{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/cj87h1gq35/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Lee Parker"]},"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":["2016-01-28 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Video File"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Rural Medicine","Arkansas","Family Medicine","Family Physician"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Lee Parker, 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/000/293/384/small/LeeParkerM.D.DVD.mp4_1759327044.jpg?1759327047","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Lee_Parker_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":6683.74373,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/384/small/LeeParkerM.D.DVD.mp4_1759327044.jpg?1759327047","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/293/384/original/Lee_Parker_M.D._DVD.mp4?1759327021","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6683.74373,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384/transcript/84854","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Lee Parker Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384/transcript/84854/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Lee Parker\n\nGood day….Dr. Bell and I are in the home of Dr. Lee Parker, a Family Medical Physician in Fayetteville, Arkansas and we are here to interview him.  Let’s start out: What physician or what person attended to your birth? Do you remember that?\n\n“The doctor who birthed me was Dr. E.E. Barlow. He was in Dermott.”\n\nThis is a curiosity point for myself.  I went to medical school and was a contemporary of a fellow we called “Fast Eddie Barlow.” \n\n“Fast Eddie, ok.”\n\nHe was bound to come from down there. \n\n“E.E. Barlow was Eddie Barlow’s grandfather.”\n\nI will keep that in mind. Was there anything unusual about your birth or about the time around your birth?\n\n“Not that I’m aware, although it was two years after the 1927 flood.”  \n\nDid the flood have a big impact on your family?\n\n“Not terribly so.  My father worked in the flood in the sense that he ran a fishing boat everyday going out to check on people and bring them in to the different places where there was someplace that they weren’t in high water if they needed to come out. Of course there was some stories about that I used to love to get them talking about the 1927 flood.”\n\nDo you remember much about it?\n\n“Not as much as I probably should have.  Those were things that you at deer camp hear them talking about; getting up in the morning and hearing a call, there was somebody hollering and wanting you to come get them.”\n\nHow far is Dermott from Montrose? \n\n“Seventeen miles.”\n\nBecause it’s not very far; there was a train stranded at Montrose and several things that happened around Montrose during that big flood.\n\n“Perhaps so; of course, the flood went all the way over to Collins.  As you go west towards Monticello, there is a rise of about thirty feet from the lower Delta area that you get the hills and so, that was kind of the break point there.  Further down around Montrose, I expect that it went all the way over to Snyder or so.”\n\n\nWhat kind of work did your father do?\n\n“Actually at that time, he was running a village station, a country store kind of thing, in Hallie, which is eight miles east towards the Mississippi.“ \n\nIsn’t Hallie known for the Buie’s?  Isn’t that where John Buie lived, Jim Buie’s brother?\n\n“Well, the township that Dermott is in; is named Buie Township and it was Jim Buie’s brother after whom the township voting precinct was named.”      \n\nI got lost down there one day trying to find my way around there and I stopped at that volunteer fire station and I asked, “Where’s island 81?” I was trying to find one of the islands over in the river.    \n\nWhat about your mom?  Did your mom work out of the house or did she work primarily?\n\n“She worked at different places; yes.  She worked as a secretary here and there.  She worked for the post office some during World War II and then eventually managed the office for the Dermott News, a little weekly newspaper.” \n\nDo you have brothers or sisters?\n\n“I have one brother, younger, who lives in Benton.”\n\nOh, of course.\n\n“Bob”\n\nBobby; just author aside, I was Bobby’s physician.  I don’t know what I was thinking about there.\n\nWhere did your family come from?  How did they end up in Dermott, McGehee, Hallie?\n\n “You know, I’m just not real certain about that.  I do know that my maternal grandmother ran a boardinghouse in Dermott.  Then, I do know that the Parker side moved down into that area around 1911 or so when they moved to Monticello, or actually to Wilbur, then about two years later my grandfather Parker bought a farm of about forty to sixty acres that was east of Hallie.”\n\nIn the mid teens: 1915 or somewhere along that time?\n\n“I think it was about 1914, actually.  My father would have been about sixteen at that point.”\n\nAre you aware; was there anybody in your family involved in World War I?\n\n“None of them, as far as I know, were in the war.  My father was just a little bit too young and my uncle, who was older, I’m not sure what the reason he didn’t get called. But, he was old enough and as far as I know healthy enough, but I don’t know the reason.” \n\n\nI know there are some families in and around Dermott by the name of Parkerson.  Are you kin to them at all?\n\n“No.  Jimmy Parkerson, I think was part of that group.  No.”\n\nHe runs the local museum now.  \n\n“Yeah, he’s younger than I.” \n\nSo, you went to school at Dermott.  Tell me about going to school, how old were you when you started school, how far did you have to go to get to school?\n\n“Oh, it was probably three quarters of a mile to the school from my house.  We lived in the south end of town and the school was much closer to downtown.  We did walk to school. Actually, my mother sent me to start school when I was five years old and it was one year too early.  I got there and ended up chickening out and coming home.  They didn’t try to send me back until the next year and then would you believe before I finished school, the superintendant talked me into taking a couple of extra courses along the way; so I ended up graduating with the group that I would’ve started with had I started when I was five.”  \n\nDid your schooling and education in Dermott have a big impact on your life? Do you remember your teachers?   \n\n“Oh, I’m sure.  I remember a fair number of the teachers; but it’s hard to specifically recall names. If I sit down and tried hard enough, I’m sure I could write names down.  Ms. Hawthorne who lived there for years was the English teacher.  She taught a lot of grammar, and some literature, and things of this sort.  Would you believe that when my kids came along and was growing up in McGehee and started school there, she was one of the teachers of some of them in McGehee? So, she was there for many years and used to come to our high school reunions there.  Her husband worked in one of the mills.  Yeah, I can recall different names over the years, I’m sure; but I can’t specifically remember any one of them doing anything real outstanding or so on.  But you know, I always felt like that even though we had very little choice of subject, for example: things like chemistry, when I got to high school they were teaching chemistry every other year and physics on the alternate year, and we had a little bit of mathematics, and we had English, and things of this nature; and even though it was fairly limited, you didn’t really go through out of five subjects that you may have taken in any one particular semester.  You didn’t have ten, or twelve, or fifteen choices, and certainly not like when my kids.  When we moved up here in 1967 and I think the high school curriculum for the four years of high school listed something like one hundred and ten or fifteen different subjects that they could take where as we might have had twenty or twenty five total subjects that you could take in Dermott.  But even so, I felt like if  you look back at it, we must have been taught pretty well; because when I look back I can sit down and recall probably ten or fifteen people within a reasonable generation around my life who became physicians,  some who became \n\n\ndentists, some who taught college, and different things of this nature. So a lot of engineers came out of that bunch. One of my good friends was Vice President of Schlumberger.”\n\nWhat about your good friends when you were a child?  Have you kept in contact with them over the years? You mentioned high school reunions.\n\n “Yes, we kept in tough over the years, not real closely; but I could probably go get a list and sit down and go down through.  Probably over the years, I kept track with maybe fifty to seventy five different people at one time or another.”\n\nYou mentioned fishing and huntin, not hunting; I was going to ask you what did you do for fun when you were a kid growing up in Dermott.  What was your idea of a good day, of having a good time? \n\n“Well if we weren’t in school, we spent a lot of time huntin and fishin.  In the summertime out of school, it was mostly fishin; because huntin usually started somewhere in September or October.  School usually started about the first or second week in September at that time and huntin season kind of ran out about February; other than turkey huntin, which was in April every year.  You could hunt squirrel in April and May.  So, it started about October and ended about mid April or first part of May.”\n\nDid you fish in the bayou?  Is that where you went fishing is the bayou, you went to Bayou Bartholomew?\n\n“Actually most of the time we went fishin at Lake Wallace, which is a little small oxbow lake down just south of Dermott down there.  It’s just right next to Bayou Bartholomew.  We played a lot of baseball and then as I got a little older, I got into softball; there were softball leagues in the summertime down there.  There was even a tennis court unpaved.”\n\nWere you any good?\n\n“So, so, not really; it was one of those self taught things. Although when I got into the service in 1955, I had played just a little bit in college, none in medical school, and then when I got to South Carolina at the air base, I represented our unit in the base tennis tournament.  I ended up in the semi-finals and played the number one player from the University of Georgia College team and that was a massacre.”\n\nBut, you could say you came in second.\n\n“No, he went off and there were at least four or three others better than I. That’s for sure.”\n\nWas your family religious?\n\n“Yes and no.  I got sent to Sunday school and started at a young age of three or four or five years and it went right on up.  As I grew older, I was part of the youth group and so forth. Then after I went to college, I kind of fell back just a little bit; although I did go to church there to \n\n\nCentral Methodist and when I moved back up here in 1967, I just moved my membership back there to that church because I was familiar with it.  When we came back to live in Dermott and start practice there, I joined the church again, me and my family.  We, my wife and I, were the supervisors or we ran the youth program, the MYF program.”\n\nAnyway when you were a child, did much of the social life of Dermott revolve around church activities or social activities related to the church?\n\n“Some, probably not as much as others.  It was surprising in our particular youth group at the Methodist church; we had some people from the Presbyterian church who came regularly because they didn’t have a youth group that went, we had some Chinese people who lived in town and a few of the Jewish people who lived in town that their children would come to our particular youth group.  The Baptist had a very active youth group of their own; but it’s surprising when I think back that in our particular little Protestant church, we had several Protestant denominations: we had Chinese and some Jewish people.”    \n\nWere there a significant number of Chinese?\n\n“Yes, really there were.  There were at least three or four families of Chinese people there.  Three of them had grocery stores and one had a liquor store.  Incidentally of that Chinese group, one of them is James Suen, the Head of the ENT at UAMS as we speak.  I’ve always said when somebody’s asked, “Do you know James Suen?”  I say, “Yes, I knew him when his mother was pregnant with him.” \n\nSince we are on the issue of race: talk a little bit about the ratio of blacks to whites where you were raised and the relationships between the black and whites back when you were a child.\n\n“Ok lets’ see, probably the population ratio was about 50/50 I would suppose at that time; 50% black and 50% white, maybe a few more white than black at least in town. Of course out in the farmlands surrounding there, there were an awful lot of black sharecroppers, so called, on the different farms around in the area.  Then after World War II, as the mechanization that took place and the enlargement of farms and the number of equipment improvements that took place, all the farm jobs just kind of dried up and went away. I suspect now in the town of Dermott, when I grew up we always used to say that it was about 4000 and it may have gotten up in the very low 5000s in the 50s and 60s back there, but it is probably more like 3,500 or so now in the town of Dermott.  I would suspect maybe there are 2,500 blacks and 500-1000 whites in the community as present. So, it has really shifted around considerably.  Chicot County has probably lost 5,000+ of the 20,000 or so population, that was at the height back in the 40s. ”    \n\nIt is probably fairly important when we start thinking about our memories to put them into context.  You were born at about the time of the stock market crash or a few months before and most of your childhood was actually during the depression.\n\n“Yes.”\n\n\nWhat do you remember about the depression?\n\n“You know, we didn’t have a heck of a lot; but everybody else was in kind of the same boat.  Obviously, there were a few people who were so called “rich” and so on, but I never did feel deprived, I guess is the word I want.”\n\nHow did you perceive the doctors in the community when you were growing up?  Were they rich, middle class? What is your perception looking back at that time?\n\n“For our community, of course, they were high-middle, or in the “rich” category as far as economic standing; but, there were probably some farmers, some mill operator owners, and so on who were even much richer than the physicians and doctors in the community.”  \n\nA couple other events during the time when you were a small child, both the drought of 31, do you remember if that had any impact on you or our family?\n\n“No, I don’t remember specifically back that particular year.”\n\nWhat about the flood of 37?  That was another big flood.\n\n“I do remember the flooding in the mid 30s. I can remember going over to Arkansas City and standing on the levy and tied up on the levy was a coastguard, a little small coastguard cutter-type, vessel there.”\n\nA long way from the river channel.\n\n“Actually back in the 20s and 30s, the river was just on the other side of the levy from Arkansas City and these days, as the river has changed itself and has made cuts to cut through and changed the flow of the river, it has moved over probably three or four miles to the east of Arkansas City.”    \n\nDid you work as a child?\n\n“No, not really; I worked in the store, the station that my father was running.  I’ve been known to pump a little gas, put in a little oil, and even sell a few slices of bologna and cheese, that kind of thing.”\n\nDid you do well in school? Did you enjoy school? Did you excel at school?\n\n“Oh, I won’t say that I excelled.  I was probably third or fourth in our class of about 26 children or thereabouts.”\n\nDo you remember when you began to think about what you wanted to do when you grew up?\n\n“As I became a teenager, like a lot of kids, there were several people in our town who had gone into the military academies, the naval academy at West Point, and I had always in my mind \n\n\nthought, “I would love to be in naval aviation.  I would like to go to Annapolis and then become a naval aviator.”  Then I realized probably my senior year, or just before the start of my senior year in high school, that I’m partially colorblind and I also have what’s called a “lazy eye.” Although at the time, and even now my eyesight is pretty good, that one eye being lazy is about 20/100 at the very best, maybe 20/70 on a good day, but you weren’t going to make it getting in any of the military academies with one eye that wasn’t good and poor color vision.  So it was at that point, as I got to thinking about it, I had always said, “I would never want to become a physician because I can’t stand blood”; but, you know, I set my mind to it that that was what I wanted to do and I never changed.”\n\nAt what point did you start thinking about that?  Was it immediately after you realized you weren’t going to be an aviator? \n\n“Yep, senior year.”\n\n This is just off to the side, it’s a little bit about you; did the fact that Charles McDermott coming from Dermott have any impact on you wanting to be an aviator? \n\n“You know, I didn’t know Charles McDermott.  I knew one of the children, some grandchildren, and so on; but of course, he was long dead by that time and it’s only been since then, the sense of the history.  I knew the cemetery was over there, and I knew the town was named after Charles McDermott; they took the “Mc” off to just use the Dermott, and we ended up pronouncing it Der-mont.”\n\nHis son had a pharmacy in Dermott, but he probably was long gone before you came along as well, I think or I would guess.\n\n“Yes, it’s really interesting to go back and read about them, that family. It’s old and in fact, I have accumulated some of the historical information.  You may know or maybe you don’t know that his granddaughter or great granddaughter was my second grade school teacher.”\n\nNo, I didn’t know that.\n\n“Then she ended up teaching one or two years at Dermott and she married a young gentleman who eventually became Chancellor of the University of Arkansas, named John White.”\n\nReally?\n\n“So, I got to get reacquainted with her.” \n\nSo, John White’s mother was a McDermott?\n\n“Yeah and taught me in the second grade.”\n\nHow did your family feel about education?\n\n\n“Well, my father always felt like he was cheated, because he always used to say, “I got to the third or fourth grade and then I had to go to work.” My mother actually went one year to A\u0026M Normal, which is now the University of Arkansas at Monticello or it was Monticello A\u0026M; but back in 1915, 16, 17, and 18 in those days, it was called A\u0026M Normal.  She went there and started teaching at Dermott, which is how she met my father, which they ended up getting married.”\n\nWere there any family members, friends, preacher, or somebody who when you brought up the subject that “I might like to go to medical school” who encouraged you or tried to discourage you? \n\n“Not any friends; some of the doctors in town, Brian Barlow who was E.E. Barlow’s son or one of them, was my family doctor during my teen years.”\n\nThis was fast Eddie’s father?\n\n“This was fast Eddie’s father. Then, Wally Thomas came back out of World War II in 1946 who he was from up close to Pine Bluff, and he started practicing there and I became friends with him.  He and Brian Barlow went into practice together and called it the Dermott Clinic.  So, I got the encouragement from those two people as far as the physician side is concerned.  When I told my parents that I thought I wanted to be a doctor, I didn’t get anything but encouragement; but nobody at that time ever said, “Well, we can’t afford it or any of this sort of thing.”\n\nSo by this time, it was 1945 or 46? When did you graduate high school?\n\n“I graduated in 1946.”   \n\nSo, you almost got into World War II?\n\n“I almost got into World War II.  I worked one summer in Atlanta in an army depot, which was a supply depot, and I was kind of a gofer: hailing the inner office mail, typing, and doing whatever else they wanted done; but that was my summer employment and that was the closest to the service I got until I ended up after medical school going for my two years.”\n\nAlright prepare yourself, I’m about to use a euphemism here, ok?  At what age did you become first romantically inclined?\n\n“Oh boy, that’s romantically inclined!”\n\nAnd you can interpret that anyway you want to.\n\n“Ok……well during the college years, probably, not much.  I was too busy doing enter maul sports and so on; although, I did ask for a few dates but never got one.”\n\nWhat about in high school?\n\n\n“Oh in high school, I dated different people all around; that was just part of being there.  You find out who doesn’t have a date for this and so on and you just get together and go. We had a lot of so called American Legion Hut dances on Friday or Saturday night, it was records that we just played ourselves and so on.”\n\nOn the sly as a teenager; did you drink?\n\n“No.”\n\nYou didn’t drink.\n\n“No.  My father always said, “You can smoke, but I would prefer that you didn’t” and “You can drink, but I would prefer that you didn’t.” I always remember something that he said, “You see these people and they would pour a drink of whisky, old grand dad, old Forester, four roses, or whatever somebody happened to have; they take a sip; and they “whew,” so if it tastes so bad, why do you have to fight and force yourself to drink it down?”  So, it just wasn’t something that interested me. ”\n\nA large percentage of physicians are to some degree obsessive, in keeping records and that sort of thing.  When you were a child did you keep records, journals, diaries, or anything like that?\n\n“No, I don’t think I ever took a record very much at that time.  As I have gotten older, I have started and much more apt to do that kind of thing in reminiscing or remembering “the good ole days” and that sort of thing. In fact, I wrote a history of our 50 year deer camp program.  I even went back and got huntin club pictures from back in the 30s and so on.  I put that together and gave each member in our club one of them when we broke up about ten years ago.”  \n\nWere you active in school organizations?  Did you play music?\n\n“We didn’t have a lot of school organizations.  We had band one or two years when I was in about the third, fourth, or fifth grade right through there. Then, it didn’t resume again until my senior year in high school around 1945 or 46.  But I did play saxophone in that band. I never did learn to read music very well.”\n\nSo, you were kind of in the band off and on for a couple of years?\n\n“Yeah, for just a couple of years; nobody had lessons you just kind of had to self teach yourself.  Then, we would go and play in band practice.”   \n\nSo you went off to college in the fall of 46?\n\n“In the fall of 46 along with all the veterans coming back out of World War II.”\n\nTalk a little bit about the decision process of where you were going to go to college and why you were going to go there and not somewhere else.  \n\n\n“There were an awful lot of colleges a lot closer to Dermott than the University of Arkansas, but for some reason I did not want to go to Monticello or any of them.   I didn’t have any desire to go to Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Louisiana Tech, or any of the other smaller colleges around the way.  I just decided that if I was going to try to be a doctor, I would at least want to go and stay in Arkansas.  Probably one of the reasons that I stayed in Arkansas was financial.  Surprisingly enough at that time, I think that I calculated when I finished college that I had probably spent less than $1000 a year for the four years of college: including tuition, books, food, housing, clothes, going to the movies, etc, etc.  I had been interested in going to Emory University in Atlanta primarily because I had gotten involved with one of my aunts who was living in Atlanta.  Her husband was in the armed services in World War II and so, I went over there and stayed with her for two summers through the Atlanta Journal Newspaper one summer and worked in that army depot another summer.”\n\nSo, this was while you were in college?\n\n“Nope, this was in high school. Of course, she lived out close to Agnes Scott College and Emory University.  So, I got interested in Emory and the tuition was, they were on the quarterly system; so, you had three quarters and what would be normally two semesters, $200 a quarter. So, $600 tuition and that didn’t include: books, housing, and all that business.  So when I applied the $600 plus the fact that they said, “Well you will need to go to our off campus college, Emory Oxford, which is about thirty miles away”, and so as I said, money being what it was, I couldn’t afford the $600 tuition; so, I stayed at the University of Arkansas.”\n\nYou were up here for four years?\n\n“I was here four years.”\n\nDid you enjoy it?\n\n“Intentionally; enjoyed every minute of it.  In fact, I said, “If somebody would pay me enough to say that I was making a living, I would just go to college and continue doing this.”  It was a lot of fun.”   \n\nSo where did that $1000 a year for you to go to college come from? \n\n“My parents came up with it.  In fact, I talked to them about the possibility of my joining the service and then getting the GI Bill because World War II was over with at this point.  So, I said, “Well, I can go in the army or marines.”  I still wasn’t thinking too good about my vision and my colorblind, but I figured that they may be a little more lenient than the academies would. So, I said, “I can do that and get the GI Bill, so I can go for two or three years and help pay for college.”  I was told, “No, we will get you through some way.” \n\nSo, they were supportive. I may have asked this earlier, but I don’t think so; is there anybody else in your family: aunts, uncles, cousins, whoever in medicine?\n\n\n“No, not a soul.  In fact, I guess this aunt in Atlanta had done a year or two of college.  My mother had done that little one year at Monticello A\u0026M.  Another aunt had gone to the University of Arkansas, although she was from Northern Louisiana.  She had gone to the University of Arkansas back when Carnall Hall was first build. She was one of the first residents of Carnall Hall on the campus.”  \n\nDid you stay on campus or did you stay off campus?\n\n“Stayed on campus basically, yes.  The first three semesters, I was at Camp Leroy Pond, which was a temporary old army barracks-type facility down where Walton Arena is now.  In fact, the street right in front of Walton Arena is Leroy Pond Drive. ”\n\nWas there a pond there or was that his name?\n\n“Well, actually there was a little small spring-ditch there; but Camp Leroy Pond, Leroy Pond was an aviator in the Army Air Corp in World War II who was killed early and they named it because he was a University graduate, so they named this little Camp after him. So, the pond did not refer to a body of water; it referred to an individual.”  \n\nSo, by this time you said, “Ok, I want to go to medical school?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nSo, you were taking courses pursuant to that?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhat are the courses in the school when you were in college, teachers that you had that had an impact on you or things that made you say, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” How prepared where you from coming from the Dermott schools to the big University up in the hills? \n\n“You know, I have always said that it took about four to six weeks of college to cover everything that I had learned in high school in chemistry and physics and that kind of thing and then after that, it was an adventure.  I was interested in chemistry and in fact, I majored in chemistry.  I also had essentially the same number of major hours in biology, so I could probably have said I had a double major.  I also had a minor in German.”\n\nSo, you could have gone into math, or chemistry, or just about anything you wanted to.\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nWere there any teachers or professors who you were particularly impressed with or who pushed you in on direction or another?\n\n\n\n“Probably my freshman chemistry professor named was Allan Humphreys.  He was very instrumental because we encountered him in chemistry the first year and at other times after this, he gave me a job in my junior and senior years working in the chemistry laboratory just as an aide and so on.”    \n\nNow were you engaged in, you mentioned playing tennis after medical school, but did you play sports while you were in college?\n\n“Not formal.  I just played enter maul sports; softball, surprisingly enough, I coached our basketball team and it was kind of funny to look at little, small, ruddy, Lee Parker coaching a bunch of football players that lived in Razorback Hall at the time, in our basketball team.  Some of them: Fat Freddy Williams, the football tackle from Little Rock High School who went on to the Chicago Bears, Pat Summerall who is the CBS announcer…”\n\n“So, you coached them at basketball?\n\n“They played basketball on my basketball team, they sure did.”\n\nBy the way, Mr. Humphrey’s your chemistry teacher, is that the Humphrey’s of Humphrey’s Hall?   \n\n“That is of Humphrey’s Hall.”\n\nWho was Head of the biology department during all that time?\n\n“Sam Dellinger.”\n\nYeah, Dellinger.  If you have any stories about that, that’s an interesting time.\n\n“I never had a class with Sam Dellinger himself; although I joined Phi Sigma, which was a biologic fraternity.  I don’t know how I got in there, because they said you had to qualify with some level of grade point and I wasn’t ever sure that I should have been in there, but I was.  Sam Dellinger was the advisor for the local chapter of Phi Sigma.”\n\nMy understanding was the he was a bit of a character.     \n\n“Of sorts.  His wife always came to the meetings and she would have cookies and such.”\n\nDr. Mainfort wrote a book about him called, “Raiders of the Lost Arkansas.” \n\nLet’s talk about the application to go to medical school; when the process started, going through it and applying for medical school, what kind of hoops did you have to jump through?\n\n“Well, I got an application, filled it out, and sent it in.  Actually, they never called me for an interview, so I was beginning to get worried.  It was really only a few weeks before the fall semester started that they had notified a few people, maybe half the class, but the other half of \n\n\nthe class hadn’t been picked.  Low and behold, probably at the end of July of so, I got a note from one of the fraternities on the University campus saying, “We understand that you’ve been selected to come to medical school and we would like for you to consider our fraternity; we have a place for you to stay.”  So, that was the first; I got a notice from them before I got a notice from the University.”\n\nIn 1950 or 1951?\n\n“That would’ve been in 1950.” \n\nSo there were fraternities in Medical School?\n\n“Yeah, two.”\n\nReally, which fraternities were they?\n\n“Phi Chi was the one that I was in and then was it Phi Beta Phi, but not PI Beta Phi; they were both on McAlmont street right across from the University.”\n\nThat’s cool, because there were none when I was in school. \n\nAnd you started medical school at the MacArthur Park building?\n\n“Yes, the whole four years I was there. In fact in 1948, they let us off one afternoon to go out and lobby our local legislators to try to get them to pass the 5cent cigarette tax to build a new medical center.”\n\nDid it work?\n\n“It worked.”\n\nNow, we skipped over something that I want to go back and pick up again; more social history, before we really get off into medicine. Love life: when did you start becoming romantically inclined?\n\n“After I started medical school; I had dates and so on.”\n\nAfter you started medical school… is that when you and your wife met was during medical school?\n\n“Yeah, blind date. I have to expound on that; I always said that, “she was blind and I was the date.”\n\nHow long after y’all met and started dating was it that you got married?\n\n“A little over a year.”\n\nAgain, while you were in medical school?\n\n\n“Yes.”\n\nThat’s dangerous…. getting married in medical school is dangerous.   Did you start having children right away or were your children born later?\n\n“Yeah, we had two.”\n\nSo, you were going to medical school, got married, and had two children.\n\n“One in my junior year and one in my senior year.”\n\nHow did you finance medical school? How did you do that? \n\n“Well, I ended up borrowing a little money after we got married for one of the years; it was costing about $1,500 a year.”\n\nWhat year did you marry?\n\n“1951 actually December of 1951, I was a sophomore at that time.  My first child was in 1953 and then one in the spring of 1954.  Like I said, I probably borrowed $1,900-$2000 apart from my father in law and apart from an individual.”\n\nWhere was your wife from?\n\n“My wife was from Malvern.” \n\nDid she have a job in Little Rock of some sort?\n\n“No, actually she was in college.  She was at State teachers College in Conway, which is now UCA.”\n\n Talk about medical school at little bit.  Talk about your introduction to going into the cadaver, going into gross lab, going into the micro lab.\n\n“If you’ve been there, you kind of know at that time it was either sink or swim.  They just kind of threw you in there and I’ve always said, “it wasn’t that the material was too complicated to learn, it’s just that there was an awful lot of it and you had to learn it fairly rapidly, you had to retain it, and then the last two years was trying to apply what you learned the first two years.”\n\nDid you enjoy your first two years?\n\n“I don’t know that enjoy it is the word, but I approached it just a little bit differently than some.  I didn’t really try to stay up all night and cram the night before exams.  I always said, “I would rather study a little more intensely along as I go and then go over the material pretty intensely for a day or two before exams and then I would hit it lightly the night before.” I was known to have just taken off and gone to a movie downtown Little Rock; I think the movies for the big \n\n\n\npicture shows at that time was something like 25 cents, but you could go downtown to the Capital or Center Theater for a reasonable amount.”\n\nAny of the teachers have an impact on you when you were in medical school that you remember? \n\n“I remember almost every one of them had some impact or another.  Of course, Jeff Banks was there in anatomy at the time, for whom Jeff Bank’s tower that was student housing there on the campus, it’s since been then torn down and gone and now where the hospital is, itself.  Horace Marvin was in microanatomy and so was Wild Bill Langston, who had been Dean of the Medical School during the war years, but he had moved back to teaching.  Hayden Nicholson was actually the Dean of the Medical School at that time.  There were always some of whom we made fun just because of some of their mannerisms and so on, like Spider McCullough who taught one of the anatomy in embryology areas. He had a little bit of a hump back and was bent over and had long limbs, so somebody said he resembles a spider with a body and long legs out there; but he was real small fellow.  I will remember that somebody went to sleep on the very front row when he was lecturing and he had broken a foot and had a crutch that he was getting around with and he grabbed that crutch and was trying to hit this fellow that had gone to sleep on the front row with the crutch and all he was doing was hitting the pad that we wrote on there, but it was funny to see this medical student leaning back over into the row behind him trying to dodge spider and his crutch hitting at him. But, we had a lot of fun.  Of course, Anderson Metalship was in pathology at that time and he was also the state medical examiner.”   \n\n Fond memories/worst memories of medical school? \n\n“Fond memories and worst memories….probably one the fondest memory is meeting my wife and so on and secondly, all the friendships that were made.”\n\nWill you tell us your wife’s maiden name and her name? \n\n“My wife’s maiden name was Beverly Brosell.  Her parents were Scandinavian; her mother was Swedish and her father, Norwegian. They were living in Duluth, Minnesota. He took a job in St. Louis traveling for Butler Brother’s shoes, I think, and then eventually ended up in Little Rock. Beverly always said that she remembers their house was right across from the University on Cedar Street.  I think it’s been torn down and they included it in the University’s construction right there at the new medical school.  But there was a huge big rock in front of this house and she always used to say, “I remember that rock, that’s where I lived when I was in Little Rock.”  They were only there a year or so and then he bought a department store in Malvern in the 30’s or sometime. ”  \n\nDid you have any worst memories of medical school?\n\n“I can’t remember any where I just really got down in the dumps or that kind of thing.  I’m sure there was some times when I wondered about some things, maybe financially or otherwise, but I \n\n\ncan’t remember any really, “I think my life’s going to hell in a hand basket” or that kind of thing.”\n\nDid not finishing ever cross your mind?\n\n“No.”\n\nWhat prompted you to go into family medicine and if you hadn’t gone into family medicine, what would you have done?\n\n“Actually when in was in the air force, I applied to get a regular commission.  I just thought that I would just stay in the air force and ask them to just send me to OBGYN residency and I would go through that three year program at that time and then just stay in the air force to make a career out of it.  I got accepted into the University’s OB program, Dr. Willis Brown at that time was the Head of the department, and the air force decided that they didn’t want me; so I had to turn that one down, because I didn’t feel like with two children and a wife I could survive on $25 a month, as that‘s what they were paying at that time, $15 or $25 for first year residents, and I didn’t want to borrow a bunch of money and get way in debt. So, I gave up on that and went into family practice.”  \n\nLet’s back up just a little bit now.  You went to medical school; but at that point, had you already done an internship? Or did you do an internship?\n\n“I did an internship in Atlanta and then went into the air force, for at that time there was a doctor’s draft and so you had to serve two years.  It so happened that they said, “if you sign up while you’re in medical school, we will let you go do your internship and then come into the service for your two years and then you can get out.”\n\nHow long did you stay in the air force?\n\n“I stayed two years, from 1955-1957.”\n\n“I began to be active in the AAFP and the Arkansas Medical Society activities.  I think I may or may not have in your question there, but Dr. Thomas was Chairman of the Council for the Arkansas Medical Society about this time, before I got up to be a Counselor, and so when they started talking about Medicare, you may or may not be familiar, but Wilbur Mills, the Congressman for Central Arkansas was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and that’s the one that controls the money: things like Medicare and Medicaid and so on.  Dr. Thomas said, “One weekend, I want you to come and go with me to Little Rock” and we ended up in Wilbur Mills’ office in Little Rock.  He was home from Congress and this was before Fannie Flagg and all the business in the fountains in Washington DC.  Back in 1964-1965, Wilbur Mills was a force to be dealt with and so anyway, Dr. Thomas took me into this meeting along with the President of the State Medical Association, for the life of me can’t remember who this was, but Dr. Thomas as the Chairman of the Counsel and the President of the Medical Society and me \n\n\nsitting in this office.  What they were talking about is the establishment of what became Medicaid and Medicare.  I wish I remembered something insightful to say about it, but it was kind of over my head.”\n\nIs it fair to say that Dr. Thomas was conservative?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nI kind of thought he was.\n\n“He was a republican before republicans were.  I can remember him answering the phone, “To hell with Harry Truman,” but unfortunately he also, after Eisenhower came in, would say, “To hell with Ike.” So, if he had something that he didn’t like about them, he wasn’t adverse to criticize when people called him up on the telephone.”\n\nSo you practiced for about twelve years in the Delta, South-East Arkansas. \n\n“Ten years.”               \n\nTalk a little bit about the practice in medicine:  Was it hard? Did you feel trained to do what you were being asked to do?\n\n“After the first couple of years, I felt better.  Unfortunately, my experience in the air force was not conducive to improving my education or experience.  I was not involved in patient care at all.  I was in a research unit and when I reported there, the Colonel gave me a copy of the letter that he had sent and he had three major criteria for the position that I was asked to fill.  One was Field Grade Officer, that is a Major or above and here I am a simple First Lieutenant fresh in the service; secondly, he wanted somebody who had combat experience and my only combat was trying to figure out how I was going to get to work the next day or that kind of thing; third, he wanted a flight surgeon and they had refused to send me to flight surgeon school because of my poor vision, I didn’t qualify. But for two years, I filled a flight surgeon’s position.  I flew 96 hours, which qualified 4 hours a month for 24 months as 96 hours, so I qualified for flight status, but never got paid for it and filled the position and never got the extra pay for that either.  But, the only time I ever got involved in patient care were the two or three times on a weekend when somebody at the hospital would ask me to cover the emergency room while their group had some kind of a party.”\n\nSo, you got no experience, but then you were thrown right in?\n\n“I got no experience.  My two years with Dr. Thomas was really my residency training, because I had to relearn the names of the drugs again and relearn how to practice.  Just by following along with him, yeah, he was a good mentor. ”\n\nDid ya’ll do a lot of surgery?\n\n\n\n“I guess one of the rememberable situations was that I remember treating a small child of 8 or 10 years old and Dr. Thomas came in and said, “This is either the 13th or 15th member of this family from Boydell, Arkansas that I have been involved with that has had Typhoid fever.  Grandma is a carrier and we’ve been unable to eradicate her carrier status.  She babysits all the grandkids and they all come to town with typhoid fever at some time or another.  This was the 13th or 15th one that we have treated out of this family.  It was interesting things like that.”\n\nSpeaking of that, we have come forward a little bit timeframe-wise, but when you were in medical school or around the time you were in medical school polio was a big deal; there was a lot of polio going on, where you part of that :iron-lung” era?\n\n”It was on the downside because in 1955, they came out with the Salk vaccine and when I got back in 1957 to start practicing,  a lot of the kids had already been given the polio shots. Then about 1962, the Sabin vaccine, which was the oral vaccine and you may remember you put the drops on the sugar cube and then they put the sugar cube in their mouth and let it melt and swallow it, and I was involved with that program of course distributing.  They had a big weekend soiree at which doctors went out into all the communities surrounding their areas and it so happened that I went to Hallie.”\n\nSabin Sundays, I think is what they called those.\n\n“Sabin Sundays, yeah.”\n\nDo you remember the first time anyone called you doctor?\n\n“Technically no, I can’t remember that because we got referred that way during our clinical years when we went to the VA and the clinics and so on and they referred to you as doctor; although we weren’t doctors obviously.”\n\nWere there some real scary moments in those first years? You said it took you a couple of years to get comfortable after you went into practice with Dr. Thomas.\n\n“Yeah…. There were several times when people got involved in serious automobile accidents and things like this.  You know you were really in over your head, but unfortunately you are in Dermott or McGehee and you’re 100 miles away from Little Rock and a specialist couldn’t run down there.  It wasn’t easy for people down in our area to travel, as it was a three hour hard trip by car to get to Little Rock; so it just wasn’t easy.  You would end up calling an orthopedist, for example, saying this is what I got and he would say, “Oh, you can tend to that.” And when you came up here and talk about where you had specialists who could have tend to those things and you mentioned just some of the things you’ve been involved with, they just shake their head saying, “I can’t imagine being in that kind of situation.” I can remember, well it wasn’t a completely severed,  an Achilles’ tendon that cotton chopping, you know with a hoe and they kept those hoes very, very, sharp, and little brother got the back of this little girl’s heel and probably cut it half into. I washed it out and sowed that bugger back together.  It got well and \n\n\nshe did fine.  But, fifteen years later if you had encountered something like that, you wouldn’t have done that.”\n\nDid you do much surgery?\n\n“No, I did not; just by choice. Dr. Thomas was a trained surgeon and had probably two or three years of surgery training before he went into the army and then that was all he did in the army service; so he did a lot of surgery and I let him do most of it.  I was first assistant for most of it.  I was uncomfortable.  But I learned how to do tonsillectomies, but for some reason or another all that gargling, spitting, and coughing in your face, and so on didn’t appeal to me.  I would not do a tonsil for example, but I would do appendectomies, hernias, didn’t do hysterectomies, didn’t try to do gallbladders, and so on like a lot of people did.”\n\nThat was pretty common practice?\n\n“Yes….see one, do one, and then teach one was the ole song back in those days.”\n\nWhat kind of medical records did you keep?\n\n“We kept a pretty good record.  We used an 8 ½ x11 sheet and had individual charts. I was surprised when I moved to Fayetteville in 1967 and I had been using individual charts with a regular size page record since 1957 and I moved up here and they were using probably 4x6 cards and the whole family was on one batch, so you would go through there and have  to be very careful when you were reading this note from 1965 about which one of the people in this family did this refer to and trying to figure out variant information.  I finally, after I had been here for two or three years, go them to convert to an individual numbered chart and each patient have their own record and we started keeping a lot better records of past history, shots given, etc.” \n\nIn 1976 when I came back from the service, I was in practice with George Warren and he was still using 4x6 cards in 1976.      \n\nLet’s talk about your time in practice both in Dermott and McGehee.\n\n“There were some bad times.  I can remember an 8 year old girl who had a belly ache and her momma thought that she was constipated and gave her Castor oil and ruptured the appendix. The poor little thing died even though we operated on her, but she already had peritonitis very severely and she didn’t recover. The follow up story to that was that probably a year or two later, I saw the little brother about 6 years-old that momma had done exactly the same thing: he had the belly ache, she gave him the Castor oil, ruptured his appendix; but, this one survived fortunately.” \n\n Sometime in your practice, did you do a lot of house calls?\n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\n\nYou did a lot of house calls.  What kind of office hours or office staff did you have?\n\n“One nurse and me.  Later, I had one front office and the nurse and I, maybe a couple of different times, but most of the time for the eight years that I was in McGehee, it was primarily the nurse and I.”  \n\nWhat do you remember about your charge structure in terms of house calls or night calls?  Your rates or charge structure, pre-Medicare?\n\n“When I started, it was $2.00 for an office call and probably $3.00-4.00 when I left down there in 1967.  My delivery for complete prenatal care and delivery and post-follow up delivery was $50.00 and towards the end was $75.00.  Appendectomy was probably $100.00-150.00. Tonsillectomy was $50.00.”\n\nWhat about house calls and night calls?\n\n“Usually the house calls were twice what an office call was plus mileage, $1.00 a mile one way; so, if you went 10 miles out of town, it might be $12.00.”\n\nWas there much you could do when you got there?\n\n“You’d be surprised, you’d probably be surprised. I used to say I could practice in my office out of my bag, but obviously you couldn’t do laboratory work, you couldn’t x-ray, or that kind of thing.”\n\nIn your office, did you have lab and x-ray?\n\n“Eventually, yeah. I did my own lab work just like in medical school. I did the urinalysis, well the nurse would do the dip stick business, but I was the one that looked at the slide of urine for a microscopic exam and I would do the blood counts and so on.  If I was real busy, I would just tell them to go over to the hospital lab and then bring me back the report or I’d send them over to the hospital to get an x-ray and then bring me back the x-ray to take a look at it and then I would take it back when I made rounds.”  \n\nDid you have much difficulty building up practice?\n\n“It was slow, yeah, for me it was.”\n\nWere there a number of physicians in McGehee? \n\n“No, there were just three of us.”\n\nAnd you were by yourself?\n\n“We were all three solo practitioners.”\n\n\n\nHow did your family adapt?  By this time you have a wife, two children, the kids were anywhere from 5 or 6 up to 14 or 15, how did they adapt to being the doctor’s family?\n\n“Oh boy, you would have to ask them how they adapted. I can remember when I moved from Dermott to McGehee, my oldest daughter was probably in first grade and she had a lot of trouble with her stomach, which was nothing more than just irritable bowel syndrome from moving to a new community and having to go to school with kids she didn’t know, etc.”\n\nWhat prompted you to make the move from down in McGehee to come up here and start the residency?\n\n“I got a phone call from one of my colleges that I had met in the AAFP and he was partners with three other doctors in the clinic up here, two of them I had gone to school with, and the oldest member of the group had retired and he asked me if I would be interested in moving to Fayetteville.  So my wife and I came up, visited, and hemmed and hawed about it for several weeks, and finally made the decision that it would probably be the best thing to move; this was in 1967.  The desegregation crisis was just showing its head at this point.  Obviously, the business in Little Rock Immigration of the school was 1957, but most of the small schools in Arkansas still had separate school systems for black and white.  There was a lot of undercurrent going on about, “We’re going to start our own schools if they make us desegregate” or ”There’s going to be problems,” this, that and the other and it eventually came to be in about 1968 or so afterwards that they said, “We’ll have to have one school for blacks and whites” and there was a period of 2,3,4,5, or 6 years there through the mid 60s or early 70s that there was a big turmoil in the Arkansas small Delta communities of immigration of the school.  You would hear stories from friends of this and that happening and so on and an awful lot of little academies going on down there that were established.  I remember Montrose Academy, Bel Air Academy just out of Dermott, another academy up at Gould; so just in that little 25-30 mile radius, there were at least three private schools that I knew about.”\n\nThis is an awkwardly staged question, but just bare with me.” What invention or convenience or change in social structure or change in medicine has changed life for the most in your time of living?”  Especially, related to practice in medicine or where you choose to live.  “What’s changed in life the most for you, especially related to practicing medicine?\n\n“What’s changed…..I think as far as public health is concerned probably improving the water supply and sewage treatment plants; public health-type things that really started back in the 40s most likely has contributed to health as far as our patient’s health is concerned.  Secondly, obviously the introduction of penicillin and other antibiotics that started back in the 30s and then became much more available to the general public in the late 40s and 50s has contributed a lot as well as the immunization programs that have come in.  When I first started practice back in the mid 50s, it was DPT, Polio, and small pox vaccination, and that was about it and now; by gollies, these poor little ole kids are getting so many dang shots to prevent diseases and so on, that I sometimes wonder that they are able to survive all the different punctures and \n\n\nreactions.  I can remember in the armed services of getting 6 or 8 shots and how achy and flu like that you felt for a day or two after this; and now it isn’t unusual to give a baby as many as 10 or 12 different vaccinations or so on for small kids.  So, those things probably had the biggest public health impact on our patients.  Of course becoming involved in teaching and so on required some adaptations, but it made things a lot easier because you had a layer of one or two physicians who were seeing people and keeping the general lot of patients, you were not involved with the emergency care of these people because you had a first year resident and a second or third year resident between you and the emergency room or the hospital.”\n\nI don’t want to give short shift to your teaching career, because your teaching career has actually dominated for an extended or most of your career.  Talk a little bit about how you ended up at Family Practice Center here and your history as a teacher and that kind of thing.\n\n“Ok, well I always felt like I would like to teach and in fact at one time, I thought about going into student health so that I could get closer back to the students and so on; but after I had been up here for two or three years, I felt like I needed to expand my practice a little bit and I looked into maybe starting an ancillary practice in several of the different surrounding communities; but by the time you put the dollar figure to it with the time of hours involved, and the driving and paying  for two offices, and the duplications of positions, and that kind of thing; it just financially didn’t seem to be worthwhile.  The University came calling, Dr. Shuree who was the Dean of the College of Medicine, asked me if I would be willing to come in and Head up that CME program that I was talking about, that was financed by a Federal Grant from the Regional Medical Program, if you’ve ever heard of RMP; so, I did this continuing educational program for physicians in the State for the UAMS Medical Center from 1970-1974 and then he asked me, as AHEC had started by this time, if I would be interested in starting an AHEC program here.  So, I had already been involved with it and in fact tried to get him to put the third program, it started with three programs, and I tried to get him to put the third one here; but he said it was too close to Fort Smith and the legislators won’t allow me to put the third one up there. I had to put it down at Pine Bluff.  Knox Nelson was the Senator and I forgot who the other big legislator was in Pine Bluff at that time, so they started in Fort Smith, El Dorado, and Pine Bluff and then they went one year and he asked me if I would start the one here.  So one thing led to another, it required another little sit down and think about episode with the wife, and so on.”\n\nThis involved you completely leaving private practice?\n\n“Leaving private practice. But at that time, our practice, all we did Dr. Jim Patrick and I, took our practices out of the private area and moved into the family practice for the University.  We were full time at the time and he became the Residency Director and I was the AHEC Director, because he didn’t care to do all the paperwork and so on that was required to be an AHEC Director.  So, we just moved our practice into the AHEC and in reality, really  all the way up until I retired in 1996, I was probably practicing very similar to what I had done before I left private practice; it just wasn’t full time or 100%.”\n\n\nHow many hours of teaching were you putting in at that time?\n\n“I was probably practicing 50% and probably teaching 25-30% and then the rest of it was administrative-type things. That didn’t really change a heck of a lot, but it sure did make my time easier for night calls, and emergency calls, and things of this nature. ”                       \n\nDid you enjoy the teaching aspect?\n\n“Yes and still.”\n\nI was going to say that you said, “You have retired”, but you really hadn’t retired.  Here, we’re in 2016 and you’re still practicing.\n\n“I still attend in the clinic.  The residents are actually seeing the patients except for Medicare patients, not Medicaid but Medicare patients.  They have to come and present every Medicare patient and I actually have to go see them; I may not do a complete history and physical examination and so on, but I at least see them and give my blessing.  But then, I review all the charts of all the patients seen at the times when I’m attending in the clinic, so I may be one of the few who actually read those charts and I’ll criticize them and so on. I have been known to tell them,”I can’t see how you reasoned this,” for example: you said that the strep screen was negative and this, that, and the other; so how did you come up with Strep throat and justify giving this patient antibiotics?” or something of that nature; that’s the kind of nasty notes that you occasionally have to send.  “I can’t see how you justify a diagnosis of acute urinary tract infection when you are showing me a contaminated urine that has a bunch of epithelial cells in it, squamous epithelium which does not exist in the urinary tract, and therefore has to be contaminated with vaginal secretions plus you have a minimal amount of bacteria, or so on, and yet your treating for acute urinary infection.”                  \n\nWhat prompted you to retire? You said you retired in 1996 or 1997.\n\n“Well, I was 67 and I thought, “Well, I’ve worked two years beyond social security retirement age and so, maybe it’s time to let somebody younger do this.”  They kept asking me to come back and serve as an attending in the clinic, give an occasional lecture to the residents, and so on; so, I got involved in that and I’m still involved.  Probably now if I had it to do over, I would probably go a little longer.” \n\nThat gives us a good question; would you do it again?  Would you do over again going to McGehee, going to Dermott, the decisions you made about family practice, that kind of thing? \n\n“It’s hard to say that if you didn’t do that, that you would have ended up where you were. Because, if you do one thing then this causes something else to happen, this then causes something else to happen; it’s almost like trying to go back and say, “What would’ve happen if I hadn’t got married to my wife.”  You can’t really, or I don’t think that you should, spend a lot of \n\n\ntime going back and saying, “What If I hadn’t done this or I hadn’t done that,” because if you’re happy with where you are and where you’ve been then why should you go back and try to change.  Sure, there are things I wish I would have done different.”\n\nThat was going to be my next question.  What are some things that you haven’t done that you would like to do?\n\n“I’m sure I have mistreated some patients that I wish I hadn’t done it and if I had it to do it over; I wouldn’t do it that way again.  Maybe, I would have avoided some of the catastrophes that we all get into.  All in all, if I had it to do over again, yeah.”\n\nWhat do you think the future of medicine holds?\n\n“Boy, that’s hard to really give an honest answer about, what the future is.  The present students are not trained like we were; for example: you can go through medical school now and never see or participate in a delivery.  The hands-on experience that we got in the junior and senior year is different now to what it was.  It’s a lot more observational and the students today are more uncomfortable.  I’m not sure how many of them could really do a good CBC, including the smear, and do a good urinalysis microscopic exam.  In fact, I’m really not sure how many of our lab techs could do a stool exam for worms, for example or so on.”\n\nWhat procedures do you think students come out of medical school lacking experience in, besides deliveries?\n\n“They can’t do simple fractures.  I’ve had some second year residents who have never sutured up a laceration.”\n\nWhat about lumbar punctures?\n\n“Oh gosh, they wouldn’t know what the lumbar puncture needle and how, I don’t think probably not one out of 100 that’s been involved in a lumbar puncture.”\n\nI just want to ask you a couple of questions about yourself at this stage in your life.  Is your health staying good?\n\n“Staying pretty good.  For example, I still forget things more so that’s come up; in fact, I made a comment to one of the residents, I said, “What is that dadgum drug that we use to give kids for vomiting now?” “Zofran.” Well, I could remember Zofran to save my soul, but you run into that kind of thing.”\n\nSo what do you do for fun? What do you do for enjoyment?\n\n“Read and just enjoy life.”\n\nDo you play music or instruments or make music or listen to music?\n\n\n“No, but I listen to music some; although not nearly as much as I used to a few years back.  My hearing is starting to fade away and I’ve got hearing aids in both ears; so, this impairs me as far as trying to listen to heart sounds and that type of thing; but it’s amazing how well you can hear with a stethoscope.  A stethoscope supposedly has about 20-30 decimals above your normal hearing.”\n\nDo you have one of those little amplifiers?\n\n“No, I never was able to get my hands on one of those things.  I told the resident faculty, “If you ever perceive that I’m giving bad information or something to the residents, or if they tell you that I’m not doing what I need to be doing and that they’re not getting information from me, let me know because it’s time to quit.” I always said at the time I retired, “I would rather retire a few years too early than a few years too late.” So far, the faculty is saying, “we’re happy with what you’re doing and the information that you’re providing and the residents are giving you decent reviews as well.”  I said, “Well, ok, as long as that holds true, then I’m willing to continue to come when you call me.”\n\nOk, we played 20 questions with you this afternoon; is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to have your grandchildren or great grandchildren hear you say, when you’re no longer here?\n\n“Oh boy, I’m sure that there probably is something that I should be saying, but most of the time they’re not going to be interested in hearing it now and they may not be interested in hearing it in the future.  I guess if it was any one thing, I would just say, “I tried to do the best I could and sometimes, or most of the time fortunately, that worked out pretty good.   There were a few times that I was ashamed of what I did and I wish I could have done it different.”\n\nThank you Dr. Parker.  We just appreciate this at no end you letting us come into your home.\n\n“The biggest thing that I try to tell residents is, “Never be afraid to say, I don’t know,” and it’s never wrong to ask for another opinion.  If you don’t know, don try to pretend that you do know; be willing to say, “I don’t know, but I will either find out or I will send you to somebody.”           \n\nThank you, again.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161564/file/293384#t=0.0,6683.74373"}]}]}]}