{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/b853f4mx0p/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Tom Honeycutt. Interview with Sue Conklin and Ann Honeycutt (daughters). CW: Racism"]},"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":["2021-06-05 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas","family doctors","rural family medicine","physicians","segregation","racial integration"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians (corporate name)"]}}],"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/000/194/888/small/Honeycutt_TomwithSueConklinandAnnHoneycutt%286-5-2021%29.mp4_1688063385.jpg?1688063386","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Honeycutt__Tom_with_Sue_Conklin_and_Ann_Honeycutt_(6-5-2021).mp4"]},"duration":6890.45023,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/194/888/small/Honeycutt_TomwithSueConklinandAnnHoneycutt%286-5-2021%29.mp4_1688063385.jpg?1688063386","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/194/888/original/Honeycutt__Tom_with_Sue_Conklin_and_Ann_Honeycutt_%286-5-2021%29.mp4?1688063360","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6890.45023,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888/transcript/45021","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Interview about Dr. Tom Honeycutt with daughters, Sue Conklin and Ann Honeycutt [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888/transcript/45021/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Content Warning: Racism and racial slurs\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Good evening, my name is Sam Taggart and I am in the home of Ms. Ann Honeycutt and her sister is here also, Ms. Sue Conklin. Both of these ladies are from Little Rock, Arkansas and they are the daughters of Dr. Tom Honeycutt and his wife, Sue.  Today, we are talking about is life as a physician and his role in the evolution of the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians because from the early 1960s through the 1980s, he had a major...sometimes behind the scenes, but always there...presence in the academy as a representative and from a history standpoint, is responsible for a tremendous amount of history that got written down both in the early years and in his timeframe..  \n\nThank you for inviting me into your home, ladies.  Again, this is the first time I have done one like this where the principal is not there and you ladies become the principal.  To me, the best place to start is at the beginning.\n\nWhen and where was Dr. Tom born, what were the circumstances of his birth and those types of things; but I would like, before we do that, for both of y’all to give a brief biographical sketch of yourself of when and where you were born, talk about your parents, and those kinds of things.....if you don’t mind.  \n\nWe can start with you Ann. \n\n    \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, I am the oldest.  My parents were born in 1949.  He had gotten through medical school and at a certain point, they got married.  They didn’t have kids right away and were a little worried about that; but eventually, my mother got pregnant and I was born in 1953.  By then, he was already an established physician.  He had graduated from medical school in ’51 and so, he had been a doctor for two years by the time I was born.  Interestingly, he started delivering babies as part of his practice; he started delivering babies in June of ’52 and I was born in July of ’53....but, he did not deliver me.  While I was growing up, he already had a practice and so, his office was always a place where we would drop in occasionally; I was a particularly clumsy kid and had to be sewn up a lot and you always knew what was going to happen. Later in life, we cleaned the office and so, we were always in and out of the medical practice; but of course, we had to be “quiet kids.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, you left and went off to college somewhere?\n\n   \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, I went to.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Where did you go to high school?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: In high school, we lived directly across the street from Hall High School on “H” Street; that was handy when you had four kids. Williams Elementary...our parents moved to the neighborhood, Midtown, in ’64 or around that time; this was during the white flight from South of 12th street and when schools were popping up in the Midtown area.  Hall had been built a few years before; so, we could walk to Williams Elementary, we could walk to Forrest Heights Junior High, and Hall was right across the street. I graduated in ‘71 and I’m having my 50th reunion this year.  I went to college in Memphis and graduated from Memphis State at the time; it’s now the University of Memphis.  I decided the first year I was there that I wasn’t going to go into any kind of medical career.  I was discouraged from nursing by dad; he thought nurses were over worked and underrated and he didn’t want to see that happen to me. I ended up in St. Louis for17 years and I worked for Grain Industries for a while and then, I went to work for Washington University Medical School for a genetics professor who did evolutionary biology research.  When he was hired at Washington University, I moved the lab...I was the lab administrator....from St. Louis to Boston; actually, we were in Cambridge and worked for Harvard in that capacity.  I also manage parking services for Harvard, which was a real interesting job considering that parking was....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: There’s not any......  (Laughing)...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: There’s not any, right; for a while, it seemed like I was the most powerful, the most loved, and the most hated person on the campus.  Finally after 20 years, that counting Washington University Medical School and Harvard, I had decided that I had “done” universities and went to work for 10 years for a multimedia production company that made CDs and DVDs for textbooks; there are a lot of textbook publishers in the Boston area. I did that for 10 years and along comes the recession in 2008-2009, they regrouped, sold themselves to a big conglomerate down in South Carolina, and I end up circling back to having worked in a medical school, having grown up...because I was the youngest kid, he would take me on rounds on my way to kindergarten down town and hospitals have always kind of fascinated me...so, I worked for Newton Wellesley Hospital, a community hospital in Newton along the trail of the Boston Marathon.   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right, I’ve had the ___________to meet.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I worked for a primary care practice in Wellesley, kind of a high end burb of Boston, and then had this wonderful opportunity in 2015 to move back to Little Rock and I currently work for Jefferson Regional Medical Center as a reconciliation analyst, which mainly means that I adjudicate claims from Medicare Advantage Programs, Commercial Medicare Advantage Programs, in which I deny claims and try to get them paid.  It suits me very well; I didn’t realize what an aggressive person I could be in trying to make insurance companies....I put them in their place and remind them that they serve their patients.      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: So, I intend to be here the rest of my life.  Part of my reason for coming back was my sister, Sue; she and I have been best friends since we were kids. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, how about you, Sue....\n\nSue Conklin: I was born in April of 1957; the third child.  I was supposed to be a boy and they were going to keep having children until they had a boy; so, I was supposed to be a boy and positive thinking....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, you have one other older sister?\n\nSue Conklin:  I have two older sisters.  Positive thinking was to tell Ann and Julie that mother was having a boy; if they said it was going to happen, it was going to happen.  So when mother went to the hospital and delivered a girl, they went all around the neighborhood and told all the neighbors that mother had had a baby boy; there was a lot of confusion.  The maid that was watching us while mother and daddy were at the hospital said, “No, it’s a girl” ....well, they had been told for eight months that I was going to be a boy and they believed mother and dad.; but, they finally got all that straightened out. Basically, you know, I had a pretty good upbringing on “H” Street.  As Ann said, we walked to all of our various schools; which seems kind of strange now-a-days, but wasn’t then.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So y’all lived west of Haze Avenue?\n\nSue Conklin: We lived directly...yeah, just west of there.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, west of Haze Avenue....\n\nSue Conklin: In the time that we lived there, it went from being a two lane road, to a four lane road, and then to a road with lots of exits and accesses; it was heavy for dad to get to St. Vincent’s. Of course, Baptist was still downtown then and as Ann said every Sunday we all piled into this  station-wagon and headed down to Baptist for dad to see some patients before church.  So, we’d prowl through the gift shop or sit in the car; whatever we decided we wanted to do depending on...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We always had a grandmother with us.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah....depending on the number of patients....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did she live with you?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: This was our maternal grandmother.\n\nSue Conklin: She lived in Little Rock at the foot of Cantrell Hill; but, she’d get in her car and come to our house so that we could all ride together and spend time with us.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Packed like sardines in a station wagon; dad driving/ mother driving and both of them...\n\n(Both daughters together)...Smoking....\n\nAnd flicking their ashes, which would fly all the way to the back.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah..\n\nSue Conklin: It was a station wagon with three seats; so the unlucky kids, usually the youngest ones, had to sit in the back turned around backwards looking out the back of the car.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: And nauseous by the time they got to church and got home.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What church did y’all go to?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We went to Trinity Cathedral down at 17th and Spring Street; our mother is in _______there.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok...\n\nSue Conklin: So, we had a pretty....I was younger than Ann or Julie and dad was more established in his practice; so, he spent more time with me and my younger brother, Tom.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They did finally get the boy.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, they got a boy after me and then they stopped, which was....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When was your brother, Tom...?\n\nSue Conklin: 1958 about 18 months...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: About a year and a half....\n\nSue Conklin: 18 months after me...so, because dad .....of course, one of the boy...there were lots of boy related activities like trap shooting, tinkering with pistols, and going to sporting events...I got lumped in with that and so my brother and I, together, got to go to a lot of events that Ann and Julie never went to.  Dad asked me if I’d like to go play golf one summer and I said, “No” and he said, “Too bad, I’ve already ordered the golf clubs.”\n\n(Laughing)...\n\nIt was a miserable summer.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right....right, I understand.\n\nSue Conklin: I just did not like golf. But, dad had lots of hobbies; he did bee keeping.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Bee-Keeping.... (Laughing)\n\nSue Conklin: Dad wanted to do bee keeping and I was chosen as the child to go with him and do bee-keeping; I wasn’t real happy about it, but “no” was not an option.  So, we spent many, many, many hours because his hives were spread out...for instance, he had hives at Mr. Heard’s house out on Hwy 10, who was a patient of his and his wife sewed clothing for Ann and Julie; fancy dresses to go to dances in..  But, we would go there and he had hives way out at East End at Mr. Owen Curry’s house; he did pest control at our house and dad’s office, probably was also a patient, as well as a member of the Lion’s Club. Dad was very active in the Oak Forrest Lion’s Club...a lot of his connections came through the Lion’s Club.  He was friends with the guys and they went hunting; I didn’t go hunting with them because they’d get kind of carried away when they were hunting, drinking, carrying on, not bathing, and stuff like that. My brother got that honor; I didn’t get that honor, but Tom and I kind of grew up together running around with dad and doing a lot of the different hobby-type activities that he didn’t have the time....\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, the older two sisters were about 5-6 years older than you?\n\nSue Conklin: No, it was two years....pretty much two years all the way down; the way they did it in the ‘50s, you know, every two years.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Julie and I are 18 months part and then, you and Julie are more than two years apart.\n\nSue Conklin: Yes...Julie was not one to participate much; she pretty much stayed in the house all the time. We had some neighborhood kid type gatherings, you know, get in the backyard and play ball and she came out one day and everybody asked who she was; they didn’t know who she was.”  \n\n(Laughing)\n\nAnn Honeycutt: She was our extreme introvert.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, so she wasn’t really running around with dad doing any particular hobbies.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It was kind of a little like two families.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, it sort of was.....it sort of was.  So, I got to be in high school and I didn’t really have a direction as far as going to college...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: By then, they had bought a boat; they bought a boat in ’72 and.....\n\nSue Conklin: hey were very active also in the AAFP both nationally and in Arkansas; they were going to a lot of meetings in Kansas City, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., and so, they were gone a lot. At the end of the school year, they asked me where I was going to go to college and I said, “I don’t know.”  They hadn’t really done any prep-work or helped me with any of that and I just sort of fell through the cracks; so, I went to work for Dillard’s and that was a pretty miserable job.  I had been working for them at night and on weekends, but I went full-time and they were glad to have me.  About January, after I had graduated the previous June, dad said, “You need to apply for this job” and he handed me an advertisement from the newspaper for Junkin Photographics and he said, “You need to go down there and go to work; call them up” and I thought, “well, we have a dark room.”  Dad did Super-8 movies; he did black and white photography starting with the graphlecs two and a quarter...three and a quarter...got us 35mm cameras and we had a dark room in the basement and I knew how to develop film and process prints. He said,’ “You know all it takes to work there; just call them.”  So, he had been doing business with them for many years and the man that was the long-time manager was a very unusual person; a very quirky personality...Mr. Paul E. Pile.  So, I went an interviewed in my mini-dress with Mr. Paul E. Pile and he hired me; it made the other person that worked there so angry that they quit, because I didn’t know anything.  But, I stuck it out because that is what you did in our family; once you commit to something, you stick it out. I stayed there for 10 years and became great friends with Mr. Pile and learned a lot; everything there was to know at that point about photography.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was Bruce involved at all during that time frame?\n\nSue Conklin: Bruce?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Bruce Junkin?\n\nSue Conklin: Oh no; no, the Junkin family had sold the business to Robert Bumgarner.  One of the Junkin family members was....as I remember, there were a couple of brothers, but it was down to one and he sold it to Mr. Bumgarner who really wanted the graphic arts piece of the business; he was sort of creating an empire and ended up having some stores in Shreveport, Memphis, and maybe Houston. So, he didn’t really like the photography part as it wasn’t the money making part of the business, but he put up with it because it was the oldest Eastman Kodak dealership west of the Mississippi , which was quite an honor. I decided in 1982 to get married and my husband came to ask dad for my hand, which is the proper thing to do, and dad said, “No.”   He said that we shouldn’t get married because we weren’t anything alike, he didn’t think it would work, and it was a bad idea and my husband said, “I’m wasn’t asking for your permission; I was coming here to tell you  that we were getting married.”\n\n      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)...Good for him...\n\nSue Conklin: My mother said...our mother said something very strange...I can’t remember now what mother said and usually, she stayed quiet; but, she said something very strange and I said, you know, “Whatever”...so, we got married in 1982 and immediately moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where my husband had a job selling oils and greases.  There were 2-3 camera stores there and after a little bit of a break, I went and applied to all of them and one of them hired me; Thompson Photographic Products.  It turned out to be an old family business with 3, maybe 4, locations and of course, I knew what I needed to know to work there because I had worked at a camera store and they basically had the same \n\nstuff.   So, it was an easy fit and I just slid in and started working.  In the process of working there, they were very disorganized and having 5 stores...computers were just starting to come around and we had dumb terminals with reversed text green letters on the background and we didn’t talk to each other; but, they wanted to get their stores online with computers.  They wanted to try to computerized their inventory and so, I was involved in the beginning of that and then, they decided that I could be their purchasing agent; so, that’s how I got started in that area of the business.  Buying and allocating the products...of course, all the cousins, brother-in-laws, and son-in-laws wanted everything in their stores and they were seriously over-burden with debt and needed to cut back; so, I was the one that they put in charge of telling the son-in-law, “no.”   \n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: The bad guy....you were the bad guy.\n\nSue Conklin: He wasn’t very happy about that and he didn’t like me very much. I stayed for 10 years and it is very nice in Tennessee; but, it wasn’t home. My grandmother was getting older and you now, she was...... \n\nAnn Honeycutt: She’s always had very a very close relationship with our maternal grandmother. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: This is the same maternal grandmother that used to ride to church with you?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, the one that would ride to church with us...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yes...\n\nSue Conklin: And would inspect everyone’s room before church and gave a $1.00 to the one who had the neatest room.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It was always the introvert.... Julie.\n\n(Laughing)\n\nSue Conklin: It was always Julie who won the $1.00.  We got to where we didn’t even.....I didn’t even care...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I didn’t even try..\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now, you haven’t mentioned the grandfather on that side....\n\nSue Conklin: Well, she was married to our maternal grandfather and he was an alcoholic; so, they had a tumultuous marriage.  They had two children, mother and her younger sister...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They were partners in a café and so, they ...\n\nSue Conklin: In Lonoke, a small town, and so, they worked together and they battled together....but, he was a “Jekyll and Hyde”.  He didn’t drink for long periods, but when he drank....as my dad said that it only took a thimble full...and he had that gene, so she finally said, “Enough.”   It was a battle and very, very, bad for my mother and her sister to see their parents at each other’s throats...and they lived in the back of the café in one room; the four of them.   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh my....\n\nSue Conklin: So, they were on top of each other.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Where was the café?\n\nSue Conklin: In Lonoke, Arkansas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh Lonoke; ok, you said that already.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It was downtown Lonoke, which is not saying much.\n\nSue Conklin: When mother was...mother went to college and her sister was still in high school when they divorced and for a period, my grandmother still worked for my grandfather; but that wasn’t going to work. So, she cooked up a scheme with his step-mother to move to Memphis; his step-mother was a very kind lady and she knew someone in Memphis at a cafeteria....“You know how to work in a café, you can work in this cafeteria” and so, Irma left and the younger daughter was left having to move to Memphis in the middle of her high school, which was a big deal in that small town....she was probably homecoming queen, the bell of the ball, and everything else. So, she didn’t want to go and my mother quit college and moved back to Lonoke to live with her sister while her sister finished out her high school career.\n\n  \n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, she had already met our father at Hendrix and they fell in love.\n\nSue Conklin: Our grandmother didn’t really believe in girls going to college; she didn’t really want my mother to go to college, but mother wanted to.  So, she made her way there...by the way, mother was runner-up for Miss Arkansas in....what year?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: 46 or something...\n\n\n\nSue Conklin: She was in the Miss Arkansas pageant....anyway, when she moved back to Lonoke, she and Betty lived together until Betty graduated from high school and then, mother took the bus to Drawls to take business classes, which helped her later when she worked at dad’s office..... Anyway, I’m already down a rabbit hole here; you’re going to have to back me up...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, mother....so, they had two more years because dad wanted to make it through his third year of medical school before they got married; then, they did marry and she moved to Little Rock.  She went to work for Frank Whitback who was Union National Life Insurance and they were Trinity Cathedral....he and his wife, Beverly, were members of Trinity Cathedral and they were the ones that convinced our parents....mother was raised Baptist and our father Methodist...they recruited them to come to the Episcopal Church.\n\nSue Conklin: So anyway, I worked in Knoxville for 10 years and then moved back here in 1990 and I was assured a job at Junkin Photography where I had worked before, but they had a new manager and he didn’t like me, which was fortunate for me because I got into the computer business; the computer is great and the camera business folded not too many years after I moved back. So, I’m still there and still a purchasing agent...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: 30 years....\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, I tend to stick with my job; something dad appreciated.  Every year on the anniversary of my employment at Junkins, dad would send me flowers.....did you know that?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: No...\n\nSue Conklin: He would send me a floral arrangement as if to say, “You did it; congratulations, you go the job and you’ve kept it.” Dad valued longevity.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He did.\n\nSue Conklin: He thought you should decide at age 16 what you want to do and never deter from that ever...ever.\n\n \n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: What about your other sister and brother?\n\nSue Conklin: Well, we’ll talk about our brother first; he went to Hendrix like mother and dad did and graduated with a degree in journalism.  He went to work for the Pine Bluff Commercial writing obituaries, like most starting out journalists do, and then left the Pine Bluff Commercial and moved back to Little Rock to be the editor of the Arkansas Business.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well first he was on the staff of the newly formed Arkansas Business and later became the editor.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah....yeah, he was one of the first editors.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was one of the first people hired when that was being formed; it was.....gosh, 30 or more years ago.  He did that until he got an offer to go to San Antonio to work for the San Antonio Light; only the San Antonio Light, which was a more than 100 year daily newspaper, folded. So, he reinvented himself and worked for USAA, the big insurance company affiliated with the military; I think there are two bases in the San Antonio area.  He worked for USAA in marketing and then, he stopped working for companies and started working for himself.  He did...because of his journalism background, he is a darn good researcher and worked as a private investigator; a private investigator who was typically working with lawyers who had suits going on...like air conditioners blowing up...cars that caught on fire....\n\nSue Conklin: The exploding tires; the Bridgestone exploding tires.....it had something to do with Broncos....he did a lot of work like that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Uh huh....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He’s kind of....Dad was rather encyclopedic; dad, if he....dad was very curious and he knew a lot about a lot of things and he could quote lots of statistics and stuff; Tom got that ability.\n\nSue Conklin: Dad never stopped learning; he was always interested in different things.  It seemed like once he read something, he retained it and he could tell you about that; we have problems with retention and worrying about Alzheimer’s because our mother had Alzheimer’s.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)...Yeah....\n\nSue Conklin: But Tom can do that; he can repeat the facts about many different things.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Like I say encyclopedic...\n\nSue Conklin: Then, he got....Tom got the opportunity to work with a high school classmate; an opportunity to purchase into a business in Fort Smith, a security business.  He moved back to Fort Smith from San Antonio and is running this ...“Professional Security” is the name of the business and they also own. “Centurion Security” in northwest Arkansas; it’s a perfect job for him.....a perfect job. He also volunteers his time with an organization called “Revamp” ...Remembering Every Victim and Missing Person...and they take cases of people whose love ones have disappeared and the remains have never been found. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Huh...\n\nSue Conklin: They try to track down where they were, who they might have been in touch with, how they might figure out ...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: And solve these mysteries.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....\n\n Sue Conklin: So, that is what he does in his spare time and that really is right down his alley.\n\n Ann Honeycutt: Yeah, it is a good fit for him.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What about your other sister?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Julie who is 18 months younger than I am, but two grades...there were two grades between us; she also graduated from Hall and was the first kid to follow dad to Hendrix.  So, she was the first Hendrix grad.  She married right out of Hendrix, another Little Rock boy, who went to our church.  He started grad school at Harvard and she started grad school at Boston College.  She went into journalism and he was going to do American Studies; but then he had a change of calling after his first year and decided to go to divinity school. So, he went to divinity school in Boston and became an Episcopal priest.  She finished her studies and oddly, they ended up in Pine Bluff at the same time that Tom was in Pine Bluff; so, both Julie and Tom were on staff of the Pine Bluff Commercial. Only, she got better gigs; she didn’t have to do the police beat or write obituaries.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Huh; about when was that...about what year....’70s or ‘80s?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: The late ‘70s.....\n\nSue Conklin: I was still in Little Rock...so, yeah; late ‘70s.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I keep saying....and I can edit some of this stuff out...there are several connections; I asked you about Bruce Junkin...Bruce Junkin was a friend of my wife’s and I.  He ended up being a physician, I think, in Newport and ultimately died.  But, a friend of mine was a newspaper writer with the Pine Bluff Commercial; Tucker Steinmetz.  \n\nSue Conklin: Oh yeah...that makes two connections...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Too bad those two aren’t here to tell you about it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And I would bet you that those two names.....if we had them here, we would be making a whole bunch of other connections.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, I do know that Tom, like I say encyclopedic, can trot out all these people from Pine Bluff and all the people.... the whole journalism industry is very tied; like Paul Greenburg was in Pine Bluff for many, many, years and then, came to Little Rock...     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you know if he had any connection with Gene Foreman?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Absolutely...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, Gene Foreman was....he was the standard that Bob Lancaster and Tucker Steinmetz...those guys were all there at the same...all about that same time. \n\nAnn Honeycutt: All of those....we’ll give you Tom’s number and you can talk to him about that.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, thank you.  That pretty well gets us up to date on y’all, because it makes things more appropriate to talk about y’all first. Now, I’d like to take a step back a little bit and talk about your dad first and then, we’ll talk about your mom.  Tell me where your father was born and a little bit about the background of the family.  Where was he born, the circumstances of his birth, and that kind of thing?\n\nSue Conklin: He was born in Hope, Arkansas.  We got his birth certificate, but we were not able to figure out if he was born at home; we think he was. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What date or time frame was he born?\n\nSue Conklin: He was born March of 1925.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: 1925...Probability was that he was born at home..... (Laughing).....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: A very strong probability....\n\n \n\nSue Conklin: He had a younger brother who was either stillborn or died shortly after birth; we have a picture of him in a basket at the side of the house and that is why we think maybe all the kids were born in the house.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: His mother had been married, had a child, and became a widow.....so, our maternal grandfather was her second husband.  She had three children by her second husband; two of them survived and our father was the youngest in the family.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What kind of work did the family do or do you know?\n\n Ann Honeycutt: Our grandfather, Jewel Honeycutt, was a United States Postal worker for 35 years.\n\nSue Conklin: Again, get with one thing and stick with it.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)...She...her first....\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In the country around Hope?\n\nSue Conklin: Oh yes, he walked his route and in those days, they delivered the mail twice a day.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right....right....\n\n Ann Honeycutt: I mean, he was the.....\n\nSue Conklin: She was a housewife and she stayed in the home.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Here you go....\n\nSue Conklin: Interestingly enough, dad delivered mail on a ______basis to make money and he hated it; he just hated it.  I think he only did it once or twice.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he ever mention the name Martindale; as in Joe Martindale? \n\nAnn Honeycutt: The name sounds familiar, but doesn’t...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Joe was a doctor in Benton, he is about the same age as your dad, but they lived just out in the country.... right outside of Hope. \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh, ok...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That is where he was born and raised.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Ok...Well.....ummm....\n\nSue Conklin: The family was what I would call middle class, but his parents were extremely...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: German and very...ummm....\n\nSue Conklin: Thrifty...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Thrifty...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Mother’s side of the family always referred to my dad’s side of the family as if they were cold and not very effusive; I think that’s what attracted dad to mother.  Mother’s side of the family was a big, big, family; very boisterous, fun loving, and lots of laughter....so, opposites attract.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do ya’ll have any sense of when the Honeycutt family....Is Honeycutt English or German...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Scotch Irish...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Scotch Irish....and when they came over to the United States or how they ended up in Hope, Arkansas?\n\n \n\nSue Conklin: They came down through Louisiana; from Virginia, through Louisiana, and back up to Arkansas. I don’t have the exact dates in my head.  But, they were farmers; dad’s grandfather was a farmer in DeAnn, which is north of I-40. They are all buried in a little church cemetery out there.  Dad’s father didn’t want to be a farmer and so, he struck out and found his way to other employment.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He was the postal worker...\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, he was the postal carrier.  They had a goat in the backyard for milk and to make cheese, they had a vegetable garden...because it was during the depression...and dad said that his mother fixed lunch for his father everyday and the boys, they would come home from school for lunch, and she would fix lunch for them and they would leave and go back to their respected places....when they came back for dinner, oftentimes it was the same food on the table for dinner that they had for lunch. He said that they didn’t go hungry, but his parents were not extravagant by any means.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: They were frugal.\n\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Very frugal.\n\nSue Conklin: He asked them for help to go to medical school and they refused; so, he strengthened his resolved and figured out a way to go without their assistance. Then later, his mother had died and his father was having some memory issues and so, he moved him to Little Rock to the newly opened Presbyterian Village, untimely; they had a safety deposit box to close out and it was stuffed with money. So, they had the means; they were just not willing to help him and that hurt him, I think.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did your dad say much about his young life; when he was a small child...before he went to school?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, it was clear to me that he and his mother had issues.  He wanted to play football and she said that he had to be a football manager; she didn’t want him getting hurt on the field.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How big a man was Tom Honeycutt?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was tall and ...not real tall...but slender and sort of slightly; we’ve got some pictures to show you.\n\nSue Conklin: He was almost 6 ft tall.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Almost...by the time, he was....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He wasn’t a little kid.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: No...not at all.\n\nSue Conklin: No; she wanted him and his brother to play musical instruments because her first husband had owned a music store. Her daughter; I’m guessing Aunt Thelma was musically inclined because Aunt Thelma’s two children ....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: One child...\n\n\nSue Conklin: Aunt Thelma’s one child is a very accomplished musician....and her husband...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They were all and dad did not want to play a musical instrument and as a result of that, none of us were exposed.\n\nSue Conklin: No.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Would you say that your father ... (Laughing)....was strong willed?\n\nSue Conklin: Yes.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Extremely...\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And did that start very early in his life?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yes.... to push against that maternal force...\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, he saw that his mother dominated his father and he didn’t like that and so.......”\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, let’s put it this way; two years in a row at Hendrix, he was voted “biggest misogynist.”  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)...Ok....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I hope that tells you what you need to know.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s all I need to know..... (Laughing)....I mean...it doesn’t not fit.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Right.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It just doesn’t not fit....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Right...right; his mother was very dominatant in his life and as a result.... when you read his memoirs, it sounds as though he was...by the time he had graduated from high school in ’43, he was pretty sure that he was going to be drafted and so, he wanted to get a jump on that.  Because he wanted to be able to pick...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Where he went...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Rather than allow himself to be drafted, he went to Little Rock twice to test for different Navy-type positions; but, he had poor vision and wore glasses.  I have a pair of his childhood glasses; he wore glass from a time when he was very young.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In ’43, he was 18?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was; yes, he had turned 18...\n\nSue Conklin: Right out of high school...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We were able to....he graduated in May...\n\nSue Conklin: I think he graduated in June, didn’t he?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He had....\n\nSue Conklin: He enlisted on June 1st.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He enlisted on June 1st, but graduated in May.\n\nSue Conklin: He even had some letter from teachers that said that he was of good moral fiber and character and would make a good service person.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you remember him saying anything about particular people in his life: preachers, teachers, family members: parents, grandparents, or whoever that had a big impact on which direction he took and the things he did?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: As she said earlier in this conversation, he is very black and white and so, he had strong opinions one way or another.  Mostly, I think, he looked to certain figures whom he thought were....who he admired; but, there were lots that he didn’t admire.  He had, I think, his own ideas and was pretty much kind of a loner and someone who, I think like most of us, are full of contradictions. I knew that he started out trying to practice with other doctors and found that he couldn’t make compromises and so, he struck out on his own pretty early and never practiced with other doctors.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he ever say much about the kinds of interests he had as a child; hunting fishing, sports, any interests in school especially?\n\nSue Conklin: I don’t remember any.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was a strong student; somewhere I read that he was very strong in math and science.  I don’t really know where this remark came from, but I know that there was a doctor in town in Hope...I don’t know if that doctor was an inspiration to him, but....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: There was a Dr. Jim Martindale; no connection to Joe Martindale, but there was a Dr. Jim Martindale who was in practice.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Ok...ok...\n\nSue Conklin: I would bet you money that they didn’t go to the doctor much.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I don’t think they did.....\n\nSue Conklin: I would bet you money that they would have to be near death...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right...right...\n\nSue Conklin: Before Eliza would open her purse for them to pay a doctor’s fee...she probably had potions and things like that at home; they were robust kids and pretty healthy.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Dad was very interested in how things worked in the human body and I also had an interest in that as a young person and so, I could pick his brain on lots of stuff like that.  He just was curious and I know the reason that he choose to be a family physician is because he wanted to be a primary diagnostician; he wanted to be the first come to get a crack at it.  Secondly, I think he thought he’d be bored with any kind of specialty; looking at the same skin every day or doing the same sort of thing.  He liked the span of being able to administer to an entire family and liked knowing all the family dynamics.  His memoirs have lots of familial-type of stories....this person’s mother and what was going on with the family.  He delivered babies for many, many, years and......I think he just really liked the variety.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Parsimonious would be one way of describing the family; ok.  So, he has an interest in science and is somewhat self-assured and obviously pretty bright.  He makes the choice and ends up going to Hendrix College...Let’s back up just a minute, I’m getting beyond myself....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He knew that by enlisting that he could come back....\n\nSue Conklin: And have the GI Bill.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: That was very much the plan and in fact, he talks about hitch-hiking back....because he was on the west coast when discharged....hitch-hiking back, he swung down to Texas to see his sister who was in Plano and literally came right back up north and almost straight to Conway.  He just sort of showed up....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right...right....\n\n Ann Honeycutt: Like “I’m ready”...”I’m ready to start.” \n\n      \n\nSue Conklin: And they may have given preference to veterans.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: They did for the first four years; from ‘46-‘50.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: And he knew he had no money....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...Right....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He knew he had no money and he did various things....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What informed his decision about where he would go to college?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, he was a Methodist and so, I think...Hendrix does have a Methodist kind of slant to it; it’s a private college and I’m sure it had some cache to it. Of course, he chose to go to UAMS, but he was never really a fan of UAMS... (Laughing)...He didn’t feel like one of the bright alumni.... and there was a reason for that, because, weren’t they setting up people... \n\nSue Conklin: He felt like UAMS set up physicians in practice and paid basically their malpractice insurance and their office expenses and it was a direct competition with someone like him who had to bear all those expenses on his own and so, it was an uneven playing field.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he give you any sense of what college was like? \n\nAnn Honeycutt: He worked.\n\nSue Conklin: He worked and he worked and he worked.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you know what he did?\n\nSue Conklin: He worked in the cafeteria and he slept in the infirmary so that he didn’t have to pay for room and board...he did work for them in the infirmary, too. He had no extra money what-so-ever; this is a guy who is squeezing every nickel that he can to get through school and I’d be willing to bet that he didn’t have any debt when he got out of school.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: This would’ve been around ’46 when he started?\n\nSue Conklin: I’m thinking; yeah.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Pretty soon after he....’46 to ’47....I mean, it was really barely two years that he was at Hendrix when he started med school.\n\nSue Conklin: Right because in those days, you only had to go to college for two years before you get your...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right...to get your 90 hours in....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: 90 hours....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I believe it was 90 hours...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, he wrote that in the book.\n\nSue Conklin: So, he got that done and by that time, mother was taking care of her sister graduating from high school ...they get married in Lonoke, a big wedding, and they move to Little Rock. She has a job and working and he’s finishing up...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Their buddy, ______, may have helped network so that she could get a job, because that was a really plum job working for the president of the Union Life Insurance Company; that opened some doors for both of them. Dad knew how to network and he probably thought, “If I go to Trinity Cathedral, I’ll meet people there” ....but, his practice was downtown.  It was after he kind of left Baptist; he rented an office at 509 Cross Street and he was there for 15 years when Southwestern Bell bought the entire block and he had to find another place.  That’s when he... Dr. Ben Means had an office at 4124 W. 11th and he died kind of suddenly, I think...so, he bought the practice from Mrs. Means. He put a down payment on it and then financed the rest of it through her.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: One of you mentioned earlier that early in his practice, he thought about the idea of practicing with other people. \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well when he first got out of med school, he went with Dr. Kolb....\n\nSue Conklin: Kolb and Raney...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: P.T. Kolb and T.J. Raney...so, he was in the office with them; but, he talked very despairingly of them.  What was it he said?\n\n  \n\nSue Conklin: He said one of them went to the races every afternoon and just left him to take care of his patients....and, I think, he said the other one drank.  I don’t remember ...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He may have spoken that, but I will let you know...y’all would have no reason to go back and look at the archives...but Dr. Kolb was originally from Clarksville and was one of the absolute...very first man on the ground at the Arkansas Academy of General Practice. He was one of the first 4 or 5; so, I’m kind of wondering....maybe that was part of the connection...  \n\n \n\nAnn Honeycutt: There was a funny story that he wrote in there and I’ll have to see who the doctor was because dad wrote that he inquired and whoever was the secretary treasurer at the time...because really the Academy started...I wrote that he joined the Academy of General Practice in 1955 because he had been told that he had to wait three years...he had to be in practice three years... but he found out later that he could’ve been an associate member or something; so, that kind of pitched him off a little bit...you know that he didn’t get good intelligence. But with regard to practicing with others, I think that dad had his own idea about how things should be and that everybody should be that way.  I’m a little bit that way too; you know, you kind of have this high moral....and if other people don’t share that with you, it is hard to be in practice together.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Also I know that initially he thought he wanted to be a surgeon; he thought surgery was going to be his thing, but, he injured his back moving an anesthetized patient.  He had back troubles his whole life and it didn’t help that he had probably an extra 60 pounds on him, but never-the-less at that point, he decided that he didn’t like the other surgeons and he didn’t think surgery was going to be right for him.\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’m getting a little bit ahead....a couple of questions...Hendrix is a fairly easy understanding; a good school, he is going to work hard, he has the GI Bill and can do that, and he is smart enough to get in. Medical school, it’s pretty easy to say what informed that decision.  But you just brought up the fact that he might have wanted to be a surgeon, but hurt his back; did he ever make any comments about at what point in his medical training that he decided that he was going to go into a general practice, family practice, or that kind of thing?  \n\n     \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, I think it was kind of between surgery and family practice.\n\nSue Conklin: In fact, I have a picture for you of the door at 509 Cross; it says “Physician and Surgeon.”\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: “Physician and Surgeon”....yeah, because that was true.\n\nSue Conklin: At that point, he was still offering surgery.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: At that point in time, 30% of all general surgery in the United States and probably a lot more in Arkansas were done by generalists...so, that would be true.\n\nSue Conklin: He did all kinds of surgeries.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Two or three other people: Amail Chudy is almost exactly at the same time frame as your dad. \n\nSue Conklin: Yeah...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...yeah...and he’s talked about Dr. Chudy.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Almost exactly the same time frame...and they both got involved in the Academy at almost the exact same time.  Amail may have been there a year before; he may have gone in ’53 or ’54.  Do you know anything about their working relationship?  Amail is still alive by the way....\n\nSue Conklin: Really?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Gosh, he’s in his 90s.\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: 96 years old and lives over in North Little Rock. He just retired about five years ago; he was doing part-time work up until about five years ago.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Wow, he must’ve taken care of himself.\n\n\nSue Conklin: Wow...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I think what appealed to dad....so, when you work from home...let’s say that; you are somebody who works from home and you’re not with anybody all day long; you somehow have to break out to be with other people and I think the Academy ...this is my opinion...provided dad with time with his colleagues, but also dad was kind of political in many ways and I think he really liked the idea of there being joined forces to reflect how things would happen.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you have an insight into why he chose not to go back to Hope?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh, I think Hope was too tiny.\n\nSue Conklin: And they wanted to raise their family in a larger city. They both had grown up in small towns...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Social as much as anything else...\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah..\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They both...he really prized education.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Your mom was from Lonoke.....so....\n\nSue Conklin: He thought his children would get a better education in Little Rock and they always planned to have children.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, they very much believed in public schools; although, I was at Central High School in ’57 and ’58...in nursery school... and I wish that I could ask him, “why would you put your 4-year old daughter in a place where there were guns?”..But never-the-less, I was there and then the following year, the schools were closed down because Faubus refused to integrate the schools.  So, a lot of teenagers didn’t graduate from high school and that is when some of the private schools started being created.  Trinity Cathedral started a day school and so at that point, I did go to Trinity Cathedral for a year and then the following year went right back to public schools. They moved to where they moved so that we would get the newer schools.\n\nSue Conklin: I was going to say that after Ann’s experience at Central, dad sent Julie, I, and my brother to the Lightcap’s School. \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh, that’s right...\n\nSue Conklin: The Light Cap’s were patients of his; Mr. and Mrs. Lightcap....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Earl and what was his....\n\nSue Conklin: Glenda..?  \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Ms. Glenda was one of them...\n\nSue Conklin: And one of their parents lived with them; he took us...it was over on Arch Street, I’m thinking.....a terrible neighborhood now-a-days, but a beautiful big old house.  He drove us, whatever kid to school or two kids at a time, and dropped us off every day to go to school; he very much admired them.  They were patients, but he was also very, very, fond of them.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In those days with the interstate there....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh no, the interstate was not there.\n\nSue Conklin: Oh no, he had to go down 12th Street.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I mean I was going to say that that wouldn’t be that big a distance.... \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Where we lived, It wasn’t a long distance; no.\n\nSue Conklin: But, we would’ve gone by Baptist, waited in the car for him, and then, he would’ve taken us to Lightcaps and then ...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Of course, Baptist would’ve been down where Children’s Hospital is...we don’t have to tell you that.\n\nSue Conklin: And then he would’ve gone back to his office and they provided a far superior basis...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They had a great start; everybody knew how to read by the time they...\n\nSue Conklin: They taught phonics, they taught mathematics, they taught dancing....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How old were you when you were there?\n\nSue Conklin: Four.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Four and five.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Kindergarten/preschool...\n\nSue Conklin: There were no four year olds in kindergarten at that time; I mean, you didn’t go anywhere until the first grade; but, I discovered when I went to first grade, I knew a whole lot more than the other kids....so, I could slack off until they caught up.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Here is something that I just thought of; dad was always fascinated with gadgets and technology.  When they were coordinating all these...they had four kids within six years and so, kids were going downtown to school...he was driving them and she was picking them up; he had a radio in the car with one of those...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: CB type-thing....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yes and she had one at home...(Laughing)...that’s how they kept up with who was doing what. But, he was just fascinated with stuff like that.\n\n\n\nSue Conklin: He also told mother to take us to the library; mother was not a reader, but dad was a reader.  He told her to take us to the library...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Once a week.\n\nSue Conklin: Once a week to the old downtown public library with the scary, slippery, marble steps up to the children’s department...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Sometimes we would...they would put us on the bus and we would go down there...\n\n“Sue Conklin: It was very important to him that we....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was a huge reader and he wanted to make sure that all his kids....and we’re all newspaper readers; he loved that.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah...newspapers....we all read books....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Of course, he didn’t realize that we were all reading newspapers at breakfast; the only meal that we were allowed to read, because nobody wanted to talk to him in the morning...it was just easier to grab a section of the newspaper with your head down.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: With your head down; yeah....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: The table, which was a 6 ft diameter Formica table that he built, was...we always rotated so that one person didn’t have to always sit by him.... because, it was a little bit dangerous.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, it was a conscious effort on your part.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: A very conscious effort...the same thing happened in church; somebody always had to sit next to him and so, we rotated.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Are y’all aware of when he really started getting interested in the Academy?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Absolutely; 509 Cross Street, which was..... he moved there in ‘55 and it was interesting how he turned it into an office; but, there was a room that was designated for the academy.  The room \n\nhad a typewriter in there and files in there; because when he was secretary of treasure,  I guess, a lot of mail went in and out of there.\n\nSue Conklin: I have copies for you of two different letterheads from the academy that show dad as the secretary of treasurer of different officers and board members...\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: From about ‘55 or ’56?\n\nSue Conklin: I’m guessing; he used the back of the paper for something else.  He would use the back of the paper for his .....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Because it would be obsolete; I’m sure they had to have stationery printed up every time there were office changes.\n\nSue Conklin: And he couldn’t bear to throw anything away; so, he’d just turn it over and type on the back of it.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I do the same thing.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Back up a little bit...on to the mid 1950s, desegregation and integration of the school systems was a big deal; more in Little Rock than the rest of the state.  There were areas of the state that took 10-15 years to get to that point. Dr. Amail Chudy remembers that there were about 4-5 physicians, African-American physicians, who came to him and a small group of other physicians about the same time that your father got involved in the academy; they wanted to join the academy and they did join the academy. Opal White was one of those...Dr. Jackson, I can’t remember Dr. Jackson’s name right now, but he was one of those...and there were two others; I can’t find the names of those two other men.  Are you aware if your father had any involvement in all that or did he ever mention race as related to physicians? \n\n      \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, what I am remembering is that when he had his first solo office at 509 Cross Street, he had a segregated waiting room and when he moved to 4124 W. 11th, he had an integrated waiting room.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And that was what year?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He moved in ’70, I think...hang on...yeah, February of ’70; so, he was at Cross Street from February of ‘55 to ‘70 and then was at 11th Street from 1970 to ’85 when he retired due to health.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he say anything about the change in his location changing the nature of his practice?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It did.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In relationship to race, social economics, or anything like that.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: That neighborhood was changing; this is the neighborhood that was a little bit north of 12th Street and would be south now of where 630 is, only 630 wasn’t there at the time. So, 630 is the great racial divide of Little Rock; once 630 got built, everything south of 630 became more lower income... predominantly black.  I don’t think that dad had any....dad was both a racist and not racist; he was a product of the time in which that was the status quo, but there were many black patients and colleagues that he admired and admired very much. So, I don’t think that you could say it was black and white with dad on that subject.\n\n \n\nSue Conklin: I believe that he treated his black patients with every bit as much care as he treated his white patients and he was very good to them; but, one thing that I always noticed was that he would sometimes call his white patient Mr. Smith, but he might call his black patient Joe...so, he kind of had a different adjacent there, but they didn’t seem to mind and most of them were extremely happy with him as a doctor.  As Ann said, the neighborhood was changing; but when he first moved in, it was primarily older white lower middle class people that lived there and as they died off and had to go somewhere...needing assistance...that is when the infield started with the black families and by the time he left, it was pretty dicey there.  I can remember going to clean his office and we always unlocked the door, went in, and locked it behind us...but, I can remember being there and having someone trying to get in the window..\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...\n\nSue Conklin: Because, they thought there were drugs there.\n\n      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....\n\nSue Conklin: Doctor’s office drugs...so, that was scary.  They had a set-up, which dad built, with the window where the office person...in later years was my mother...they had a sliding glass door and they had a door leading from the waiting room to the examining rooms that was locked; in those days, most doctors weren’t that careful....but, he was conscious to the fact that somebody might come in during the day and try to steal drugs.  So, he kept the door locked and my mother was supposed to tell him when someone unsavory came in; they actually had a plan.....they had guns, hand guns, and she was supposed to tell him /tip him off somehow, then roll underneath this counter that he had built, and he was going to come out blazing with a gun and shoot the guy before he got the drugs.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But that never came to be.....\n\nSue Conklin: Thank God that never came to be.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, good....alright....\n\nNow, your father moved to the second office on 11th Street in what year?\n\nSue Conklin: He moved in 1970; he bought the building and then moved.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you remember anything about your father’s involvement in the academy during the ‘70s or early ‘80s?  I’ve got some very specific things that .....\n\nSue Conklin: No, because ....see, he didn’t really bring that academy work home.  All we knew.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: At one point he had an office at your house of his office that your mother...?\n\nSue Conklin: His office at 509 Cross Street and mother went down and did secretarial work because she was a wiz at typing.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Because she is listed in the minutes as the secretary.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, she would’ve typed up the minutes; he could type, but I would say that he was not a proficient typist.  His spelling was abysmal.....His grammar was horrible...for someone educated to the highest level, he couldn’t write worth a toot.  And she was a English Major; so, she was supposed to....you know, he wrote a book and she was supposed to proof read it; I imagine there was some marital strife over that.\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In the very early ‘80s, he spent months, and months, and months, and months writing a history of the Academy of Family Practice.   \n\nSue Conklin: I didn’t know that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Every month in the newsletter, there is probably 300-400 words....\n\nSue Conklin: Oh ....ok.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And it’s not something that he transcribed from somebody else; I’ve gone back and read the original documents.  \n\nSue Conklin: I can’t ever remember seeing an Academy newsletter; so, he probably kept those at the office behind his desk. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok...\n\nSue Conklin: I’d like to see one.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh yeah; they’re....\n\nSue Conklin: Have you taken that history and compiled it together?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh yeah...\n\nSue Conklin: Is that what’s going to be in the...\n\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat is definitely going to be in the book. I was telling your sister that in the very early ’80s, your father over about six years did an ongoing history of the Arkansas Academy of family Physicians.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Uh huh, I heard about that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In the newsletter.... every month.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I didn’t know about that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And it was obvious that he spent a lot of time. ...I wonder from what ya’ll are saying if your mother may have done this.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: No...\n\nSue Conklin: Well, dad was the one who would record...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He put it together.\n\nSue Conklin: Dad loved to record things.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok and then, she would transcribe it up.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I have the gene.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart:  She would transcribe it....\n\nSue Conklin: So, she probably took it from his horrible scrawly writing and typed it.  By this time, the ‘70s, they were involved in some kid activities too and mother was at home most of the time; so, he even might have had somebody in the office type it.\n\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Dr. Cobb, who he was with initially, was one of the very early historians of the Academy in the 1950s, I guess....’56, ’57, ’58....he wrote a series of things and then, your father transcribed those and added a bunch of stuff.\n\nSue Conklin: Oh... ok..\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In the 1980s and so, I’m using a bunch of that...I’m using all of that in my......\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I know; it was amazing how when he wrote _______ ______ in his memoirs that he could even remember his military ID number.  I mean, he just could retain....he had an incredible memory.  He didn’t forget things.\n\n  \n\nSue Conklin: Mostly what we remembered about their involvement in the academy in those years was when they went on trips, because that mean that....early on, our grandparents would come and stay with us and we could do things that they normally wouldn’t let us do; that was a big thing for us...freedom. It was freedom.  But they would go to these meetings and they would get energized; they seemed to be very happy when they got back.  Dad loved to go and wear his razorback hat, red jacket, and ...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was very obnoxious.....at the meetings.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah...he carried on at the meetings and had a good time; that was his time to party.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I think that dad got a little bored with medicine.  I think that he wasn’t seeing...a lot became rote and he...I remember when his secretary would go on vacation, every two weeks I went to work for him and so, I could see him on downtime and he’d do a lot of reading.  I think that the academy gave him another project; one of the things that dad was really good at was organizing things....like a campaign manager; I got that gene.  He really enjoyed compiling, putting things together, and organizing things.  I know I read in his memoirs that they got $500 every year from Eli Lilly and he, when he was secretary of treasury, put on some kind of program at their annual meetings and such; so, I think he looked, or needed, a source of new projects to do.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he ever make any comments about recruiting other physicians to be in the academy?\n\n Ann Honeycutt: I think he always kind of went after some of...he did have some younger doctors come in and do, I don’t know if it was preceptor work or whatever, but that never worked out very well; because he was very territorial...but he seemed to always be promoting the academy.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He really deeply believed in it.  It was....I think, he took his....he had worked for the Enterprises for the Blind; it was in the...he was a Lion and it was the Lions supporting the Enterprises for the Blind; they go hand in hand...but, I think that was just merely social.  I think he felt that the academy was not just going to be good for doctors, it was going to be good for patients, it was going to be good for society in general...I mean, I think he was really on the band-wagon about family practice.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Y’all probably already know this, but I think it is well worth stating; Medical politics in the United States has always been top heavy with a very small number of people making all the decisions and then putting other people’s names on them.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Right....right...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Well that happened early on in the academy and your father was part of that.  \n\nSue Conklin: Part of the top heavy part?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Part of the top heavy part; ok......committees would be appointed, he would do the work and then, somebody else would put their name on it.  I’ve heard that; I wasn’t there and the only reason I say that is because I’ve heard several people say that.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, it would be really hard to be on the board with dad there.  He is very opinionated and thought he knew best.  I know at one point, he wrote about...I think they were in Hot Springs or something and he quit; he wasn’t going to be secretary of treasury anymore.  I think he even wrote...I think it was on a page that Sue copied for you....that they talked Harold Hedges into being secretary of treasury; that is kind of how dad blew If he didn’t feel appreciated....but then, he kind of resurrected himself in another way and I think bringing the academy up, you know, working behind the scenes is better.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It was about this time frame, I think....by the way, Shot Rodgers reflected that too.  I talked to Shot and apparently your father and Shot had a good relationship, but then it would explode every once in a while.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Nah, I wouldn’t be surprised.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)...That’s what he said.\n\nSue Conklin: If Shot didn’t agree with something dad thought.\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: If Shot didn’t agree with what your dad did.  (Laughing)....\n\n About this time, early 1980s...’84 or ’85...is when Carla came along.\n\nSue Conklin: No, Carla had come before....well....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Carla was hired in ’84...\n\n Sue Conklin: 84, gosh, I was thinking it was...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I believe it was, but right around that time frame and they became thick as thieves as I understand it. \n\nAnn Honeycutt: Unbelievable...\n\n Sue Conklin: Dad was on the committee to interview the people .....because, he had been very sorry that Alta Jean failed ...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: In his eyes, not everybody felt that.....\n\nSue Conklin: Yes.....yeah, he felt that she was a failure and he had recommended her.  Then, Dr. Wade’s wife came and he did not approve her; so, he was very invested in getting somebody that was good.  So, he probably put himself on the committee to interview and he made up his mind that Carla was going to be the one for the job and that was that.   Once she got the job and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, “We’ll make sure you do. We’ll give the tools to do the job” and he did; he taught his way.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Your father has no more a bigger fan in the while world, other than y’all, than Carla.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Than this child...\n\nSue Conklin: Just not to be too personal; but when he died, I called Carla and said, “Carla, my dad has left you some money in his will.”  She said, “Oh my gosh, I had no idea” and I said, “To let you know how much he thinks of you, he left you more than his grandchildren” and she said, “oh.”  He was that close to her.....that close to her.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....yeah.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, she.....first he trained her; his way.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah...and she didn’t buck him; she was grateful for the training that he gave her.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I think later they were more collegial because she kind of understood some of the value in what he was trying to teach her and how it needed to be run..... and I think he made sure that she was well compensated.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah.....yeah, me too; I think that that is clear in the board minutes and it’s clear in everything.\n\n Ann Honeycutt: Right...\n\nSue Conklin: And he liked to spend time with her and go over there; they talked just like friends talk at work sometimes and she would tell him stories that he found very entertaining.  I mean, he’d retell us....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, she had a little body.... .(Laughing)......\n\n\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, he recounted some story that she told him about going to the gas station, putting the nozzle for the gas in her car, and it spit gas back out on her.  She cursed, got mad, and then, she traded her car in; he just thought that was crazy as hell to hear him tell about it.....that she would get that mad at that car that she would just go and trade it in; of course, he would never do anything like that.\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Clearly, your father was part of the institutional memory of the Arkansas Academy whether it was of General Practice or Family Practice, because he spanned....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He’s an institutional memory anyway.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah.....because, he spanned both eras....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And at some point in the ‘80s, he began to go downhill; is that right?  Is that when it was?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, he became ill in ‘85.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: With...?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: In ’85, he had a transverse colon cancerous mass that blocked him; so, he had to have sort of emergency surgery.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He was only 60 at this point right?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was 61 or 62.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: A young man...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Dad was so secretive about most everything to do with him that my mother was in the kitchen about 7 o’clock in the morning, maybe earlier, and there was a tiny rap on the door; dad was still in bed and it was John Baber.   She said, “What are you doing here?” and he said, “Tom called me.  I need to go back and see him.”  She didn’t even know he was sick; so, he had...\n\nSue Conklin: There was snow on the ground.  A little uncharacteristic for Little Rock, a large amount of snow; but, Dr. Baber had a front wheel drive Cadillac and he was able to get to the house.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: So, they went to the hospital and I think it was 24 hours before they...\n\nSue Conklin: Dr. Baber took him to the hospital in his Cadillac.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: So, he had to have his colon removed and Dr. Baber made the decision not to do a colostomy; for the first year, dad cursed Dr. Baber for not doing that because he had a really, really, hard time adjusting. But, he did adjust and I think that that was the right decision.\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he retire at that point?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: What he did was....\n\nSue Conklin: Backing up; he also didn’t tell anyone that he had been treating himself for diabetes for several years.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: For more than 10 years.\n\nSue Conklin: Nobody knew and when he got to the hospital, he completely went out of whack.  I mean, they could not get his blood sugar in registration....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Also, he smoked at the time and was a pretty heavy drinker; so, he went through a lot of withdrawals.\n\nSue Conklin: It was two weeks that he couldn’t see; for two weeks, his vision was messed up and at the end of the two weeks, my mother asked him about smoking and he said, ‘”I’ve been two weeks without cigarettes; I don’t think I want to start back now.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You know why he had trouble seeing?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I don’t know if he was...they couldn’t regulate him.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: No; if his blood sugar had been out of control for months or a year or two....where it had been really high....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He controlled his blood sugar.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I know; but, I mean, if it had been and he had not been paying any attention to it...and it had been real high....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He had been treating himself.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: If you drop it down with insulin or anything, the vision goes away for a brief period.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Ok....Ok.\n\n    \n\nSue Conklin: He had been treating himself orally and once he was in the hospital, that wasn’t going to work anymore; he had to go on insulin.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah; he had to go on insulin.....I bet you that is what happened.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: They corrected his blood sugar, which it had probably been a lot higher than he was admitting that it was...\n\nSue Conklin: Yes, probably....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yes...\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Then, that is why his vision went away temporarily.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Ok, that is good to know.\n\nSue Conklin: I will say that in his later life, particularly after mother and he divorced, he became obsessive about his diabetes; he measured his food, he was very precise, and he.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He tracked everything.\n\nSue Conklin: Everything, in his journalistic way; and he was able to control his blood sugar to the point where his doctor said, “You’re doing it better than I could; just keep doing what you’re doing.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Although, we would go out to eat with him occasionally and he would sit right in the dining room, pull his insulin out of his shirt pocket, and stick it straight thought his material; you know, use his needle until it’s...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...\n\nSue Conklin: He used his needle until it got so dull that it wouldn’t go through his skin.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right....      \n\nAnn Honeycutt: I mean, just a codger...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now wait a minute....yes, I agree that he was a codger, but he’s not that old at this point; he is 61 years old.\n\nSue Conklin: At 61, he tells my mother, “I can’t go back to work.” They had been working half days and my mother was the help; because, you know....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: You couldn’t keep help.\n\nSue Conklin: You couldn’t keep help...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Steady, steady rotations....\n\nSue Conklin: And when the last one went out and she kept having to go in and fill in; by this time, we were all in high school and could take care of ourselves....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Or gone...\n\nSue Conklin: So, she kept filling in, filling in, filling in until finally, she was just there all the time.  He had a nurse for a period of time, but eventually she left and then, they were.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They would all get fed up with him as he was hard to work for.\n\nSue Conklin: But when he was in the hospital, he realized,”I just can’t even do half-days anymore” and so, he told mother, “I’m going to have to retire.”\n\n     \n\nAnn Honeycutt: It was very abrupt......very abrupt.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah; very abrupt and so, he never went back to the office.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now, he came from a family who scrimped......\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was you father parsimonious in the same way?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Very much so.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, so it wasn’t as though he wasn’t going to be able to support himself...\n\nSue Conklin: Well, he worried about that a lot.  You know, they had splurged on things; he had bought a house boat in the ‘80s and enjoyed it for about 10 years and then, sold it.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: No, he bought a house boat in the early ‘70s.\n\nSue Conklin: He put three children through college and at the end of that college, none of them had any debt.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, there wasn’t a lot of....we never took vacations.\n\nSue Conklin: No and he lived in the same house from 1960 on.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: To the mid ‘90s......\n\nSue Conklin: It had a 30 year note; so, he was probably just paying it off with about a $250.00 a month payment.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right....\n\n Sue Conklin: You know, he was 61 and I don’t think...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They were sailors...they were sailors\n\nSue Conklin: He couldn’t get social security yet.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right.\n\nSue Conklin: But, he had paid on social security policies all of his life and so, he was ready to cash in on those; but, the doctors had to write letters for him and send them to the .....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It took a few months.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah and he was real worried.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We have that in here and willing to give you a...\n\nSue Conklin: He was real worried about the time lapse that it was going to take and so, he gathered up everything in the house that he thought he could sell and had a garage sale.  He sold all these guns that my brother would’ve liked to have had and just crazy stuff....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was on disability from ’85 to ’90 and then went on social security.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So at some point, I think you father began to deteriorate; mentally, emotionally, and physically.  He was already going down physically...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...\n\nSue Conklin: Physically; but I will argue that his mind was sharp.  Emotionally perhaps; but, I would argue that his mind was as sharp as a tack.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When did that start?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Also, after that colon cancer and he didn’t have any chemo or radiation afterwards....surgery, they thought they got it all.  He probably didn’t want it; I mean, he had always said that he would never have chemo.\n\nSue Conklin: No....no.....yeah...\n\n Ann Honeycutt: But, he also quit drinking.\n\nSue Conklin: Well, to excess..\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He didn’t drink a lot after...\n\nSue Conklin: Some.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It was after he went back to move into the Robert’s building that he was...\n\nSue Conklin: No, he was still drinking some; just not a lot, because I was having to take him to the liquor stores.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Maybe, he had stopped smoking.\n\nSue Conklin: He was a man who could drink a lot and not look drunk; let’s put it that way.  People might and I’m sure at the meetings, he was....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was a very high functioning drunk.\n\nSue Conklin: That was a lot of his fun at the meetings; to have a drink, to relax, and to party with his friends. But, I would wager...in my lifetime, I never saw him falling down drunk.\n\n \n\nAnn Honeycutt: My observance of him had to do with his eyes; when his eyes had a certain glassiness to them, I knew.  But, we’d also known how much he drank; he was an alcoholic.  \n\nSue Conklin: Mother drank too, but she stopped and so, that was.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, he was definitely an alcoholic.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now, we don’t need to go into why; that is not.... I don’t mean to...but, your mom and dad got a divorce.\n\nSue Conklin: Yes.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: At some point.....about when was that?\n\nSue Conklin: Uh...we don’t have that in there.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We don’t have it in there; but, they separated...she left in ’94.  He resurfaced; he had a further decline at that point, but he regrouped and ended up in Alexander.  He lived in a trailer in Alexander and was happy as a clam.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he work at the juvenile place out there?\n\nSue Conklin: No; at that point, he didn’t work at all.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He may have still been working...we didn’t put that in there, but he did some claim review for Blue Cross Blue Shield...but he also, Tom and I were trying to figure out the years that he did this...but, he worked for Jennings Osborne at the Arkansas Research..\n\nSue Conklin: Arkansas Medical Research Testing Center down in Riverdale; he enjoyed that.  In fact at the end of that time, he had Carla typing up the minutes of their meetings; they had board meetings and the minutes had to be transcribed.  It was a nice extra job for Carla, because Jennings was very generous with his employees.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When did your father pass away?\n\nSue Conklin: 2006.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, he was in this situation for 6, 8 years...or 9 years?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Longer than that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: 10 years?\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah; he liked Alexander.  He became involved in the Episcopal Church in Benton and became friend with....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Really?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He did.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok...\n\nSue Conklin: Oh yeah; he tried to tell the office staff in the church...\n\n(Laughing)...\n\nHow they needed to staple papers...and how they needed to....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh yeah, he became the clerk of the vestry and tried to run everything.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh my.....oh my.....y’all may or may not know the Ellis family; Bucky and ...\n\nSue Conklin: Bucky Ellis; Bucky and Selena...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Bucky was a good friend of mine.\n\nSue Conklin: Oh yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You’re talk about somebody who met a hardheaded man who would’ve met a hardheaded man....  (Laughing).....\n\n Sue Conklin: Oh, dad had...and Selena too; Selena was on vestry and dad didn’t think that Selena liked him.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh..Selena...\n\n Sue Conklin: And Bucky, I remember dad talking about Bucky and his pledge to the church.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Oh, I’m sure dad.....but, who was the priest there that...\n\nSue Conklin: Bill Olford.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Bill Olford....\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah and so, dad enjoyed that church a lot.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: They really got along; I think Bill Olford was like a father confessor to dad.\n\nSue Conklin: They were very close, but....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, Bill Olford had his issues.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)...Uh huh....\n\nI’m not discussing the factor, but yes...\n\nSue Conklin: So, dad enjoyed his time in Alexander ...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I’m sure you know the...\n\nSue Conklin: ....And he stayed friends.....I was the only one living here then and we didn’t lose touch through the divorce, which was my goal.  You know, I still had a mother and I still had a father; I wasn’t going to take sides and I’m not going to.... Although, I did assist my mother in moving out of the house....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We were blamed.....but we did support her because she was the one asking or help: Sue Conklin: Yeah....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Tell me about your mom; what happened with your mom? You said that she developed Alzheimer’s disease at one point.\n\n\nSue Conklin: Well, she left the house and moved into an apartment by Catholic High, which she just loved and it was very peaceful for here.  She had never lived alone and she lived in that apartment for, I guess, a couple of years.  My grandmother, again the grandmother that went to church with us and lived at the foot of Cantrell Hill, got dementia and was really needing to be in assisted living, but neither of the daughters wanted to put her there...but, she fell, broke her hip, and went to the hospital who was ready to release her after three days and the anesthesia had caused her to be increasingly...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Disoriented...\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah; so, they had to move her into a nursing home.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: By the way, that grandmother...”Meme” we called her...worked until she was 84.  My mother’s side of the family had all the longevity genes.”\n\nSue Conklin: So, she had moved out of her house and my mother moved into that little house, which she dearly loved.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Mother also worked at Franke’s Cafeteria on Rodney as a beverage hostess and loved it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Really?.... \n\nSue Conklin: Yeah...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: And the Franke’s were very open to working with us, the kids, as mother began to develop dementia.  We told her that our mother had yanked her mother out of her work situation abruptly and without any concern of what that loss might feel like and we didn’t want to do that to her; so, they worked with us up until they decided that she could no longer do the job and we had a really wonderful ending for all of that. \n\nSue Conklin: Actually, I think that they would’ve kept her; they told me that she was better than some of their other employees.\n\n\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)....\n\nWell, but Carolyn had said that.....\n\nSue Conklin: Mother was having trouble...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Mother had a lot of anxiety; because as you know when you lose your short term memory, you can’t remember where you put your keys....she was losing her keys at every shift and...\n\n It didn’t worry her...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Of course not...it never worried her; she had dementia.\n\nSue Conklin: She had to ride......we had to not let her drive because the doctor was worried that she’d lose her way; so, we arranged for her to ride the Links Para-transit Bus, which is for people who can’t ride the regular city bus. But, the mechanism for scheduling her rides were so convoluted that I had to schedule all of her rides and I even had a little trouble with it; You had to call at least seven, but no more than fourteen days before you wanted to have a ride and I had an elaborate scheduled that I carried around with me and every week, I had to call and schedule for two weeks out.....but, all she knew was that she had to keep $2.00 to get on bus.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....right...\n\n“Sue Conklin: ...and she had trouble doing that.  But, she rode the bus to Franke’s and they picked her up and brought her home....and then, she’d lose the key to her house and bother her neighbors. So, we knew it had to come to an end, but Mrs. Franke....no; she said, “I like her better than most of my other employees.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So when did your mom pass away?\n\nSue Conklin: She died in 2013.  She stayed in that little house not too many years before we had to move her to assisted living and then she bounced out of assisted living and into full nursing care; actually into a memory unit over in Maumelle. It was...I can’t remember the name of it...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Outlook Point; no....yeah...\n\nSue Conklin: It was Outlook Point, but it’s not that now. But, she moved there.....well, she was at Presbyterian Village to begin with, but she became too much for them to handle after she got away from them and went down to the Industrial Laundry one night; they had no idea where she was.  The problem wasn’t her; the problem was with their security or lack thereof.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, they are not set up for dementia.\n\nSue Conklin: So, we took her to Maumelle and then, she came back to Presbyterian Village when she needed more help and broke her hip there.\n\n  \n\n Ann Honeycutt: Ended up a Valley Ranch; the Villages of Valley Ranch out on Cantrell and...\n\nSue Conklin: She was like #27 resident; it was brand new and it was lovely....very lovely. She was happy wherever she was; she always maintained a positive attitude...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We used say to dad, “Dad, you will get better services living in assisted living if you are kind to people and respectful to people....... “God damn it, I told them...blah-blah-blah.”\n\nSue Conklin: He was very angry; he lived in assisted living for about 18 months, because after...he lived in his trailer and made himself rent a post-office box, which forced him to leave his house every day; that was his plan. He said, “That makes me get out of the house everyday at least one time.”  It was part of a routine that he was trying to reestablish and so, he went to the post-0ffiice one day and on his way back, a young man, who didn’t have a driver’s license and driving a borrowed vehicle, crossed the center line and hit dad  head-on.  The ambulance came and dad said, “There’s nothing wrong with me” and they said, “Sir, you need to sit down. We are going to take your blood pressure” and so, he sat in the back of the ambulance, on the tailgate, or whatever and one of his neighbors rode by on a bicycle and said, “What are you doing here, Tom?”   He said, “Oh, look at my car” and he said, “Well, how are you going to get home?”  Dad said, “I don’t know” and the neighbor said, “Well, let me go home, get my car, and I’ll come back and get you.” Well, dad refused treatment; he absolutely was not...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Typical...\n\nSue Conklin: He was not going to go to the hospital, not going to be treated; there was not anything wrong with him.....the kind neighbor picked him up, took him back, and then checked on him for a couple of days. He knew something was wrong; but not being a medical professional, he called me and said, “I think your dad is having trouble.  He can’t really get his breath.”   So, I said, “Put him on the phone” ....”I said, “Dad, we need me to come get you” and he said, “Ok.”  So, we took him to St. Vincent’s emergency room, by this time, it was....I was at work, so it was probably 7 o’clock...my husband and I, we, were in the room when the doctor came in and did the cross-examination and said, “There is nothing wrong with you; I’m going to release you” and dad said, “There is something wrong.  I know there is something wrong; I know my body”.....”No...no...no” and he left the room.  My husband went out the room and he said, “Look, if he is telling you that there is something wrong, there is something wrong.  I don’t know what you need to do, but you need to do something else; because, he knows what is going on. He is not a dummy.”  The doctor said, “Well, maybe we can do an EKG”....well, the EKG came back and there was something wrong with it.  He couldn’t read it and didn’t know what it was; so, he called the doctor who was on call, who was at Park Plaza, and he said, “I’ll just come over there.”  He came over, looked at it, and said, “Yeah, we’ve got to admit him” ......so, dad was right; he knew that something was wrong.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He ended up with a pacemaker.\n\n Sue Conklin: Before it was all over with, although he said he didn’t want one, he got one and it did improve his quality of....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, he went on oxygen then too.\n\nSue Conklin: He did; he went to rehab....he actually went to rehab first and then, he went back and got the pacemaker...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: That was first....\n\nSue Conklin: He didn’t have enough stamina; he couldn’t do anything at rehab and he knew that there was still something wrong, but he refused....his primary care physician was a lady; I can’t remember her name now, but she was at University in Aging and her husband was a physician too...but, she was very angry with him because she wanted to treat him for his heart condition, but he refused.  He said, “I’m not doing it.  I’m not having it. I will treat it with medication and that is as far as I’m going.” She said, “That is not right; you need to do what I say, because I am your doctor” and he said, “I’m not doing it.”  So, she gave him a little card ....that he was very proud of and I should have brought it here...but it said, “If I die, it is not the fault of my doctor, Dr. Such-and-such”.....\n\n(All Laughing)....  \n\nAnd he was so proud of that card; he would pull it out and show it around..but, he made her so mad that she fired him and made her husband take him as his doctor.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)......I know who those people are...Kazenski; it’s not Kazenski, but something like that.\n\nSue Conklin: No...no; it’s a lady....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I know who it is; there was a couple who practiced together.\n\n \n\nSue Conklin: If you said the name, I would know it; but anyway when the heart doctor came to the hospital to examine him, I happened to be there and I told him about this and he said, “I will never operate on your father; ever, under any circumstances.  Now I will give him a pacemaker, but that will be the wrong thing. Your dad was right; that would be the absolute wrong thing, but. I would recommend a pacemaker to help with his quality of life.”  He had been to rehab once and fizzled out with something wrong, came back, got the pacemaker, and then went back to rehab again and aid, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to go back to my trailer”.....Because in rehab, they taught him how to walk with a walker and he had three or four steps at the trailer.  Typical for dad, the trailer was just the way he wanted it.  He didn’t have a kitchen table; he had his computer, all these phones, and all these papers...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: If you wanted to sit in his trailer, you had to go get a yard chair and bring it inside.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah; he had a bedroom....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It was settled for him.\n\nSue Conklin: It was....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, it was perfect for him.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, he didn’t have to cater to anybody else and that’s fine; I mean it was his preference.  And we didn’t eat there, because we weren’t too sure about the food.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)\n\nNoooooo....and then when he cleaned it up, it was....\n\n\nSue Conklin: He’d wash dishes in cold water and we just didn’t eat there.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)...\n\nHe never cleaned the skillet.\n\nSue Conklin: We didn’t eat there...but anyway, he did go to assisted living.  He asked me to check a couple of places out and then typically for dad, he went to the cheapest place.  He said, “I don’t want to spend any more money than $1,000” and I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t find anything less than $1350 a month” and he said, “Well, I guess, I’ll have to make do with that.”  So, we went to the Robert’s Building and the administrator was a black female...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Stephanie...\n\nSue Conklin: You might want to turn this interview off for this; she had a serious problem with her....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: She had some dental...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I can edit it out....\n\nSue Conklin: She had some teeth that came out of her gums and went this way....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Straight...\n\nSue Conklin: They didn’t come out .....he called her, “the ga-rilla”.... \n\nAnn Honeycutt: She was very tall and extremely capable; she could take him on.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, she did take him on and they butted heads. They butted heads a lot; he wanted to talk about surgical procedures at the dining table with the little ole ladies that lived in assisted living and they were horrified. So, ultimately, dad got his own table with a seat that faced the wall and nobody ate with him; he was as happy as a clown.\n\n   \n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)....\n\nHe also had a little....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I don’t know what I’m laughing about it, but that seems......  \n\nAnn Honeycutt: I know....\n\nSue Conklin: He had all his own condiments on the table; but he battled, the whole time he was there, he battled the staff.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Everybody...\n\nSue Conklin: He battled with the people who fixed the food because he kept elaborate notebooks, again the journaling thing, of his blood sugar.  He checked it in the morning when he woke up and wrote down what they had for that meal; whether it was acceptable or not.  He figured they gave him the wrong food or they didn’t have enough food for his blood sugar calculation and then when he got back to the room, he checked it again and it was their fault if it was off because...remember he’s...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: It was never his fault.\n\n   \n\nSue Conklin: He’s writing down exactly what he’d eat, but he’s got to eat what they give him; you know, they’d give him white bread and he knows it’s going to affect his blood sugar....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: That was always a bone of contention with me, because ...\n\nSue Conklin: He’d ask them for something else and they’d say, “We don’t have anything else” ....so, it was that kind of stuff. ...or he expected a hot meal for dinner and they give him a bologna sandwich with two pieces of white bread that again he knows is going to affect his sugar. So anyway, he was at war.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, he was just...he was angry\n\nSue Conklin: It was hard for him....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was angry.\n\nSue Conklin: Being a control freak, when you can’t control your food....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Also, he was responsible for his poor health; it was his lifestyle choices...but, he never took responsibility for that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did he ever talk about...obviously, he had a lot of trouble with the cancer and then, he and his wife getting a divorce....but, did he ever talk about his life as a physician and the things that he did or the things that he would’ve done different?   \n\nAnn Honeycutt: No, because he did everything perfect the first time.\n\nSue Conklin: Right, he set his course and he stayed course.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But did he seem to be happy with that part?\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah, I think he enjoyed being a physician; yeah.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I.....dad; even in this homily that he wrote, he wrote his own funeral homily and wanted our brother-in-law to read it ...they said no....but, they printed it in his...\n\nSue Conklin: Yes, I need to remember; I’ll send you that.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I may have you a copy of that; but at any rate, he wrote in there that he didn’t have any regrets and that he.........I’m going to go see if I can find it.......  \n\nSue Conklin: You should have that, because that is firsthand information...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah; sure....\n\nSue Conklin: He wouldn’t let me put that in the newspaper because Mr. Hudsman only allowed 75 words free at the time for an obituary; so, he wrote a 75 word obituary to be put in the newspaper for free.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right.....\n\nSue Conklin: And he wrote the other one that he thought they might put...well it was a homily as she said... and he wrote a longer one for the Benton paper, because they didn’t charge for the longer obituary.  Of course, my brother wanted to write an obituary and we put the long one in; of course, I knew dad would be horrified that it cost $800.00.....but as my husband said, “Let it go; he is dead now.  This is important to your brother for closure and your dad won’t know the difference.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)....Yeah.......\n\nHow would you think your father would like to be remembered?\n\nSue Conklin: As a good doctor and somebody who really cared about his patients; he wanted to do the best for them, despite the fact that many of them never followed his advice.  Much to his regret, many of them continued to make the poor choices that he told them not to make: don’t smoke (he’s smoking), don’t be overweight (he’s overweight)....don’t do as I do, do as I tell you to do.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: As I tell you to do.....Yeah.....\n\nSue Conklin: I think he would want to be remembered that way.  I can’t...hell, I don’t know that he was as invested in his family as he was in his patients as far as that goes; but, I think that he would want to be remembered as a man with deep faith because the church was important to him, particularly in low times in his life.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Some of this is funny, because he did have a huge ego; he said, “Speaking from a forefront of this experience allows me to make my own observation and not rely on others.  But my attempt to glorify my life, when in fact I was just an ordinary Joe and never did anything outstanding, never aspired to fame, failed in my aspirations, fortunate in the monetary view point, and at least at part of failure in marriage. I did feel fortunate to have lived a long and relatively rewarding life. Later in life, my prayers always addressed my thanks for physical, mental, emotional, and financial good fortune, and a plea for spiritual improvement, which I most desperately felt I needed. I never did obtain that spiritual good fortune that I aspired to, although I tried.  As I alluded to earlier, don’t judge me as presumptuous for subjecting you to this discourse; but after all, who knew me best but me.  Therefore with permission of my children”....which is bullshit, because he never asked us about any of this.....\n\n(Laughing).....\n\n“Let this be my homily of my life; there were those that loved me, there were those that hated me, those that understood me, those that misunderstood me, those that knew me, and those that thought that they knew me. My life was that of a loner, an independent, described by some as stubborn as a mule, a willing worker for those things deemed worthwhile; an Indian and not a chief.  In many respects, I thought of myself as being dumb as dirt”...that is false, honestly....”yet, always ready with an opinion on any and all subjects. My critical assessment of character and evaluation of associates/acquaintances was on target with the possible exception of close relationships where I suffered defeat in every argument and debate, although never learning to back away from either. I oftentimes said that my only true success in life was my ability to propagate children and grass.”         \n\n(Laughing)...\n\n“My love and purpose in life centered around the Academy of Family Physicians to which I dedicated many years of service, the United States Marine Corps in which I served WWII, the Episcopal Church and God, and the abbreviated or condensed family retaining derogative state: not necessary New York State”...anyway, you can have and read the rest.....\n\n      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh please.....please....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: That is a lot of false.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But, that is a great way to end this......that is a really great way to end this...\n\n(All laughing)...\n\nI’m going to do some still photography here in a minute, if you don’t mind; but, do y’all have anything else that you would like to add about your father..... his professional life, his social life, anything that you knew of him that we haven’t included ......? \n\nSue Conklin: I was going to see if I took any notes here......I don’t think.......I can’t think of any; a lot of these, of course, I didn’t get to answer...”\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Dad terrified us; we were all terrified of him as children, but I think as we got away from him and we better understood how deeply he needed to control everything around him...I began as more of a separate person to be able to appreciate him more when I could kind of hold my own with him. Sue and I talk daily, so we rehash lot, and lots, and lots of....the perceptions, even if you’ve got six years there...each child has a completely different perception.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh absolutely....\n\n\n\nAnn Honeycutt: But, if.....we play parlor games too and one of them is, “if you had to spend a full day with dad or mother, who would you spend the day with?”.... (Laughing)....and definitely, he was the more interesting parent.  He was engaged in life, curious, a fountain of information, and if you could weed out the bullshit.....as he got older, he began to....this was a new word for us...confabulate/make up stories and....\n\n  \n\nSue Conklin: But there has been many times since he died that I would.....my husband would say, “do you know this?” and I’d say, “No; but if dad hadn’t died, he could’ve told us.”  I mean you could call him and ask a question about anything, most anything...I mean we are talking before Google....what you might Google now to get the answer to...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: You could get it from him.\n\nSue Conklin: I could call and ask him and he would explain it.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Also he was quite the authority on things in my mother’s family, because he could observe and remember and process; he was a great, great observer, which is why I think that he was a good physician in that he was very good at taking lots of different things and putting them together.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, I think clearly....that comes out very clear.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah, that was his gift.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: That was his gift and I’m grateful for things that I inherited genetically from him, but I also am mindful that there are ways that I don’t want to be like him.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Of the four of y’all, who is most like your parents?\n\nSue Conklin: Julie is dad made over.\n\n\nAnn Honeycutt: And she won’t....she refuses to see that at all.\n\nSue Conklin: Right....Julie is dad made over. We were just talking about our brother the other day...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: We wonder who Julie’s mother was because; we know who her father is.\n\n(All Laughing)....\n\nYou see, Julie disowned him at the end of ...when our parents separated....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Because of your mom....yeah.....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Julie never spoke to dad again after that; didn’t even go to his funeral.  But, she is so much like him that that is why she couldn’t tolerate him and he couldn’t tolerate her.\n\nSue Conklin: Very much like him; yeah...our brother is more like my mother’s father, my maternal grandfather; very, very, much like him.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Laid back...\n\nSue Conklin: We just said that yesterday...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah...he\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: Well, who are you like?\n\nSue Conklin: I like to thing I am a combination between mother and dad; I have dad’s tenacity to pick a path and stick with it...obviously as I’ve only had three jobs in my entire life and my brother and sisters don’t understand that...10 years, 10 years, 30 years....you know, I get with something and I stick with it.  Like I told the guy yesterday at work, “If you don’t answer my email, I’ll email you again and until you answer me, you’ll keep getting emails”...that is the dad in me.  I like detail orientation; I like...I’m a small picture person and so, I think I’m, like dad in that way.  But, I like to think that I’m like mother in that I’m not completely black and white about people; I mean I do tend to judge people, but I usually give them more than one chance. Dad wasn’t much more than one chance guy....  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)....\n\nMiss Ann, who are you like?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I’m definitely a blend of both; I’ve probably done more antitypical work on myself than my siblings.  So, I have understood which parts of me that I....I am very grateful for everything that I inherited from my father; I am apolitical,  I am curious, I like to know a lot about everything, but I don’t have that encyclopedic knowledge.  I decided pretty early on that medicine wasn’t going to work for me as I’m more of a logistics and business person.\n\nSue Conklin: She got mothers gift of gab though; she talks to everybody that comes through the door.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He really was an introvert and I’m more of an extrovert.\n\nSue Conklin: She is like mother in that way.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: So, I hope to get...I’m involved...I’m the only one though that is a joiner; you know how he really was...he really believed in the Episcopal Church and really believed in the Academy, that’s me.  That’s me; I have things that I really invest myself in.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Well, I will say that when you sit down to talking in the 2nd and 3rd person about someone and you have two people there, you think, “well, one person is going to dominate”....that hasn’t happened.\n\nSue Conklin: I tried to be respectful and not talk when y’all were.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: No, y’all haven’t talked over each other and have given complimentary reviews/interesting reviews/different reviews...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: If anyone could be luckier in life, I’d like to see one; but I have a sister.\n\nSue Conklin: Well, I think that mother and dad...we resented the way that they raised us, because they were very strict...but as I’ve gotten older and I’ve seen young people, particularity people that I work with now, having children and making their children the center of their lives and turning their children into basically spoiled brats...I’ve realized that they system that people used in the ‘50s and ‘60s raising children was pretty darn good.\n\n    \n\nAnn Honeycutt: They threw you out of the house and you raised yourself.\n\nSue Conklin: You raised an independent person who can think for themselves and it gave them boundaries; you didn’t allow your children to run your lives.  I thought that was chafing when I was a kid, but I realized that it formed a foundation for us to be better adults; basically is what I’m saying.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, I agree....I agree.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I was the oldest, so they had to cut their teeth on me.\n\nSue Conklin: So, I think that while we thought they were overly strict...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, we say this a lot now; we’ll say, “Dad said this and it really made me mad, but he was right.” \n\nSue Conklin: Yes and...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: One thing he always said....\n\nSue Conklin: The main thing he said was, “dad, can I do this?” ...“No”...“Why not?” ... “Because, I said so”  ...“But why?” and he’d say, “I know more than you, because I’ve lived longer.”  That just made me so mad when I was a kid; but now that I’m 64 years old and I realize that I’ve learned things in my life, in my 64 years, that I couldn’t have known when I was 7.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Yeah....exactly...\n\nSue Conklin: There is no way; no way and because he was older than me, he did have the wisdom and life experience....you know, he just made me boiling mad when he’d ...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Dad said a lot, “Nothing good happens at 2 o’clock in the morning.”\n\nSue Conklin: Oh, yes....we say that one too.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Absolutely...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He said that one a lot.\n\nSue Conklin: I was talking to my brother the other day recounting a story about some crime that had occurred over on the eastside of Little Rock at 1am and I said, “You know what dad said; nothing good ever happens after”...first it was 10 o’clock, because we had a 10 o’clock curfew and then it was midnight, because we had a midnight.....but, we never had a curfew later than midnight; never.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)...“Never...never.\n\nSue Conklin: Never....not to say that we didn’t come home and then, go back out again.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Now, we chafed a lot as teenagers...\n\nSue Conklin: Because, he did go to bed at something like 6 o’clock at night....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now, it would’ve been hard for you being the daughters of that man and not to chafe some.... (Laughing)...I don’t mean...you’ve got some of his characteristics...\n\nSue Conklin: She was the oldest and she had it the hardest; she was the oldest and she....it was the first time through and then the second one was the introvert, so she wasn’t much trouble.  By the time that I came along, he was starting to go to more AAFP meetings and starting to have to vote...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: He was having more of an external life at that time.\n\nSue Conklin: He was relaxing a little and it wasn’t quite such of a struggle to build the practice up and get it going. Then when my brother came along, it was like, “Hell, you can do whatever you want” and boy that really angered me; because you know, he was....\n\nAnn Honeycutt: (Laughing)....\n\nBut, we were all very proficient liars.  Now, we should maybe tell him about the book....\n\nSue Conklin: Well...\n\nAnn Honeycutt: I wonder if I can....so, no one liked to deal with him directly....\n\nSue Conklin: Well, he didn’t allow it.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Well, he....it was just easier to deal with him indirectly; so maybe...\n\nSue Conklin: No, we would ask him something and he’d say, “Write me a note” remember?  \n\nAnn Honeycutt: No, that was if you were saying, “Hey dad, can you bring me so-and-so from the office” and he’d say, “write me a note”...he never wanted to have to remember anything.  But if we wanted to go out and be with our friends, there were certain rules. First of all, you could never single date; you always had to double date.  You always had to have permission 24 hours in advance; so, we had a date book that you would write your request and be sure that you had all the details... \n\n(Laughing)...\n\nSue Conklin: Like: where are you going, who would you be with, what time would you arrive...?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: What time would you leave?\n\nSue Conklin: Would the parents be there?\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Right, exactly... and then there was a yes box and a no box.  You would cruise up and down the hall to see if he had.....because, it was on his dresser ..\n\nSue Conklin: His dresser; yeah...\n\n\nAnn Honeycutt: To see if he had answered or not; sometimes he would horse around with you and not answer and it was because you left out a detail or something.\n\nSue Conklin: Yeah or he’s say.....he’d add a condition like “must know such and such” and you’d have to answer that before he’d check yes or no.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: Right....right and so, it wasn’t until I was probably a senior that I defied him; he told me something was no and I did it anyway. There was going to be a party on a boat in the river and I couldn’t assure that I’d be back by midnight and he told me that I would be responsible for jumping off the boat and swimming to shore; yeah, that kind of stuff.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ladies, thank you; this has been great fun.\n\nAnn Honeycutt: There will be a lot of great material with this.\n\n(All laughing)....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I have enjoyed this.  I enjoyed it immensely.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97834/file/194888#t=0.0,6890.45023"}]}]}]}