is a senior this year and Jessica is in the 9th grade.  Morgan lives in Austin, Texas and Austin lives in Shreveport.”\n\nSo you are a nurse?\n\n“No.”  \n\nYou were an Office Manager?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nHow long did you do that?\n\n“Twenty years.” \n\nYou served as his office manager?\n\n“Yes; all that 20 years.”\n\nWhen did you retire from that particular job?\n\n“2009.”\n\nAnd what do you do with your time now?\n\n“Oh, I am the baby of 15 children.  I had 10 brothers and 4 sisters; there are three of us left and they live in Bernice and Humber, Louisiana.  I spend a lot of time there and take care of grandkids and try to take care of him.”   \n\nAs the wife and family of a busy physician, especially someone who does OB, you take the back burner a lot of times; that;’ just the nature of it.  So, how did y’all adapt to it?\n\n“I think the kids did fairly well; I had a hard time adjusting.  Finally I decided that I would, I mean everybody always wanted him and everywhere we went it was “how wonderful he was and he was so gracious and such a wonderful man,” and is, but I finally had to decide \n\n\nthat this was what he was put here on earth for and it was what we would do.”  \n\nWe had a lady who we were talking about this same subject and she said, “My husband is a public utility.”  I thought that was a wonderful response to the question and I think that that is true a lot of times.\n\nDid you ever feel any remorse about being amiss?\n\n“You mean the life that I lived?”\n\nYeah, being taken away from your family and your life?\n\n“Well you always whenever you come in, and I go way back yonder in my first beginning thinking of medicine, you were a public utility as a physician no matter where you saw them; whether it was Dr. Calvin, Dr. Reeves; they worked all the time.  I think everybody did.  In fact, Calvin Reeves and I went 12 ½ years with every other night and every other weekend on call; I thought everybody did that.  So, when I moved up here and I could get off sometimes Saturday at noon until Monday morning, I thought that was just doing real good.  I do look back at the situation of what you are talking about; the effect on the children.  There is a strange thing that you run into with these things; however you put a physician, it has some barring in the community.  That is not extended to your children.  If I was with my children, they were treated nicely; but when I wasn’t with them, they suffered from reverse discrimination.  You know, it’s like Robin, who is my son, somebody told him one day; both Robin and little Pete are good golfers or were in their time, Petes playing at state level now.  Robin had to tell somebody; they said, “Boy, you’re lucky your dad can play.” and he said, “My dad has never hit a single putt, driver, or nine; I did all that” and I thought it was so appropriate the way that he answered.  I gave the opportunity and gave the love of the game, but that was about it.  So, there is the reverse discrimination that your children live through.  But I guess whenever you come in some people think you don’t have to do anything because your dad is a doctor, or this, or whatever.”\n\nWhat kind of interest did you have outside of medicine? \n\n“We played a lot of tennis and reading.”\n\nI knew he used to be a big tennis player.\n\n“Yes, we both did.”        \n\nNow do you still play tennis?\n\n“I can’t anymore; my knees gave away.” \n\n So when you were the AHEC director from ‘89-99; what happened in ’99?\n\n“I got to be 67 years old and I said, “In this situation, I have done all that I feel I need to do and it’s time for me to turn over the reins to somebody else”.  So, I went over and did my own OB practice.  Can you imagine all of the sudden I only had to swap out with somebody doing OB, which I was doing with the two obstetricians who were in town?  I was on call every third weekend and then finally every fourth weekend.”\n\nDid you continue working in the residency some?\n\n“After I quit and they got it done; they asked me to staff one day a week, which I was glad to do.  So, I did that and the other thing was that they didn’t have anybody to take call at night; so, I did that until 2007.”\n\nI feel like this is a silly question; but I’m going to ask it anyway.  Did you ever think about retiring?  Have you ever thought about retiring? \n\n“He’s had three retirement parties.”\n\n“They try to give me another one all the time.”\n\nWhat triggers your impulse to retire; even though you haven’t succeeded yet?\n\n“My thing is at the present time; when you consider all of the things that I do and what I enjoy now, I’m not teaching; I’m still learning.  I value that to be able to do so.  Starting in 2007, I had to have corneal transplants and my vision has decreased a bit; but I’m just glad I got it.  But just think, l can go over there and get in my family practice essentials and put it on that big screen.  I can put that up on any size I want and sit there and read it; so I still am in the learning mode, which is the thing that makes me want to do it.”        \n\nDo you still do OB?\n\n“No, I will do office whenever the lady doctor, who I work with in Magnolia, is gone; so I will help them.” \n\nLet’s talk about the gratifications from practicing medicine; the idea of what you have gotten out of this during your life?\n\n“To begin with; you know up until I graduated from high school and truly part of the way into that, I never thought of financial success because the doctors I knew were county doctors and stuff like that; they just lived a normal life.  I was always in awe of how their thought processes were.  I will tell you that at the tender age of 13 or 14, when I went and told my parents that I wanted to, if I could, go to medical school; my mother cried, not of joy. She knew doctors who had drug problems.  She knew that how you looked at life, because you saw the innermost workings of people and what you had to be a portion of.  What I’m saying is that the innermost thoughts of anybody; you know, you’re stuck there.  Way before we had a HIPPA law, we believed in the autonomy of the patient; that made it the way that it was.  The other part was; \n\n\nyes, I knew that I would be accepted by the community wherever I was personally.  I did not know the thing about reverse prejudices with your children; I have to say that. The greatest thing that I could ever imagine was that what I have learned, like you mentioned a while ago, the progress of medicine as far as antibiotics and treatable diseases; imagine that I never dreamed until I finished medical school that Polio would be a thing of the past in this country.  There was still the situation of horrible outcomes of German measles and nobody would carry the baby with the disease.  So, just all of these things and to have been there.  But the funny thing is, here it’s taking me 61 years to live, since graduation from medical school, and I know that that knowledge turns over quicker than every seven years like it used to.  To me with today’s technologies and all that, I think it’s down to much shorter.  I don’t even think it’s down to three years now.”\n\n So, are you thinking of retiring again?\n\n“As long as my health holds were it is; I’m fine.  The things that do me where I can; I hope my vision holds out for commuting or for anything.  I wouldn’t put anybody though that; there would be people who live in El Dorado who would come by and pick me up and drive me over two days a week, but I don’t think that I want to do that.  But most days; if I’m not working those two days, I’m at the gym working out for an hour.  I’m walking 45 minutes and doing a little upper body.  The other thing that I have is that years ago one of the old maid aunts that lived across the road from me taught me to play piano.  Consequently, that has been my comfort; when the world is going wrong or going good, there is always a song that I know that I can go in and play.  Now I will tell you this; when the kids were growing up and Susie would drive up with the kids, if I was playing, “As Woe is my soul” she came on in, but if I was playing “Bridge Over Trouble Water” she just loaded the kids back up and took off.”        \n\nDid you encourage your children to go into medicine? \n\n“I never encouraged my children, but I would tell them that you can.  Of course, the son that went into law, he was at a different tune.  Jeff had the money for an education when he finished high school, but he just chose not to do.  He’s happy that way, so I have to accept it.”\n\nYou made a comment when we first started, and I was listening, about the world going south on us and things not going as good as they should be.  How do you think it has and why do you think it has?\n\n“When I said that, I was talking about such things as the epidemic of drugs that we are suffering for.  Where it hurts me; I worked in the VA Clinic for about two years here and saw what was happening; how the veterans were treated and how they were respected.  Now a days, so many of them come back with drug problems and can you imagine me as a caring person, being a physician, and a veteran comes in and he throws a fit, which can happen.  If he becomes a \n\n\ndanger to himself or somebody else, we don’t have somebody like at the VA Clinic in Little Rock to put him in a straight jacket, we end up calling the police.  How much trauma have we done to that veteran? We have to get better than what we are doing for our veterans; that’s just one of the things that I would say.”\n\nIs there a psychiatric center her in El Dorado?\n\n“Well we have South Arkansas Regional Health Center and in Magnolia there is Methodist and _________.  The South Arkansas Regional Health Center has no psychiatrist, they have two graduates from our program who goes by and prescribes anti-psychotics for them.”\n\nBut no mental health at all?\n\n“There is a psychiatrist lady, who I admire greatly, but she works at the geriatric unit over at….”\n\nSo for elderly people?\n\n“Right.”\n\nIs there anything unique about Union County; those areas where you practiced, where you said, “This is something that most other people don’t see and I got an opportunity to see some of this.”  \n\n“From a medical standpoint?”\n\nYeah or from life; mainly from a medical standpoint.\n\n“I think one of the most amazing things in Bernice is that it only became a town a little over 100 years ago.  Shiloh was a town three miles towards Farmover, but they put a railroad which is gone now and it created Bernice; they lined it off and the whole bit.  Now then, there are still people and they are keeping that community going.  You got to wish them well and the way that they have kept going is just amazing to me; a great bunch of folks.  Of course, I’m prejudice because my in-laws lived there. ”   \n\nWould you do it again and have you enjoyed what you did as a chosen life profession? \n\n“I enjoyed every bit of it and I consider myself a blessed man. I enjoyed every bit of it very much so. ”\n\nDo you have anything you want to comment on?  \n\n“100 years ago, my dad was in pharmacy school and he went downtown in Atlanta.  There was a public painter there to teach.  Dad always felt that the black person, the only way for them was education. The point being to me whether it be for whatever reason whether it took the \n\n\n\ndeath of JFK and I don’t know not on that same basis, but because of his death the Civil Right Act of 1964 was done.  The education thing which was avoided when I was growing up and in medical school was equal, but separate; well we all know what Little Rock went through during the ‘50s and then finally before anything else was intergraded, I was in Bernice and had just come back out of the service and I was there when all of the sudden the wall between the waiting rooms was torn down and intergraded the hospital.  You know as a young man, I didn’t know what to think it was going to be like because hate letters went out into every trial and all of that.  I thought, “What is going to come out of this that is going to make some sense?”   Today with looking around and seeing the addition of Native Americans and African Americans into a full entity of a medical profession, I am just delighted to see it.  I think it has made a tremendous progress and hopefully after the _________fiasco in ’34, we can finally get where we can deliver the healthcare, health preservation, to a portion of our population, which is 40+% of people here in South Arkansas.”    \n\n “You asked me something else a while ago that I didn’t finish my comment on.  My father was born in Spearsville and as he grew up there was a friend of his, Charlie Murphy Sr.  Charlie Murphy formed what became Murphy Oil Company and when I moved here in ’72, Susie and I became friends with a lot of those descendents from the Murphy family.  What was amazing to me was that they could live anywhere they wanted to, but they lived here in El Dorado.  I think that that has been a tremendous addition to us and I appreciate the whole family.”     \n\nI want you to pretend we’re not here; you’re talking to your great, great, great grandchildren.  Talking to people who have only known you as a picture on the wall; what do you have to say to them? \n\n“In this situation, I cannot foretell what is going to happen.  I do feel like in every place and mankind, we need to preserve the situation of a belief in an internal being who is kind and gives us the opportunities, but he doesn’t push us.  So we have to aggressively take advantage of the opportunities.  So in four generations from now, may there be a quicker way of healing folks of preserving their capabilities and live a life that is enjoyable.”         \n\nThank you, Dr. Carrol; that was a great interview.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160195/file/291682#t=0.0,7182.96746"}]}]}]}