{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/p843r0rw38/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Robert Kerr"]},"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":["2016-05-20 (Created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video file"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["family medicine","family physician","Arkansas","Rural family medicine"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Robert Kerr, MD (personal name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/681/small/RobertKerrM.D.DVD.mp4_1758121352.jpg?1758121355","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Robert_Kerr_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":5558.01079,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/291/681/small/RobertKerrM.D.DVD.mp4_1758121352.jpg?1758121355","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/291/681/original/Robert_Kerr_M.D._DVD.mp4?1758121328","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":5558.01079,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681/transcript/84348","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Robert Kerr Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681/transcript/84348/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Bob Kerr\n\nThis is Sam Taggart and I am the interviewer.  I’m interviewing Dr. Bob Kerr with his wife, Maryann.  Today is 5/20/16.  We are here interviewing for the Arkansas Physicians Oral History Project.   There is no better place to start than: When you were born? \n\n“I was born December 14, 1938 in Lake Village, Arkansas.  I looked up the doctor’s name and it was W.D. Easterling; I have no idea anything else about him, but he signed my birth certificate.” \n\nDo you know William Weaver?\n\n“No.”\n\nHe is a much, much, much older physician from down there who is retired.  He was in Lake Village and McGehee during that time.\n\nSo, tell me a little bit about the town and place you were born.  What was it like?\n\n“My dad managed a plantation at Mackin Lake, which is north of Lake Village for Mr. Mathis.  My family had all come from Mississippi.  My mother was from Liberty, Mississippi, which is in south Mississippi, and my dad from Carralton, which is near Greenwood, Mississippi.  My two siblings were born in Mississippi and then they came over here and I was born down in Lake Village.  11 months later, he was hired by Mrs. Harvey Parnell to run her 2000 acre cotton plantation at Hallie, Arkansas, which is 8 miles east of Dermott.  That was a unique thing to grow up with because Ms. Parnell was the widow of Governor Harvey Parnell and they had built a place down at Hallie back in the ‘30s when he was governor.  They had taken a bayou and made a lake out of it and they had built a big white house that had a formal dining room, ball room, big sleeping porch because people who came from Little Rock needed a place to sleep.  It had a big commisary, two or three barns, a blacksmith shop, and we had a house over there.  It was just a unique place for a kid to grow up.”\n\nWhere was this in relationship to the little Buie graveyard?  There’s a grave yard there that has some Buie’s, Jim Buie, buried there?\n\n“That’s in Hallie and we were just south of Hallie; right at a county line.  We were in Chicot County.”\n\nAnd your father was a manager?\n\n“He managed a 2000 acre cotton plantation for her.  She was just a nice lady.  One of my stories about her is that when I was about 10 years old she had a friend come in from Crossett with a \n\n\nboy who was about my age and wanted me to come have dinner with them in this formal dining room.  My mother spit and shined me, got me all cleaned up, and told me how to act.  I got over there and they had fried chicken and I thought “oh, I’m in trouble.”  Mrs. Parnell said, “Now, you folks can do what you like, but I’m a southern lady.  I eat my chicken with my hands” and I could have just hugged her neck.  It is a very vivid memory I have of that time.  Her home had this ball room and my sister, who was a little older than I was, was married in 1951 and the reception was held at her home in the ball room.  They were married in Dermott.  Of course, that was Jack and Jean Kemp, who is Dr. Lynn Kemp’s mom and dad; but that was a very unique thing, too.”\n\nLynn Kemp is where I got that name from.   \n\nDo you remember, you said Dr. Easterling was the man who delivered you, were you delivered at home or in a hospital?\n\n“I think I was in the hospital in Lake Village.”\n\nThe kind of house you lived in was a plantation house?\n\n“The house I lived in was a framed house, a little three bedroom house.  It was there by Mrs. Parnell with a semi-circular drive that connected us.  We were not far from the Mississippi River over there.  There was a water mark about six feet up on the side of the living room where the ’27 flood got into the house.”\n\nSo, you came there right after the ’37 flood?  Or you were born right after the flood?\n\n“Right, we moved there in ’39.”\n\nSo your father was a manager; how many people did he have working or living on that farm to do the work in that time?\n\n“You know, my first memories are that they had a lot full of mules to do the work and probably had 20-30 people who worked on the farm.  They had a big bell that they rang each morning to let them know it was time to gather around, they’d ring it at noon to let them know that they could eat, and again in the evening; it was quite a deal.  I remember the first John Deer tractor we got.  It was quite an accomplishment to have a Poppin John Deer tractor there.”\n\nDo you remember when that was?\n\n“Probably in the mid ‘40’s or somewhere in there.  I remember saving scrap iron for WWII when the whole country was trying to help with that.  One of my dreams that I had during that time was dreaming that German soldiers were coming down the road there at Hallie; so, it was in mind.“\n\nYou mentioned your siblings; were you close to your siblings?\n\n\n“Yes.”\n\nAre you still?\n\n“Still am; my sister, Mrs. Kemp, died about 8 years ago.  She was born with a heart defect that they told my mother, “don’t get too close to her because she won’t live very long.”  She was born in 1931 in Rosedale, Mississippi.  She went ahead to be a high school cheerleader, to be a married lady with four pregnancies in five years, she delivered three children, and lived till age 77.  I had heard about her murmur all my life.  I listened to that thing and it would blow your ears off, but it was probably a small VSD.  My brother is 2 ½ years older than I am.  He is a civil engineer in Texarkana, Arkansas.  He and I have been real close.  Jean and Jack lived in Mountain Home for a long time.  He was a pharmacist; so, we were close.”     \n\nHad there been anybody in medicine before you in your family?\n\n“Not that I’m aware of.”\n\nAs you were growing up as the children, or family, of a manger; did you think of yourself as being either poor, middle class, or wealthy?  Did that thought ever occur to you when you were a kid? \n\n“I don’t think that ever entered our minds whether we were poor, not poor, well off, or anything; we were people who enjoyed life and had a good life, but not anything exorbitant, you know.”\n\nNow early on, your extended family was still back in Mississippi; is that correct?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nDid they come over here a lot or did you go back over there a lot?\n\n“It was a little of both; mostly us going back over there probably.  My dad had about five brothers and my mother had a brother and a sister.  The brother lived in Greenville, Mississippi and the sister lived around, because her husband was a captain in WWII who was injured and had to be in Michigan for a while.  My mother’s mother died at age 33 of Bright’s disease and left her with two younger siblings that she helped raise.  So, we were her second family to raise.” \n\n What kind of work did they do over in Mississippi?\n\n“Mainly farming.”\n\nAre you a geniology person and gone back and looked at your family history in terms of where they came from in Europe or where they came from before they came to Mississippi?\n\n\n“I’ve done a little of it and haven’t got much.  I think the Kerrs came from North Carolina to Mississippi and from Scotland originally.  Mother was a Smith and it is kind of hard to follow the Smiths……..”    \n\nYou really haven’t lost your southern accent.\n\n“No sir, I haven’t.”\n\nYou still clearly have a clear southern accent.\n\n“Right.”\n\nSo, tell us a little bit about some of your fondest memories of when you were a little kid.  You mentioned going to the big house to have fried chicken.\n\n“Well being there on the farm, we had horses; I grew up on the back of a horse and loved that.  I helped the blacksmith turn his fan to keep his fire going; just around the farm and all was really great.  I loved to fish.  My mother liked to fish and she taught me to like to fish.”\n\nWhat kind of fish did you catch over that way?\n\n“Bass and some Croppie.”\n\nDid you go to the river or one of the locksman lakes?\n\n“Lakes mostly.  Kate Adams Lake at Arkansas City, Lake Wallace south of Dermott.”\n\nWere you a hunter?\n\n“You know, we didn’t hunt much.  I had an uncle who was a deer hunter, but my dad never did hunt very much.  He went deer hunting a time or two and killed his buck and enjoyed that, but I don’t think he was a ….. He didn’t do a lot of hunting.”\n\nWas there as many deer in that part of the country then as there are now?\n\n“Not as many now as there was then.  It was a bigger challenge.”     \n\n So, talk about your elementary school: going to school, how did you get to school, did you ride a bus?\n\n“We rode a bus to school and it was 8 miles into Dermott.  Which in that time, it was a little bit longer drive as it is in this day.  We rode a bus into town and many afternoons mother would be in town for some activity and we might come home with her rather than on the bus.  I had a good little school in Dermott and enjoyed elementary school; I had some good teachers at that point.”\n\n\nDo you remember anything about any particular teachers, or people, who had an impact on you; who you can look back now and say that they really helped or hindered?\n\n“I don’t remember any particular one.  I just remember that all of them were positive and gave me a sense of worth.  My mother and my dad gave me that sense of worth and I think that the school system did the same thing for me.” \n\nSo, you had one sister and one brother; none of your siblings died during childhood?\n\n“No.”  \n\nWhat kind of interests did you have in school?\n\n“As school went along, of course, sports was my big interest.  I grew up in a time when we had a small school.  There were 36 in my graduating class.  You played football in football season, you played basketball when that season came along, you ran track and then in the summer, you played baseball.  So, it was a lot of sports emphasis.”\n\nWere you any good?\n\n“I probably was alright for that time.  I was 6 ft tall in high school, which at that time was a fairly tall person.  I played quarterback on the football team, forward on the basketball team, ran the 800 yard run in track and high jumped, pole vaulted, and ran the high hurdles.”\n\nWhat did you play in baseball?\n\n“Played first base mainly.  My claim to fame in baseball is that the summer before my senior year in high school, we had a coach leave town and left them without a little league coach.  I was 16 years old and they came and asked me to be coach for that little league team that year. So, I got to coach Eddie Barlow and Bobby Crockett of Arkansas Football Fame and I was their coach that summer.  We had a great time together; they were good kids.”\n\nDid you win any games?\n\n“You know, I don’t really remember that much about winning.”\n\nDid you work as a child, adolescence, or your teenage years?  Did you work on the farm or in town?\n\n“I worked after, well my dad died when I was 13.  He was one week shy of 50 and had a massive gastric hemorrhage.  Dr. Gilbert Dean from Little Rock drove to Dermott and operated with Dr. Brian Barlow and H.W. Thomas all night.  I assume they did a line gastrectomy.  He got about 16 pints of blood and he then died; that was on Sunday and he died on Thursday.  My mother was left with a son going into the 11th grade and one going in the 9th grade.  Dad had had a \n\n\n$10,000.00 life insurance policy, which doesn’t sound like much but in that day and time was a pretty good start.  It got us a home and then she worked.  My brother and I both worked at Kroger in Dermott.  I cut yards one summer and then later, I worked in the hospital.  I think probably my dad’s death had a lot to do with me wanting to be a doctor.  I have his bill here for his hospital stay from Sunday until Thursday with all the operating, 16 pint of blood, the whole thing was $458.85.  I worked for Blue Cross after I retired for a while and I got them to judicate that bill for me; they were quite taken with it.  My dad died in June ’52 and Eddie Barlow’s dad died in ’53.  He had a heart attack and passed away at his desk one morning.  I have the annual from Dermott 1954 and they dedicated the annual to those two men.  They were both on the school board and both were active in the community; I thought that that was pretty neat.  But, I’m sure all of that played a role.  When I was 15, my mother said “what do you want to do in life?” and I said, “I think, I want to be a doctor.” She never hesitated; we didn’t have any money, but, we did it.”      \n\nI notice when talking about your father, were you and your father close?\n\n“Yes, I would ride around the farm with him as he went to see about things.  He was a man of few words, but you listened when he talked.  He was a Deacon in the Baptist Church in Dermott, he was on the school board, he was a good citizen, he was a Mason, and he was a good man.  It was just tough.”\n\nHad he been ill much before he died?\n\n“To my knowledge, no. He had some type of operation on his stomach when he was in his 20’s, but he was well and healthy as far as I know.  Mrs. Parnell’s grandson, Harvey Perry from Monroe, was a little younger than I was, but he and I were friends growing up there when he came to see Mrs. Parnell.  I had gone to Monroe to spend a few days with him on Saturday and then dad got sick on Sunday.  So, you know, it was a sudden thing; but very catastrophic when it happened.”\n\nIn 1950, Monroe is what 90-100 miles or something like that?      \n\n “Yes.”\n\nHow did you get back and forth; car or train?\n\n“Car.”\n\nI let you pass up on something a bit ago; you mentioned that one of your family members was born in Rosedale, Mississippi.  At that point in time, what was the bridge situation or were there ferries across there?\n\n“There were ferries across the river.”\n\n \n\nWhen was your first memory of there being bridges across there; that big ole red bridge?\n\nOf course by the time I came along, they had a bridge across there and my uncle, my mother’s sister’s husband, was an engineer who helped plan that bridge across the Mississippi.  My granddaddy, my mother’s dad, lived with us in Lake Village and he died while we were there.  They had to take him back to Mississippi on the ferry to bury him.”\n\nDo you remember riding the ferry?\n\n“I do not, no I don’t.  I was a little young for that at that time.” \n\nI was thinking and we’re jumping forward a little, but they still had a pretty substantial ferry when you went to Mountain Home or had they put the quihedous to that already?\n\n“No, we had ferries at Mountain Home for years.”\n\nHenderson Ferry, I remember those.\n\n“I guess it was three ferries that they had for a long time.  Vada, they finally built the bridges up there to shut her up they said.”\n\nShe was special.  \n\nThat’s a southern compliment?\n\n“Yeah.” \n\nAs you were growing up, obviously there were some crisis during your childhood; especially losing your father.  Did you have close knit friends, or a close set of friends, as a kid growing up in a rural area?\n\n“Yes, we had kids from my grade and the grade above me.  Don Bullock was a young man who was a year ahead of me; he and I played sports together and he would come to the farm and spent days and nights with us while I was still there.  Then, I spent time in Dermott with him.  I have several of those guys that was close to me.”\n\nWhen your father passed away, I assume that y’all moved off of the farm into Dermott?\n\n“Yes, we did.”  \n\nDid you find it a lot different living in Hallie versus living in Dermott?\n\n“It was different in that we didn’t have the horses or the outdoor freedom, but still Dermott was a place that we were familiar with.  We lived within two blocks of the school and two blocks of the church; so, we walked to school and walked to church.  Mother got a job working in a \n\n\nbutane gas office as their secretary and later they got her a job at the bank there in Dermott.  She spent many years as a teller.” \n\nWho is “they” who got her the job; friends?\n\n“The gentleman who ran the butane gas business, Lamar Grisham; he knew mother needed a job that would be ongoing and he helped her get on at the bank after he had gotten her the job with him.” \n\nI think it is interesting; did you enjoy school, do well in school, or excel in school? \n\n“I enjoyed school and did well; I excelled.  Dermott did not have a lot of the classes that some of the larger schools had.  Probably one of the best things that happened in high school was that we had a gentleman come to town who we thought was a teacher, but he probably wasn’t a whole lot older than us; but he was a math teacher and he taught us Algebra II.  There was about six of us who just sat down with him every day and worked problems.  So, when I went to college, I was ahead of a lot of people in mathmatics.  My chemistry and my biology, I had to work really hard to catch up, because we didn’t have that much.  Our chemistry teacher was also the principal and he spent more time down in the principal’s office than he did in class.  But, it was a good school and a good place to grow up.”                            \n\nTell us about English literature.\n\nThe superintendant’s wife, Mrs. Palmer, taught our English literature and she was just a dandy lady.  She was a person who cared about us more than she did anything.  So, I did get a good background in that.”\n\nI have a good friend from Eudora, a bit younger than I am, and he brags about the literature education that he got in school.  I think that that was a big deal in most of the small towns; English and literature, despite what a lot of people would think.  It was a very big deal.  \n\nAt age 15, you look up one day and your father has passed away, and you said, “I think I really want to go into medicine;” did you start pursuing it right then or was it just kind of a “that’s what I want to do and I’m just going to keep doing the things I’m doing?” \n\n“There wasn’t anything a whole lot different to do in school at that time, as far as that, but I don’t think I ever waivered from what I wanted to do.  When I went to college, I knew what I wanted to do and didn’t realize what an asset that was.  A lot of guys wound up at college and they were just at college; they didn’t know what they wanted out of life and I did; that meant a lot.”\n\n What did you want to do when you went to college?\n\n\n\n“I wanted to be a doctor, just like those doctors in Dermott.  Dermott had a hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital, run by the Bendectine sisters and Dermott had an article written in 1978 that Dermott had produced 18 doctors.  I thought that that was pretty amazing, but I think that that was because Brian Barlow, who was Eddie’s dad, was a doctor there in town.  His dad, E.E. Barlow had been a doctor there.  H.W. Thomas, who became president of the Arkansas Medical Society, was there and Dermott had a great general practice doctor who delivered babies and did surgery.  Major Smith had grown up in McGehee, but he was a Dermott doctor.  We admired those people.  Major was my Sunday school teacher in the church.  I think I always wanted to be that.”\n\nWhere did you go to college?\n\n“I went to college at Arkansas A\u0026M at Monticello where I was very fortunate to meet my wife.  She’s from Monticello in Hamburg.  We dated in college and got married the summer before my sophomore year in med school.”\n\nSo, you were only about 20 miles from home.\n\n“That’s correct.”\n\nWhat year did you get married?\n\n“August of 1960.  I started med school and at that time, you only had to have 90 hours to get into med school.  So, I did three years and had 91 hours and got into medical school.  That first year was really tough, but we got married the summer before the next year.”\n\nWhat about your education at Monticello?\n\n“There was a guy named W.C. Hopgood who was the professor of anatomy.  He was a good friend of Jeff Banks, who was Head of the Anatomy Department at UAMS back in the ‘50s.  So, W.C. did a good job in anatomy of producing doctors.  Then, we had a good chemistry department that helped us a lot.  A\u0026M was a good premed school at that time.   Although, I had friends from Hendrix that I was with and they were a little ahead of me at that point.”\n\nWe called them Gunners.\n\n“That’s right.”\n\nWas there any question about where you would go to college?\n\n“No, I think financially, it was pretty well that I was going there.”\n\nAnd this would’ve been in about what year?\n\n“1956.”\n\n\nWhen you finished high school, did you ever just consider going to work somewhere and not going to college?\n\n“No, my mother, as I said, had to raise her two siblings and did well in high school; but never got to go to college.   Her desire was that her kids would all go to college and finish college.  She’d never waiver from that and I never waivered.”\n\nWhat did you study in college?\n\n“You know on doing just 90 hours to get in, it was mainly the chemistries, biologies, and some economics, some English; but it was pretty bare boned courses to get me to medical school.”\n\nWhat motivated you to go to medical school?  What did you want to do when you thought that you wanted to be a physician?  Was it dated back to your dad’s passing or his illness or did you just always want to do that?  You admired those people you say.\n\n“I think it had to do with being exposed to it when he died and then being exposed to, I remember the next year being over at the Barlow house for a party and somebody had been in a wreck.  They brought them by going to the hospital and Dr. Barlow had to go take care of that.  I thought that that was pretty cool that he could go do that.  I think I developed a wanting to help attitude, but I wanted to do……I liked delivering babies and worked at the hospital after my freshman year in college.  I worked in the operating room, worked in the lab, worked in x-ray; and as a matter of fact, the sisters taught me how to do lab and x-ray work.  They helped me get a job at St. Vincent’s when I came to Little Rock.  I actually lived in St. Vincent’s from about April of 1960 until August when we got married.  I lived upstairs with the interns and took night call in the lab.”\n\nBack a little bit, when you were in high school and college, before we get off into medical school; any subjects that particularly caught your attention or interests?\n\n“I think the anatomy probably did more than anything.  Dr. Hopgood was very good at anatomy.  I remember in micro-anatomy where we had to draw outlines of all comparative anatomy and I spent one Christmas drawing these things for it; but I enjoyed that, I enjoyed the anatomy part.  I like chemistry also.  As I mentioned earlier, I had a good math background in high school; so that when I started physics in college, they had a medical physics and an engineering physics.  I couldn’t work out my schedule to do medical, so I did the engineering physics.  Those guys were taking calculus and I wasn’t and by semester, I told them, “You got to get me out of here” because they were starting to know more than I did at that point.”\n\nAt what point did you start the process of applying for medical school?  You remember you said 90 hours, which is close to three years in school.\n\n\n\n“I think we applied in our second year and I’m not sure they had the M-Cat at that time.  I think it was on your grades and you came up and interviewed with one of the professors.”\n\nDo you remember much about the interview? \n\n“Dr. Dining was my interviewer.  He was one of the psychology people, I think, and was Dean for a while.  He was very nice and really made me feel comfortable.”\n\nHow many people were in your med school class your freshman year?\n\n“109, I believe.”\n\nDo you remember thinking, and this is kind of off the beat and path, but do you remember wondering in college “How are they going to make me become a doctor?”\n\n“I don’t guess I did.”\n\n“I can answer that; no.”                 \n\nWhat I remember is and it took me a while to be comfortable with somebody saying my name and in front of it putting the word doctor.  That’s what really took me a little while to be comfortable with that.\n\n“You know somehow I got instilled in me that I could do most anything I wanted to do and it’s been a wonderful outlook on life.”         \n\nTalk about your first couple years in medical school; the academic portion of it.\n\n“When I got to medical school in ’59, we started on gross anatomy and biochemistry immediately.  As you say, the Hendrix boys were a little further along, particularly in chemistry than I was.  I really had to work hard and I remember in gross anatomy reading a sentence and looking up three words trying to figure out what they were talking about.  Maryann and I were thinking seriously about marrying at that point and she called on weekend and said, “I have a ride to Little Rock, can I come up?” I said, “You cannot come up, I don’t have time.”  It was that bad that first semester.  I finally learned that I had to take off Saturday at noon and do something physical outside, maybe go to a movie that night, church the next morning, and then hit it again Sunday at noon.  But, I had to learn to take off that 24 hours to survive.  It was a very hard thing from September till April to get those courses out.”\n\nI missed over this and you just reminded me about something; tell us about your religious upbringing as a child and the role of church or religion as a child.  Which church did you belong to and that kind of thing?\n\n“We belonged to the Dermott Baptist Church.  My dad was a Deacon.  My mom was involved in all parts of WMU, Sunday school, and BYPU or BTU at that time.  If the doors of that church \n\n\nopened, we were there.  I remember when we lived at Hallie even coming in from school and “Boys, grab you a sandwich because we are due back in town for some church activity” that night.  It was very much so.  The preacher, Ed McDonald, was a good friend of ours who left Dermott in April ’52 and when he left he said, “Now, I’m leaving and your new preacher will marry you and bury you, and that’s it.  My dad died in June and he came back and buried him; so, we were close.”\n\nDid you ever consider going into ministry or becoming a medical missionary?\n\n“No.”\n\nYou did bring up when talking a few minutes ago about your athletics in school and obviously they don’t put marginal players at first base or marginal players as quarterbacks, so you may be underestimating your roles.  Did you ever think about playing athletics after high school?\n\n“One of my biggest regrets is not playing basketball.  My coach in high school said, “I can talk to A\u0026M and get you a look-see at basketball.” I thought that I needed to work and I knew I needed to study. and I needed to get it; so, I said, “No, I don’t want to do that.” When I got to college, a another guy and I had our shoes and got to the gym one day to walk on and we turned around and walked out; I regretted that.  I haven’t backed up from too much since then.”\n\nWe kind of talked about your specific family and talked about Dermott, etc….but during the time you were growing from ’38-’39 up to the time you went to medical school, there was a lot going on.  You had WWII, Korea, polio epidemics going on; do you remember much about that or remember even thinking about that?\n\n“I remember WWII; as I said earlier, one of my dreams was that the Germans were walking down the road coming to our house.  There were some German prisoners of war in Dermott one time; there was a Japanese enternament camp at Jerome just south of Dermott and one a Rura over out from McGehee and a German camp over at Monticello.  It was known around that these prisoners were around and the internees from the Japanese were around.  I remember the day that Franklin Roosevelt died.  I was in the front year playing under a tree and my mother came out crying because the president had died.  I remember Korea because my sister had married in 1951; but in 1953, her husband had to go to Korea.  My sister came back to live with us and my dad had died then, so we were up town.  Glen Kemp was born in Dermott because his dad was in Korea.”\n\nI’m skipping around a little bit, but nobody is really going to care.  We talked about the academics the first two years of medical school, what about your clinical years in medical school?  What did you think about them?  How did that fit with what you thought you wanted to do with the rest of your life?                         \n\n\n\n“I found I loved it.  I started out on an internal medicine rotation and we had some great people, Lou Sanders, George Ackerman, those folks.  I had a good resident, Charlie Fitzgerald.  I just found my calling; I loved it.  I remember Charlie coming and we had a patient with tetnus.  I was over in the library and had everything all lined out reading all about that and Charlie came up  there and said, “You’ve got to give me some of that” because I had pulled everything they had on tetnus and he wanted to find it out.  But, I loved the clinical years.  I did better in the clinical years; I did well in school.  The fall after we got married, which would’ve been my second year then, we had physiology and Maryann’s brother’s wife was in California and had a baby and she almost died; I remember that kind of tied things up.  I didn’t do well in physiology and that really offset my academic record.  I remember Lou Sanders, when they got ready to do AOA when I was a senior, he said, “What in the world happened to you?” because that kept me out of AOA.”\n\nWas Dr. Ackerman a teacher or a resident?\n\n“They were instructors.”\n\nHe was a special person involved.\n\n“Yeah; they were just a good bunch of guys”      \n\nWas Bob Abernathy there then?\n\n“Oh yeah, Bob Abernathy; he could teach you more with one patient than anybody could with lots.”\n\nThese guys were still there when we were there.\n\n“Dr. Ebbert was the Head of the Medicine Department, which was really well known.  Of course, we had Dr. Red Growden, who was Head of Surgery and Dr. Harrell was there as one of the first cardiovascular surgeons in Arkansas.  But, you mentioned polio earlier; I remember when I got to medical school in ’59, there were iron lungs still around the wards up there.  I remember also our first child was born before our senior year in ’62 and taking him as a child to get his polio inoculation; that’s when you saw it stop.”\n\nSo you get into your senior year in medical school and you’re at that point where you are beginning to make some decisions about what you’re going to do the rest of your life; whether an internship or at that point in time, I think, there was still a short period of time a general practice residency.\n\n“Correct.”\n\nDid those things go into your mind?\n\n\n\n“I started out in the general practice residency there at the University.  The first year was medicine and pediatrics, which was very good.  As I took that year, I saw that the second year, which you were supposed to do surgery and OB, and I didn’t think they treated those guys very well the second year.  So, I talked the surgeons into letting me do a year of surgery.  I did it through the VA with three months over at the University.  I didn’t realize when I did that, but we had the Barrick plan at that time, which meant we had to go into the service either after school or after the internship, but you were going into the service.  When I went in, I went in as a partially trained surgeon and got to work with a surgeon for two years in the Air Force.  So by the time I went to Mountain Home, I had three years of surgery.”\n\nWhat were those two years you were in the service?\n\n“’65-’67.”\n\nSo, right in the middle of Vietnam; where did you end up?\n\n“When I was doing that year of surgery at the VA, I found out they had a watch line where I could call Washington and the guy who assigned doctors and I became pretty good friends.  I had a classmate, John Moose from Silom Springs, who was at Orland Air Force Base in Orlando, Florida and he told me what that was like.  It was 125 bed hospital.  So, they had an opening for a partially trained surgeon, so I got to go there.  When I went in August of ’65, they sent us to Montgomery, Alabama for three weeks to teach us how to be an officer, because we went in as a Captain.  That’s all they talked about, a place called Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam; I had never heard of it until we got down there and “You guys, some of you are going to wind up down there.”  The last day we were there, there were 200 of us and they said “Captain Kerr, call your base” and I thought “oh lord, I’m gone to Vietnam.”  This is Sargent So and So, “Would you like base housing?” and I said, “You beat I would, please.” So we lived on the base at Orlando Air Force base for two years.”\n\nSo by this time, how many children did you have?\n\n“We had one with one on the way.  Our first son was born in August ’62.  Maryann had taught school for two years.  She taught one here at Joe. T. Robinson in the fourth grade and one year at Cloverdale.  We had it set up with her principal that he would be born in August and she’d go back to work in October.”\n\nFor the record and I always forget this; give us the name of your children and when they were born please.                            \n\n“Kenneth Lee Kerr who was born August 22, 1962 and we went out in September and told the principal that she would not be back.  I drew a check from every hospital in Little Rock for the next three years, but we were able to let her raise our family, which she did a good job.  Our \n\n\nsecond child was born in Orlando in December of ’65.  He is William Lamar Kerr after her dad, Bill Law, and my dad, Leonard Lamar.  Then our daughter was born in Mountain Home; Kara Lynn Kerr-Stockwell.  She was born in 1968.  We had to quite moving because every time we moved, we had a child.”\n\nDid any of them go into medicine?\n\n“Our second son, William Lamar, graduated medical school in ’93, I think it was, and then he went to Houston and did a pediatric residence.  He was going to be an oncologist and spent a year at Oxford between his second and third year of med school.  He thought he wanted to be in research, but he fell in love with a little pediatrician who was also an oncology resident.  She went ahead and stayed in oncology and he got an MBA and has been in the business part of medicine for the last 20 years.”\n\nWhere do they live?\n\n“They live in Tampa, Florida.”\n\nHis wife is a pediatrician?\n\n“She’s a Pediatric Oncologist.”       \n\nWhat is her name?\n\n“Jodi Zema-Kerr.  He worked for Blue Cross in Philadelphia, Jacksonville, and then in Tampa.  He is in the process of starting a company, which is looking at lab work the way they are radiology, you know how they determine whether you should do that test or not.  But, he has done very well.  Our oldest son is in bank payment systems.  He wound up at Florida, also in Tampa.  Then our daughter worked for Alltell for 20 years and now works for Windstream, as her husband does.”\n\nDo you have grandchildren?\n\n“I have six grandchildren.  Our oldest boy has one boy who is 17.  The second boy has three children, 17, 14, and 12.  Our daughter has a 12 year old and a 10 year old here in town.”\n\nI think that your wife said that that was one of the reasons why you guys ended up here.\n\n“That was why we moved here.”\n\nI was wondering why you left Mountain Home to come here to Little Rock.\n\n“Grandchildren.”  \n\n\n“In that case, we got it backwards; you’re supposed to move from here to Mountain Home.” \n\nWell, you have a beautiful place; I can see why you live here. \n\nLet’s go back to medical school just one more time.  Debt, did you end up with a lot of debt after medical school?\n\n“You know, I borrowed all that they would let me borrow in student loans, but that was only about $2,500 a year, I think.  So, I think we wound up with around $10,000 or $12,000 worth of student loans, which doesn’t sound like much today but was a pretty good bit back then.  The interest on those loans didn’t start until you were out of training and out of the Air Force.  Then, you had 10 years to pay it back; so, really it was quite a very good deal.”\n\nDo you remember the last payment? \n\n“I remember making it; but, it was probably 10 years after I had started to practice.”\n\n  There is a big difference between Mountain Home, Arkansas and Dermott, Arkansas.\n\n“Yes.”\n\nHow did you end up, I mean they are two worlds apart; how did you end up or what was the process of you going to Mountain Home and ending up there?\n\n“A classmate of mine, Jack Wilson, and I decided we would try to practice together and he, I think, was from DeQueen and I from Dermott, the southern part of the state, and we both thought we wanted to go north.  We looked at Springdale, Russellville, and Harrison and found two doctors over at Mountain Home, Max Chaney and Bill Snow, who wanted partners and we decided to go in with them.”\n\nThat would have been what year?\n\n“Jack went there in 1966 and I went in August of ’67; I was the sixth doctor in town.”\n\nDid you go planning to do general practice or surgery?\n\n“General Practice with an emphasis on surgery.  Having had those three years, the two in the Air Force and the one there, I did a lot of surgery.”\n\nWhat kind of procedures did you do through your career?\n\n“I did thyroids, a lot of breast surgeries, a lot of hysterectomies, pins and hips, did some knee menisci, hand surgery; one of fellows I worked with in Orlando had worked with a hand surgeon, \n\n\nhe was an orthopeditis; so we did a fair amount of hand surgery.  One of the cases that set me up in Mountain Home was a fellow who had moved back to Mountain Home from California and had a Dupatron’s contrapture of his hand and he had been told in California, “You will have to go to Kansas City to get that fixed” and I fixed it for him.  He liked to talk and thank goodness, it went well; it really helped set me off for doing surgery.  I did a lot of surgery.  I went there in ’67 and I was in a group of 4 that we built up to around 8.  Then, it kind of dwindled down and did not do well.  Good doctors, but being in a partnership with guys is like being married and I probably was not mature enough to handle those type relationships at that time.  In December of ’73, I went out by myself and worked 4 ½ years by myself.”\n\nHow much older that you were the two guys who were already there when you got there?     \n\n“They were about five years older than I am.”\n\nSo not that much older; it was not dramatic.\n\n“Bill Snow was a classmate of Asa Crow up at Perigould and had practiced with him in Mississippi for a couple of years and then came back to Mountain Home.  Max Chaney is a native of Calico Rock and has been there a while; both good guys.  Jack Wilson was a good guy.  Good practitioners who practiced good medicine; they cared about people.  It was an excellent situation.”\n\nDid you ever eat at the Cedar Grill?\n\n“The Cedar Grill was excellent.”\n\nI knew you probably had.  That’s where we’d do canoe trips all day and go eat supper at the Cedar Grill.\n\n“Cedar Grill was a good place.  When we moved to Mountain Home, it was about 3,200 people.  The county was about 12,000.  The hospital was 39 beds.  There was six, well actually another doctor came that summer to another clinic in town; so, there were seven of us.  When I left there in October ’04, there was a 220 bed hospital and 100 doctors.”\n\n100 doctors?\n\n“100 doctors in Mountain Home doing open heart surgery and all the specialties, except neurosurgery.  It was a wonderful practice environment for me to be in that growing situation.  Mountain Home is a good community and a great place to raise a family.  We raised our children there in that school and I noticed today in the paper, they are graduating 278 kids tonight out of Mountain Home High School.  Most people don’t understand that; it’s a retirement community, but it’s a growing community.”\n\nWould you say it’s a regional center?\n\n\n“Three hours to Little Rock, two hours to Springdale, Missouri, two and half hours to Jonesboro, and two and a half hours to Fayetteville.  We had to grow a medical community to take care of people.  It is now about 12,500, the county is about 50,000, and the draw area is probably 100,000 or more.”\n\nIt’s bigger than Harrison now, right?\n\n“It is.  When I first went there, Harrison is the place for people to go, but it surpassed that.   We had a attitude among the doctors in Mountain Home.  I remember a lady coming in to see me who needed to see an ear, nose, and throat doctor and I said, “You’ve got to go to Little Rock or somewhere.” “Well, why don’t you have one here?” she was from Chicago, as a lot of people retired there, and I thought, “Well, lady you’re lucky to have a doctor here” but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “You’re right, we need that here.”  Several of us went together and pulled some money and began recruiting doctors.  We were lucky to get an anesthesiologist, an orthopedist, Dr. David Sword, who had presepted with us.  We were all active in the preseptor program.  When we got an anesthesiologist, other surgical specialties would come there.  When I first went there, we had nurse anesthetists and they did a good job; but most of them did not want to be operating and have to worry about the head of the table.  It was good when we got an anesthesiologist, then the orthopedist, the general surgeon, urologist, ophthalmologist would come to town.”\n\nWas Ben Salzman still there when you were?\n\n“Ben Salzman was there still in practice.  He and John Gosner and Dr. Arc Beard were the other clinic in town at that time.”           \n\n When would you say that Mountain Home surpasses Harrison as far as the medical community?\n\n“Probably in the mid ‘70s; we began to get some of the specialists in.”\n\nWhen you referred patients out from Mountain Home, which direction did you send them? \n\n“Most of them went to Springfield.  It was only a two hour drive to Springfield and so, we had to learn the doctors in Springfield to refer there.”\n\nWhen you first went to Mountain Home, did you have an ICU?\n\n“We did not.”\n\nDo you remember when that first came to be?\n\n“Yes, because we went around and went to Springfield, and other places, and looked up what ICUs were doing and it was probably in the mid ‘70s, at that point.  One thing I remember about \n\n\nthose first years was when Medicare and all came in, which I had been advised not to go into medicine because Medicare was coming, “Don’t you go to med school” you know and all that.  They began to want you to do managed care, or not managed care but helping people to get out of the hospital quicker, and we were trying to do that; we had a committee to do that amongst our few doctors.  But Blue Cross found out we were doing a pretty good job of that and George Mitchell and Sharon Allen got us to go and talk to other hospitals.  I remember flying to Fort Smith and talking to a group of doctors there on how we were handling that situation.  You mentioned Ben Salzman; Ben was very upset about us telling when to get people out of the hospitals; until one day he had a person that he could not get out of the hospital and he could blame it on that committee.  So, Ben was very active in Mountain Home.”\n\nSo when you started practice, you went into an already established practice;   there were three guys there before you went in.  Initially you weren’t required to know a whole lot about business in medicine.\n\n“That’s correct.”    \n\nAt what point did you begin to get that education?  Was it after you started your practice? \n\n“When I yes; that’s probably one of the things I wish I had known more about. We did some business with a group of us as we tried to grow and then when the group kind of didn’t make it, we had bought some land by the hospital and was going to build out there.  We just didn’t quite get it done.  Then I went in by myself in December ’73 and I did build out by the hospital.  I had a business manager that helped me with that.  We learned by the hard way to managed medicine and do it.  I remember that when I first went to Mountain Home, we charged $4.00 for an office visit and the people would come out of there, flip their chart on things, and say “send me a bill” and walk out.  I was one of the ones who said, “Guys, we have to stop that.  They need to start stopping and paying their bill.”  So, we did that as we went.  When the office visit got to $15.00, I tried to not raise them anymore and I got caught there in the mid ‘70s with too low an office fee and Medicare then wouldn’t let you grow your rate except maybe 2/10s or 2% a year.  It was a struggle then for a while.”\n\nWhat about your medical records; what sort of medical records did you keep when you first went into practice and how did that change over the years?\n\n “When I first went into practice, we had the cards that we wrote on that went into a folder; it was just pretty basic..sore throat, penicillin…that type of thing.  As we began to do more, we kept better charts and developed a system where we’d break things down in the lab, x-ray, notes, and so forth, and do that.  I had gone on the school board in 1977 and they had talked about something called a computer and hardware and software, which I knew nothing about; I had bought me a little Commadore 64 computer to try to learn what they were doing.  I became kind of fascinated by them and so, we moved into computerized records a little later on.”\n\n\nWhat year was that?\n\n“It was in the ‘80s, probably mid ‘80s, when we started getting computerized.  By the time I left, we had a pretty sophisticated computerized program at the clinic.”\n\nDo you remember which system you were using by the way?\n\n“I do not.”\n\nDo you remember treating heart attacks when you first went into practice?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nHow did you treat them?\n\n“We kept them in a hospital for about six weeks, watched them, and did the best we could with them; we didn’t have much to offer, you know.  We felt like they had to be watched pretty closely at that point.”\n\nIn your days of general surgery, in the days when you did a lot of general surgery, other than changing anesthesia was there some dramatic changes in the way you did things or equipment that you had available to do the surgery that you were doing or the staffing?\n\n“We had a good OR crew when I first got there.  They were very willing to learn.  I remember that I was going to pin hips and we spent several weeks getting the equipment together to getting it ready, and I had pinned hips.  I had learned how to do knee surgery and we had to get a numatic cuff and learn how to do that in the operating room.  It was all good; but as the years went by, we got more and more sophisticated equipment and x-ray.  When I first went into practice, you could do an IVP, you could do an upper and lower GI, chest x-rays, extremity work and that was about it.  The evolvement of what all the radiology people can do with their ultrasounds, MRIs, Cat scans has just been phenomenal as it progressed.”\n\nDo you remember the first radiologist coming to town?    \n\n“Yes I was trying to remember who it was; I believe it was Joe Tullos.   Joe was one of a group of doctors that we got in from Texas.  He helped bring down a surgeon or two; that was kind of the way we grew.”\n\nAs you got in more specialties in surgery, did you continue to do surgery?\n\n“I began to do less as we got more specialists.  When I first got up there, the closest orthopedist was in Little Rock or Springfield.  Later Don Val and Charlie Ledbetter went to Harrison and then David Sword came to Mountain Home.  The urologist was Bob Brandon over at Fayetteville and he did some work in Harrison and Fayetteville; we didn’t have anybody else.  Our ambulance \n\n\nservice was the McClure Funeral Home hurse; we didn’t have an ambulance service or a way to get people from Mountain Home to Little Rock.  One of the big cases I remember doing in the later ‘60s early ‘70s was a young man who fell off of a boat and got caught in a prop out on the lake and they brought him in.  I had everybody in town helping me, but we worked on him for about 12 hours.  We had to put pins in his legs, sew some arteries back together, we had the radiologist even scrubbing in, helping for a while.  I’d get on the phone and call Little Rock in the middle of that to ask, “How do I go from here?  What do I do?” and they’d say, “Well, why didn’t you move him?” I said, “Well, we didn’t have a good way to get him to Little Rock.”                   \n\nWould it have been the hurse?\n\n“Probably would’ve been.  One other big thing was; a couple of years later, that young man from up in Illinois, he walked back in that hospital and it was very gratifying.”\n\nHow long did it take for you to get comfortable practicing medicine?  You had your residency program, medical school, internship, and then a couple of years in the Air Force where you kind of semi-supervised, then out on your own; how long did it take you to get comfortable with the name doctor or comfortable doing the kinds of things you were doing?\n\n“You know I’m probably crazy, but I got pretty comfortable pretty quick.  I loved it.  I liked what I was doing.  I had good people around me, which I felt comfortable with that.  I had not had a lot of OB training, but Bill Snow was an excellent OB general practitioner.  He taught me a lot about that; we did forceps.  You know, when I first went into practice, we probably did 3% ceasarians.  When I left, we were probably doing 15-20% and I can assure you that it is better to do 15-20%, because some of those at 3% were tough.  One case that I had that I was very proud of was in the late ‘60s, I delivered a Jehovah’s witness baby that was RH negative.  At that time, we were doing exchange transfusions for babies that had, I’ve forgotten, 3.5 in their cord blood or whatever and so, they did not want blood and I respected their belief.  I called Little Rock and they said, “Well, if they won’t do blood, then you might as well forget about it because that baby is not going to make it.” I called Springfield, Missouri and they said, “Forget it, if they won’t take blood, you can’t do it.”  These people said, “There is a doctor in Houston, Texas who is helping Jehovah’s witnesses, would you call him?” I called him and he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, somebody told us and we’ve had a little luck with it; put the babies under a flouresent light situation and also give them some charcoal by mouth.”  Glen’s dad, Jack Kemp, was our hospital pharmacist and I ordered charcoal for this baby and he called and said, “Have you gone totally nuts?” I got the maintance people at the hospital to build me a bank of flouresent lights; that lady is still alive today and it was very gratifying.  I became the Jehovah’s witness doctor in that area.”           \n\nA lot of scary moments.\n\n“They are.”\n\n\nDid you go fishing on the White?\n\n“That’s the funniest thing Maryann likes to tell about me; we went up there because it’s good fishing and all and I didn’t get to fish a whole lot.”\n\nDid you get to play golf?\n\n“A little bit.”\n\n What did you do besides practice medicine?\n\n“That’s all he did.”  \n\nWell, that’s good; that’s good.\n\n“I worked lots of hours, but we had a boat on the lake, a pontoon boat.  We had a lawyer friend, Frank Huckaby, and his family whose kids were the same age as ours and we went to the lake together.  I love to quail hunt and I had bird dogs.  Before we had pagers, I had them mount me a telephone in my truck and I could flip a switch and when the phone rang, it blew a horn; so, I’d bird hunt around that truck.  Then, we came down and duck hunted in Stuttgart.  Church was a very big part of our life.  We joined the Baptist Church the first week we were in Mountain Home.  I was a Deacon in the church.”\n\nWho was the pastor then?\n\n“Elmore.”\n\nYeah, yeah; I know him from going to church there.\n\n“He was our preacher then.  Frank Huckaby and I and another guy named Russell Moore, who died a couple of weeks ago, became known as the big three in the Baptist church; we helped keep it going for years.  My partner, Paul Wilbur, who came in after with me after I had been by myself for 4-5 years was an architect in Rogers before he went to medical school at age 35.  It turned out that he was chairman of the committee to build a new Methodist Church in Mountain Home and I was chairman of the committee to build a new Baptist Church in Mountain Home; so, we had quite a bit going out of that office.  But, church was a big part of our life, the lake was a big part, and bird hunting, I liked to do.”\n\nObviously, you were involved in the community more than just church; you mentioned the school board.          \n\n“I was on the school board for eight years and was the president for about five years. I would’ve stayed longer, but I got voted off.  I learned something about politics that way; Bill Clinton had his teacher testing, if you remember that.  Our teachers wanted us as a school board to OK them boycotting that teacher testing.  My point was that we had taken a vow to up hold the laws of \n\n\nthe state of Arkansas and we should not OK them to not do what the law allowed.  I sat there on that school board that night and knew when I voted not to back them on that; even though I had been a big backer of teachers for eight years.  I knew that they were going to get me and they did.  I thought you know, “If I were a real politician who depended on politics, I would’ve probably bent my principal that night and done what was expedient”, but it wasn’t.  It was an interesting part of politics.”         \n\nSo you’ve active practiced in Mountain Home for how long?\n\n“Forty years; thirty nine, I guess.”\n\nTalk about how some of the things changed.  You’ve already talked about how the community got bigger; about your own personal practice of medicine; obviously I think you said that you began to slow down surgically at one point. \n\n“I still did a lot of surgery, but as surgeons came in; orthopedics, I quite doing hips and so forth.  I delivered a lot of babies.  Paul Wilbur, my architect partner, liked to deliver babies; he and I delivered a lot of babies.  I did a lot of office practice.  I began to do a lot of counseling.  We went to a meeting back in ’82, or so, up in Colorado and it was on counseling.  I got into that and thank goodness I learned a lot myself about relationships; so that it helped us with our life better.  But, I also began to do counseling in my office a lot.”\n\nOther than getting voted off the school board, any other major crises related to either medicine or your social life or anything like that that changed the way you lived in Mountain Home?\n\n“We had some crises; Dr. Simon Abraham came to Mountain Home with Ben Salzmann.  He was a cardiovascular surgeon from India.  After Dr. Sword got there, we had found out some things about Dr. Abraham. We had a pretty big situation where we had lawyers from Little Rock and everything; we had to excuse him from our medical staff.  That was tough because everybody thought that it was us against the other clinic, but it wasn’t; that was a big crisis.”\n\nDo you remember when Bob Cogman came?\n\n“Bob Cogman came; he was an oncologist.  We had another oncologist, Bruce White up there.  Getting the specialists in really helped the practice of medicine in Mountain Home.”\n\nWhat is the most gratifying parts, and I realize that you do still practice some, of your years in practice?\n\n“You know, I enjoyed getting to know my patients and their families.  I took care of three and four generations of a lot of families and found out that they liked it too.  They were pleased that Dr. Kerr took care of granny and so forth.”\n\n\nDid you always go to the hospital or did you give that up?\n\n“I always did; just as I left they were starting to get hospitalists.  I hated to give that up.  One reason I probably quite practicing was that I was 65 and things were changing.   I couldn’t do as much as I had done and I didn’t want to do it any less than that.  I had built up a clinic that had six doctors in it and two nurse practitioners and was able to leave knowing that people would be taken care of.  There were probably two reasons we moved to Little Rock; one was grandchildren and the other was that I thought “If I retire here, I will never be able to not answer that telephone” and  I found out that was true.  I retired in October ’04 and went to work for Blue Cross three days a week for about 16 months as a medical director.  Then, the hospital had an administrator who was a good numbers man, but a very poor people person.  He was in trouble and they were in trouble; in February ’06, they asked me to come back and be CEO of the hospital while they found a new one.  So, I went up and ran the hospital for 18 months.” \n\nDid you still live here?\n\n“Pretty much, yeah.  We still had a house up there for a while and I went back and forth.  I found out that I was right about people, because every day in the hospital somebody would come by wanting me to….. you know, they’d looked to me for 40 years; they wanted to keep asking.” \n\nDo you work now?\n\n“I work for the North Little Rock Veteran’s Hospital doing compensation and pension exams two to three days a week.”\n\nDo you enjoy that?\n\n“I do; I enjoy it very much.  No overhead, I get to go to work 6:30 in the morning and work until noon or early afternoon.  I get to sit down and have a patient across the desk from me again; after you’ve done that for 40-50 years, you kind of get to liking it.”\n\nHad you contemplated what you would to do when you retired?  Had you thought about that before you retired?  Obviously some, but….?\n\n“When I retired, did I think about that?”\n\nYeah, when you turned 65 did you think “I’m going to hang this part up and I’m going to go on to something else?\n\n “I thought about it and when we moved down here, I looked at going into practice part time with Charles Rogers; I went and talked to him.  He was tied up with St. Vincent and then I finally got a contract from them, it was about 30 pages thick and wanted me to obligate to three years…. at that point in my life, I did not want to obligate; so, I called Sharon Allen over at Blue \n\n\nCross and the cost of our helping them years previously, she and Jim Adamson were very gracious to let me come work there.  I thought that I didn’t want to just completely quit, I wanted to do something for a while.  It turned out to be very nice to have had three jobs now since I retired.”\n\nHas your health been good?\n\n“My health has been excellent.  I’m blessed.”\n\n Are you active?\n\n“I’m active.  I play golf as much as I can, usually two or three days a week. My wife is very healthy and active.”\n\nOne thing we skipped over, just because I forgot earlier; how did your family when obviously you were a surgeon and on-call; those two things keep you up at night and you’re away and miss things; how did your family, your wife and your children, take to this life of being the family of a busy physician?\n\n“I think that it was rougher on them and I realized.  Thanks to Maryann, who did a very good job, and was a very active person in our church.  She was a Sunday school teacher and played the piano for 110 voice youth choir that made trips about three years in a row to Canada in the world fair and all.  She did a good job raising our children.  There was a movie that came out called “The Surgeon” where the lady said, “Kids, say hello to your dad” and they went and picked up the phone; she accused me of that same thing.  But, I think that that’s the thing on counseling; when our oldest boy was about 15, it helped me a lot and I think helped us a lot.  As busy as we were in our practice, one of the best things that happened was after working four or five years by myself, I got a partner and then we got ER doctors in Mountain Home.  Dr. Pat Black had been in with Chaney and Snow and he decided that he wanted to do ER work; that really saved my life.  There was a lot of tourist call in Mountain Home and when you were on tourist call, you had your practice plus all night doing that.  To have that relief was a very, very, positive thing and I think that it helped us a lot.” \n\n Let me ask you a question and you can answer briefly.  When you went to medical school, or was getting out of medical school and training; what did you think your life would be like in medicine?  You’ve told us a lot of that, but what do you think the future of medicine holds?\n\n“I thought my life would be about like it was; that I would be a person who worked a lot and did a lot and it was.  I thought that I would be a community leader as I had seen that happen in the doctors.  As I was getting ready to leave college and go to medical school, the doctors there said, “Oh, you are in trouble because Medicare is coming and it’s not going to be good”; it turned out to be very good and worked out alright.  I tell the kids today, “It’s not going to be the same as when I came along, but number one, you’re still going to be one of the better \n\n\neducated people in your community, you’re going to be a leader in your community, you’re practice in medicine can be as good as you make it, and I think that it will still be good for you.  I think that you need to watch that computer and try to remember that there is a patient there and not get tied up with that computer.”  I was fortunate when I went back to Mountain Home to run the hospital because they named a scholarship after me.  They give a couple thousand dollars a year to students in med school from our five county area around Mountain Home.  So, they have a dinner each August to give those kids their checks and I get to make a little talk to them each year because of my name being on it; that’s kind of what I try to emphasize that (1) it’s still a good thing that you’re a doctor and (2)  remember that patient and get hands on.  One reason chiropractors are thought a lot of is because they put hands on patients and I think sometimes you better remember that as a physician.”\n\nIn reference to how your family dealt with being the family of a busy rural doctor, Maryann had an interesting take on that, please tell us.\n\n“Well of course, I did, you know, expect him to work all the time; I guess in 1960 when we married that’s what doctors did.  I do remember one night lining the kids up to introduce them to their dad, because they never got to see him.  He was there occasionally; they knew who he was.”\n\nI know the answer to this question, but I do want to get it on tape.  Would you do it or would you have done it again? \n\n“Yes, I would do it again.”\n\nDid you encourage your children to go into medicine?       \n\n“I encouraged them to do what they wanted to do, but I certainly didn’t discourage them from practicing medicine.  I would do it again and I would probably hope that I could do some things better; but who knows, I might do some things wrong.”\n\nDid you ever grandfather in on family practice boards or did you do surgery boards? \n\n“Yes; in 1977, it was about the last time they let you grandfather in and I went in and stayed board certified until I quit practicing.”\n\nIs there anything else that we haven’t asked you about that you would like to have included in this interview?  Anything that might make Mountain Home or Dermott unique, or unusual, something in a story and an antidote about where you were raised, spent your life, or even here in Little Rock.  Anything that you think should go into record.\n\n“I think Dermott and Mountain Home were unique towns.  Dermott in the ‘50s was just a super place to live and grow up; it has become not so super anymore with the agricultural community \n\n\ngoing away.  You asked me how many people worked on dad’s farm; now one person does what those 30 did before.  Mountain Home has been a great place to live and raise a family.  It is a good north Arkansas town.  We were blessed to have both of them.  Maryann did not want to go to Mountain Home when we went there.  We had lived in Little Rock and Orland, Florida and when we went up to look at Mountain Home, they were redoing the sewer system and it was looking pretty rough.  It turned out that it was a super place to raise a family and I think we both enjoyed it.”\n\nI have one last question and this is for both of you; I want you to pretend that we are not here and either one of you can comment.  You’re talking to your great, great, grandchildren,  young physicians, researchers, people who are looking into your life around Mountain Home who may be doing this in 2050.  What do you want to tell them about yourself or your life?  What do you want to tell them what you think their life will be?\n\n“I think my life was something that I enjoyed living. I was fortunate to have a good family and good wife.  I enjoyed a good practice.  I liked people and I think they liked me.  I hope you’ll be the same.”\n\n“I think we have a good relationship and that made a big difference.”\n\n“We feel very blessed.”                         \n\nThat’s a great way to end; that’s a great ending.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/160194/file/291681#t=0.0,5558.01079"}]}]}]}