{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/9882j6b559/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Mike Young"]},"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":["2016-09-13 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video file"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["family medicine","family physician","American Academy of Family Physicians"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Mike Young, 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/000/291/722/small/MikeYoungM.D.DVD.mp4_1758131799.jpg?1758131803","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Mike_Young_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":4128.5244,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/722/small/MikeYoungM.D.DVD.mp4_1758131799.jpg?1758131803","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/291/722/original/Mike_Young_M.D._DVD.mp4?1758131775","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4128.5244,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/transcript/84364","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Mike Young Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/transcript/84364/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Mike Young    \n\nGood day, this is Sam Taggart and it is 9/13/16.  We are in the office of Dr. Mike Young of Prescott, Arkansas.  We will be interviewing him for Historical Record today.  Good day, Sir; thank you for inviting us into your office.  Let’s start from the very first:  \n\nWhere, when, and what were the circumstances of your birth. \n\n“I was born on April 2, 1948 at Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Dad was in college and mom was a nurse.  I think it was still City Hospital down town.”\n\nDo you have any idea who delivered you?\n\n“Last name was Butt and when I was a student at the University, he was the campus doctor; the first name I don’t remember.”    \n\nTalk to us a little bit about the history of your family; where your mom and dad were from and what are their names.\n\n“Mom’s name was Fay Imogene Hughes and lives there at Square Rock, Arkansas; north of Waldron and south of Paxlie.  She is a twin and went to nursing school there at Paris, Texas back when they had a school there.  Dad is dead and was from Hon. Hon is a little dot on the road between Waldron and Haden, Oklahoma; not much exists anymore.  They met as children and went through high school together.  WWII broke up that relationship for a while, but he came back and she had finished a nursing degree.  They got married and he finished his education at the University.”\n\nWhat did he do?\n\n“He worked at an extension agency.  He was a county agent.  He took his rural agricultural background and went to college and became a county agent.” \n\nDid you have a big extended family?\n\n“No, I don’t. I have a sister who is a nurse in Georgia.”\n\nHow old is she?\n\n“She just joined the Medicare population; September 3rd she turned 65.”     \n\nSo you lived your first few years of your life as a child…\n\n“I can give you that I was born in Fayetteville in ’48 and dad graduated that year.  His first duty station was Nashville and we lived there up to three years.  My sister was born in Nashville’s hospital.  We then moved to Murfreesboro and he was a county agent there.  We moved to \n\n\nRussellville, which is where I went to high school.  I went to Fayetteville to go to college and mom, dad, and my sister went to Harrison.  They subsequently moved to Bentonville, dad retired and then deceased; so, mom moved back to the house she grew up in in Square Rock.”\n\nAnd still lives there; three miles north of Waldron. \n\n“And three miles south of Paxile.  So, I have country roots.”        \n\nSo where did you spend most of your young childhood before school?  Where did live growing up?\n\n“I grew up on the banks of the creek there at my grandparents.  Her mom and dad; my granny Chloe and George Vander, my grandpa.”\n\nSo in rural Arkansas.\n\n“Yes, sir.”  \n\nTalk a little bit about the history of your family in terms of where they came from.\n\n“Mom’s side of the family, if you go back far enough, they came from Wales just after the American Revolution and settled in middle Tennessee; Johnson, Tennessee between Memphis and Nashville, somewhere in the middle of Tennessee.   War between the states, they got displaced to Arkansas.  Dad’s family; my grandfather, Clarence, my dad’s dad; everybody else was leaving Arkansas going into the Indian nation and he was headed east.  We’re not real sure why, but we think he was leaving something and coming back to Arkansas; that’s as far back as the Young side can go.”\n\nAnd you said you did or didn’t have an extended family?\n\n“I have a sister.”\n\nNo, I mean aunts and uncles, or cousins.\n\n“Mother had her twin sister and they had a brother who died with Polio in the early ‘50s.  Dad had a sister and she had two boys; so I have those two cousins and my aunt had three kids; so I have those three cousins; it’s not very big.”           \n\nWhat are your first memories of childhood?\n\n“Fishing with my dad and eating oysters out of a can.  He loved canned oysters; he loved raw oysters, but it’s hard to get fresh oysters in Murfreesboro, Arkansas.”\n\nAs I remember, the canned oysters were a little yellow weren’t they?\n\n“Well, it beat some things.”\n\n\nHow old were you when you went fishing?\n\n“As early as three.”\n\nOn the little Missouri?\n\n“No; well, yeah on the little Missouri, but then it was called Narrows Lake.  When we moved from Nashville to Murfreesboro, they had just finished the dam, just closed the locks, and the lake was just filling up.  So, when you lived at Murfreesboro it was only like two miles to the dam.  We spent a lot of time fishing on what’s now Greason, but back then was Narrows.”\n\nSo it was built in the ‘50s?\n\n“That’s when I was there.”\n\nSo where did you go to elementary school?\n\n“I started out in Murfreesboro and then Russellville.  We moved to Russellville when I started second grade through high school.”\n\nDo you remember anything about your teachers in school?\n\n“Who Ms. Wear in third grade and Ms. Teeter who always made us take a nap when we didn’t want to and now you’d kill for one?”\n\nIs she Stanly Teeter’s wife?\n\n“No, she was maybe a cousin and never married to the best of my knowledge.  I saw her obituary a couple of years ago, but I don’t think she ever married.  She and Stanley were kin somehow and then the Teeter brothers from Prescott were kin; but I don’t know the exact relationship.”   \n\nWere any of those teachers that you just brought up very quickly; did they have a significant impact on you; on what you did or how you did it?     \n\n“My first grade teacher taught me that you shouldn’t bring a pocket knife to class.”\n\nWho was that?\n\n“It was over in Murfreesboro…it will come to me.”\n\nSo your father was in the county extension service; that is a pretty nicely held position in the community to look up to.  Did you think of yourself as being poor, middle class, or rich?\n\n“Oh no, not rich; dad said we were always middle class.  Poor was not on my…no.”    \n\nWhat kind of interests did you have in school?\n\n\n“Piddling; I like to build things.”  \n\nWere you a puzzle worker?\n\n“Like jigsaw?  A bazillion; I have since graduated to crossword.  You remember, I grew up in the days that we did not have television.  I remember going and getting our first television and it had both color; black and white.”\n\nDo you remember some of the shows that you watched?    \n\n“Mrs. Francis’ ding dong school.”\n\nI remember that.\n\n“On a good day when you got out there and turned that antenna just right, you could pick up a little bit of the Mickey Mouse Club.  But, you had to get the weather just right.”\n\nWas that coming from Little Rock?\n\n“No, that was from Murfreesboro; you could get into Pine Bluff tower.  We didn’t have video games.  We had shovels, dirt piles, and pretend stuff.”\n\nWas your family religious?\n\n“Southern Baptist; I have to tell people today that I had a drug problem growing up because every Sunday morning I was drugged to church.  What’s interesting was when we were at grandma’s house, it was a Methodist Church; there still is a little Methodist Church right there across the road.  Dad was Southern Baptist and mother was raised Methodist.  They got married and had to make a decision because they were not going to have a split house.  So, she became Southern Baptist and me and my sister were raised Southern.”\n\nSo you like working puzzles and you liked “piddling” as you said; did you do well in school?\n\n“My mother brought my high school report cards to our house once and left them laying out for my children to see.  I did not get through high school on my English grade.  I got through high school on my math and science grades.”\n\nDo you think it was math and science that pushed you towards medicine?\n\n“No, I think it was Burl Williams and Doug Lowery; those are my two doctors growing up.  They were my…..I’ll tell you the story; this is my story and I get to tell it.  At the end of the 8th grade in Russellville High School when you started the 9th grade (that’s when high school started in the 9th) we had a guidance counselor who took each one of us, which there wasn’t many at that time, and sat us down and said “Where do you want to be in 4-5 years?” So, I told her.  I said, “I want to be in college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.  I want to be in pre-med \n\n\nbecause when I get through with all of that, I want to go to med school and I want to be like Burl Williams and Doug Lowery.  I want to be a small town country doctor.”  I had to write that down and I’d give a dollar bill if I had that piece of paper, but it’s gone forever.  So, she said, “Well, if that’s what you want to be when you grow up, than this is what you need to take for the next four years at Russellville High School.”  So, she outlined my four years of education with heavy on the math and science; the English history that you had to graduate and get accepted to a state supported school; so between her pushing and me wanting; that’s what I got.”\n\nSo it’s sufficed to say that didn’t do as well in English as you did in math and science. \n\n“No, I’d admit that.”\n\nBut you made passable grades.\n\n“Oh I didn’t flag the classes, no; but they were quite as good as they could have been.”\n\nWhat about teachers; were there teachers in your high school or junior high school that had an impact on you or pushing you in one direction or another?  Not just teachers; business men, or anyone out in the community.  You already said two physicians in the Russellville area had an impact on you. \n\n “To go into medicine?”\n\nNo, who just had an impact on you.\n\n“Mr. Kasserio; my math teacher, he was Italian and Mr. Price.”\n\nTalk about Mr. Kasserio; how did he have an impact on your life?\n\n“To get an education.”\n\nWas it his teaching methods?\n\n“Part of it was, because I can remember taking geometry and you had to do these proofs; you do all this stuff and you’re supposed to get down to the bottom and it is supposed to be....”no that isn’t right”.  He’d give us stuff that was wrong that you couldn’t prove, because it was wrong.  Your answer had to be “this is wrong; this can’t be proven” which was the right answer, but it was an insolvable problem…an education.”\n\nIt’s a little bit like practicing medicine.\n\n“Yeah.  You have to realize that this is an insolvable problem.”    \n\nDid you have an extended group of friends while you were in junior high and high school?\n\n\n\n“No, there were probably four of us that bummed around together and we’ll see how many of them show up the weekend of the 23rd because that is our 50th reunion.”\n\nHave you kept up with them?\n\n“I kept up with one.  The other two just kind of fell off the face of the earth; I really don’t know.”\n\nWere you engaged in sports in school?\n\n“No, I was a band patsy.”\n\nWhat did you play?\n\n“Trombone.”\n\nDid you enjoy it?\n\n“I loved it.”\n\nDo you still play the Trombone?\n\n“No; I reached a point in my life where I needed money more than I needed a horn and the kind that I sold it to needed a horn more than he needed $75.00, so we reached an agreement.”\n\nDid you play all through high school?\n\n“Seven years; I didn’t play just through high school, we could start in 6th grade at Russellville.  We had a pre-junior high band, HL Shepard.”\n\nDid you have a car?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhen did you get your first car?\n\n“When I married my first wife.”\n\nReally; how old were you when you married your first wife?\n\n“21.”\n\nWhat kind of car did you get?\n\n“A red opal cadet with a redheaded wife.  I had access; we had a 1953 blue dodge pickup that I could use and drive to and from school that dad used and we went hunting in and then we also had a family car and I had access, but I did not have “my car.”\n\nDo you read music?\n\n\n“Yes.”\n\nDo you enjoy listening to music?\n\n“Yes; I’m one of the few people who still pick up a hymnal.  They have the drop down screen and they got the words, but they don’t have the notes and they don’t have the key; so, I still pick up the hymnal.”\n\nDo you play any other instruments?\n\n“No; other than the radio.”\n\nDid you ever record any of your memories of your childhood; write them down?\n\n“No.”\n\nHave you ever had the impulse to do that?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhen did you graduate from high school?\n\n“1966.”\n\nSo, right in the middle of Vietnam.\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWere you aware of Vietnam at that time? \n\n‘Yes.”\n\nTalk about that a little bit.\n\n“So, you had to register for the draft and got your student deferment, which was very precious.  You worked real hard to keep your grades up, so that you could keep it; because if you looked at the 4th floor of Yoakum Hall at the beginning of the fall term and at the end of the spring term, it went from full to I think 8.  If you didn’t make the grades; my best friend through high school, Shelby Heflin didn’t make his grades and got drafted.  He did not go to Vietnam, he went to Germany just luck of the drawl.  Charlie Austin, a classmate, went to Vietnam and part of him came back and part of him didn’t; head trauma.  Three classmates died in Vietnam; so, yeah.”\n\nWere you involved in any social activities, clubs, or groups, either in high school or in college?\n\n“Other than band, there wasn’t much in Russellville that wasn’t illegal.  Dad had a rule, “Since, I’m the county agent, you cannot participate in 4-H.”\n\n\nReally; that’s interesting, I wouldn’t have thought of that.  \n\n‘I’m not going to have them look at you and go “well your dad let you do that” is what he said.  I got to go; I went on a ton of 4-H field trips just as long as I tagged along with him.  I was not allowed to participate because he didn’t want folks thinking I had an unfair advantage.”\n\nWere you in FFA?\n\n“No.”\n\n So, just mainly band?\n\n“In high school.”\n\nBut, that’s what you enjoyed.\n\n“I did.”\n\nSo at what point; you’ve already said that there was a time in the 9th grade where you looked around and said, “I’m going to medical school because of these two doctors.”  Do you remember any significant experiences with those two doctors in your childhood that really stand out to you?\n\n“Dr. Williams lived down the street, so we saw him on a regular basis.  Those two gentlemen one afternoon took my appendix out and made me feel a lot better; besides the cuts, the stitches, and just routine stuff growing up.”\n\nDo you remember what your draft number was?\n\n“No.”\n\nWas it high or low?\n\n“Oh when they had the drawing; oh it was astronomically high.”\n\nSo you would’ve missed it probably.\n\n“Yeah; I kept my student deferment and I got married.  We sat up and watched the draft drawing and mine was so high I wouldn’t have gotten drafted.  So I had this goal, right; I was in ROTC, because you had to, and I found out “Hey, this isn’t such a bad deal.  I can stay in ROTC and I can let the Air Force pay for me to finish my college, then I can let them pay for my med schooling, and then I’ll just owe them a little time; but they’ll pay me all the way along for all this.”  So, I thought I could go in the Air Force and be a flight surgeon and yada, yada, yada…not; I couldn’t see well enough.”\n\nReally?\n\n\n“So, me and the colonel decided that it would be better if I just kind of…..before I quit, I had gone through six stripes and made some field trips, I was really looking forward to maybe being in the military.  Besides I can’t see, my color vision sucks; but, I didn’t know all that.”\n\nDid you want to be a pilot?\n\n“Ok, let me ride in the backseat; just you know, I don’t have to be a pilot” but they said, “I’m sorry.” \n\nReally; would the Army take you?\n\n“I don’t know, I just wanted to be a pilot.”\n\nDo you remember when John Haas sat in the tree protesting Vietnam?\n\n“Yeah, right outside my dorm.”\n\nAnd then they did away with mandatory ROTC.\n\n“Yeah; but it was mandatory back then.  Maybe that’s why I have long hair.”\n\nMaybe so.\n\n“The first thing you did when you got to campus was go by the barber shop and get it all cut off.”      \n\nSo you already started talking about the finances of college and you were looking for help; did you fit your own bill for college or did family help you?\n\n“Multi-source financing; part of it was mom and dad and part of it was working summers and Christmas vacations that got me through Fayetteville.”\n\nWhat kind of work did you do?\n\n“Ok…I was easy buddy.”\n\nAnything anybody asked you to do.\n\n“I had some training in a print shop.  I had worked at the newspaper there in Russellville; so, I had some little bit of skill in hot metal printing.  When I got to Fayetteville, I was the breakfast cook for Roscoe’s Bar and Grill on North University; any time of day.”\n\nIs that right?\n\n“Yeah, there where the old bowling alley was; North University, Roscoe’s Bar and Grill, Ozark Lanes.”\n\n\nDoes it still exist?\n\n“Last time I was up that way, it was still there.”\n\nIt’s not a bar and grill now.\n\n“It was a good place to get hurt on Friday nights.  It was a red neck hangout and if the college kids showed up, you could know that there was going to be something happening.  So, I was a breakfast cook for one summer.  Fayetteville had a ESD office; so if you could show up and get in line for day labor and if somebody needed however many, you could get a job for the day or till it was done.  So, I painted furniture and mowed yards or just whatever it took.”\n\nWere you prepared for college having gone through the Russellville School system?\n\n“Except for my English; math and science was good.  But, I got through English.  When I got to med school, mom and dad helped and borrowed all the money that you could borrow and Gail taught school, a high paying job in Pulaski County School system, $5,000 a year.” \n\nDid you get married out of college?\n\n“We got married after our junior year.”\n\nAnd where did you meet Gail?\n\n“Analytical chem lab at Fayetteville.” \n\nWhere was she from?\n\n“Pine Bluff.”\n\nShe was younger than you?\n\n“No; that’s why we had to wait to get married.  I was not 21 and I was not going to have my momma sign that I could get married.”\n\nYou had to be 21?\n\n“21.”\n\nYou don’t have to now do you?\n\n“No; but back in the day, Gail turned 21 in February and I turned 21 in April.” \n\nSo, essentially you were the same age.\n\n“Same age; but I was not going to have my mother sign a piece of paper saying it was ok for me to get married.”\n\n\nThat was what year?\n\n“1969; the end of our junior year.”       \n\nDid you ever think about going to college anywhere else?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhen did you start thinking about where you were going to go to medical school or was that ever any question?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhy not Arkansas Tech?\n\n“I lived there.  Dad was a Fayetteville graduate. Uncle Jack was a Fayetteville graduate.  I had a legacy.”\n\nWas there any question about whether you would go to college or not; ever?\n\n“No.”      \n\nOr your sister?\n\n“No; that’s just what you were going to do.”\n\nWhen did you start the process to apply for medical school?\n\n“In the end of my junior year, because that letter came at Christmas our senior year.”\n\nDid you do well on the MCAT test?\n\n“I had a young lady from here, Missy Graham, who had never made anything less than an “A” in high school, college, and med school.  She was looking at making a “B” in one of her classes.  She precepted with me for, I think, 6-8 weeks and she was, “Oh, she was going to make a “B”.  I said, “Missy, come here.  See that piece of paper; it doesn’t have a grade point on it.”  The first person to graduate from your class is called doctor and the last person is called doctor; and I really don’t know what my MCAT score was.  The only thing I know is that I got drafted on the first round, so I did ok.” \n\nWhat kind of degree did you receive in college?\n\n “I have a BA in chemistry.”\n\nSo, you took lots of chemistry.\n\n“Yes, 126 hours.”\n\n\nDo you remember Jacob Saacs?\n\n“Jacob Saacs…..I have a Jacob Saacs’ story; or two or three probably.  We won’t talk about Nancy Hollar and the skip-and-go-naked.”\n\nMaybe we should.\n\nMaybe we should; Jacob would love….somewhere between reverence and gut wrenching fear and undying love is what the pre-med students had for Jacob Saacs.” \n\nWho was he?\n\n“He was the professor of chemistry and was the head guru of the pre-med group at Fayetteville at that time.”\n\nIf he said, “This one needs to go to medical school” they went. \n\n“I really think that that is how Tommy Love got in. Jacob pushed and shoved and got Tommy into med school, which was a very, very, good choice.  Tommy is a classmate of ours from old Washington/Hope.”\n\nI didn’t know that; I mean, I know who he is.\n\n“He is an internist and is still practicing, I guess; he was the last time.  So, I am taking biochemistry and Jacob Saacs is the teacher, professor, or lecturer.  He would stand there and he would have a little 3x5 card with that day’s lecture on there and he would look at it and drop it on the floor.  Buddy, you better have your seatbelt on because it’s coming at you hard and fast.  I am truly flagging that class; I am showing up, I am doing everything that I know how to do, and I am flagging it big time.  I mean I made an appointment to go see Dr. Saacs and I said, “Dr. Saacs, I am failing you class” and he said, “Yes, I know.”  Soft spoken, “Yes, I know.”  I said, “I need to drop, but I have to have your permission to drop.”  He said, “I’m not going to give it to you.”  I said. “Dr. Saacs, I can’t get into…I don’t think I’ll get into med school, which is what I really, really, really want to do if I have an “F” in your biochemistry class.”  He said, “Well, you’re probably right.”  \n\nHe was being real helpful.\n\n“I just had to give the man time.  You know, reverence, gut wrenching fear, and steadfast love.  He said, “But, I’ll tell you what you do; you continue to show up and sit where I can see you so I know that you’re there, and you continue to do the best that you can do, and I’ll know whether that’s the best that you can do, and I’ll give you a “D” and then you take it over again next spring.”  There was no second choice; so, ok, I did.  I showed up and made sure that he knew I was there.  I continued to do the absolute best that I could do and I probably didn’t earn the “D” but I got one and I took it again.  That must have been in the spring because I took it again in \n\n\nthe fall after I had got married.  You get a lot more time to sit and study if you’ve got one woman and you’re staying home a lot.  But anyway, I retook the class and made an “A.”  So, I have that “A” and that “D” on my transcript for the same class.”          \n\nI understand that.\n\n“And I got into med school.  I think probably if I’d had said, “No” I’d have gotten the “F” and I wouldn’t had gotten in; that’s Jacob Saacs.”\n\nThat’s kind of a crisis; was there any other crisis along the way that shifted you in one direction or the other or made you look at things differently?  \n\n“I kind of kept my eye on where I wanted to be, which was a small town country doctor.  For one micro instant, I thought maybe I wanted to be a surgeon; that lasted about that long”\n\n So you were in ROTC, but then you didn’t advance because of your vision.\n\n“I would imagine that the Colonel is just as happy as I am today that we parted ways friendly.”\n\nDid you apply to anyplace else beside the University for Medical School?\n\n“No; I put all my eggs in that one basket.”\n\nDo you remember who interviewed you?\n\n“I don’t know; there was a group of people who came to Fayetteville and you were assigned a time to go and I have no recollection; I was scared shitless.”\n\nBut you went anyway.\n\n“Yeah, not going was not an option.  Put your best foot forward.”\n\nSo what do you remember about that first two years of med school, but especially that first year?\n\n“Everybody lined up on test day to go to the bathroom to either have diarrhea or throw up; gut wrenching fear.”\n\nWas there ever a time when you questioned whether you would make it through?\n\n“No, I was not going to allow that to happen.”\n\nIt is interesting and J.P. can verify this; we had several people say that, that there was a moment or two during their medical school career when they said to themselves, “I don’t know if I can do this.” \n\nSeveral times I thought of how many times I’ve heard them say that.   \n\n  \n\n “I was too bullheaded.  I got in and you aint….you know this; it’s amazing that before that moment when you cross that stage to pick up that diploma, you aren’t anything to anybody in that school and as soon as you got MD after your name, you are a different person. They actually talk to you like your human.  But before that, my gosh they were mean to us.”\n\nDo you remember any particular teachers? \n\n“Fred Caldwell.”\n\nWhat was it about Fred Caldwell?\n\n“First day, surgery rotation, junior student; our job obviously is to go in and make sure that the patient is properly prepped and draped and then draped for the person who is on staff.  So the patient was prepped and the patient was draped and I was sitting there scrubbed with my hand appropriately folded on my chest.  Fred Caldwell comes in and says, “You, go stand over there underneath the clock.” I said, “Yes sir” so I spent my first day surgery rotation with my hands; he wouldn’t let me break, wouldn’t let me look, I just stood there under the clock while he did the surgery.”   \n\nWhat was the logic behind that?\n\n“I have no idea.  So fast forward; Gail and I are at some function and Fred and Betty Caldwell, you know Betty is a big time Children’s advocate and Gail Young, a big time Children’s advocate; it was probably something for advocates for Children’s, I don’t know.  We were at some social function and Fred is there and Betty is there and Gail is there and I am there; he doesn’t remember me from anybody; thank you Lord, but I remember Dr. Fred Caldwell.  Come to find out, underneath that gruff, he likes cats, which I like cats, and his favorite all time movie and my favorite all time movie just happen to be the same, which is “Quest for Fire.”  That was Fred.”\n\nDid you make close friends in medical school?\n\n“Well you know James Tedford and Richard; very, very close friends.  Not a lot of time to socialize though.”\n\nWhat do you remember about standing over the cadaver?\n\n “I remember it not bothering me as much as I thought it might; that was one of my piddling things when I was growing up.  My science fair projects always involved dead things that I had cut apart and took pictures of.”\n\nWhat about the second two years of medical school?  We already talked about Fred Caldwell, but what about the second two years?  Did you enjoy the second two years in general?\n\n\n\n“Yes, once you get passed all that books, microscopes, lectures, and stuff; clinics are wonderful.  Interacting with people is wonderful, was wonderful, are wonderful.  Surgery is piddling; you get to cut things apart and then put them back together.”\n\nDid you have any attendings, staff members, or residents who had a significant impact on you either during your second couple of years of medical school or your family practice?\n\n“Staff; John Tudor, he was the head of the department when I was a resident. Mike Moody who was two years ahead of me; he is out at Salem.  Jim Bozeman was my chief resident, but we didn’t see much of him.  Jim Bozeman and Mike Moody were the first two family practice residents that John Tudor’s program started.”    \n\nHad you not gone into family practice, is there any possibility that you could have gone into anything else in medicine?  You already said surgery.\n\n“I wouldn’t have been happy.  I might could have, but that would be like settling for second best; it wasn’t in me.”\n\nWhat made you want to do country medicine?\n\n“My two doctors; they were my mentors.  David and Burl Williams; Burl always had a buzz cut; he never had hair much longer than that.”\n\nTalk a little bit about your residency program; did you enjoy your residency program.\n\n“Yes, most of it; till the end of it and then we kind of….”\n\nWhere did you go?\n\n“Little Rock; then governor Bill Clinton, this is the way I remember it; Clinton got in touch with John Tudor and said, “We need country doctors, family practice primary care in Arkansas.  I’m going to put you in the med center and you’re going to make this thing work.”  He gave us a little bit of money, but not much.  So, John Tudor came from Duke, I think, and for a country boy from Clinton, he was very intelligent student; very well educated.  So, he came back to Arkansas and started the family practice residency program there and he got Bozeman and Moody and that was the first two. Then, he had the next four who was Jeff Eisenach, Sam McGuire,….who were the other two….but anyway, there were four and then somebody turned loose with some money and they were able to get twenty; that was the first big class and that was the class that I was in.  Well, the med center didn’t want us; nobody really wanted us saying, “Oh, you’re just going to be a family doctor” I heard that until I was going to puke, but anyway…at that time, Baptist and St. Vincent’s said, “Ok, we’ll take 10 of each and you can use our facilities.”  So, half of us went to Baptist and half to St. Vincent’s, but we still rotated through Veterans and Children’s.  John Tudor was doing something that had not been done, which was to combine the senior year in med school and your first year in residency.  So, instead of going nine months as a \n\n\nsenior, you went a year and you got your senior year in med school and you’re first year in family practice residency.  So, that’s what we did and then we started our second year, which was our first year post-graduation.  At the end of our second year, I don’t know if it was the American Board or the American Academy that said, “Well, you can’t do that” and John said, “Well, my first group; both of them have passed your boards and they are boarded in family medicine.  They did this short course that you get out a little early.  They passed your test and we have done everything.”  Whatever the credentialing committee is, you got to do some many things your first year as an intern and they were all done.  We have done everything that the med center said that you have to do to be a senior.  So, that was all done and they had already passed their boards.  But they said, “No, you can’t do that.”  So, most of us left; I felt sorry for John because it decimated his program.  There was that fork in the road that if you left now, we could leave when we left and get in our three years of practice and come in and grandfather to take the boards, which is what Russell and I did.  If you didn’t leave by the end of June 1975, we would have had to stay two more years in the residency program to take our boards.  So, we left and took our boards and passed them.”\n\nSo you did one year of med school then one more year post-grad?\n\n“It was kind of two years of residency; but anyway, it was fuzzy.”\n\nSo did you end up with a lot of debt after medical school?       \n\n“Just a hair; but thanks to the federal government, this is a man power shortage area.  You can come out here, hang out a shingle, and start working; so, they’d pay off your debt for you.”               \n\nSo it started out you were from rural Arkansas and even though you were raised mostly in Russellville; how did you end up in Prescott?  \n\n“The City of Prescott had three; gosh I hate to say doctors my age, but anyway three young physicians; Dr. Crow, Dr. Avery, and Dr. Hairston.  So the City of Prescott was recruiting and they would come to Little Rock to throw big parties and big hoorahs saying “Don’t y’all want to come work and play with us and be our doctors?”  So Richard, Jim, and I had kind of gone together through school and I really wanted to come to a small country town.  Richard had some of his loans that he had to come and was obligated to come to a small town and Jim had grown up at Ward, which is not that big a place; so we felt comfortable in small town Arkansas and the City of Prescott was recruiting.  It was not just Prescott; the other town that we actually looked at was a little town in northeast Arkansas, Corning.  We looked at that place, but the community here; John Browning Sr., President of the Bank and the President of, used to have a Savings and Loans and the President of that, and administrator of the hospitals; they would all come and they made it real easy for us to come financially.  That red brick house right there was the administrators house and we stood in his back yard one day and said, “We can turn that bean \n\n\nfield into a doctor’s office.”  It was all planted in soybean and he said, “We can turn that into a doctor’s office; that’s no big problem.”  \n\nThis building?\n\n“Yeah; this building was a soybean field.”\n\nDid y’all have to borrow money to do that?\n\n“Oh, we borrowed so much money you could burn a wet Army mule, because we didn’t have any.  We had no money, we were in debt to our upper lip from med school, and the Bank of Prescott said, “Y’all just start writing check” with my hand up true statement, “and we’ll cover them and when you get a positive cash flow, we’ll cut off your line of credit and you can start paying it back.”  So, we did.”\n\nDid it work like that in the end?\n\n“Yeah; we had a positive cash flow at about six months.  When we had a positive cash flow, the bank said, “Ok, now you need to start paying it back” and we said, “Ok.”  So for the longest time, we would go down once a month and pay the accrued interest and then what we could on the principal. We finally paid it off.”       \n\nSo the three of you go in here; did any of you have any business experience?\n\nHead-shaking.\n\nNone of you had any business experience.\n\n“No, but we did have a man who did that we hired who kept us; Bill Williams.”\n\nAnd he was able to help you stay on the straight and narrow in what you spent, came in, and what went out; ok.  \n\nHow long did you guys practice together?  \n\n“Together; Richard must have left in ’88 and I guess Jim left in ’89 and I have been here by myself every since.”\n\nThat’s a long time.  Are you still by yourself?\n\n“Yes; it’s hard to attract people.”  \n\nDo you remember much about the process of setting up the practice and creating records; all that kind of stuff?\n\n\n\n“99% of that was given to Bill Williams.  We were busy getting through school; because to be able to take our boards, we had to have everything in place June 30th.  So, we had to finish our residency and have everything in place so that we could open.  We saw two people that day, so we could say, “Yes, we were in practice and we were seeing patients.”  So, we were practicing physicians.  We saw one pregnant woman and one physical for the man who built out building.  But, Bill did all the other.”\n\nSo you are next door to the hospital; tell us a little bit about the hospital.  You had said earlier, but I think it was off tape, that it was a Hill-Burton Hospital.\n\n“It is a Hill-Burton Hospital.  There was a hospital here, the Cora Donell and I think the Medicaid Hospital came into existence by 1966.  There’s an ER, operating room, and at one time, I think, we had like 74 beds with an ICU.  After we moved here, they redid the ER, ICU, and added an extension.”\n\nTo the hospital that is gone?\n\n“Yeah to the hospital that’s gone.”\n\nTo the Cora Donnell?\n\n“No, that’s the old one.   The old hospital on the other side of town was the Cora Donnell.”  \n\nAnd this hospital was here, but it’s gone?\n\n“Yeah, it’s gone.  It closed in ’95.”  \n\nWhat kind of hospital practice did you do initially; what all did you do?  Did you do any surgery or OB?\n\n“A little surgery; we delivered babies and did our own sections.  After Ed Coribale came, we did a lot of surgery.”\n\nIs Coribale here now?\n\n“He’s dead.”\n\nAnd who was Ed Coribale?\n\n“Ed Coribale was a classmate.  He was a surgeon who went to LSU, Shreveport.  He came back to Little Rock and was a general surgeon there for a while.  I guess his divorce is how we ended up with him, but he came down here and we were doing general surgery plus obstetrics.”\n\nWhat was your life like when y’all first went into practice?  How many days a week did you work?  How many hours a day were you working?  How much call were you taking?\n\n\n“There were three of us and we were open Saturday mornings; so, we each worked four and a half days a week.  If you worked on Saturday, you got a day off.  We worked four and a half days a week and took call one in three.”\n\nDid you enjoy that?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhat happened when the other two guys left?       \n\n“It got to be not quite so much fun.”\n\nSo you were working a lot?\n\n“Yes and on call a lot during that transition between that falling apart and then Hope coming together.  I share call with Dr. Vermont across the street and Dr. Goins in Hope; we are the three musketeers or the three stooges depending on what day of the week we want to be.  But, we are the only three doctors who are doing the hospital in Hope.”\n\nSo you are doing hospitalizations in Hope now?\n\n“Yes in Hope.” \n\nHow far is Hope?\n\n“Some days it seems like its forever, but it is only 16 statute miles.”\n\nWhat kind of hospital facility do you have at Hope?\n\n“Interesting; history, it started out full blown surgery, OB, orthopedics, ophthalmology, and then has dwindled down now to it is mainly geriatric, nursing home, internal medicine.  We don’t have any surgery.  We don’t have any orthopedics.  We don’t have any OB.”\n\nDo you have a tenor of people who come out for ophthalmology, surgeons, or OBGYN?\n\n“No.”\n\nSo what happens if you have somebody who comes in your office who is having an MI?\n\n“2339; that’s our local ambulance.”\n\nDo you have a good ambulance service?\n\n“Yes; paramedics.”\n\nWhere do they go to? Texarkana or Little Rock?\n\n\n\n“Yes; Hope, it depends on if you’re having an acute “I’m trying to die right now” it’s Arkadelphia or Hope.  If you’re having an “I’m not going to die in the next little bit, I’ve got a doctor somewhere” then they can go to Little Rock or Texarkana.  We have 24 hour ER doctors in Hope that is a life saver.”\n\nDo you ever have to cover the ER?\n\n“I’ve not covered the ER; I think I have covered ….I used to work the ER back in the day, but I think I actually covered the ER one day for about an hour during shift change; but no, they are good and they show up.”\n\nTalk about your office practice a little bit. What is your office practice now like?\n\n“Internal Medicine; because when we lost our OB, you know when you lose your pregnant women, you lose your children.  I see some peds, but not a lot.  I take them on as soon as they get out of the nursery.  It’s mostly internal medicine; old folks medicine.  I have patients in four nursing homes.  At one time, I was medical director for a hospice program for the State of Arkansas.”\n\nDid you enjoy that?\n\n“Yes; I made house calls to Hospice patients and get to see them.”\n\nDo you still make house calls?\n\n“Don’t tell anybody; yes.”\n\nBut not a lot?\n\n“No, it is very selective.  When we started, we would make house calls and that will get you in trouble in a hurry if you don’t know who you’re going to see.  I’ve got some patients who I have seen for years and they don’t get around good anymore, so I go see them.”\n\nHas medicine turned out to be what you thought it would be?\n\n“It’s not what it was when I started.”\n\nTalk about that; talk about the difference.       \n\n“We could talk about pharmacology; we could talk about that when we were at Veterans, we were doing some of the original human research on Inderal before it hit the market.  We can talk about the days before Tagamet and the changes in GI medicine that has happened in the last 40 years.  Back when I started practicing medicine, we had two kinds of insulin; pork and beef.  Now, the treatment for diabetes has so many nice choices.  Oh I wish I could remember his name, the little short sawed off cardiologist from Veterans…he said, “Why do you want \n\n\na serum Lanoxin?  I can do it in my research lab, but I need to know why you need it and I can only do it at","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722#t=0.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/transcript/84364/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"on Tuesday morning?”  Now, you can get a serum Lanoxin anytime you want to.  When we first came to Prescott, you could get a blood sugar at","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722#t=600.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/transcript/84364/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"am on weekdays because it was all wet chemistry and they batched them.  Now, you can do them at home.  Protimes are done at home and they call me; you can do all that over the phone.  Technology is just …….”\n\nTell me about your office staff; how many people do you have working here?\n\n“I have this lady that works here, Ms. Gila Cox.  She has worked with me, not for me as I am an employee of Prescott Family Clinic.”\n\nIs Prescott family Clinic part of another group?\n\n“Nope, please gosh no.  Ms. Cox has worked with me for 40 years come February.  She started out as a receptionist.  Jessica has been here for about three years.  Shannon has been here for one.  I have two nurses that’s been here a year and two years. So, we get along.  We have an itty bitty lab; mostly clea waived.  We do have x-ray and we went digital last year; those film e-rays are going to go away anyway.”\n\nWhen did you start computerizing in your practice? \n\n“We went EHR on November 19, 2015.”\n\nBut you started with computers when?\n\n“Oh yeah, she’s had computers for insurance filing for years.  I have had that computer on my desk for e-scripting prescriptions for about six years; but we didn’t go to ERH until last year.”\n\nHas it had an impact on you practicing?\n\n”Yes, I think we spend a lot of time making those things happy and making insurance companied happy jumping through their firery hoops.  I will not carry one of those in the room; I go in with a piece of paper or their old paper chart so that I can look at you and not have anything between me and you.  I think we spend a lot of time making insurance companies happy and making what I refer to meaningless use happy and less time actual touchy, feely, talk to, listen to people.  I think it has interfered with patient contact.”\n\nHave you been well compensated practicing medicine? \n\n“Oh yeah; it’s great.”                \n\nAll throughout would you say?\n\n\n\n“No; you and I talked earlier about when Firestone closed and our unemployment went to like 26% or something; there was some rough times, we just weathered them.  Firestone came back.”\n\n Have you been or are you now involved in the community; church or social organizations?\n\n“Well Rotary; I’ve been a Rotarian for about 39-40 years.  I’m a church member; active in the church.  There’s not much for an old man with no children to do in the church except to go up and give them money and come to potlucks.”   \n\nSo talk a little bit about your family.  I know that Gail passed away.  Do you want to talk about that a little bit?\n\n“My first wife Gail Marie Gentry was from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.  She was a zebra.  We met in college and got married in ‘69.  Talk about life changing events; junior student in med school, surgery rotation…..”We’re going to have a baby.”  So, if you’re going to have a baby, that means Pulaski County School system aren’t going to hire you pregnant.  So, wife is unemployed and sons coming…”ok, we’ll get through it, no problem.”  When we moved here, she stayed home pretty much all the time.  She didn’t teach until the kids got in school.  She went back to teaching and she taught part time, as all she really wanted to teach was physics and chemistry.”\n\nSo you have a son?\n\n“I have a son in Little Rock, Britt Michael; he is a pharmacist for Wal-Mart.  Right now, he is working out on Baseline.  I had a daughter, Amy Marie Young-Wilson, and she is a nurse practitioner for Women’s Health with Dr. Karosa in Arkadelphia.  I had two granddaughters there and a granddaughter and a grandson with Britt.” \n\nHow did your family adapt to being the family of a busy doctor in a small town?\n\n“They did well, I think.  We didn’t have any trouble.”\n\nYou didn’t have any complaints?\n\n“Yeah, they had complaints.  When you have teenage kids, they complain; it’s in their contract to complain.  But when you have two partners and you’re not working all the time, you do have time off and can schedule your man trips like football games or go to dance recitals.  You can swap call.”\n\nWhat do you do for fun just around Prescott?\n\n“What do I do? I go out and play with my dogs and my sheep.”\n\nAre they sheep dogs?\n\n\n\n“I have Pyrenees; they are guard dogs.  We have a flock of sheep out at Bowden and two guard dogs.”\n\nTalk about your sheep.\n\n“You ate one of them; we used to have a big 4th of July hoorah and was always looking for something to cook, anybody can cook ribs.  We decided that we’d use goats and I finally found out that these sheep were very, very good to eat.  The guy that we were getting the sheep from was going out of business and said, “Would like them?” so I said, “Yes” not knowing what I was going to do with them, but I said, “Yes, we’ll take your sheep.”  So out at Bowden, another friend had 20 acres and said, “You know, I’ve got to do something with all this brush” and I said, “I can help you.”  So, we turned my sheep lose on his brush and cleaned up his brush.  We got the sheep and we’ve been in the sheep business for I guess 30 years.”\n\nSo do you have border collies to herd the sheep?\n\n“No.”\n\nSo you have dogs, cats, and sheep.\n\n“I have one barn cat, two Pyrenees, and 27 sheep.” \n\nSo do you live out in the country?\n\n“No, I live in town.”\n\nBut you don’t keep your sheep in town?\n\n“No.”\n\nThat would be baaaaaad.\n\n“By","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722#t=600.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722/transcript/84364/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Saturday morning, I’ll have about 8 fewer; they’re going to market.”\n\nDo you sheer them?\n\n“They are Barbados.  They are black bellied, what they call “hair sheep” and you don’t have to sheer them.  You just have to eat them.”  \n\n What invention or change has occurred in society, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with medicine, has changed your life the most?  What one thing or maybe two or three things have changed in life that has changed your life? \n\n“The birth of my son; that will change your life big time.  When we first moved here, there was no answering service.  To this day when the office is closed, this phone rings at my house; we don’t have an answering service.  The hospital had a somewhat dicey paging system; so you \n\n\nknew if you were the guy on call, you couldn’t really get very far away from anything.  So, the technology of communication has freed up your ability, I guess that may not be the best word; but you can go do something like go to town or go out.  You’re not tied to the phone like you used to be.  Then the medicine stuff; the testing technology.  Knowing how long it used to take to get over a gallbladder surgery; I came to work one morning and my nurse was sick.  She was having a gallbladder attack and so, we sent her to Hope to get ultrasounded.  Ed Coribale was the surgeon at Hope and I was going to go see her after we got out of clinic that day and after I got to Hope at a quarter to five, she was already at home minus a gallbladder.  She was back at work in about three days; so, surgical technique.  My office manager; when she had her hysterectomy had a laproscopically assisted vaginal hysterectomy.  You know, down time is negligible.”\n\nIf you had to do it over again, would you?\n\n“This?”\n\nWell yeah.\n\n“In a heartbeat.”\n\nWould you do it any differently?\n\n“Every time I think about that; I have to go back to x-ray Dan Tensely.  X-ray Dan; his name was DanTensely and he was our x-ray technician over at the hospital.  He had this theory, “You’re life and where you are today is the sum total of all your experiences; the good ones and the bad ones.”  Where you are is the sum total of that.  If you are reasonably happy where you are today, you need to be very careful about changing either one of those; the good ones or the bad ones.  If you change one of those, you’re going to change this one and you might not like.   You might change something, but you might not be as well off as you are right now. I am passed reasonably happy. Everything is paid for except the last credit card from the gas station, but the big stuff is paid for.  The office is paid for, the house is paid for, the farm is paid for, and the deer camp is paid for.  I have two kids that are healthy and happy.  I am working and putting money in social security, so that my check is good every month, which I ______if I ever get a chance.  There were some bumps in the road.  We had some bumps with Richard, some bumps with David Sites, and some bumps with Kenny Rogers.  But, we did not lose sight of what we were and what we wanted to be and we worked through those bumps.”\n\nWhen did Gail pass?\n\n“It will be four years in October.”\n\nAnd you have subsequently remarried.  What is her name?\n\n\n\n“Yes; Sherry, I’m her fourth husband.  She was married too already.   Anyway, we were preplanning to not have it fall on the children, so she went down and got her funeral arrangements and she paid for all of that. I said, “Did you pick out a headstone?” she said, “No.”  I said, “Why” and she said, “I can’t decide what to put on it.”  I said, “Well, you can run it this way, or you can run it that way.” She doesn’t know what last name she wants to put on it.”  But, we had known each other…..actually; I had been her doctor and her family’s doctor for like 35 to 40 years.”           \n\nWhat has been the most gratifying part of your practice in medicine for you?\n\n“The most fun I have ever had; the most fun and the most fear was delivering babies.  It was just a wonderful time.”\n\nWhen did you give up OB?\n\n“When the hospital made the decision that they didn’t need to employ anesthesia; that cost them OB service and cost them a surgery.  That hospital and the people that ran that hospital decided that they did not need to employ anesthesia and you’re sitting there thinking, “How in the world do you think that you’re going to have a surgeon and modern obstetrics?”\n\nDid you do sections?\n\n“Yes; from day one.  Boy, that was a gut wrenching; in this room, a gut wrenching experience.”\n\nWhat?\n\n“Making that decision to transverse lie; either do it or send it.  Sending it gets to be problematic; “That’s not our pregnant woman, that’s you’re pregnant woman.”  So anyway, we had been taught at St. Vincent’s how to do sections.  One of my preceptors at St. Vincent’s said, “You see all these things; all these forceps?  You need to put them in glass cases and hang them on the wall; never pick them up.  Learn how to handle a knife.  If they don’t come out easy, section them.”  So, we had a……I don’t know, they still argue about what your section rate should be and our section rate without even _____  was like 21.”\n\nSo are you still in good health?\n\n“I think so.  I went to see my doctor last Tuesday; I’m not my own doctor.  I cannot advocate everybody having a family physician unless I have one.  So, I have a family physician and her name is Jamie Campbell.  She was a resident in the AHEC of Texarkana and I tried to recruit her to come up here and she said something about families and children; I don’t know.  But anyway, I still go see her.  She didn’t fuss at me too bad.  I’m just a little short for my body weight.  But, my blood pressure was good.  All my numbers on my lab were good.”           \n\n Have you thought about retiring?\n\n\n“Every day and the answer is no.”\n\nSo how long will you keep practicing?\n\n“I don’t know.  I had a friend of mine, Donald Duncan; and I did this.  He had a most unpleasant experience.  One of his surgery colleagues, when the dust settled, they found out that he had Cruthfield Jacobs.  But before the dust had settled, he got to being funny, he got to making bad decisions, and he got to doing bad surgery.  Donald was the junior man in the group and everybody said, “You go tell him that he has to quit.”  He said, “Me?” and they said, “Yeah, you’re the junior man and we all voted while you weren’t here.  You go to tell him that he has to quit because he is practicing bad medicine and he is making big time mistakes.”  So, Donald was the one who had to tell him that he had to quit and it was a big stinking mess.  Physicians, we have an ego that is just enormous and surgeons have an ego that is even better. So, Donald said, “I did this, I wrote out three letters and gave them to three different people and what the letter said was…”On this day while I am still in my right mind, I wrote you this letter and if you find that I am doing funny things and practicing bad medicine, you come tell me and show me this letter that I told you you needed to do this when this day came.”\n\nThat is a good idea.\n\n“So, if I ever get to practicing bad, funny, or whatever; I know that there are three people out there that I granted them permission that they could come and confront me if that day came.  Talking about retirement; I like what I do and I even more than like what I do, I love what I do almost every day all day.  There are things, and it’s not medicine and it’s not the people, it’s the interference from insurance companies dictating what people can take, what they can do, what hospital they can go to.  It’s the government standing over this shoulder and the Arkansas Medical Board standing over this shoulder.  We were talking last night at the staff meeting how many different organizations inspect us and that can just walk in and say, “We need to see whatever.  Our labs are inspected, our x-rays are inspected, insurance companies send around inspectors to just look at the floor and the number of fire extinguishers we have and the number of…….it’s that level of interference that’s just aggravating as snot.  But, I like what I do.  I also have an un….I don’t know;  I have had some colleagues who quit and they ran out of money and I don’t know how much money you need to have saved up to retire on.  That’s one of those sort of dam occluse fears that I have…”To quit, do I have enough?”  I don’t know, but I like what I do and I make a good living at it.”          \n\nDid you encourage your children to go into medicine?\n\n”No, actually I discouraged them and dammed if both of them didn’t try.”\n\nWhy did you discourage them?\n\n\n\n“I said, “Do you really want to do what I do?” They said, “Yeah, that’s what we want.” So I said, “Ok.”  Britt tried and he got turned down, so he decided that he’d do something else.  He worked at Children’s for a while in microbiology research and somebody said, “You know, you’re wasting your time; you need to go do something else.”  So, he went back and went to pharmacy school. Amy thought that she wanted to be a doctor and then she said, “Now that I’m a nurse practitioner, I don’t want to so what Dr. Karosa does.”  So, they are in medicine, but they are not doctors.  Basically, I let them choose what they wanted to do.”  \n\nIs there anything unusual or unique, we talked about this a little bit; anything unique about Prescott or this part of the state?  Do you see any illnesses or problems that you wouldn’t see in other parts of the state?\n\n“At one point in time, we thought we had an over abundance of pancreatic cancer.  When you live in a small town, you know everybody.  You know your patients and all the other patients, so you know why most of them died.  So, we had a nurse practitioner student with us at that time and that was her research project.  “You need to go through our records and see what our incidents of pancreatic cancer is” and come to find out, it was like everybody else’s.  So, I don’t know if we have anything unique.”\n\nKidney stones?\n\n“I don’t think so.  I have not very many people with kidney stones.”   \n\nDo you have any interesting stories or funny situations that you got into or any scary situations that you’ve gotten into?\n\n“You mean like the night you carry a pistol into the ER.”\n\nThat would be one of those things.\n\n“I don’t really know any interesting or scary things; a guy brought a snake in a milk jug to the front office one day.”\n\nWhat was his logic; did it bite him?\n\n“It had bit him and he wanted to know what it was.”\n\nWas it dead?\n\n“No; it was alive.”\n\nWas it poisonous?\n\n“No, it wasn’t poisonous; but you know, we don’t really see many snake bites.  Do you really see many snake bites in the ER?”\n\n\nA Few.\n\n“That’s what we saw was a few, but not many.  We have heart disease and diabetes; you know, we are living in the middle of the stroke belt.  Poverty is….we just live north of the poorest county in the state, Layefette County.” \n\nYou had suggested earlier that you were losing population.\n\n“Oh yeah; when we moved here 40 years ago, it was about 4000 and now we’re down to about 3200.”\n\nWhat do you see in the next 20 years; the rest of your life?\n\n“Dwindle.”\n\n  Tell me what you think the future of medicine is going to be out in the rural areas?   \n\n“Future of medicine in a rural area will collapse.  When me and Charlie are gone, aint nobody going to move, back to my calocoulism, nobody is going to move to Prescott.  There’s nothing to attract them.  By the time you get through with med school, you have a wife or a husband with a couple of kids and they are involved with whatever in the bigger cities.  You’re in debt and I don’t think that you can do what we did; I think lending institutions won’t give you a line of credit like we had just on signature.  I know I can’t attract anybody.  Baptist has just put in a midlevel nurse practitioner across the street with Charlie; so there may be midlevels out in the country, but I don’t see them having doctors.  I’m 68 and Charlie is within a year or two.  Dale Goins is the baby in the group and he is 63.  So when we are gone, there is nobody steeping up to take….like country music, “whose gonna fill their shoes?”  There aint nobody. The big hospitals, I guess, own all of us sooner or later because they got all the money. The last two doctors that came to Hope, neither one of them do hospital. They just said, “No, we won’t do it.  If you want us to come, we will do clinic but we won’t do hospitals.”\n\nDoes Hope have hospitalists?\n\n“Yeah, I are one.”\n\nYou are?  So, you have to make rounds every day.\n\n“No; actually I’m on call today.  But, I made rounds this morning.”\n\nSo talk about the hospitalist business.  When did you get into that?\n\n“They make the money right?  I reached an age and by law, I was sitting there going, in fact me and Charlie were going, “We don’t have to take call anymore.”  There is an age cut off that says when you reach, I think, 55, or something, you don’t have to take unassigned call.  “So, if you don’t want to take unassigned call and I don’t want to take unassigned call, you and I can quit.”  \n\n\nHe said, “Well, that’s pretty good; where did you find that?”  I said, “Its right here.”  So, we actually took unassigned call for another year or two because I didn’t want to leave Dale out there by himself.  Then Hope’s Hospital has been in turmoil and it finally settled down and was bought by Wadley.  It was owned truly by a couple of crooks; they are still in federal prison and will probably die there because of the charges that they had against them.  Anyway, Wadley bought Hope’s hospital and turned it around.  Charlie and I went in and they said “Do y’all have a problem?”  And we said, “It’s right here in the bylaws; it says that you don’t have anybody taking unassigned call if Charlie and I just decide to quit.”  They said, “Oh well, we need to talk about that don’t we?”And we said, “Yeah, we ought to probably talk about that.” So, they made an offer of X number of dollars and the three of us said, “We can do that.”  We get paid to take call.”         \n\nSo how much of your life is spent doing hospital work now?\n\n“Ewe, I bet you I spend 30-40 minutes a day.”\n\nSo, it’s not major?\n\n“No, now that’s on the average.  I was on call Labor Day weekend, so I was on call for all three of us.  I probably spent two hours a day at the hospital then.  Hospital census usually runs less than 20.  Our only service is for geriatric/internal medicine.”\n\nHow long will the hospital be able to exist with that small a census?\n\n“According to Tom Gilbert last night, forever.  See all the administrative stuff is done in the big hospital; so there is a big piece of overhead.  All the buying is done through the big hospital.” \n\nWhen you came out of training, what did you think your life would be like?\n\n“Oh just an absolute bed of roses; it took probably all of two days to figure out that I was wrong.”  \n\nIs there anything else you would like to tell us about your life in medicine?\n\n“Sandra Baker, my first office nurse, taught me a ton of medicine and patient skills.  Faye Sutton, a formally trained certified nurse midwife, taught me tons of obstetrical skills and things to watch for that I never got in med school.  I wish that we had had more exposure to business because so much of it… and now it is worse than it used to be with the business side of medicine.    And if it wasn’t for this lady who started out 40 years ago and has continued, you can see her certificates all around; she has continued her education in the business side of medicine and without her, I couldn’t exist.  I just give it all to her.  I say, “Cox can handle that, she does it.”  We have an agreement, I write the prescriptions and she takes care of the business.  She also takes care of the money and makes sure that we collect it.”        \n\n\nOne more question…I want you to just pretend we’re not here; you’re talking to your great, great, grandchildren.   What do you have to say to your great, great grandchild about your life and how you lived it and what you expect and hope for them?\n\n“I actually have great, great grandchildren.  We have four and one coming.  My suggestion to my great, great grandchildren is that you get an education.  It gives you more choices than what you can do with your life.  One of the biggest problems I see, even in this little small town, is substance abuse; stay away from substance.  Get you an education and I’m not going to tell you to get an education in what, because we need good welders and we need good school teachers.  My grandson’s girlfriend wants to be school teacher….I could not be a school teacher.  My wife was a school teacher and I could not do her job, but people can’t do mine.  We need all kinds of job, but get an education because it gives you more options.”   \n\nThank you Sir, that was great.  You have given us one of the best interviews.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2195/collection_resources/160220/file/291722#t=600.0,4128.5244"}]}]}]}