{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/jm23b5xm56/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Bruce Schratz and Georgia Schratz"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2021-04-08 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas","family doctors","rural family medicine","physicians"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians (corporate 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/000/196/822/small/Schratz_BruceandGeorgia%284-8-2021%29.mp4_1689097951.jpg?1689097953","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Schratz__Bruce__and_Georgia_(4-8-2021).mp4"]},"duration":5371.69967,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/196/822/small/Schratz_BruceandGeorgia%284-8-2021%29.mp4_1689097951.jpg?1689097953","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/196/822/original/Schratz__Bruce__and_Georgia_%284-8-2021%29.mp4?1689097930","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":5371.69967,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822/transcript/45034","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Dr. Bruce Schratz and Georgia Schratz interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822/transcript/45034/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dr. Sam Taggart: \n\nGood afternoon, my name is Sam Taggart.  We are in the home of Dr. Bruce Schratz who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas and most of his practice years were spent in North Little Rock, I believe.   We are going to talk to him today about his life, not just in medicine, but his life and hopefully his wife will joins us here soon.  Then, we are going to turn our attention towards issues that involved the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians and some of the changes that he saw during that time frame. The best place to start is at the beginning: When and where were you were born?  What were the circumstances of your birth? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nI was born November 19, 1932 at home in De Valls Bluff, Arkansas.  I went to school there, except for a couple of years when my dad was in the Armed Forces in WWII. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid I hear you say that you were born by a midwife?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nYes.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you remember who the midwife was?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nI do, but I can’t remember the name right-off-bat.  I think it was Hickman, but I’m not sure.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you live out in the country?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nNo, we lived in town.  My dad ran a service station and I think at that time….I don’t know which station he had; he had a Gulf at one time and a Saint Clair later on….so, I’m not sure which one he was operating at that time.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you have any brothers or sisters?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nI had one older brother and then, I had one younger brother; well actually, their first child was stillborn and then, my older brother after that.  So, it was my older brother, me, and my younger brother who died with pneumonia at age two and a half or three years old.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nTell me a little bit about your mother and father; where were they from and how did they end up in De Valls Bluff?  Also, what are their names and dates of birth?  \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nMy dad was Bruce Schratz, but I’m not Bruce Jr.  His middle name was Chandler and mine is Elton and so, I’m not a junior.  His father was an old German; he wasn’t an old German when he was born of course, but anyway, he was originally from Ohio and had migrated down to the Pocahontas area where some Schratz lived.  He worked at one point for the Studebaker Company, I think, up north because he always liked Studebakers; in fact, he had one ….and he died in one as a matter of fact in a wreck.  My mother; they moved to De Valls Bluff…. my mother’s parents already lived at De Valls Bluff.  She was the oldest of four children and her mother was the deputy country clerk for Prairie County.  The county seat at that time in Prairie County, and maybe still, was divided…Des Arc had one seat and De Valls Bluff was a secondary; there only about four counties that did that, but it was one of them.  My mother’s father died when she was a baby….her mother was pregnant with her fourth child when her husband got killed in an accident cutting timber.  He was running a timber group and somebody cut a tree and forgot to holler…whatever they holler…but a tree fell on him and killed him.  She ended up with four kids and I think her mother moved in with her eventually and so….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhere they German as well?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nNo, Scotch-Irish primarily.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nA lot of Germans, speaking about your father’s family, came over because of promises of land, the railroads and those kinds of things; do you know if that had any….or was that the reason they came to the United States?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nI don’t know; he was born in Ohio and so, he wasn’t a native German but his parents were and I’m not sure why they came or I never heard if there was a reason.  But, they were in Indiana, I believe, out in Ohio.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThere is a fascinating lady up at Fayetteville who recently gave an at-home lecture, a zoom lecture, on the Echo, the German newspaper that came out of the Arkansas River Valley….you might; if you ever hear….her name is Sullivan and she teachers German at the University, but she is particularly interested in health care issues that the Germans dealt with in the time frame of 1880 and WWI…..very, very interesting…when they came this way and settled up and down the Arkansas River Valley and stuff.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nMy grandfather wasn’t conscripted during WWI, but he did get that Spanish flu…I guess that was what it was back then and ended up being treated for it…. back then, they had an open thing like a storage unit….not a storage unit, but big open doors and they left it open in the winter time to let the bad ______ get out; no wonder so many of them died, but he survived it…there were no antibiotics or anything like that at that time…much less anything for the flu.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHe and 7,000 other Arkansans died.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\n7,000…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n7,000 and right now with COVID, we are at 5,800 right now…so, we are close.So, you were raised in town in De Valls Bluff; do you have many memories about your childhood, especially your preschool childhood?\n\n \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nIn preschool, dad had a Saint Clair station right across the street from school and we lived there until….I remember when WWII started, we were back over at our grandmother’s house for Sunday lunch and my brother and I were out in the ditch playing Army with little soldiers.  They called us in the house to listen to the radio because Roosevelt was on giving his speech about “This day to live in infamy and so-forth”…..so somewhere during that time my dad went to work…he just leased that service station and got rid of it and went to work for a company here in North Little Rock called 555 Auto Supplies; he was there when they drafted him.  I think he was 37 years old….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAnd he had how many children?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nJust two and bilateral hernias…..every time they transferred him from one place to another, they put him in the hospital and wanted to operate; he refuse…he didn’t want any Army doctor operating on him.  One of them said, “You know Schratz, we can court martial you if you refuse” and he said, “Ok, go ahead.”   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nCourt martial and send me home…. (Laughing)….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nAnyway, he ended up in basics at San Antonio and I was about 10-11 years old by that time and then up to Independence, Kansas from _____for the rest of the tour and when the war was over, we were at Independence, Kansas in 1945.  I remember him driving us down through town in Lubbock, which is…..did I say he was transferred down to Lubbock at that time…..from Independence down to Lubbock, Texas; that was where he was when the war was over.  We drove downtown and people were drinking and dropping off paper bags with water and dropping them off gallons by the cases…..      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHow old were you?\n\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\n12…because I had just joined…when I left Kansas, I went from the cub-scouts to the boy-scouts and so, I was just a boy.  You had to be 12 years-old at that time to get into the boy-scouts and so, that is how I know how old I was.  I wasn’t real active in the scouts in Lubbock like I was in Independence, but I don’t know why.  We didn’t live on the base; we lived across the street from Texas Tech in a kind of apartment complex there.  He was a Corporal in charge of ordinates at the air base there in Lubbock, Texas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWas your family religious?  You said that you are catholic now….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nWhen the war was over, they sent us back to De Valls Bluff to stay with our grandmother and he bought a…he had already bought the house come to think of it and had it remodeled and we were renting because he got drafted…so, we stayed with our grandmother to start school in September until he got discharged and came back home.  Then instead of going back to work at 555, he started his own business, Schratz Auto Supply, and bought a big truck and took it up to Conway to get a big bed put on it and then, he put all sorts of parts in it.  My job every weekend, Sunday afternoon, I was helping him load that truck up.  He’d come to Little Rock on Saturday in a station wagon with boxes and come back and fill up the truck in our front yard; for some reason, I got that job instead of my brother….I never did figure that out….but anyhow, I knew a lot about auto parts… \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nBy the time you got through…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nAnd I went with him in the summertime a lot of times; he traveled like from De Valls Bluff to eventually New Port, Pocahontas, and Batesville….one weekend, we took a southern route through Stuttgart, down south, and over back to home.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou probably went through my territory; my family were rice farmers…they were sharecroppers in Augusta just up the road from you; up the road a ways.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nUh huh, you were; I got ya.  We went through Augusta and somewhere, I got egged in one of those towns…north of Brinkley….what’s the first town north of Brinkley?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nCotton Plant….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nCotton Plant is where I got egged…..them asses.\n\n(Laughing)….\n\nSorry about that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIt would’ve been just easy to cuss at.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nI went with one of my friends to a date with some girl; they got me a blind date because she wanted her friend to have a date and so, he got me.  Well, we went and took the girls to Brinkley to a pick nick and a show and then, we took them back home and walked them to the door…when we came back out, all the sudden it looked like a snow storm had hit.  It was eggs flying through the air at us….. (Laughing)….these boys from Cotton Plant were not too happy about these out of town kids coming after their girlfriends.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart:     \n\n(Laughing)….I had a similar event happen to me only I was coming from Augusta and went to Brinkley and it wasn’t eggs either; I got the crap beat out of me….but, that was…. Anyway, did you enjoy school?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nYes, I did.  I was pretty active; we had plays back then.  In fact, even in ______; I was the corner man in one of the _______we had.  I was in most all the plays my junior and senior year.  I was also in FFA, Future Farmers of America; even though, I never planned on being a farmer…but anyway, I participated in that and was an officer in that.  I was a Salutatorian of the class, which is second; the Valedictorian was one of my best friends.  Then, I went from there to State Teachers College.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart:  \n\nWere there any things about high school that you said, “Ok, I really like this” …any interests that really caught your focus and/or attention when you were in high school?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nProbably; mainly in the back of my mind, I guess, or maybe from reading magazines that I took, I thought I’d be an aeronautical engineer and that is kind of what I started out in Teachers College in business and after two weeks, I switched over to pre-engineering.  By the time I was through the second semester, I decided on med school and in fact, I did that because I visited med school.  One of my friends had a former classmate who was in med school and we got to go tour the school with Jeff Banks and all that. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThis was when the school was still over at Mac Arthur Park?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nYes, we were the last class to graduate from there.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere there any people up until you left for college who had a major impact on you in terms of “I want to be like that person”…..… men or women: teachers, preachers, family members, your father, you mother; people who just had a big influence on you? \n\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: \n\nUh….I guess to some extent the local doctor; yeah.  His….the local doctor’s wife, not the local doctor…his brother was married to my dad’s sister; so, he was kind of like almost family.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: He was something and I can remember…….\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Don’t get up…..  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHi; how are you, I’m Sam Taggart….\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Good to meet you…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou are more than welcome to join us here and when we get through, I am going to do some still pictures along with our video and I would like for you to be a part of that; if you would with your husband here….I may not ever use them, but at least I will have them as a good accompaniment to this.  \n\nGeorgia Schratz: Ok…yeah…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nJust as an aside.  I’ll send you copies of the DVD plus copies on a thumb drive so you can use it electronically, however you want, plus a copy of the transcript; so, you can share with your parents, kids, grandchildren, great grandchildren…..however you want to do with it…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: That would be neat for them.  \n\n \n\nGeorgia Schratz: Uh huh…    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThese are the questions that they should be asking you right now and 10-15 years from now, they are going to be saying, “Why didn’t I ask them this…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Why didn’t I think about that?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhy didn’t I ask them this?…these are the kinds of questions that are going to wish they asked.\n\nSo where were you born and raised?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Here…Little Rock.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHere in Little Rock; so, do you mind me asking your age?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: 6…plus… (Laughing)…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo you were born in the mid ‘30S?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: In ’34….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nTalk about your family a little bit, mother and father; where were they from?    \n\nGeorgia Schratz: Uh….wall, here; my father’s background was from Kentucky…all Irish and Scotch-Irish ….and mother was a Harrisburg, Arkansas girl.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Didn’t your dad live in Dewitt for a while?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Yeah, he did; he was born in Dewitt. His dad was a dentist there.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Her grandfather was a dentist.\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Yeah, my grandfather; he decided to come up to Little Rock and so, he moved his practice here and stayed here.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAbout what year was that?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: (Whispering)…..I have no idea…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: She went to the office with him a lot of times and got to sit and watch him do stuff....\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Oh yeah….I had a little chair that I could move around the office and I’d sit over to the side at watch him; pull and fill…all sorts of teeth stuff…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: As a little girl.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What kind of training did your dad have; do you remember?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: My dad?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: It was her grandfather…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Grandfather; excuse me…I’m sorry….\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Yeah, he went to school for dentistry in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was from; the dental school there.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: We were just talking with Dr. Bruce about his experience with WWII; you were 6-9 years old, do you remember much about that?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: I was 7…..I remember what I was doing when it came over the radio; I was out in the front yard walking on a rock wall that I wasn’t supposed to be on……(Laughing)….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Isn’t it interesting how things like that stick with you?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Interestingly later, I fell off and got my first stitches. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I asked a fellow this same question just a few months ago and he said, “My first response when I heard it was….where is Pearl Harbor?…. (Laughing)…..\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Well, I remember they were in the dining room all around the radio, that was it in those days, and they were listening to the radio.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What kind of interested did you have in school?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Uh….. where?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Where ever…..like in elementary school, junior high, and high school …..\n\nGeorgia Schratz: I went all the way through from second grade till I graduated from St. Mary’s.  Then, I went to Fayetteville for a year, I worked a year, and then, we got married.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Were there any particular interests that you had during that time that lead you in one direction or another?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Not really; we were just busy kids.  I guess most of our fun stuff was hiking; we hiked all over the heights and the reservoirs and climbed Pinnacle.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Where did you live?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Uh…in Hill Crest….on the corner of Monroe and B Street.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Obviously, y’all meet fairly early…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Uh huh; we met….I was dating several of his friends in college.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I moved from the Teachers College up to Fayetteville University and I joined Sigma Chi.  One of my pledge brothers was from Lonoke and…let’s see, I was a sophomore I guess at that time… between my junior/freshman/sophomore year in med school…they had a….what did they call it…a rush party…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Yeah statewide….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: At his house in…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Well, he had a dinner before it....\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Oh, that’s right...\n\nGeorgia Schratz: We went to his home for dinner. \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: But, I wasn’t with you….\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Nuh uh…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: That’s where I met her; in fact, we went from there to the Marion Hotel, I think, to the rush party and we were dancing….\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Yeah, I think it was…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: We were dancing and I said, “I might call you sometime”….she was….where were you working here in Little Rock then…I don’t remember…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Roy Daniels... (Laughing)…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Were you were working for Roy? ...one of our family friends… (Laughing).. .in fact, in WWII, he was a war hero; he was a pilot in WWII and a friend of my dad’s.  Anyway, I said, “I might call you sometime” and she said, “Ok.” She was going to give me her number and said, “Oh, it’s in the phone book” and I said under what…there’s a lot of Hills in the phone book…and she said, “Not but one, Joe Hill” and I said, “Really?” and she said, “yeah”…..sure enough only one Joe Hill and that was her; their father…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: And we started dating...\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: And we started dating and..\n\nGeorgia Schratz: And married the next year….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah and married in ’54 at the end of my second year.  \n\n       \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So I was asking…..were there any people…men or women: preachers or priests….were you Catholic?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Uh huh, I was Catholic….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Priests, preachers, politicians, family members, people in the business community, your father, you mother; people who just had a big influence on you as a child? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Probably the nuns…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was there one particular one that you remember……?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yes, there really was; she was the English teacher….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was it a positive influence?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Very……very, very, very much; sure was.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: My wife is Catholic and she is from Conway…..\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Oh yeah…..ok…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And she had an experience with a nun that she didn’t particularly care for; she didn’t care for it very much.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Oh, I know; but this was a good one.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now, WWII is over and you had already made the decision and went through business aeronautical engineering and then to pre-med; what informed that change?  Do you remember anything about that process, that thinking process?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz:  No, other than I just haven’t ever thought about premed until my roommate, not roommate, but the people at that hall that we were staying in Conway at the Teachers College were pre-med and got me interested in it.  Like I said, they took me down with them to visit on the way home; everybody went home on the weekends back then from the Teachers College, even the teachers; there was nothing to do.  It was dead and a lot of times, I hitchhiked back and forth or caught a ride.  Anyway, they took us and showed… I went with them and got a little tour of the anatomy lab with the ole med box where they had the arms, legs, and stuff…so that weekend, I was helping my dad stock his truck and we were talking about it.  He said, “Well, what did you think about it?” and I said, “I don’t know; they had this big box that had all these arms and legs and I don’t know if I can stomach that.” He said, “Were the other people stomaching it?” and I said, “Well, yeah.”  He said, “Well, if they can; you can” and I said, “Well, I guess I could.”  He wasn’t really trying to encourage me, because…ca-ching…ca-ching…money was getting into med school and all….but, that convinced me….he was right; if they could, I could.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, you started college in what year?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: 1950.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And you started college in what year?\n\nGeorgia Schratz: 52\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Do you enjoy college; your time at State Teachers?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, I did.  We had a lot of fun at ______hall; a lot of play time and stuff. I didn’t join any fraternity down there, but I was in a group called “organized independence” and so, it was kind of like a fraternity without any rules.  It was a fraternity of boys and girls and so forth and I enjoyed that.  I stayed there that summer after I decided I was pre-med to get anatomy, not anatomy…what am I thinking….biochemistry, not biochemistry, but the other……organic chemistry…organic I got at Fayetteville…..what two chemistries do you take before…” \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: QUAN…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: QUAN and QUAD analysis; both of those that summer along with….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Both of those in one summer…. (Laughing)….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I know…..along with…..\n\n Georgia Schratz: He had to get busy to catch up…. (Laughing)…..\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: What was that other course……chemical biology, I guess, is essentially what it was because it coordinated with biology II. I carried 12 hours…I got 12 hours that summer and then when I went to Fayetteville, I gained 19 hours there.  Then, I got accepted into med school, but I didn’t have enough hours.  I had to get….I don’t remember how many more hours I needed to get in; but, I didn’t have anatomy classes…comparative anatomy, a four hour class, I had to have that and  some more college hours.  I skulked around; I didn’t have a computer to look at and find all this stuff back then and Ole Miss was the only place I could find close that I could get those. So, I went to summer school at Ole Miss and got comparative anatomy, a political science course, and what else……anyway, I got 12 more hours and I ended up with 92 hours.  I think 90 was required by that time and I was just barely over it; I went to med school that fall, two years after I finished high school.  Betty Lowe was the only one younger than me in my class; no, wait a minute….Bill…..\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Two…..\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Bill…\n\nGeorgia Schratz: Bill Heffy…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What about the guy, because I know that he was about your time, out from Perryville….who am I….he is just about your age and just got started…..he is a little older than you are, but he is from….I’ll think about it later. \n\nDid you do well in your classes?  For those who might watch this video at some time in the future, 19 hours in science is an awful lot. \n\n Dr. Bruce Schratz: Well, it was all at least a “B” and again, we were going home every weekend.  My brother had been in the Army because of the Korean War back then and when he got out, he went back to college and so, he went to Ole Miss with me that summer.  So, the two of us would typically go home every weekend because there was nothing to do in Kansas anyway.  I could have done some stuff with Sigma Chi because there was a Sigma Chi chapter down there, but…..\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you work through college?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: No.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So after you left working with your dad in the auto parts business, you didn’t have to work through your college years?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: No.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was Dr. Sacks already the organic teacher in Fayetteville at that point?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: The guy who was the organic teacher was the one who was gun shy; when a loud noise went off, he went berserk.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I don’t think that was Dr. Sacks; I didn’t go there, but I heard enough people talk about Dr. Sacks. \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: He was a character there; I can’t remember his name, but I’d know it if I heard it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Were you ever involved in sports in either high school or college?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Kind of; I played basketball in high school and I started…we didn’t have a football team until I was in 11th grade and we’d been on summer vacation, the family, down in Florida and came home and they had started practice.  So when we got back, everybody else had started going and so, I wanted to go out for football too and my brother did.  I was in the 11th grade then and my mother wasn’t too enthusiastic because she’d paid to have two caps to be put on my teeth….she was afraid I’d get them knocked out.  What happened was, I was out of shape considering that I hadn’t been exercising like these other guys; anyway the coach had these tacklers lined up and throwing…the coach gave the ball to somebody and said, “Just go right through them guys”…he gave it to me and said, “Bill grazed the first one; don’t go around them, go through him”….”Ok coach, give me the ball”…I tried to go through him and he fell on me and my ankle popped, like a gun shot, and it started swelling.  I went to the doctor the next day and he said it was a bad sprain and it never did heal up real good. About 10 years later, I had another injury with it and they found out I had had an old fracture.\n\n         \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: But, they didn’t have x-rays back then and so, that was the end of my sports.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did your schooling at De Valls Bluff prepare you for college?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yes and no; as far as the knowledge part, yes…..the social part, no …. I guess there is no way that that could happen; you know, De Valls by itself had a hundred and something people, I think.  It was a …..what do you call a school where they bring in mostly kids of farmers……\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Consolidated…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, and so, you didn’t have much of a social thing like you did in college; it didn’t really prepare me for that, but education-wise it did.  I had a great English teacher, history teachers, too, and enjoyed the FFA part.  I was an officer in that and got to participating in public speaking, ________, and so forth; that was good.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did the public speaking events help build your confidence in yourself? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I think it did; I went up to, not national, but state with it.  I didn’t win state, but I did good and I got enough experience that I did go up with it.  My talk was on the Bobwhite quails in Arkansas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: My talk was on, as I told you my father was a rice farmer, and it was on the aquifers of east Arkansas; I did that for three years.  So, we thought…there are some pasts in there that are very similar….\n\nWas there any question; at this point, you left high school, went to college for two years, and then went to medical school….what about the service during that period of  time; was there any question that you might end up in the service?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I think I was still draft exempt because I was in college and I’m not sure why my brother got drafted…..oh, I know; he didn’t get drafted.  He went to Teacher’s College too, but he joined the Army Reserve there and they called the reserve unit up.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, he had to go.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: After 6-8 months, they let him out to go finish college.  He and I started out as roommates and then, he got drafted within 2-3 weeks after we started; so, he left me.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Talk about the application process to medical school, getting accepted, and did you have any question that you would get in or not?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yes, I did; but, I had Dr. ________ for us; if you ever heard of him.  Do you remember Dr. McClain?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I remember the name.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: He was one of his partners and _________ was …I forgot the technical term, a hunch back essentially; he was kind of a stooped over guy, but really smart…..a really smart guy.  He knew some people at the med school and then a lawyer, it was a lawyer that Georgia worked for, who was on the board of prestige, and so, I thought I had a little in there; that Roy would help and it probably did…I don’t know if it did or not.  When I came down for the interview and Jeff Banks interviewed me, I was young and hadn’t even finished my second year of college and he said, “Why are you so interested in getting into med school this fall?  You’ve got some more stuff to go” and I said, “We’ll, I guess the main reason is because it’s costing my dad money and I feel like I need to get out, get it done, and get him out of having to pay all this as much as I can”…I don’t know if it helped or hurt; but anyway, that was my interview with him.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’ve had a number of people tell me that Jeff Banks was a larger than life person; is that a fair assessment?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: (Laughing)…Heck yeah; he walked around and….you didn’t ever know him?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: No, he had passed away before….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: A big guy; at my anatomy table as a freshman….he came by periodically and would ask you questions about what you were doing and so forth…one day he came by and of course, we were in the prudential area dissecting….he asked what we were doing and we said, “We are dissecting in the prudential area Dr. Banks” and he looked at one of the guys and said, “What does the word prudential mean?”  He kind of put his head down and said, “In fact, I don’t know” and then, he asked somebody else and he asked me “I don’t know either.” Hobgood; Jim Hobgood, was at the table and he was little flighty, smart though and kind of…..a high pitched voice too…anyway, he says, “Ok Hobgood, do your stuff” and he said, “Well, Dr. Banks, I don’t know.  I’m not sure; I think it means to be strong and big like the Good_____ Life insurance company”….(laughing)….     \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: He said, “Hobgood, I think if you’ll check; you’ll find out that that is Prudential Life Insurance Company.  That answer; you should be ashamed of. You might want to check with their company” and he walked off chuckling.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: We had a teacher who walked in, looked at us all, hunched over our cadaver table, looked at us and spread out his arms, and said, “technicians all”…….(laughing)….So your first year or two of medical school, talk about that.  Almost everybody looks at it as being very hard as they throw a lot of information at you.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: It was; I had an “E” -incomplete in biochemistry.  There were 12 of us; we started out at, I think, 110-120 and we only graduated with 97.   There were knocking us out with biochemistry and then, the national board got a lot of them, too.  Anyway, if you got an “E” you got an option; you could go somewhere and take it over and Michigan was the only place that had it in the summer or you could come back in the fall and take another test….if you passed that exam, you would be promoted and so, I spent the summer sweating it out.  I did get a job working at the production marketing administration measuring cotton and rice when they were getting ____________________; they had a monitor that would go over everything and math that would tell you how many acres were in that lot and measure those things….and studying biochemistry.  I passed the test; but they called me out and said, “We need to talk to you; the honor club, the honor society, wants to talk to you.”  It turned out that somebody behind me had the same answer that I had on that test and was the wrong answer…..apparently his paper had been erased and he put down what I put down as the answer.  I was on the front row and so, that last time I saw him…the guy they were talking about…he was way up in the back and apparently he had come down and looked over my shoulder at my paper; so, they wanted to charge me with collusion.  I had to go to the dictionary and look up with collusion meant; it was aiding and abetting a crime.  I said, “Good God, I didn’t help anybody.  I do good to take care of myself; much less help somebody.”  Anyway, they got that straightened out and I got exonerated.  But then the next year, Nettleship got me.  He gave an “E” in it and I don’t know why.  In fact, I went to the Dean with it and told him, “This is unfair; people that got lower grades than I did, passed the course and I got better grades and now, I’ve got an “E”…..to get through that, you had to work in the anatomy lab; I mean, the pathology department during the summer to get rid of that “E.” Well, I went to Nickelson, the Dean, and talked to him and he called Nettleship down to the office; we sat there and talked about it and Nettleship told him that he disagreed.  He said, “Well, you can’t just do it that way” and he said, “Yes, I can” and the Dean let him; so, I went to work for the pathology department that summer between my sophomore and junior year…..that was the year that I got married too.  Anyway, the rest of the time was smooth sailing and I ended up finishing up my senior year pretty much ahead because between my junior and senior year, I didn’t have a job and I was working part time as what they called a “HECS-tern” back then at the old St. Vincent’s over on High Street before they moved to the new building taking physicals on the patients…that didn’t pay that much.  So anyway, I took my internship, or my medical clerkship, during the summertime and so, I finished three months ahead of everyone else.  By this time, I had already matched with St. Vincent’s for my internship and so, as God would have it, I guess….they had a German intern who had decided to go back home to Germany and so, they had an opening and called wondering could I….I said, “yes sir, I can” and so, I went to work there with a magnificent sum of $200 a month as an acting intern until I finished med school.  \n\n          \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And got your degree….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: So, I really had a 15-month internship by the end; which turned out good, because I had three months starting out early and it was all in OB. Of course when I became in regular rotation, I rotated through three months of OB again, which was six months of OB.  Then when I was finishing up, I volunteered to go in the Air Force and they sent me a letter saying they had a new program and they needed more OB doctors and would I be interested in going into that field; if so, I needed to go down to _______ for a two month period for a tune-up, which I did and it worked out great.  We were stationed there for two months and…..\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What year was this that you finished medical school and then you finished your internship?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I finished med school in ‘56, my internship in ’57, and went into the Air Force on July 2, or 3, of ’57 until September two years later.  I was in the Air Force for two years.\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you enjoy your time in the Air Force?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, I did; it was fun with interesting people.  There were people from all over the place. I got my ham-radio license while I was there and my private pilot’s license while I was there…not at the base, but we had a club……the Air Force base had a club at the municipal airport where they taught flying and they gave us a discounted rate; so, I was taking…the instructor fee was like $3.00 for a half an hour and the plane was $3.50 for a half an hour and so, it was like $7.50 for a half an hour.  Now, it’s probably like $90.00-100 an hour; so, I got in and got my private pilot’s license and the ham radio license, both of those there.  I got to ride in a jet, a 233; my neighbors were both…well, one was a ______pilot and the other was an instructor…..an instrumental pilot in instructor school; he was the one that I flew in the 233 jet with.  He let me fly it when he got it off the ground.  We were flying one day and he flew me back to Little Rock two to three times from Waco, Texas….(Laughing)…..There was a big cumulous cloud in the summer time and I said, “that’s a big pretty cloud up there, Mel” and he said, “Don’t let that fool you, Bruce”….I said, “Why is that?” and he said, “Let me show you; give me the stick” and I said, “Ok, you got the stick”… he goes up there and we had these things tied on each wing tip on this 233; he is up in front and I’m in the back….he gets up to this cloud and he puts the wing tip into that cloud and the whole plane shakes…..he brings it back out and said, “What do you think?” and I said, “That’s enough”…….(Laughing)…..  \n\n       \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)…..When you finished medical school or when you finished your internship, did you know what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yes and no; I really wanted to come back to…I really wanted to go to Fayetteville because I really liked that part of the country when I was there, but we had the RH problem and we had two kids by that time with the third one on the way, I guess….no, we had the third one…..but anyway, I knew that if we had any more kids with this RH thing, it was kind of like a time bomb and if something happened and they needed an exchanged transfusion; I wasn’t sure how they were equipped in the Fayetteville area for that sort of thing and I knew that they could have it at St. Vincent’s or Baptist.  So then, I started thinking about this area and I called one or two of the doctors; Elder Richey was one of them and he had already got somebody else to come in as his partner and so, I came back, rented a plane, and flew over southwest Little Rock because there was a possibility of a drug store out there close to the IMAX theater looking for a doctor to come, settle down, and build an office out there.  I rented a plane and flew out over that area to see what the population looked like from looking over and decided against it.  Then, I ended up in North Little Rock and met with a druggist from there who called and said that he had talked to one of the detail men who told him about me and he said, “I’m looking for a doctor to come up here and I’ll build him an office; would you be interested?” and I said, “We’ll, I’d be interested in talking about it.”  He said, “Well, we are going to San Antonio, my wife and I, next week and we can cut through Waco and sit down and talk about it” and I said, “That sounds great.”  So, he did, I did, and we did; we came back up and looked at it and looked at the area and decided that I would do it.  I had my guy fly me back a time or two to check on the clinic being built as I got to design my clinic and house,too.  In fact, we bought a…back then, a two bedroom; I think it was a three-bedroom house, a small one…about $19,000.  We took out a loan for that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Had you ended up with a lot of debt after medical school?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Not really; not really bad…..my dad pretty much paid for my way through medical school and Georgia worked some too; in fact, she worked at one of the OB/GYN groups that I was working with at the hospital too and ended up delivering her.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So how long….you were in solo practice for a while; how long were you in solo practice?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Seven years.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Seven years and then, you joined Amail Chudy.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Amail Chudy; yeah.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What triggered that?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Well, at the time, there were three of us: Charlie Kennedy, Amail Chudy, and me alternating weekends. We had the medical exchange on our pager, a one-way pager, and so, whoever was on call used to answer the phone and they’d page you and you go to whatever doctor you covered for on the weekend; this was eventually 4-5 years into it and not right off the bat.  Then, it was Chudy who came up with this; he was building a new office on 18th and Maple with room enough for more than one doctor and so, he called me about it.  I went and talked with him about it, we looked at it, and then, decided that it might be better than what we were doing with this other offer because if you did have somebody to page you, you didn’t have much free time at all….of course, if you’re just solo. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: By this time, it was late ‘50s or early 1960s?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Let’s see; ’57 and it took about seven years….’64.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Polio had come and gone by then.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did that have a big impact on your training years; do you remember?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: No, I can remember going to the clinics and giving shots; the free polio vaccine.  No, it didn’t; it affected a lot of stuff.  I remember they wouldn’t let us go to the swimming pool in Stuttgart due to polio when we were growing up. But, I only had one classmate that ended up with polio; she ended up with paralysis, a version of paralysis, in one of her arms and that was the only person or close experience of polio that I had.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What about other health issues….big broad things like the passing of Medicare….Medicaid was there, but it really came on in the ‘70s in Arkansas.  Did Medicare change the way you practiced medicine?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I don’t really think so.  I don’t think it did; I haven’t really given it much thought.  At one time, we had… we were four men, I guess, and right next door to our clinic…..Chudy had retired at that time and we moved from 18th and Maple and rented a building…I got to design that too…but, we had four doctors and I forget where I was going with this now…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: We were talking about Medicare.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, Medicare…right next door was the Bell telephone company and they were with Aetna.  I got so ill with Aetna that I fired them and we lost all those patients who had Aetna from there, but they were stonewalling us from paying us.  They would send something back saying it was because we didn’t cross a ”T” or dot an “I” and they would back up our payment for 6 to 8 months; this was just mean corporate stuff and so, I got rid of it.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Were you a business man?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Uh, I was the one running the clinic most of the time; yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did medicine turn out to be what you thought it would be; mainly talking about those years of the late 50s, 60s, up till the early 70s?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Pretty much; I think so.  We were pretty fortunate in getting in with the best of the group who could handle our money for us well enough to do some tax advantages and things to make some money where I could retire when I turned 65.  So, I guess we’ve been kind of …I’ve done a few things since then, nothing big; I worked for Baptist on a per case basis going with their home health care thing to prompting to the doctors….I could get in a doctor’s office where they couldn’t get in without another doctor talking to them and stuff like that and go with the nurses there…it was interesting.  I worked for Veteran’s Evaluation Services, VES, contracted with the government for the veteran’s disability determination and did some of those cases for a while; that got a little irksome too because it was so detailed.  After I retired, I was still doing VES and I…..\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What year was it that you retired?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: 1997.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Talk a little bit about……where there any crises along the way….medical or otherwise….you mentioned that your wife had an RH problem with the babies….any crisis that made you think, “Oh my, this is tough” and might have changed what you did or sent you in one direction or another? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Let me think…I can’t think of anything like that.  I pretty much enjoyed it especially when I got up in the academy and was on the commission.  I was on the commission for 10 years and you know, had twice a year meetings with those.  They paid your way and gave you enough to get either first class fare or two second class tickets and I’d take Georgia to most of the meetings that I went to.  They were at nice places; one was at Idaho…white water rafting on the Snake river….Georgia didn’t go to that meeting and she wouldn’t have rafted anyway.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: We started out talking about some major issues and these came a little bit before your academy time; the business of integration of medical staffs…..I know we already talked about it, but we didn’t get in on tape; talk a little bit about what you remember or if you remember anything about that process.  \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, I don’t remember having any feelings of that being an issue at all.  We had two black males in our class, I think, or maybe three…two I’m sure and I liked both of them; they were friends of mine.  So, I didn’t have any problems with blacks.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Morris Jackson wasn’t in that group was he?  He was about your age…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: He’s younger than me.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was he younger than you; ok…..how about Obie White?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Who Obie?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah…….he was quite a bit older…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah…quite a bit older….Henry Cooper became __________ and Horace Jackson, our age, had a practice at Fayetteville or Fort Smith, I believe; I think he did general practice.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was he any kin to Morris Jackson?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I don’t think so.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok; different people altogether.  What about women in medicine in those early years; do you remember any females in your class or any of the women that were around during that time? Margaret Harrison, I know, is about your age.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: She must be younger than me or older than me.  No, I don’t remember any at all; I’m lying about that, Betty Lowe was a standout….in fact, one of my classmates down in Shreveport called me the other day and said he talked to somebody about doing a thing at the Med Center to honor her, a memorial for her or something, and wanted to know if I had an antidote or something that I could tell them about Betty and I said, “I can’t think of anything about Betty; everybody just loved her.  She was great and a nice gal; she smoked, but she was just great. I never heard anybody say anything bad about her.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: She never did anything bad to make anybody think bad about her.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’m working on an extended piece called, “Against All Odds” and it’s early women in medicine in Arkansas and Betty Lowe is one of the people that we talk about in the piece.  \n\n  \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: The other one was Barbara…she practice down near Fordyce, just south of Fordyce down there; Barchdale…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, Barchdale; she was in Rison. I talked to Mark Atwood about her. There was another lady, Martha Fields, who was from Marianna and she was about, I don’t know age-wise, but she was about the time that you were on the board and she started making appearances at some of the board meetings.  She and Mildred Ward, who worked for the Family Practice Program in Little Rock; both were there and I don’t have any idea of what impact they had or anything.  \n\nI think this is a good place to start throwing this in……in or on about the early or late 1970s, about 1976 as far as I can tell, you joined the board at the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians. You were President in 1988; tell me about how long you had been a member of the organization and…..   \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Well, first it was the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: General Practice; it was general practice before Family Practice….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: AGP…..when I joined...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah….yeah…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: And I’ve got certificates here…medical school, board of family practice; I’ve got several of these old……I was going to take them and drop them by the office to see if they wanted them because when I’m gone…these are…\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: One of the interesting things to me, it’s fascinating, and I think the readers would be interested to know that the Academy, the Arkansas Academy of General Practice and the American Academy of General Practice, were the first to require the 150 hours of CME. \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Right.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did that play a role in anything?  Tell me about going to the CMEs in the early years; the CMEs you got and how you got them.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Well, the annual meetings primarily and then, there was one company that sent out a book that you could get CME for free by reading it, filling out the things, and sending it in. But, most of it was just the one meeting; of course, I went to the Arkansas Medical Society annual meeting and the Arkansas Academy medical meetings.\n\n   \n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: How big a deal was the Arkansas Medical Society meeting in those days?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Pretty good; it was probably better attended than the Academy meeting of Family Practice. Of course, they had a lot more people.  I didn’t; I wasn’t really involved a lot in it…I was president of the Pulaski County Medical Society, but that was a far as I really got involved with the Arkansas Medical Society.  I was on one or two of the commissions…..  \n\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When you first joined the board, almost right off the bat, you became involved in the education committee; I don’t know if you remember that or not, but you are listed as that.  Did that have….you, Lee Parker, and Jim…they guy from Fayetteville….Lee Parker’s running buddy…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, his picture is in here somewhere…Georgia was looking and asked “who is this?” and I said, “Well, that was Lee Parker’s partner”……here’s Jim Webber with his mustache and weird hat… (Laughing)…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: For several years, 3-4 years, you were on one committee after another.  Do you remember much about the work of the academy or the board at that point in time? There were nurse practitioners about this time that were becoming an issue…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Uh….I’m not sure I understand the question here…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’m just looking for issues that were important to you during the time that you were on the board; especially the year that you were president of the board.  During that time, Tom Honeycutt was doing a lot of the daily work for the organization; did you have a lot of work with Tom? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Oh yeah and it was all good; I didn’t have any problems at all with him.  Everything he did was positive for the Academy.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I think Alta Good was the executive director or executive vice president, whatever they called it at that time.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Well, she wasn’t the first…..the first one was one of the doctor’s wives.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: It was one of Shot Rodgers’ partners, I think, and I can’t think of her name now.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’ve got it written down somewhere.  Now, you stayed on the board for 10 years or so; three or four years before you were president and then, four to five years afterwards.  \n\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Uh, I don’t remember…I have no idea.  I know I was on the board of committees; I was talking about a while ago, 10-years Commission with the National Academy and I had two five year terms. They were supposed to be six years terms, but somebody got elected up and I moved in their five years remaining, twice; I got cheated out of two different years…but anyway, those were with the American Academy.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Talk about those....\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Those were great.  I told, I guess, everybody that wanted to hear it that it was one of the nicest and best things that ever happened because you got to rub elbows with some of the smartest doctors in the country and these guys on the board with me were smart and I learned a lot from them.  I enjoyed it all; we met twice a year at great places…..\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What was the commission; what were the names….?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: The first one was a membership and member services and the second one was…..it’s in here too somewhere, but I can’t remember exactly…that one, membership and member services, wasn’t as much fun as the next one that I can’t think of.  Yeah, it was…..people who were on the committees with me, eventually most of them, became ________ on the Academy.  Jim Webber did, Bruce Bagley was on the commissions with me and became president, and a seat from Jackson, Mississippi….what was his name; he joined with me, but he didn’t become president of the academy, he became president of the AMA.  I sent him a letter on time; he sent me something and I sent something back and marked the envelope…..I put something like, “Meant for your eyes only”…I can’t remember what it was, but he called me up and said, “You’ve got my front office all stirred up.”   \n\n(Laughing) Everybody was like, “What’s this?”….”What’s this?”…”we can’t open this mail?” It wasn’t anything bad; I was just trying to be funny with it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Mahlon Maris told me when we were talking, I think he was involved in the committees for the local or state; he said that one of the best recruiting tools that he felt like, I don’t think I’m putting words in his mouth, was good scientific meanings…..if you put good scientific meanings that was a good recruiting tool for the doctors in the state. Would you concur with that?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yes, I sure do.  _________, after he got to be president, he rarely showed up.  In fact, I hardly ever seen anything of him and I don’t know if he even came to another state meeting.  He just kind of vanished…..I don’t know if somebody made him mad or he got ill about something, but he just didn’t seem to show up after he got…….he was right before me; I thought he was after me, but he wasn’t.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Talk a little bit about George Warren, Jim Webber, and Shot Rodgers; all of these are names of guys who have been around and who……one of the reasons that I really wanted to interview you is because you are part of the institutional memory of the organization.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: (Laughing)….Ok…. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Whether you think you are or not, you are.  But there were several of these guys who were right around you……..oh and Lee Parker…..Lee Parker has been around forever…..\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And Amail Chudy, Les Anderson, and Harrell……Mike Moody and Joe Stallings; they actually came a little bit later than you….didn’t they? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, that was a group…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Except for Chudy; he just had his 95th or 96th ….he was born in ’26…so, whatever that is…95th birthday, I think.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: From an institutional memory, he was involved in the academy for 50 years…(laughing)…when you go back and look at the board meetings, he was attending board meeting in the early ‘50s and still attending board meetings in the late ‘90s….does any of those guys stand out to you?  I was in practice with George Warren for a year and George was a very intense man who worked hard and expected everybody else to work hard.  Jim Webber, in my opinion, was a little bit….he was a very hard worker and did a lot, but he was a lot more easy going… than George.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I’ll go with that.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Shot Rodgers……….\n\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Shot is going downhill; have you talked with him lately?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, I’m going to interview him next week…….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Good luck with that…..I went to see him about a month or two ago, right down the street from here, I talked to him on the phone and he knew I was coming and he wanted to know if I still lived in North Little Rock…I haven’t lived in North Little Rock for 20 years.  In fact, he had been to our house over on Pebble Beach and we have been to his house too, but he didn’t remember any of that….I’m not sure how he is now, but he wasn’t too good back then…..\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I was really surprised….really surprised at how well Amail Chudy did….he was absolutely amazing.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Uh yeah….some of that is just bullshit with him though”…… (Laughing)……\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But see, I had his wife there…his wife was there and he’d say something and she’d say, “No, that’s not the way it happened”….… (Laughing)……and she would….that worked really well. \n\nAt some point in your career, you started thinking about retiring….or thinking about trading this hat for another kind of hat….kind of like I’m doing with writing and you obviously did other jobs and stuff…..what informed that decision? Were you in good health and did you stay in good health?  \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah….my health got worse after retiring actually.  I’ve got a pacemaker and had a stent.  I got spinal stenosis that’s my big prognosis….the pacemaker don’t bother me at all and the stint…I got nitroglycerine that I carry in my pocket, but I had that for two years since I got my stent put in.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you exercise on a regular basis?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I try to.  I’ve worn out four treadmills over the years and I got one in the room now that is about to rust out because I don’t use it….but, I’m going to…(Laughing)….there is a list.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Talk about interests that you have outside of medicine or have had during your adult life; like reading, writing….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Do you see that thing up there......Laying up there on that….?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh….the…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: The crucifix…..wood carving is one of my ….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Really?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah…___________\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you do those?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh wonderful….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: That is one of my….I’ve got too many hobbies, really.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When did you start doing wood carving?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: When I was a boy scout….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Really?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Essentially…or maybe even a cub scout…..just off and on I sporadically do it.  The crucifixes are about the biggest thing that I’ve done and I just started painting it; it’s natural wood.  But, I’m going to give it to my daughter….I gave it to a nun who was a good friend of ours and her godmother when she was born….we had five boys and then, Diane was the only girl we had and so, Sister Charlene was her godmother and Frank Lovegood, the surgeon, was a good friend of mine and is her godfather.  When I gave one to Sister Charlene, I said, “Now, put this in your will…when you die, make sure this goes to Diane if you would please” and she said, “Of course, I will Bruce; yeah ok, that’s fine.”  But then, she got transferred up to Fayetteville…..Fort Smith, I think, to a ________ house and subsequently died.  So, she had given me the crucifix back to me to hang on to it for Diane and I decided that I needed to paint it up a little bit to make it look a little better. I kind of wished I hadn’t after I started, but I’m still going to do that.  But anyway, that is one of the hobbies and painting…..I’ll show you some of the pictures that I painted too.  My favorite one is in the hall around the corner there; it’s a hot air balloon.  We went to the balloon festival down in Albuquerque….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh yeah…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I took a bunch of pictures of the balloons.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you happen to go the year that they had the family practice review course at the same time?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: No.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: They did a family practice review course at the exact same time…I got out and did that and went to the balloon festival; that was absolute wonderful….that is a wonderful event.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, I enjoyed it.  Let’s see…..I’ve got a list of stuff that I like to do…..I’ll give you this sheet too so that you can have it.  I was an Eagle Scout too, by the way, before I got out of high school; about the year I got out of high school. I have an advanced class radio license and pilot’s license.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you still fly?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I don’t anymore; I have, but it’s been a while.  I think the last real flight I had…I done two of these things called “Sky warriors” and “Sky….something else” ….where you go up in planes and dog fight; they had lasers on them and receptors on the planes and you go up and somebody else goes up in another plane, you fly along and then separate, and when you come back, you’re about 5,000 ft and when you get wing to wing, the fight is on.  You see who can get behind the other and hit that gun switch to make his thing light up…..his plane starts smoking when he’s out….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That sounds potentially dangerous; is it?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Oh no, I don’t think so.  Anyway, I’ve done that twice….one in California and one in Georgia; that’s a lot of fun.  I’ve been on a balloon ride, but I don’t have a balloon pilot’s license; I wish I had. It was a real nice balloon trip.  Oil painting and photography is another thing; a lot of the stuff I paint is from pictures I’ve taken.  I play with computers a whole lot…..\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That is another question I wanted to ask you about; after you talk about that, we will go back to computers and the practice of medicine…..\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I study a lot of languages.  I studied German in college and I studied it since I…. travel is the other thing.  I was going to tell you about being on these commissions; my wife got to go with me and there was a whole long weekend and three or four nights that they covered your meals, hotel room, and flight out and then, you got to sit in on these things with some of the smartest people and so, that was really, really good things twice a year to different places and not to mention, I made most of the national meetings for years; in fact in all the local, I missed one academy meetings that was when it conflicted with my weekend on the commission….that was the only meeting I missed.  Anyhow, I made remote control air planes too; I made those a while.  Travel; we’ve been to…I have been in all 50 states and have been in 20 or so foreign countries.  I’ve made 13 trips to Honduras on medical missions and we have a mission with our church that many of us go; we were doing it every year till the bug hit.  I was in the first group it started and I ran the second year at it and was in charge of the whole thing; but after that, I just went and saw patients and so forth for a week instead of a week at a time…that trip to Honduras. I was on the school boards; PTA at St. Josephs’ school and down at the orphanage when they had a public school out there…it wasn’t a public program school.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Over in North Little Rock?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah and St. Patrick’s Church, I was president of the PTA for a year and on the school board at Catholic High for a while……….you can have this that tells all that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, good, good, good..…would you do it all again….would you do what you have done again or would you change things? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I can’t think of anything I would change really; maybe if we sat and talked for a while, but right now I can’t.  I feel so fortunate to have done as much stuff as I have done and been able to enjoy as many different things.  I guess, it’s kind of like maybe I just get too jaded with something to switch to something else.  Like I was doing painting and taking lessons at the art center many years ago and then, I discovered photography and so, I starting taking photography classes out there. Did you ever know a guy named…….Kilgore?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Kilgore; yeah, sure…wonderful, wonderful.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Black and white….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah; oh wonderful, black children and ….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I took a course under him one time.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Andrew Kilgore…..\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Andrew, yeah; it was at the art center too.  Then, I have done a lot of video stuff too; I got video tapes stuffed to the kazoo around here, home videos……then, I got back interested in painting because I had a lot of pictures that I could use to paint from…acrylic paintings; I had a lot of fun with that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I may be over making the point on this, but one of my personal memories of you and your involvement in the academy and everything has been working with computers or listening to you talk; I’ve heard you give a talk on office computers which was, I don’t know, in the early ‘90s when I heard this. Do you remember when you first got interested or enamored with the idea of using computers in the practice of medicine?  \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Yeah, I can remember because we used it in my office and I kind of borrowed an idea from a commercial thing on it where you could have templates that you could use and phrases that you use repeatedly in a…..I don’t know what you call that…where you can go to it, pull it up, and insert it.  I did my own one of those things and we used it in our practice; I think I liked it better than my partners did… (Laughing)…..but anyway, it did speed up things and it sure made it clearer.  Instead of written notes in there, you had all this typed stuff and it didn’t cost anything…. you didn’t have to have somebody type it up because it was already on the computer; all you had to do was send it to the printer.\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You are on the other side now; you were talking about your spinal stenosis and your stent and stuff….what do you think about electronic medical records?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I’m glad I don’t have to do it; that’s the only thing I hear.  People tell me, “You sure got out in time, Bruce.  Golly, you don’t know what it…”….all I know is what I hear.  It confuses me; you know when I go to the urologist or something, they say, “Your information; if you have your password…you can remember it”…it’s in my I-phone here; but they say, “You shouldn’t have more than 2-3 passwords the same because it’s too easy to “….well hell, I can’t remember more than 2-3 without it being somewhere…..anyhow….       \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’m real bad about that too….I get real close on all those…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: But yeah, I liked the things that we came out with with that, but I’m sure they dropped it when I got out.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now, this doesn’t have to be medicine it could be anything…technology has just Toft-Lauring speed of just going fast, fast, fast….. What piece of technology, or form of technology, has changed life the most in your estimation?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I’m not sure if it qualifies, but I’d say the fake news in the commercial papers and T.V….how they come up with fake news.  In fact, I just watched a program about a lady who wrote a book called…….anyway, she quotes….how people misquote; that used to be that paper and reporter getting in trouble when they misquoted somebody or throw a wrong fact in…now-a-days, they just go back and recreate it like they didn’t do it …even though they did.  But no, as far as…nothing; I use Google a whole lot and Google stuff all the time.  I order stuff from Amazon and Sam’s because my Sam’s Academy will deliver my stuff here; my Kleenex for instance, I don’t have to pick it up and carry it in my cart because they will deliver it for free and that part of the computer I like.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When you were growing up, there were 2 to 2 ½ billion people in the world or something like that and now almost 8 billion; is that sustainable?\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I don’t know how it is……and I don’t know what is going to happen to our county the way they just open the doors and say, “anybody who wants to come in, come in” without a care…that just doesn’t make sense in any….any way of thinking about it.  I mean I feel sorry for people, but I feel sorry for the people here too.  We’ve got veterans for instance who are out here in these shelters and we are giving shelter to any people who come across the border who say, “I want to come over”….”ok, we’ll give you a room”…in fact, they have a motel there in Texas for them.  They ought to be taking care of the veterans instead of those people like that…..I have a real, real concern about where our country is headed.\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I have two last questions and before I do, do you have anything else that you want to include in this?\n\n \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Well, ask those and I’ll be thinking if I want to add stuff.\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: Ok….50 years from now, you’re going to be a picture on the wall and your great, great, grandkids could potentially see this….we didn’t talk about grand children….what do you want them to know about you?   \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Let’s talk about that...I wish that every one of them can get a copy of that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That book……I promise you that every one of them can get a copy of this because they are going to have that…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: We had, like I said, six kids; one of them died, the next to the oldest.  He had lung cancer, which he got cured with radiation and therapy, but started smoking again and drinking and died from heart disease.  We still have four boys and one girl and we’ve got five…no eight grandchildren and two great, great grandchildren.  We stay….we do zoom on Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock every week since this virus got started because we’ve got grandkids and a great grandkid up in Philadelphia that we haven’t seen since a year ago Christmas.  I can show you pictures; I’ve got 1200 pictures and 127 videos of him and he’s not even two years old yet; they are keeping me informed and that’s another good thing about technology…at least we get to see him.  We face-time too…\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: What I will do with this is scan this in and this will be part of the transcript that I will send to you.\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Let me see that, I think...I don’t know if I ….no, I didn’t…I have one grandson on here when I did this and now, I have two…can I….\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You can do what you want to…\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: I have two grandsons…ok, there we go….I just wanted to add the addition…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That was one of the cute things when I interviewed Amail…….he was sitting there and I said, “how many grandchildren or great grandchildren do you have?” and he said, “We have four boys and four girls” and she said, “No, you have two boys and two girls…”…he said, “Yeah, two boys and two girls”…… (Laughing)...it was so cute….\n\nNow the last question; what do you want for all those grandchildren and great grandchildren in their lives?  You obviously had a very good life and enjoyed yourself doing a lot of things that you wanted to do…what do you want for them? \n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: Well, I’d like for them to have the same satisfying life that I had, but I don’t know….that is kind of a broad thing, because not even my grown kids have that…..but that is what I’d like for them to have opportunities to do the things that I’ve done.  I feel like I’ve been blessed, I started to say fortunate….but, blessed.  Of course, we are a church going family, Catholic, and we don’t miss Mass on Sundays.  We are active in the church and several of the Bishops have been friends of ours. In fact Bishop McDonald, when he was here, had his 50th birthday party at our house when we lived out in the country in North Little Rock.  He got transferred here from Georgia, but he fit right in…particularly that night…he hadn’t been here very long, but we had his birthday party and he took his shirt off with an undershirt on that said, “Fly the friendly skies of Arkansas”\n\n(Laughing)…\n\nBack then, United or somebody had a “Fly the friendly skies” \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right….\n\nDr. Bruce Schratz: He had one made that said, “Arkansas” …I always remember that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99116/file/196822#t=0.0,5371.69967"}]}]}]}