{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/bn9x060b09/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Mike Moody"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2016-06-02 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video file"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["family medicine","family physician","Arkansas","Rural family medicine"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Michael Moody, MD (personal name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/776/small/MikeMoodyM.D.DVD.mp4_1758135685.jpg?1758135688","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Mike_Moody_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":6734.29423,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/776/small/MikeMoodyM.D.DVD.mp4_1758135685.jpg?1758135688","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/291/776/original/Mike_Moody_M.D._DVD.mp4?1758135662","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6734.29423,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776/transcript/84374","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Mike Moody Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776/transcript/84374/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Mike Moody\n\n“Jim Bozeman retired from the clinic about two years ago, but he is still doing one weekday a week and one weekend day a month. So, he is not fully retired either.” \n\nWell, I retired three years ago because I found that I spent more time writing and researching than I was practicing medicine and I knew what I was going to end up doing.\n\nGood evening, today is 6/02/16.  My name is Sam Taggart and I am the interviewer.  Today, we are in the office of Dr. Michael Moody of Salem, Arkansas.  Thank you for inviting us; I appreciate this opportunity.  We are here interviewing for the Arkansas Physicians Oral History Project and Dr. Moody this is your interview.   This interview is only a format.   Let’s just talk about you.\n\nWhen were you were born? \n\n“I was born in August 1946.”\n\nSo you’re a baby boomer. \n\n“I’m a baby boomer.”\n\nDid your dad come home from the war and you were born after that?\n\n“Actually, my father started a real estate business here in 1940 and then got drafted.  He came back in 1945 and then I was born in ’46.”\n\n Where was your father during the war?\n\n“He went to several different places, but did not go overseas.”  \n\nWas he in the Army or Navy?    \n\n“He was in the Army; actually at that time, it was called the Army Air Core.  That was before there was an Air Force.”\n\nHow did your family come to be in Salem in the first place?\n\n“Both my parents were raised at Calico Rock, Arkansas; so, they finished school down there and got married.  My grandfather was already in the real estate business.  He set up my father and two of his sons in Batesville and West Plains and then my father came to Salem.”\n\nTo just extend the family business?\n\n“Yes.”\n\n\nWas there anybody else in the family in medicine; aunts, uncles, cousins, anybody else who would’ve directed you in that way?      \n\n“Not that I know of; I’ve heard stories of a great grandfather by the name of Laky that probably practiced in Mountain View.  That was in medicine, but that…”\n\nThat would’ve been the later part of the Nineteen Century, as you said great grandfather?\n\n“Later part Nineteenth Century or early Twenthy Century; yeah.  My “mentor” was Dr. Carl Arnold who moved here about 1954.  I was a teenager and he took an interest in me.  We didn’t have a hospital at that time, but he had bought his practice from Dr. Gusnor who had moved to Mountain Home.  Dr. Gusnor served on the State Medical Board and was in the last eclectic physician that served on the Medical Board.”\n\nDo you have any idea when that was?\n\n“50s-‘60s.”\n\nI know there was still an eclectic physician who still practiced in Benton at about that same time.\n\n“He was still practicing over in Mountain Home, but he was still on the Medical Board when they sort of abolished the eclectic physicians and grandfathered all of them in and gave them one place on the Medical Board until they were all gone.”\n\nDo you anything about the circumstances of your birth?  Obviously, you weren’t born in a hospital; you must have been born at home or at the doctor’s office? \n\n“Well, actually, I’m the third of six children.  I was born in a hospital down in Batesville.  There was a little bitty hospital down there.  So, I was the first one; my older brother and sister were both born down in Calico where my grandparent’s still lived.”\n\nBefore the war?\n\n“Before the war.”\n\nThat’s interesting; do you know or remember who the doctor was that delivered you?\n\n“I can’t remember.”\n\nTell me a little bit about being raised in Salem; how big a town was it, what was it like, and what the people were like.\n\n‘The first population sign that I remember was 600.  The county was about 5000.  We’re the county seat.  Everybody was close.  I had five brothers and sisters; so during the summer time, \n\n\nback before television, electronics or anything, we had lots of friends; about a dozen.  There was a family here by the name of Weathers, Dr. Larry Weathers who lived up the block a ways, and his grandfather lived right across the street from me.”\n\nWhere did you live then?\n\n“Up Church Street; two to three blocks just west of the Methodist Church.”\n\nI know where that is; I kind of wandered around and took pictures of everything.  I love the stone houses here.\n\n“That’s where I was raised in one of the stone houses three blocks west of the Methodist Church.  I was here and born in ’46.  In January of ’47, a tornado came through here and totally wiped out my house and several others.  That’s when my father bought that lot and that’s when he built that rock house.”      \n\nWhat’s the address on that rock house?  Is it still there?\n\n“Well, it would be West Church Street; like 407.  I really can’t remember the exact address.  A little antidote if you’re interested in that house; my father was helping the carpenters build the house and he was putting on the front door and he couldn’t get the lock exactly, so he was building it up, hammering it down, that sort of thing and my father was a little impatient; so, he made that skeleton key fit in there.  He pushed a little too hard and it broke off the skeleton key; so from that day forward, my front door was never locked.”\n\nIt was impossible to lock.\n\n“It was totally impossible to lock until after I left for college.  My front door was never locked.”\n\nJust to the side; we had a lock on my front door, but nobody knew where the key was; because nobody cared.                 \n\n“I knew where the key was.”\n\nIt was stuck in the dam lock.\n\n“It was broken off in the lock.”\n\nWhat are some memories of your childhood?  Either good or bad memories, things that might have changed the course of your life, changed what you might end up doing, or changed whether you came back here or not.\n\n“Well, I was very much involved with sports.  I played lots of baseball from Little League all the way up through American Legends; in fact, I played American Legends for Batesville.”\n\nI saw that Preacher Roe signed that.\n\n\n“I was at all the Preacher Roe games.  I was the bat boy for the Salem team that opposed Preacher Roe’s team; lots of professionals.  He was originally from Viola and lived at West Pines.  He would bring some of his people down here and that’s the way my father and two other local citizens actually borrowed the money to build that park.  They had to beg Preacher Roe every year, but that’s the way they made the bank payments until it was paid off.  Preacher was sort of an uncle; by that I mean, I had an uncle who was in the real estate business up in West Pines and he was a brother in law of Preacher Roe.  We had a family connection there.”\n\nWere you good at baseball?\n\n“I was good enough that I made the American Legends team down at Batesville.”\n\nHow old were you when you played on the American legends team?\n\n“17.”\n\nDid you ever have any thoughts of playing baseball beyond high school into college and then major leagues?\n\n“Well, yes; at one point in time.  Actually the first two years of college, I went to Lyon College at that time an Arkansas College on a basketball scholarship.  After two years, I decided to transfer to Arkansas State to improve my academic performance.  Preacher Roe was a very good friend of the baseball coach there at Arkansas State and they just begged me to go out for the College team down there, but then I focused myself totally on academics trying to get into medical school.”\n\nWe’re going to come back around to the baseball.  Well, one more baseball question and then we’ll come back to baseball.  Were you any good?\n\n“I was very good.”\n\nWhat position did you play?\n\n“I was a very good pitcher and a decent first baseman.  When I wasn’t pitching, I played first base.” \n\nWere you fairly tall when young?\n\n“I was completely grown when I was 16.  I was tall and my father was a pitcher; he taught me how to pitch.”\n\nWas he your coach?\n\n“He was my coach until I went to Batesville, yeah.”\n\nWhat about basketball? You said you were a basketball player and enjoyed that.\n\n\n“Yeah; yes I was.”\n\nWhat position did you play?\n\n“Small guard; when I went to college, I was a small forward.”\n\nBut, you’re not that small.\n\n“Pardon?”\n\nYou’re not that small.\n\n“But, I was the ball handler.  I actually made....well, I was the starting guard in the 7th grade in Junior High.  So back then, I was a small guard.”\n\nSo tell me about elementary school and high school.  Did you enjoy school?  Did you enjoy the intellectual parts of school? Obviously, you enjoyed the sports part of school.  \n\n“Yes, I enjoyed basically all of it.  I found it challenging and my teachers found it a challenge to challenge me.  Salem had just developed their first physics class; my physics teacher had never had a physics class.  He had been our chemistry teacher, but then he went to ASU through summer school and took his first physics class.  He then came back here and taught it.  He said, “I don’t know much about physics, but this is the book and we’re going to learn it together.”  When I went back to ASU, I pretty much set the curve on physics.  I attended ASU.”\n\nThat’s good.  So, anything else about high school; were you a social kid, did you run around a lot, play a lot, party a lot?\n\n“Well, I was social right there in the neighborhood during the summer; not so much during the winter.  I spent my spare time up in the gymnasium after school.  Once I got into high school, well before that, of course it was only three blocks from the high school down to my father’s office down.  So, I just walked down from the office and when my mother lost me, she’d call down to the librarian and she’d say, “Is Mike in the back?” and the librarian would say, “Well yeah, he is” then she’d say, “Well, it’s about time for ya’ll to close and about time for supper, so  send him on home.”  I spent a lot of times in the stacks back there; I read all the biographies of Mikey Mantle and all of my baseball heroes.  Yogie Bera, I can talk about all the Yogieisms for the next hour; you don’t want to hear them.”\n\nIs the library that is there now the same library that was here before; or is that a different building?\n\n“It’s a different building.  It’s on the south side of the square where the revenue office is now.”\n\nSo essentially, you were raised in town, but it was almost like being raised in the country.\n\n\n“My father always had cattle.  I had to always help take care of them.”\n\nWhere was his farm? Was it around the edge of town or where?\n\n“He was in the real estate business and he would buy and sell; so, when he bought a farm, he’d put his cattle there.  We’d take care of them there and when he sold the farm, we’d have to move the cattle somewhere else.” \n\nThat might solve a pasture problem.\n\n“Right.”  \n\nWas your family religious?\n\n“We went to the Methodist Church and when I was 5, 6, or 7 years old, I was saved.  All my mother’s friends said, “I’m sure he wants to be a doctor, but I really think he needs to be a preacher.”\n\nDid you ever have any inclination that you wanted to be a preacher?\n\n“Absolutely none, but this, what is called a Methodist Youth Fellowship; that’s when I sort of got into politic.  I was kind of the Chairman of the Local and then we had Regional in Mountain Home, Yellville, Gasfill, Carter; that was the region and then I became President of that region.”\n\nIs that the same as Dee Malay?  Wasn’t that a Youth Methodist organization wasn’t it?\n\n“I….”\n\nMaybe not; I was thinking it was.\n\n“Not that I know of; anyway when I was 15 years old, the MYF would always send a representative down to Hendrix for a week.  So, I was our regional representative down at Hendrix; so when I was 15 years old, I spent a week down at Hendrix.  I thought about going to Hendrix and actually got accepted on an academic scholarship.  I also got accepted on an athletic scholarship down at Arkansas College.  That’s one of my few regrets in life; I probably should have taken Hendrix.”\n\nBoth of them are good schools.       \n\n“Both of them are really good schools and they told me that I could play basketball down there at Hendrix, but I knew if I couldn’t get up the grade points I’d lose my scholarship.  Having an athletic scholarship, you don’t have to worry about your grade points.”\n\nNow, at what time did you start thinking about what you wanted to do when you became an adult?  Do you remember that?              \n\n \n\n“I knew I was going to be a doctor when I was 8 years old.”\n\nYou knew you weren’t going to be a preacher; that’s for sure.\n\n“I knew I was going to be one or the other; and it wasn’t going to be a preacher.”\n\nHow did you fit together this interest in politics and being a doctor?  Was there any thought about that at all?\n\n“My father has always been very politically active here in Faulkner County; very politically influential here in Faulkner County.”\n\nIs your father still alive?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhat kind of politics was your father in?  Did he run for office or just one of the people who worked behind the scenes?\n\n“He was one of the people who worked behind the scenes.  But in the insurance real estate business, you make lots and lots of friends.  He could deliver lots of votes in a rural county.”\n\nYou mentioned what the town was like; 650 people or something like that, when you were born and the county was 5000-6000; what is it now?\n\n“Little over 2000.”\n\nSo, somewhat bigger; well, quite a bit bigger.\n\n“Yeah; a little bigger.  The county is still just a little over 10,000.”\n\nBut it’s not losing a lot of population?\n\n“No, we’re actually gaining minimally.”\n\n What do people do here?  Obviously, there’s cattle farming; I can see that.  \n\n“The major employer here is Fulton County Hospital, as one of the major employers, and North Arkansas Electrical Co-op.  If you saw the big tents up at the high school; today is REA day and they’re having their annual celebration there right now. So, that’s also another major employer.  All the county offices, but mostly rural small farms.”\n\n I couldn’t help but note that the Spring River, or at least a branch of the Spring River, is about a quarter of a mile north of here; I guess it’s north.  Did you spend a lot of time on the Spring River when you were a kid?\n\n\n\n“The South Fork of the Spring River; yes.  The first farm that my father ever bought and kept was on the South Fork.  He then bought four more farms all adjoining and they are all on the South Fork.”\n\nHow big is this fork of the Spring compared to the one that comes out at Mammoth?\n\n“Well, it’s what’s called a “navigable river”; but, it’s not nearly as big as the Spring River.  Once you get those farms together, the family had about two miles of land.  His plan was to give all his kids one of his farms.  I ended up with one of them.”\n\nHave you accumulated any more farm land?\n\n“No, I already owned like 500 acres of my own, before I inherited another 300 from him.”          \n\nWhen you were a child, you talked about being politically active and doing well in school; did you ever record your memories or think about writing down things that happened to you when you were a child?\n\n“Never; well, never seriously.  Lots of my colleagues when I start telling them stories of the old days, especially from ASC, when I tell stories about some medical site politics, family practice politics; they said, “You ought to be writing these things down.”\n\nNow you have an opportunity; you can write down the ones you want to.  Again, you can answer any question you want to; you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to.\n\n“Now, I’m back in private practice and still seeing patients five days a week.”\n\nSo, you graduated from high school in ’64?\n\n“Yes.”\n\n And you went from here to Batesville to Lyon College.  Did you enjoy Lyon College? \n\n“I enjoyed back then Arkansas College.  I enjoyed it very much.  I enjoyed playing basketball.  I traveled a lot around the state, but back then it was the AIC and based like Henderson, Ouachita, Southern University; all of those south Arkansas schools were in the AIC; so during those two years in Arkansas College, I got to see a lot of states that I had never seen before.”\n\n You suggested that the first two years of college you weren’t academically active; enough to get along. \n\n“No, I was told that I could play basketball down there and also told that I could get my pre-med down there.  What they didn’t tell me was that there was no way in hell I could do both at the same time.  By that, I mean all of the science courses, biology, chemistry, everything that had a lab, the classes were from 1 to 3 in the afternoon and lab was from 3-5 in the afternoon; \n\n\nbasketball practice started at 3 and the coach frowned real hard on people who missed basketball practice, so I couldn’t take any course that had a lab.  So, that’s what I went through for about a year trying to make up my mind whether I was going to change my major.”\n\nWere you romantically engaged during this time frame as well?\n\n“No.”\n\nSo, you just kind of worked, played basketball, and went to school.         \n\n“Yep.”\n\nDid you work outside of basketball?  I would think that that would’ve been very hard; but in high school, did you work for your father or somebody else in town?\n\n“My father had a partnership with some construction folks and so, he would build houses in partnership with these carpenters.  They would then sell the houses and split the profit; so, I spent three or four years as a carpenter’s helper here in Salem.  Then when I was on a full scholarship, I didn’t have to work much; a little bit during the summer.  When I transferred to ASU, I didn’t have a scholarship anymore; so, then I did have to go to work. I worked as an orderly at St. Bernard’s Hospital, 40 hours a week, for the last two years while I was carrying a full load; 18 hours and working 40 hours a week as an orderly at St. Bernard’s Hospital.”\n\nJust on the side, this is parallel to how I did; I had no idea about this.  I started at ASU in ’64.  In ’66, I left home and started working out on Gee-street for the Goodyear people.  So, you and I probably never crossed paths, but we were in the same place at the same time.\n\nDid you enjoy ASU; enjoy living in Jonesboro, and enjoyed school? \n\n“I did, but I was very academically focused.  I had to work hard because I was also working 40 hours a week.  My, now, wife also started school down at ASU about the same time.”\n\nWhat was your wife’s maiden name?  \n\n“Barbara Moore.  She was an “Air Force brat” but Salem was always the home town; so every time between deployments, her father was an Air Force pilot, the family would always stay here until he could get from one place to the other.  So, I started dating her back when we were in junior high; just when they were here.  She would then be gone for a year or two then come back.”\n\nHow old is your wife compared to you?\n\n“She is one year younger.”\n\n\n\nSo, you got to Arkansas State and started working your rear-end off.   Tell me about being an orderly at St. Bernard’s; I bet that was interesting.    \n\n“It was interesting.  At that time, I was working 3-11; there was only one RN at that time that covered the whole hospital.”\n\nAnd that was a big hospital.\n\n“Not as big as it is now; but the 3-11 shift, there was one RN that did everything, including respiratory therapy and did all the EKGs.  She figured out that I was pre-med and decided that she needed some help; so, she trained me to be a respiratory therapist and then she trained me to do EKGs.  I started enjoying my job a whole lot more; it was a whole lot better than emptying bed pans and that sort of thing.”\n\nWere there any of the physicians at St. Bernard’s or Jonesboro medical community who had an impact on you?  That you became friends with or became associated with in any way?\n\n“Yes, but I have a mental block right now.”\n\nYou can’t remember a name.  What about teachers at ASU?  Were there any teachers who had a particular impact on you?  Did you end up taking organic under Dr. Supert?\n\n“Yes, not only did I take organic under Dr. Sifferd; I also was on the Work study program.  I helped him with his catfish experiments, which you may or may not know.”\n\nOh, I did too; at one time, I did too.  I went out and put potassium permanganate in the water and got all the catfish out of the pond.\n\n“Yeah and weighted them all.”\n\nMuddy, nasty stock.\n\n“Growing up here, I been sent in farm ponds to get perch to go bait trout lines and run lines over on Lake Northfork.  My father would take me over there and we would bait all the tout lines with perch that we just got out of the farm ponds and then we’d crappie fish until midnight.  Then, we’d run lines and brought home lots of crappie and lots of catfish; that’s back when Lake Northfork was kinda new.”\n\nWhat about any of your other teachers?  Any other teachers out at ASU with an impact that they had on you.\n\n“Sort of, Dr. Sifferd more than anybody else.  The first semester, I was number one in the class; but there was less than 4/10s of a point between the top five of us.  He wasn’t about to give five “As.”  He gave five “Bs,” that’s the way the curve was set.  The second semester, I was third, but \n\n\nthere was a little break between first, second, and third; so, I got another “B.”  It was the hardest “B” that I ever earned.”\n\nYeah, I know; really hard.  This is just a side comment; but the best teacher I’ve ever had.\n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\nBar none.\n\n“The only teacher I ever had where all tests were unannounced and comprehensive.”\n\nAnd could be the day after the last test.\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nBut I still remember and I’m sure you do too, organic chemistry.  I still remember that course.\n\n“Oh yeah.”                \n\n So, what were some of the factors, you already said that you knew since you were six years old that you were going to be a physician, that made you start looking at where you were going to go to medical school?  There were several places you could go to college, but what about medical school?        \n\n“Well, I knew that; there were places that I considered like Vanderbilt and others, but I knew that me and my family couldn’t afford those.  I knew that it would be a lot cheaper just to go to UAMS; so, I did apply to Vanderbilt and did get accepted but I decided that I couldn’t afford it.  So, I went ahead and went to UAMS.”\n\nHow did you finance UAMS?\n\n“Well, I worked on the summers.  I had a work study program down there; I worked in the morgue at the hospital my first and second year.  I got married between my first and second year.  I was on duty at the morgue every third night and my wife would actually bring me my dinner; she really didn’t like that very much.  But, we would have dinner together there at the morgue every third night; we were newlyweds at the time.”\n\nThat was when the morgue was down by the old ER; down near the basement by the old ER? \n\n“Yeah and I had also helped by working every third weekend if there was an emergency autopsy on the weekends I’d have the assistant there; most of them were done during the day.”\n\nWhat did you do during the summertime?  You said you worked in the summertime. \n\n\n\n“I came back to work for my father.  I knew more about the insurance business at that time than he did.  So, I basically ran the insurance business here in Salem during the summer.”         \n\nWhat about your wife; did she work?\n\n“Yes, she was a junior high teacher at Ridge Road in North Little Rock teaching English.”\n\nWhen did you start having children?\n\n“My son was born in ’72.”\n\nSo, just about the time you started residency?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nAbout that time or one year into.  Now, did you have any armed forces obligation at all?\n\n“No.” \n\nDid you ever go into the service in any way?\n\n“No; well, that’s back when the Vietnam draft was going on; so, I did have to go and get my physical when I was a senior and expected to get drafted.  That’s also when it started winding down; my class was the first one that there were very few draftees.  Out of the class before me, there were at least half a dozen that I know got drafted.”\n\nThere were a lot of burial plans and a lot of that kind of stuff.\n\n“Yes.”\n\nSo, tell me about your first two years in medical school.  The academic aspects of medical school; did you enjoy that?\n\n“Well, of course.  The first year, I guess, ASU didn’t have the reputation of being the greatest pre-med college in the state; so all the folks that I was competing with from Hendrix and ASU and Ouachita my first year I felt very stressed trying  to keep up.  At the end of my first year, I found out, as I rarely checked my grades, one of my classmates made me go over and check my grades posted at the Dean’s office.  I found my number and found out that I was in the top 10 my first year; so, I relaxed a little bit after that.  My second year, the Cardinals were in the World Series; I kind of skipped out of class every once in a while, so I could go catch all the World Series games.  I relaxed by that time so that I could watch the Cardinals in the World Series that year.”\n\nSame question as going back to your college and high school; were there any people, teachers or any people who had an impact on you during medical school pushing you in one direction or another or what you were going to do?  Anyone who was stimulating, pressing you, or had an impact on you?\n\n\n“Oh, I’m not sure any of my teachers that I can remember.  There were lots of internal medicine folks.  AJ Thompson was a cardiologist who was actually born and raised in Hardee.”\n\nReally, I didn’t know that.\n\n“I knew him; he was 2-3 years older than me, but his father was a basketball coach down in Hardee.  So, I knew the family.  AJ sort of took me under his wing when I was a junior medical student and a senior intern, he was going through his internal medicine residency and his cardiology fellowship.”\n\n Where did he do his cardiology?  Did he do it there?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nWas Kent Westbrook already fellow when you were there?               \n\n“Yes.”\n\nHe had a big impact on me.  He was just a bigger than life character; AJ Thompson was too.\n\n“I knew him every well, but I didn’t have much interaction with him at that time; you know.  I had a lot of interaction with him later.  He had a huge interest in Melanoma and I developed a malignant Melanoma back in the 1980s.  So, my partner, Dr. Bozeman was the one who took it off.”  \n\nYou developed a malignant Melanoma?\n\n“Yes and my partner was actually the one that took it off right here at my little surgery room here; but when we got the pathology report back, he made me go to Kent Westbrook for a consultation to make sure that I didn’t need any more treatment or anything like that.  As it turned out, Dr. Bozeman was a fairly aggressive surgeon and he took off half my arm.  It turned out that all the margins were so clear, Kent didn’t recommend any treatment.”\n\nHave you had any sequlea from that since then? \n\n“No, except for my daughter.  She developed a malignant melanoma in her 30s and she always wanted me or her mother for everything.  So, I was sitting right here and got a call from her and she said, “Well, dad you’ve done it to me again” that’s when she just told me she had a biopsy and had a melanoma also.  She’s not had any sequlea from that either.”  \n\nWhere does your daughter live? \n\n“She lives in Little Rock.”\n\nLet’s talk about that a little bit; you have how many children and what are their names and ages?\n\n\n“Scott was born in ’72, Melissa was born in ’74, Carla; my youngest was born in’75.  My son is a father to my grandson Bryce and lives here.  My youngest daughter, Carla, is married to a chemical engineer who works for Pfizer up in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Melissa is the politician in the family.  She is a campaign manager for the last attorney general and then she was his chief of staff for four years and started her own lobbying term after that.”\n\nSo, she came by this naturally.\n\n”She blames me and I blame her grandfather.”\n\nWhy her grandfather?\n\n“He really had more influence.”\n\nSo at what point did you say, “Ok, I’m going into family practice and I’m going to go back to Salem?  Was it that simple and that straight forward?\n\n“No, I knew I was going into family practice.  By that time; my grandfather had moved to Batesville and that’s when White Water first gave guilt while we were in the medical center.  He recruited big time about Batesville.  I really thought about it a lot; but that’s when my mentor, Dr. Carl Arnold was having some health problems at the time and so, I came up here and Dr. Bozeman and I both had been up here moonlighting in the ER and in March of ’73, I took two weeks off because Dr. Carl was down in his back.  Senator Dale Bumpers wrote his autobiography; the title of which was, “The Best Lawyer in a One Lawyer Town.”  At that particular time; for those two weeks, I was the best doctor in a one doctor town because I did everything.  Dr. Carl had got back on his feet and then crashed again in May of ’73.  They called my internship residency director and said he was down in his back again, literally making rounds by telephone as he couldn’t get out of bed; so, he called and talked to my residency director and they released me two months early.”\n\nWas John still there or was it somebody else at that time?\n\n“Yes, but it was Dr. Cooper that was there at Baptist and was actually the one who was in charge of me; it was Cooper who was a friend of Dr. Arnolds that was actually the one who released me two months early.”\n\nYou mentioned Jim Bozeman two or three times; when did you and Jim become fast buddies because all I remember was you guys being a pair.  I don’t remember you guys not being a pair.\n\n“That would’ve been our first semester in our gross anatomy class; our dissecting tables were two tables across.  So, that’s when I met him and we got to visiting; we just hit it off.  Two ole country boys against all these city folks; he told lots of good stories.  He was from Hamburg and one of his gross anatomy table members said, “What do they grow down in Hamburg?”and he \n\n\nsaid, “Well mostly, they grow macaroni.”  He said, “What?” and he said, ‘Well, you know, those little stems, you know, we grow them straight so they can make noodles or we grow them crooked.”  So, this city boy just listened and believed every word of it; I was listening to all this and that’s when I decided that Jim was my kind of guy.”\n\nAt what point did y’all decide that you were interested in the same kind of thing and was going to go into the similar kind of practice?\n\n“Well, the family practice program was just started there.”\n\nYou were the first year, weren’t you?\n\n“Yes, that’s when they were doing this experimental thing where the seniors would take a straight family practice year that would count towards their residency.  So, I went to Baptist and Jim went to St. Vincent; but we still were going back and forth moonlighting up here.”\n\n Did you do some mixed work at the VA during the program at that time?  Or did you do all your work at Baptist and St. Vincent?\n\n“Well, I went to the VA during my junior year, but I did several electives at UAMS.  I knew that I was going to be delivering babies up here, so I wanted to learn how to do my own spinals and epidurals.  So, I did several electives at UAMS to get more expertise.”\n\n Were they helpful?\n\n“Oh very much so; Jim and I have delivered babies here now for 20 years.”\n\nWas there anyone else delivering babies?\n\n“Well the first few years, Dr. Carl still was.  He delivered my two daughters here, but then after that it was just me and Jim.”\n\nIt sounds like you had a pretty set idea that once the White River thing was built and you and Jim starting looking at a place and Dr. Arnold was your mentor that this was the place you were going to go; is that correct?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nHave you ever regretted that; regretting coming back to the hometown where you were born and raised?\n\n“Not much; you know there is a lot of very rewarding things.  My first grade teacher was my patient, my second grade teacher was my patient, and my fifth grade teacher was my patient.  Most of my old friends; it was just nice because they didn’t think I was a real doctor, you know?  \n\n\n\nBut then 10 years later, that’s all that I take care of anymore; mostly folks that I was born and raised with.”\n\nHow long did it take for you to get used to the title for somebody to call you doctor?\n\n“Oh well, I never knew that there was any getting used to; my brothers all called me, “Doc” and my nephew calls me, “Uncle Doc”.  My grandson calls me “Doc” Lots of my patients still call me “Mike” and I don’t have any problem with that.”\n\nTalk about the practice that you came into; about the nature of the practice that you came into.  You did OB; did you do general surgery?   \n\n“Not much; Dr. Bozeman actually stayed down there one year longer just to do surgery as the last year of his family practice was all surgically oriented.  So, we did lots of minor surgery; hernias, appendectomies, hysterectomies, tubals; that sort of thing.  I would always assist him.  We had a couple itinerant surgeons.  Alan McKnight was a gynecologist and he would fly up here and do surgery and I would assist him on my patients.  John McCracken would fly up here and do general surgery and l would assist him.”\n\n How long did they keep doing that?\n\n“Close to ten years; from ’73 to ’83.”\n\n Yeah about that same time; when I was in training a year or so behind you, I fly to McCrory with Alan McKnight to operate one time.\n\n“I’ve been there more than once; once back when there was a big flood and of course the runway was right there at the hospital, but it was under water.  So, I flew there and there was a fertilizer spreader plane with a landing strip there; so, the plan was that we would go to buzz the McCrory hospital a couple of times and if it was under water, the doctor would come out to the other landing strip and it was a little scary.”\n\n Do you fly?\n\n“Oh, no.”\n\nYou’re not a pilot; you just flew with someone else.\n\n“Oh no; I flew with Alan quite a bit.  I flew with other doctors quite a bit and then I hired a retired Air Force RN here, who was my first office nurse, and her husband was an Air Force Major who survived both Korea and Vietnam; he had his own private plane.  So, he would fly me around if I needed to go to a meeting in Little Rock or Fort Smith or wherever.  He’d fly me to Fort Smith for a morning meeting, fly me to Little Rock for an afternoon meeting, and then fly me back to Salem.”\n\nHow far a drive is it from here to Fort Smith?  Four hours?\n\n“Four to five.”\n\nHow about to Little Rock?\n\n“Three.”         \n\nSo, it’s a long way to anywhere in Arkansas anyway; besides Mountain Home.\n\n“Yes.”\n\nHow far is it to Jonesboro?\n\n“Ninety minutes.”\n\nSo, not quite as far.\n\nDid you have any scary moments medically, not plane-wise, during that first few years?  Things where you might have said, “Oh, my goodness!”\n\n“Dr. Bozeman and I had some complicated obstetrics and we didn’t have any backup.  That was back when Lake Northfork still had the ferries; so, we couldn’t get any obstetrical backup from Mountain Home.  We were basically stuck up here by ourselves.  We had some complicated deliveries; fortunately we were both very well trained and very experienced. So, we really didn’t have any problems.”\n\nDid you end up doing a lot of sections?\n\n“Not as many as most people did.  We did our share, but not as much as the national average.  We had some panic moments at times with a prolapsed chord.  Of course, the scariest time was my youngest daughter. When she was born, my wife had a placenta pravia and that was a very stressful night.  We finally had to do a c-section.”\n\nWho did that?\n\n“Dr. Carl, Dr. Bozeman, and another doctor here was the anesthesiologist.  My daughter was born a little depressed and I looked at both of them and I said, “I need some help back here.”  Jim looked at me and said, “I’m busy” and I looked at the anesthesiologist who said, “I just barely got her under right now.” So, I realized right then that I was on my own; about three months before that, I’d gone to a CME course about newborn resuscitation and I suddenly realized that I was the most qualified person in the room to do it anyway.  So, I just looked around and said, “Well hell, if I’m the most qualified in here, I might as well just go ahead and do it myself” and they were all totally tied up taking care of her.  She lost lots of blood and we had a walk-in blood bank at the time and they had given her two pints during the surgery; that was all the blood that we had.  Dr. Bozeman was the same blood type, so he went straight from \n\n\nthe operating room to the lab and donated a pint.  We called the county judge and he came in at 6 o’clock in the morning to donate a pint.  We got a couple more in and so, that’s the way we got her stabilized with the walk-in blood bank.”\n\nThis was your youngest daughter; your last baby?\n\n“Yes.”                                          \n\nWhen you first started practicing medicine; tell me about the kind of medical records that you kept.  What kind of medical records did you keep when you first started?\n\n“Well, I did a six week preceptorship, or whatever, with Dr. Shot Roger’s office, a family clinic there in Little Rock.  I brought his medical records up here with me, as far as which I’m still using right now; the same thing.  When I first got here, Dr. Carl had little 6x10 little post cards; that’s the only medical records we had when I first went to work with Dr. Carl.  It was all 6x10 file cards.  After a year, I finally convenience him to get Dr. Shot Roger’s records; so, that’s the kind of records I’m still using right now.”       \n\nDo you remember much about the charges when you first started? \n\n“Yes, Dr. Carl charged $5.00 an office call.”\n\nThis was in ’73, right?\n\n“Yeah; I got him to raise it to $6.00 when I got there.  Then Medicare had already started, but then they were about to put a freeze on during the Nixon administration and the guy from Blue Cross, who was also our Medicare guy, said, “You better raise your prices right now, because they are fixing to freeze it.” So, we raised up to $8.00 an office call.  We couldn’t raise it any higher until after the freeze.”   \n\nDo you remember much about the cost of medicine back in those days?\n\n“Well, Tetracycline was .02 cents a pill.  What I remember most was that there were only three blood pressure pills; one was pink, one was grey, and one was white.  The patients could never remember the names, so once I learned they were taking the grey pill, the pink pill, or the white pill; of course this was all started by Dr Carl, I ended up making them all bring all their medicines in like I do now.  They’re all generic now and all different colors now; but that’s what I remember more than anything else that fact that it was simplified; we didn’t have hardly any antibiotics. We had Tetracycline, Penicillin, and Sulfa; that’s about all.”    \n\nTell me a little bit about how you got involved in medical politics and about how you got involved in the Academy of Family Practice. \n\n\n\n“Well, as far as family practice; Shot Rogers recruited me on to the Family Practice Board.  We had our own tri-county medical society here, Fulton, Izard, and Sharp.  I became a delegate to the Arkansas Medical Society and Dr. Gibby Louder, who is a family physician in Batesville, talked me into taking his place on what was soon called “The Counsel.” Now, the Board of Directors was retiring and he talked into talking his place on the Counsel. So, he was the one who got me involved in medical politics; he and Shot Rogers.”\n\nSo you suggested earlier that this was a kind of carry on from your Methodist politics as a child; or your father’s politics as a child.\n\n“Well, sort of; I was a lot more ambitious back then than I am now.”         \n\nWho were the powers that be in family practice when you first started there?\n\n“Ace Udey from North Little Rock; he was at one time the National Family Doctor of the Year.  He was one person and still is, by the way as he still comes to the Medical Society Meetings, the Speaker of the House, when I first became a Council Member.  He was sort of my mentor in both Family Practice and the Medical Society and he is still working by the way.”\n\nIs he?\n\n“Yeah; the last Medical Society Meeting this past April, May, or whenever; they had a 50 Year Club.  Ace was down there; I ran into him and visited for a long time.  He’s still working as a company doctor.”\n\nHow old is he now?\n\n“Well, he’s in his 80s.”\n\nWho are some of the other people?  Lee Parker?        \n\n“Lee Parker was Residency Director in Fayetteville and he still comes to the meetings.  He came to the last annual family Practice Meeting, although he did tell me that that was probably his last meeting.  He was very involved.  My daughter was going to school at the University of Arkansas and I worked my way through school, so I thought my kids ought to work their way through school just a little bit; so, Parker actually gave Melissa a job there at the Family Practice Program as a secretary/receptionist or whatever.  I remember Lee kinds of doing me a favor and doing her a favor, you know, by hiring her.”\n\nDuring what time frame are you the most active in medical politics or are you still active in medical politics?\n\n\n\n“Well, I’m still Past President of both organizations; so, I still go to most of the Board meetings.  I’m one of eight Arkansas delegates to the AMA, me and Joe Stallings, one of the senior delegates now.  We are both delegates to the American Academy of Family Practice.  We spent six years as Alder delegates and six years as delegates for Family Practice.  Now, I’ve spent several years as Alder delegates to the AMA and now, he is serving his last year as a delegate to the AMA.  Next year will be my last year as I am at my term limit.”\n\nWhat are some of the big issues you’ve had to deal with?\n\n“Well, there is always medial politics; the STRs, substainable birth rates are one of the big things.  Malpractice Reform was a big thing.  I don’t know that I was involved in a lot more.”\n\nDo you feel like you had an impact?\n\n“Well, certainly in the state I did.  I’ve been on several Boards.  I served a term on the Board of Health, Private health Services Commission, the Governor’s Adviser Committee to an EMS; I done my time there.  I was a lot of influence when I was on the Board of Health; that’s when there was a vacancy and my friend Fay Bozeman applied to be Director on the State Board of Health.  Governor Huckabee was not his first choice.  I was able to influence my Board Members that Board Members were supposed to choose the Director Board of Health, not the Governor.  He sort of fought us with that.  I was personally called into on the of the Board of Health staff people and I was told that if I didn’t support Governor Huckabee’s candidate I would never be appointed again to any other Commission for the rest of my career.  I told the guy, “Well, number one, Dr. Bozeman is fixing to be the next Director of the Board of Health and number two, I don’t want to serve on any more commissions; I’m already done.”  I figured that I’ve had enough political influence to serve on the Game and Fish Commission and that’s the only commission that I ever wanted to serve on; so that will be the one that I’ll never get to.”\n\nNow you mentioned some funny stories that were related to medical politics; would you like to share any of those stories?\n\n“That’s what I was talking about when I tell people stories like that, they say, “Well, you need to write them down.”  It’s just something that pops into my mind from time to time.”\n\nAre you kind of backing down out of politics now?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nYou said that this is your last year in your cycle.\n\n“Yes.”         \n\nTell me about your years at AFMC and tell about what it is first.\n\n\n“The Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care; the CEO was Dr. Brassure and I was hired on a one year consultant contract, which got renewed one more year.  I was still just a consultant; back when I was basically sort of just a liaison clinae for AMC, the Medical Society, Family Practice, and the Legislature.  I did a lot of political lobbying for the AMC.  After two years, the Medical Director resigned and Dr. Brassure talked me into becoming Medical Director.  So, I was medical Director for the next 20 years.”\n\nDid you enjoy that?\n\n“I enjoyed it a lot.  I got to kind of travel the state.  My favorite was going to the Critical Access Hospitals; I was very involved with that.  My job was to kind of keep all the country doctors up on all the new Medicare rules and regulations that changed every year.  I’d meet with medical staffs everywhere, including Big Baptist all the way.  Fordyce is one of my favorite places to go because the hospital administrator down there would always send home some really nice tomatoes; they were big ole nice tomatoes.”\n\nDid you fly to a lot of these places?\n\n“No, I was driving that time.  My pilot was getting a little older and I was driving most the time.”\n\nYou really had the opportunity to see how medicine was practiced in each little corner of the state; were the differences dramatic?  Illustrate your answer; between Southeast Arkansas and here or Southwest Arkansas.      \n\n“Oh yes. Not necessarily geographically, but the difference between the small hospitals, the rural small hospitals, and the critical access hospitals were all cost reimbursed.  The big hospitals were all DRG reimbursed.  So, doctors would practice differently with the critical access hospitals being cost reimbursed; you could keep the patients longer and still get reimbursed for them.  Under the DRG system, all the sudden I realized that patients would be discharged quicker and sicker under the DGR systems than when they went to a critical access hospital; it all had to do with the reimbursement.”\n\nWhere do you think we stand with that right now? \n\n“Same way.”\n\nAre there any moves being made to correct the inequities?   \n\n“Not that I know of. You know, medicine is changing.  The idea of going into the hospital in the morning and having a laparoscopic gallbladder taken out and going home the same afternoon; you know, you’d used to be in the hospital for a full week after.  There are lots of ways things are changing.”\n\n\n\nYou’ve had the opportunity from the inside to look and see the results of these various systems.  Where do you think we are going?   \n\n“Well, we’re getting more and more specialized.  For a small town country doctor it is hard to get patient referrals made; it takes me 6-8 weeks to get a referral to a gastroenterologist.  It takes me 2-3 months to get a referral to a neurosurgeon.  Those are the things that stress me the most; people are sick and need to see a specialist and they’re all backed up.”\n\nHas the Affordable Health Care Act had any impact on your practice or patient load?\n\n“Well, it’s had a little impact on me because I work very little, but it’s had a lot of impact on the hospitals.  There are many fewer uninsured patients coming in anymore; therefore, the uncollectables, or bad debt, has gone way down in most hospitals, big and small hospitals, because of the Affordable Health Care Act.  Many more people now have health insurance.” \n\nIs that true in Fulton County?\n\n“Yes, very much so.”\n\nI noticed that one of the subjects, we are kind of drifting off a little from my routine, but the Corporatization of Medicine; talking about more specialists, I noticed that there was a clinic down on the highway ran by a nurse practitioner.  I didn’t recognize the initials.  It was BRMC.\n\n“That’s Mountain Home, Baxter County”\n\nIs this Corporatization of Medicine, where you have large centers putting small clinics in small towns, is that having an impact on healthcare in these towns that you know of? \n\n“Well, in some ways yes; by that, I mean many of the young physicians feel more comfortable being a corporate employee with set hours, set salaries, set guarantees, set retirement plans; that sort of thing.  The idea of a new young family practice resident going out on their own, building their own clinic, like I did with my own borrowed money; that just doesn’t happen anymore.”\n\nWhat about nurse practitioners?  What is your feeling about nurse practitioners in general and their role?\n\n“They do a very good job as physician extenders.  I’ve got a little problem with them working in the hospital, especially as a “hospitalist” not being adequate supervised by a real hospitalist.”\n\nDo you have hospitalists at this hospital?\n\n“Not adequately.”\n\nDo you still do OB or when did you stop doing OB?\n\n\n“When I went to work for AFMC.”\n\nSo, it’s been a while?\n\n“Yes, it took me about a year after I went to work for AFMC. Dr. Bozeman was having to cover for all the time that I was gone, so it took me a year to work myself out of those that I had already committed to.”\n\nSince we both know having lived in small towns part of our life, I know that news travels fast.  There was a lady in town who told me today that she thought Dr. Bozeman was trying to retire. \n\n“Well, he retired on his birthday two years ago from here.”          \n\nHe’s working in the wound clinic is that right?\n\n“Well, he’s giving that up July 1st.  He still works one day a week; one weekday a week and one weekend day a month.  He also still works in the ER here; so, he’s not totally retired.”   \n\n What has been the most gratifying part of being in practice or being in this town with these people?\n\n“That’s kind of a difficult question; I very much enjoyed my obstetrical practice for a long time.  Then when I started having new girls in here with their first pregnancy and I had delivered them, that when I thought it was time to get out of practice.  I don’t know, taking care of my old friends, the ones I was raised with, is very gratifying.  Back when I first went into practice, taking care of my old school teachers were very gratifying.  I’m becoming more and more like my friend, Dr. Carl.  Just before he retired he said, “I’ve about forgot about all the medicine I’ve ever learned and the patients are so that there is not much I can do for them anymore, except they like to come in and see me.  So, I try to entertain them and they entertain me.  When they leave, I feel better and they feel better just because we got to entertain each other for a period of time,”  that’s kind of where I am now.”\n\nAre you still in good health?\n\n“Oh yes.”\n\nHave you thought about the idea of retirement?\n\n“Well, I get asked everyday if I’m fixing to.  So, my nurse that has worked for me for more than 20 years, she really wouldn’t want me to say how long, but more than 20; anyway, we have this standard answer that we give everybody as some people ask her.  We have this standard answer of “It’s taken her 20 years to train me and she is too old to train somebody else; but \n\n\n\nshe’s too young to retire; therefore I can’t retire until she gets old enough to retire.”  She’s been an extremely good employee and when I ring the bell to ask her to come in and help me with something; she’s already got whatever I want in her hands.  She doesn’t have to walk in and see what I want then go back to get it.  She knows exactly what I want.”\n\nHow did your family take to being the family of a doctor in a small town? Whose time is not theirs a lot of the time; a lot of night work and a lot of being gone.\n\n“You’re talking about my wife and kids; well, I probably spent too much time away the first 10-15 years while I was trying to build my practice.  I had three little kids and they probably felt like I should be at home a lot more; like my grandson is feeling right now, he feels like I should be home right now.”\n\n Did you encourage any of your children to go into medicine?\n\n“I didn’t actually encourage them; no.  My son is or was a paramedic; he actually got his basic EMT license before graduating high school and then he went back and got an Associate Degree to become a paramedic and ran our Fulton County Ambulance Service for about 10 years.  Then he went back and got his Critical Care Certificate so that he could be a helicopter paramedic and did that for 6-8 years.  He then had a bad traffic accident and broke a femur; so, he has not been able to get in a helicopter since then.  Now, he had more time on his hands and he’s a lot better farm manager now than he was back then.”\n\nSo, he’s your farm manager?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nSo if you did retire, what would you do?\n\n“My wife and oldest daughter, Melissa, says that I’m not capable.”\n\nSo out of self defense, you almost have to keep working.      \n\n“They say that I’d go crazy in six months if I retired.”\n\nDid you ever know Joe Martindale out of Benton?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nJoe said at age 66, I think, that he retired, went home, sat down for two weeks, and then went back to work.  He’s in his 80s now.\n\n“I know.”     \n\nIs there anything about Salem, practicing here; we’re almost in the Foot Hills here or close to it?\n\n\n“Yeah, about 8 miles to the Missouri border.”\n\nIs there anything unique or unusual about practicing medicine in Salem; other than it being remote?\n\n“Nothing that I have not been able to adapt to.”\n\nHave there been any illnesses that you’ve dealt with over the years?  You’ve got this good overview of the rest of the state; any illness that would’ve been different than any other part of the state.\n\n“Well being in the country, there is lots of tick borne illnesses here, Tularemia here, vertiginous, and going over into the Ozarks, there are a lot more Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever over there; I’ve only seen 2-3 cases of Spotted Fever here, but I’ve seen lots of ______reindeer here.  There are geographic differences from one place to the other, but it’s still all the Ozarks.”   \n\nIs there anything else that you would like to comment or have on record about your life or medicine in general?\n\n“I have pictures that I want to show you from my retirement party.”\n\nOkay; you will understand if I am a little incredulous that you’re retiring; I don’t much believe you.\n\n“I didn’t say I was retiring.” \n\nNo; I know you didn’t say you were retiring.  You said you were slowing down or maybe I over said it.         \n\nI have one last question for you; just pretend that we are not here and you’re talking to your great, great, great grandchildren.  What would you like to say to them about your life or what you hope for them in the future?\n\n“I’ll tell them the same thing that I told all my kids and tell my grandkids right now, “First figure out what you like to do so much that you would do it for nothing and then figure out some way  to make somebody pay you for it.”  \n\nThat’s a good one.\n\n“That’s the way I’ve lived my whole life.  I don’t practice medicine for nothing, but I’d like to figure out a way for somebody to pay for it.”\n\nIt makes sense; that’s excellent.\n\n\n\n“That’s what my daughter, Melissa, did; that’s what my son did when he was still able to be a paramedic; he wanted to be a paramedic and he would’ve done it for nothing.  That’s the advice that I have given to all my kids.” \n\nThank you very much for sitting for this interview; I appreciate it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160266/file/291776#t=0.0,6734.29423"}]}]}]}