{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/qr4nk3895s/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. John Alexander Sr. \u0026 Dr. John Alexander Jr. "]},"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":["2016-08-25 (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":["Rural Medicine","Arkansas","Family Medicine","Family Physician"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["John Alexander Sr., MD (personal name)","John Alexander Jr., MD (personal name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/479/small/Drs.AlexanderDVD.mp4_1759336907.jpg?1759336909","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Drs._Alexander_DVD_.mp4"]},"duration":8499.9915,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/479/small/Drs.AlexanderDVD.mp4_1759336907.jpg?1759336909","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/293/479/original/Drs._Alexander_DVD_.mp4?1759336870","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":8499.9915,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479/transcript/84896","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Alexanders interview transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479/transcript/84896/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. John Alexander Sr.  \n\nGood afternoon; it is August 25, 2016 and my name is Sam Taggart.  I am here in the home of Dr. John Alexander Sr. and his wife, Mary.  Also in this interview is his son, Dr. John Alexander Jr.; both of whom practice or have practiced in the city of Magnolia for a long, long time.  I want to make it very clear that this is your interview.  If you want to go off in one direction or another feel free to do it; you’re not going to offend us at all.  \n\nLet’s start where we really should start and that is: Where, when, and what were the circumstances of your birth. \n\n“I was born in Magnolia, Arkansas on March 19, 1928.  At the time I was born, I had a sister who was two years older than me and daddy had lost his job, like a lot of people in 1928; so, we were living in my mothers’ grandmother’s house who was sick.  My mother was taking care of her.”\n\nAnd you lived here in Magnolia?\n\n“Yeah we lived two blocks off the square.  My daddy ran a man’s clothing store for 51 years up on the square; it was a real good business and everything.  The overall man got me started when I was about 3-4 years old.  He came twice a year to sell overalls and he always brought me a pair of lizard skin overalls.  I didn’t have a pair of khaki pants until I was in the 9th grade.”\n\nI’m sure you weren’t offended by the lizard skin overalls; that’s a new one on me, I haven’t heard that.\n\n“No; no I wasn’t.”\n\n“Lizard striped.”\n\nLizard striped; I’m sorry.  And Mary, where were you born and raised?\n\n“I was born in North Little Rock, Arkansas in April 1929.”\n\nAnd you went to school where?\n\n“I went to school in North Little Rock schools.  Then, I went to St. Vincent to nurse’s school.” \n\nAnd when did you become a nurse anesthetist?  We’re going to get around to talking about this in a minute.”\n\n“That’s alright; I went to school in 1947 to nurses training after I graduated from high school and was there three years.  Then, I went and \n\n\ntook nurse anesthetist’s school the year after; not the same year I graduated, but a year after I graduated.”\n\nWhere?\n\n“At St. Vincent’s; Dr. Prickett was the anesthesiologist.” \n\nWhat was your maiden name?\n\n“Goss.”\n\nSo talk a little bit about how your family arrived in Magnolia and Columbia County.  \n\n“Well, my wife lived in North Little Rock, but my family; daddy was raised out in the country about 9 miles out.  He had four sisters and they were part of the same Alexander’s family that came in 1828 or 1829 from a little town in South Carolina by five wagons.  Three wagons stopped in Mount Holly, which is 25 miles east of here, and then the Fosters and Alexanders came here and set up next to each other.  Each one of them had 1600 acres on the federal grant.” \n\nWas it just woods when they came here?\n\n“Yes and nobody else was out there.  There was a saw mill in Camden, Arkansas that they said was way before it’s time, but it went all the time.  The Alexander house that you are going to see; all their wood came from the saw mill in Camden.”\n\nNow there are a lot of families, Scotch Iris families, who came this way and they dropped the Mc from the Alexander, because I happen to know some McAlexanders.  Was that true in your family or was it always Alexander?\n\n“It was Alexander; the man that set it up was Sam who was raised in England.  His church somehow got in trouble with the queen and they all skipped and went to Scotland because they were going to be put in jail.  He didn’t like Scotland, so he went to Ireland; former Ireland what did they call it; Indentured servant?  They’d been there a few years and this guy said, “I’m going to the United States.”  So, they all got on the ship and went to South Carolina.  He was farming with this man again and he told him, “I’d like to be loose and move, so that man turned him loose.  So, he came here and brought his wife and I think three children.  By the time, he built the Alexander house, he had four children.”\n\nAnd at some point, he obviously moved from the country into town.\n\n“I don’t think he did.”\n\nHe didn’t; he just built a house?\n\n\n“He built a big ole house and when you see it, you’ll be amazed like everyone else is.  It’s 6 ft off the ground.  You walk up underneath it and you look and you’re near these 22-24 inch tree that’s flat; they flattened that side and about every 2ft or less.”\n\n“Naw, they thinned out through the years; wear and tear.”\n\n“But it’s….”\n\nWas it in the flood plain or was it elevated to flood plain normally?\n\n“It was on a hill.”\n\n“There’s a creek right below it.”\n\n Something that might flood?\n\n“Yes.”\n\n“The reason they put it where they did; about 100 yards west started a string of springs and they went or about 100-200 yards and then they all ran into a pond.  So, you had your drinking water, laundry water, animal’s water, and all that kinds of stuff.” \n\n“I’ve seen Chadowbite Springs here and another springs located close to here referenced, do you know if that was…..Chadowbites just an iron spring?\n\n“I don’t know of anyone that had a particular name.” \n\nDid you know there were over 250 named spring areas in the State of Arkansas?  That was something that I learned.\n\n“Of course, we’ve got Magnesia Springs.”\n\nThat’s what it was, Magnesia Springs.\n\n“It was a camp and now a localized state park.”\n\n“That’s where he and I went to the local Boy Scout camp.”\n\nAnd that’s the people that bought the school out a Macedonia right?\n\n“Longino, Goud, and Lile.”\n\nThat’s what that stands for? \n\n‘Three families; the Longino family, the Goud family, and the Lile family got together and done that that.”\n\nI want to talk about the Longino family because of Dr. Longiono’s.\n\n\n“Luther was here and had a cousin who was doing most of the surgery in Magnolia.  Two car salesman; they would say, “So and so had an appendicitis and we need to get a ride to Texarkana.”  So, they would get the car, have a driver, and the next fellow sat up front and helped him because he was going to have at least one flat.  So, my daddy used to catch about once a week a trip to Texarkana and somewhere coming or a going, he’d have to change at least one tire.”\n\nHe was the service man or the driver?\n\n“Yeah and that was Luther Longio’s first cousin who was doing all the surgery.  So, Luther left and went to University o Alabama, he took a residency, and then moved to Boston and took a pediatric surgery thing.  In the big organization up there, he became the big pediatric surgeon and then finally moved back home.”\n\nWas the older Dr. Longio still practicing when you were born? \n\n“Just Luther.”\n\nBecause there was an older guy.\n\n“Yeah, he’d gone to Texarkana.” \n\nSo talk a little bit about the memories of your childhood; growing up in South Arkansas, growing up in Magnolia, and what it was like.\n\n“Well, it was pretty easy because we didn’t have a car and it was 1/2 mile up to the store.  So, if you didn’t have too much to do and your folks didn’t fuss, you’d ride your bicycle with them when they went up to work, stay a few minutes, and then come back home.  We just, it was the best town in the world to me because we could just do anything and everything.  We lived in an area on East Main Street and there were 12 houses with boys and girls growing up in them.  So, we were always….”  \n\nSo that was you extended family?\n\n“Yeah; we had a good time.  We had a next door neighbor who was a real good athlete and up the street about six houses was another boy about my age and our biggest trouble was we never did whip Billy Morgan.  We’d go over to the house and knock on the door and she’d say, “What do y’all want?”  We’d say, “We want Billy to come outside.”  She said, “What for?” and we’d say, “Well that’s ok; we’re going to whop him today.”  She’d say, “Billy, they want you outside.  Don’t go hurt them.”  So, he’d come outside and beat the fool out of us.”\n\nWas he older?\n\n\n“He was two years.”\n\nSo he could whip you up.\n\n“We ended up living 12 years next to each other.  Then when  we came out here to this house in 1960, the house next door, he was running the furniture store and he came in 1961 and built him a house right next to mine again.”\n\nDid you whip him at that age?\n\n“No.”  \n\n“He never did.”\n\nWhat do you remember about elementary school and starting school?  Talk a little bit about going to school and memories of going to school.   I want to talk a little bit also about the depression because you obviously grew up during the depression.\n\n“Well, I’m still logging about it.  We have pictures of the small group of us; it was 20 people from the 1st grade.  Somebody will look and say, “That’s Maryann Warner.”  And Tootsie used say, “I must have been sick.”  I said, “No, this was the morning group and you were in the afternoon group.”  She said, “No, we went all day.”  I said, “No, we didn’t, we went half a day.”  We’re still arguing about it and I’m 88 years old.  I still see one them; Billy Morgan married Maryann Warner, but Tootsie was Tom Greers’ daughter.  We’ve argued with them over the years.”\n\nDid y’all have enough cotton down here to have split term and then go home in the fall?\n\n“We had three gens here in town.”\n\nSo did y’all have split terms in the fall to get out and pick cotton?\n\n“No.”\n\nYou didn’t.     \n\n“What was so funny; the blacks here had the same school we had here, but they claimed that the teachers wasn’t as good.  So if the blacks could afford it, they’d take their kids up to Forrest City and those schools up there where they split it.  Then they’d have educated teachers that were educated better than our black teachers.”\n\nThey had a black institute just north of Brinkley.  I can’t think of the name of it, but it was supported primarily by churches.\n\nDid you enjoy school?  Did you like school?\n\n\n“Well, it was just part of it; I liked school, but I was a runt.  I was the smallest one in the 1st grade all the way up to about the 8th or 9th grade; I was still the smallest one.  You catch a little flack when you’re that way, but I could out run all of them pretty good.  School itself; we had some of the teachers who were the same teachers as my mother and her brother and sister.  They had like 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and all; it was just part of it.  We didn’t think that much about it.”\n\nDo you remember any particular teachers who stand out in your mind; people who had an impact on you in terms of making a difference in your life?\n\n“I did in high school.  I had some teachers who I thought of pretty good.” \n\nTalk about that.\n\n“Ms. Puckett who was a math teacher; there was some of us who said, “Why don’t we have trigonometry?”  And she said, “Well, we just don’t have enough.”  We said, “Ok.”  So, she went up and talked to the superintendant and had 12 of us on a piece of paper and said, “These are going to go up to homeroom after lunch and I’ll teach it on my lunch.”  So, she gave us a semester of trigonometry to go with our geometry and algebra because she said we’d need it.”\n\nAnd this was in the late ‘30s?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nSo what do you remember about the depression?       \n\n“Well, we were poor because I sat on the steps and watched my daddy and about 20 other men in the middle of the street digging a ditch for the sewage, you know. They would dig for maybe a block in front of our house to get over to the next main street and it was just here.”\n\nDid y’all have any trouble making it through?\n\n“Momma and daddy both knew what they were doing.  My mother’s parents had died and so, she was raised off in a foster home, but they did a good job.  The church was the 2nd building up and the preacher had some twin boys and he came and got me and my sister 9:00 every Sunday morning.  We’d be up there till noon until he got through with us.”\n\nWhat were your father’s full name and your mother’s full name?\n\n“William O. Faulkner and I don’t know what the “O” was and of course, her name was Louise Mae. She was a Jamison here and she had two brothers and a sister.  It was just hard times and you know, you just made it alright.”\n\nAt what point did you start to think, “I’m not going to work in a clothing store or be a farmer.  I want to do something else”; whether you knew it was going to be a doctor or not?          \n\n  \n\n“Well when I got to about the 7-8 grades, one of the doctors would pick me up on Sunday and take me with him when he went to make calls.  I sat in his car with a telephone over here; so, I’d sit in his car and answer the telephone and take messages from him.  I told my mom, “I’m going to medical school because I liked to watch Dr. Wilson and Dr. Campton ride around the square with the windows down waving at people.”\n\nWere there a lot of cars here?\n\n“Seemed like there was.”\n\nWhat kind of phone did he have in his front seat?\n\n“Something that belonged to Southwestern Bell.”\n\nShort wave radio phone?\n\n“He had a 20 something ft antenna on the back.  They would call his house and his wife knew where he was.  He was from Dillage, which was 10-12 miles east, and she would know that we were going to go out that road till there wasn’t anymore and then he was going to go up over to the farm to see how things were going and  then we would come back.  He only made his house calls going that way because he knew he was going the wrong way that way.  He was busy, his name was John Harp Wilson and everybody in the world knew him.”     \n\n At what point did you start thinking, “I’m going to go to college?\n\n“From the time I was in the 3rd or 4th grade.”\n\nWas it expected in your family of was it just something that you got in your mind?\n\n“My momma said I was; she’d already said I was.  My sister was very smart; she was valedictorian in high school and upper 2% in college and all.  She went to Oklahoma A\u0026M.”\n\nWas your momma headstrong?\n\n“No; she was the most obliging person there ever was, but my daddy thought he should eat peas 7 days a week.  So, every morning she got him off at 6:30 and she’d shell a couple of pounds of peas to put on to cook till she got dressed and ready to go to work at 8:30.  She’d turn them out and then walk up to work.  They both walked down and they loved them; she’d turn the peas on to finish cooking and make her cornbread, then we would eat lunch.  One of the things that used to tickle me and  people didn’t think anything about it; you didn’t have a refrigerator, you could have a coolerator and have 50lbs of ice in it; but my mother and daddy went to a grocery store as soon as the store closed at 6:00.  She’d buy a slice of round steak, cut it up, fry that up, and make gravy; she’d had made the biscuits.  But, you went to the grocery store everyday because it was the only thing….”\n\n\nDo you remember electricity coming?\n\n“Oh, I remember we had electricity.  The funniest thing every happened, my mother got mad; the kitchen was a little room at the end of the house on the left and the 2nd room here was like a dining room.  She asked this, his name was Bill Raffer who was an electrician, and told him she was buying a coolerator and wanted to put it in the kitchen.  So, he was looking and he’d been there before as he’d put her in a window fan on this wall.  So, he’d put her in another thing and went up in there, got it, brought everything down, and when momma got home that night her new coolerator was in the dining room.  So, she had just walked, and walked, and walked, and told him she didn’t want it there.  He said that he knew the electricity was better right there.”   \n\nSo were you involved in sports in school?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nYou had said that you were a runt.\n\n“I was a runt.  I played high school football and I wanted to have a double number.  I wanted to be 13 because I knew I was going to be throwing passes.  He said, “No, you only have room for one number” because I was so little I could only have but one number, you know.  In baseball, I could even out with them because I’m left handed and threw a good curve.  I played baseball on into Arkansas when I was up there.  Sports fans here had to have been good sports fans because when we were in the 9th, 10th, 11th grade, and all that; we didn’t do anything.  We had so many boys that had been in the Army and Navy; we had 6 boys on the GI Bill playing high school football in 1946.”\n\nWhen did you graduate from high school?\n\n“I didn’t go my 12th grade.  I left after the 11th grade and the man my daddy worked for was in the Army and he told me to go ahead and go to school early; that it’d be good for me to.”\n\nSo what year was that that you went off to college?\n\n“1945, I went to college.”          \n\nSo how did you decide where to go to college?  You had already mentioned several people going to ……\n\n“There wasn’t but one in the world.”\n\nAlright.\n\n“Well, that’s what we thought; we thought that much of it.”\n\nSo you went to Fayetteville.\n\n\n“No, I went out here two years.”\n\nSo you went out here for two years and you enjoyed that?\n\n“It was only a two year school though.”\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nAnd did you play baseball out here?\n\n“They didn’t have it. I had my own baseball team and everything.  You looked up and see an ole boy who has a car; you’d say, “We’re going to play some baseball down at Emerson to play them’ I’ll let you go play if you’ll take 3 or 4 of us.”  So, we’d get the ball gloves loaded up.”\n\nWhat position did you play?\n\n“I pitched; if I wasn’t pitching, I played center field.”\n\nCould you pitch a curve ball?\n\n“Yes sir; I had a good one.”\n\n“A left handed one.”\n\nI mean, could you hit a curve ball?\n\n“I did pretty good; I batted _____ off usually, because I was going to bunt anyway.  I was pretty fast.  I really enjoyed playing ball.  We played; the last year I played was in the 11th grade and we played Stephens up the road about 16 miles. We played them twice a week and Emerson twice a week.  We didn’t play El Dorado but once a week, because we always had trouble with El Dorado.  They had a big ball club with big boys.”\n\nHow did you get a coupon for gas to do that much traveling?\n\n“We had a man that let us go with his 10th grade son in a Chevrolet pickup and we never did ask him where he got his gas.  Bobby Butcher took 9 of us to our different ball clubs and the coach would sit up front with him.  Mr. Tip Counts liked to go so he would go.  9 of us would sit in this 1938 or 1939 Chevrolet truck.”\n\nDuring WWII, there was a rationing for coupons for gasoline; so that’s why I asked that question.\n\n“You’d be surprised how my daddy knew everybody and everybody liked my daddy.  He was “Mr. Sam.”  He’d get a black man who said he had 8 kids and daddy would say, “Now you take some of those shoes that look pretty good and bring them in a sack up there and I’ll give you \n\n\nshoe coupons”, because you had to have a coupon to get the shoes.  So daddy would give this black fellow a set of red wing shoes.”\n\nTell us about going to Arkansas A\u0026M at that time.\n\n“No, that was in Montello.”\n\n“Magnolia A\u0026M.”\n\nI’m sorry; tell us about going to Magnolia A\u0026M.\n\n“Well my first semester there, there were 28 of us I think who stayed in the dormitory; that was all the boys there were out there and there was 300 and something girls.”\n\nThat’s interesting.\n\n“When the semester came, they had 500 something GIs in WWII and they put them 3 to the room instead of 2 to the room with ole double bunks you know.  I had some teachers out here who were just as good as any I saw at Fayetteville.”\n\nSo you finished the 11th grade in 1945.\n\n“Yeah then I went out here in ‘45”\n\nStayed there until 1947?\n\n“Yes sir.”\n\nWhat did you major?    \n\n“Pre-Med; I knew I wanted to be a doctor.”\n\nWho paid for it?\n\n“Well, this one out here; we all laugh about this because we all could remember it.  Tuition was $60.00 a semester and room and board was $25.00.  So, my sister and I had to go out there because we didn’t have a car.  We had to go stay in the dormitory because we couldn’t get back and forth without having something to take care of.”      \n\nDid you have any teachers, as you mentioned you had some teachers that were as good as any you’ve had before; talk a little bit about some of those that you really liked.\n\n“Mr. Sage McClain taught general chemistry and everybody that ever had it under him learned how to balance an equation because he started you off saying, Remember you’re a boy, so you’re a plus; these pretty girls here are a negative.  That’s where chemistry is going to come \n\n\n\nfrom; a boy and a girl, each one.”   Then, I had a guy that taught, I guess I had 10 hours of organic _______ and physics under him.”\n\nOut there?\n\n“Out there.”\n\nWow, that’s interesting.  Two years?\n\n“Yeah, it was a two year deal.”\n\nThat’s pretty fair.  \n\n“His name was Ray; I think it was Ray.”\n\nDid you do well?\n\n“Yes sir, I did pretty good.” \n\nDid you apply yourself or was it just you were smart? \n\n“No, you had to apply yourself.  I worked for Mr. Theise, who owned the book store and the snack bar; he was the librarian at the college for 40-50 years.  He paid me a quarter an hour and the GI Bill they just started, so nobody paid for anything.  If I needed a rim of paper, I’d stand around and see an ole boy who was pretty good buddy of mine and I’d ask, “Are you going to buy anything today?”  He’d say, “I don’t know” and I’d say, “I wish you’d get a rim of paper.” He said, “Ok, I’ll lay it on your bed.” And I’d say, “Thank you.”  Later on I’d go to the dormitory and he’d done laid those 12 things of notebook paper on the bed; the GI Bill paid for them.”\n\nYeah, ok; that’s pretty smart.\n\n“I’m sure they got away with a lot of stuff out here that you wouldn’t have in Fayetteville or somewhere like that.”\n\nLest go back and talk a little bit about WWII and throw some of your stuff in there too; memories of WWII, memories of our family being involved in WWII, things that worried or scared you.      \n\n“We had two companies of National Guards at the college out here; Company B and Company D.   The man my daddy worked for had graduated from Ouachita in 1920.  In 1934, they called him to active duty and another man got up the two companies and started drilling every fourth weekend.  They drilled all day Saturday and all day Sunday.  So when the war started, our two companies of the National Guard got called to active duty in 1940 and Pearl Harbor wasn’t until ’41.  It has already been a year since they’d stated off at Camp Robinson and then they went to Alaska and stayed in Alaska through 1943.  We had guys getting shot at in Alaska in ’42-43 \n\n\nbecause the Japs had 25,000 troops up there.  They didn’t like the way the set up of Alaska; everybody said nobody liked it.  About once a month 10 would leave and go to officer candidate school, come back through here, and then go off and do that in England or wherever.”\n\nSo you did your two years out here, was there a questions of where you’d go to school after that?\n\n“No, because Arkansas is unusual; we still only have one good football team and that’s the way it was back even then.”\n\nNow did baseball have anything to do with you going up there?\n\n“Well, no because I went up there two years and nearly froze to death; that was the coldest place I’d ever saw.  I went to a Veteran’s thing and I went in there and a fellow asked “What you want?”  I was 5’6 and weighed 112, you know, out here and I’d grown a little bit by the time I got up there and I said, “Well, I need something so I can get warmer.”  He said, “I know what I’d buy if I was going to buy it.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “The Navy P Jacket; that’s the warmest thing they got here.”  I said, “Well.”  So, he found a size 40, which was way big for me, but he left me have that and a pair of the navy gloves for $5.00.  So, he kept me warm in the winter.”                    \n\nSo you went off to Fayetteville in about 1947?\n\n“Uh huh.”\n\nAnd you stayed up there for two years?\n\n“Two years; I went to med school from there.”\n\nWhere did you live when you were in Fayetteville?\n\n“I lived in a housing thing one time and then fooling around and messing around getting to know a few people, I got transferred into Razorback Hall.”\n\n“Before that, you were in a Quonset hut.”\n\nBecause of the baseball?\n\n“Well yeah; Fayetteville was east, middle, west.  West was football, the middle is basketball and track with some baseball, and then the east side was just a lot of good students; Lee Parker was there.” \n\nWe interviewed Lee Parker; he is a wonderful guy, the same kind of interview as you.\n\n\n\n“He, I, and another ole boy got through supper every night; we ate at, Razorback had a dining hall added on to them, and we’d get through a little bit before 6:00 and we’d go in and piddle.  Lee Parker would say, “Are y’all ready?”  I’d say, “Just a minute.”  We’d walk over to the library and then go upstairs.  We’d find one part of it that wasn’t going to be too busy and you could do more studying up there for two more hours than four hours if you stayed in your dormitory.” \n\nDid you apply yourself in college?\n\n“I did on some courses, some I didn’t.”\n\nWhat courses did you like and what courses didn’t you like?\n\n“I did not kike French, but I shouldn’t have taken French, you know; it was just one of those things.  I knew who was teaching Spanish out here and I had already had her for English; Ms. Elle Tucker, a nice lady but I didn’t want to mess with her for French and they had a new French teacher.  So, I took a year of French and then I didn’t take any more out here.  I had to take my second year after I got up to Fayetteville.”  \n\nYou already mentioned some teachers here, but were there any teachers either at the school here or up at Fayetteville that had a big impact on you?\n\n“There was Ms. Holcombe who was a professor in anatomy.  There was a man named Huffman; he was a little fellow from somewhere in the mid-west but he was always just dressed just prefect.  He was the best teacher; he could get it in there.”\n\nJust out of curiosity; did Lee Parker wear bow ties back then?\n\n“Lee; he used to have two bow ties and he took turns about wearing them.  Does he still were them?”\n\nYes, he still does.  I saw him about a week and a half ago and he had on a bow tie.\n\n“Well, I got a card from him and he said, “Do you know this girl?”  It was Johnnie’s daughter with her picture was in the Fayetteville paper; so, he cut that out and had to send it to me.”\n\nSo, when you were going through the process of preparing to go to medical school, what did you do?  Did you have to take a test to get into medical school or just apply?\n\n“We took a first test; I don’t know what they called it.”\n\n“The MCAT?”\n\n“I don’t know; I’m not sure what they called it.  I know that we were at Fayetteville and there were 5 of us from down here.  We went to Ouachita one Saturday; we had to drive down in one of their car.  We took that test at Ouachita and then didn’t get into school.  In fact, Jeff Banks \n\n\nwrote me a note and said, “I’m not even going to look at your picture until all the veterans get in; we’ll get you people later.”  So the next year, I went up to see him and he said, “I told you that I wasn’t going to pay any attention to you.  I wasn’t even going to read yours.”  I said, “Well, what about my $10.00?”  He said, “Well, that ain’t got nothing to do with it.”  I didn’t like Jeff Banks; I didn’t like him at all.  He was twofaced.” \n\nSo he didn’t even look at your application for the first few years?\n\n“He said he didn’t, but I got in the second time.”\n\nAfter you went and confronted him?\n\n“Yeah.”         \n\nDo you know Ted Lancaster from Walnut Ridge?\n\n“I knew a Lancaster, but the one I knew practiced medicine in Russellville.”\n\nThis guy is from Walnut Ridge, but he tells a similar story about Horace Marvin just a few years after; a very similar story, very similar.”\n\nSo at this point in time, where there any crisis points, either in your childhood or college years, that turned you in one direction or could have easily turned you to go in another direction one way or the other?  Family problems or money problems?\n\n“Oh we had those, but really we were just aware of all that kind of stuff.  My sister went to Oklahoma A\u0026M with a free ride, you know, for two years.”\n\n“You went to Oklahoma too for a while.”  \n\n“I went 12 weeks to Oklahoma A\u0026M.”\n\nBecause?\n\n“Well, it was summer school and I was going to see about their baseball team.  They had a veterinary college there and in Stillwater.  So, I’m down for bacteriology and I told my buddy, who didn’t take bacteriology; he was another pre-med from Princeton, Arkansas, I told him and he said. “Well, I don’t think you’re supposed to be over there.”  I said, “Well, I don’t know,” and he said, “Well, you need to talk to somebody over there.”  One day the lab man sat down at out scope and was trying to adjust something and I said, “Can I ask you something?” and he said, “Sure.”  I said, “I’ve had two years of college and I’m 19 years old; but it looks like a lot of these guys in here are in their 20s.”  He said, “Well that’s right, but their back to those in the veterinary college.  We had room enough that every seat was taken; lab and everything; that’s why y’all are in it, but you’re taking the same course that they take at veterinarian medicine when they are in their freshman year.”\n\n\nWas it a good course?\n\n“Oh my, it was fantastic.  The only “A” I made n medical school was bacteriology.”\n\nBecause you had already had it.  Was it a lot different; the class that you got in veterinarian bacteriology different than the one you got in medical bacteriology? \n\n“It was better because there was more parasentology in it; but both of them were just tremendous courses you know.”\n\nDo you have fond memories of college?  \n\n“Yeah, I liked it.  It was better than working, you know.  I worked in the oil field when I wasn’t going to college.”\n\nDid you?  Talk about that a little bit; rough necking and necking, that kind of thing.\n\n“Johnnie, one summer….when was that, what year?”\n\n“In between years.”\n\n“Well, a friend of mine had a company with an oil company rig, drilling rigs and all that. I said, “Can you hire my boy?” He said, “Well, can he work?’ I said, “Yeah, he can work.” So, he spent the summer working his rear end off.”\n\nDid you ever get hurt in the oil field; either one of you?\n\n“Oh no; I saw a lot of people get hurt.”   \n\nI practiced in Smackover for over a year and there were still a lot of active oil work going on there when I was there; we saw a lot of injuries, lots and lots of injuries.  So you didn’t get injured in the oil fields?\n\n“Well I stayed out all night pretty good, but it sure was different and you could make a lot of money you know that helped out on everything else.”\n\nTalk about going to medical school; talk about when did you start medical school.\n\n“I started in ’49.  There was; I can’t ever remember, we lived on Barber Street just two blocks behind, remember I guess it was the President’s or....anyway there was a two story great big building behind the hospital at the old med school, I guess where the residents slept when they weren’t working.”\n\nAre you talking about Shuffield Hall?\n\n“No, the med school was down; in fact, the street that he’s talking about is off 630.”\n\n\nOh, down McArthur; I’m sorry.      \n\n“See they replaced Barber Street and the next street for about 20 blocks; that was interstate.”\n\n“I-30.”\n\nSo did you have anything about that first two years of medical school; I always ask about the first two years, what was that like?\n\n“Well, I always enjoyed med school.  I really enjoyed med school.”\n\nDid you feel prepared?\n\n“I was prepared most of the time; every once in a while I wouldn’t be.”\n\nDid you have any teachers during that time frame that you really liked or have any experiences or stories to tell?\n\n“The worst thing I ever had was Dr. Brown, an OBGYN professor; he liked 3-4 people around him all the time when he walked through the halls.  Going down there, they’ go by and through everything, you know.  I went in and I sat down; we had a Dr. Sutherland who had just come for a year from Bennett, Iowa and he’d came down to get an extra year of surgery.  I’d talked to Dr. Sutherland some and I was living at St. Vincent’s.  One of the professors of physiology had brought his wife over and they opened her up and took her ankle out and got an IV going like they wanted to.  It was going to be an RH thing and they pulled 100 out and put 100 of good blood in.  They changed this lady by taking 100 out and put 100 in and all.  When I walked in there, Dr. Sutherland said, “John, what are you doing?”  I saw, “Well, I’ve been warming the blood.  I brought the blood because they told me to bring it on.”  I had 125cc of blood and I had been in a water bath for 30 minutes.  So, he and I stood there and talked a minute and then they got my bottle back and I left.  The next day, I went in to find out about my junior paper.  “Here, I want you to write a paper.”  He said, “Do you want me to sign this or do you want to do it?”  He said, “I don’t know about you, you’re asleep every afternoon at 4:00 o’clock.”  I said, “Well sir, I’m sorry; but I do because sometimes I don’t have an excuse but sometimes I’ve been up all night in the lab.”  He said, “Well, you should quit working.”  I said, “Yes sir.”  Sutherland was the finest fellow in the world and said, “Didn’t you notice he brought the blood in that they were going to give to the baby?”  He said, “No.”  Of course Dr. Brown was a politician and he was only talking to people that would help him, you know; he was one of those. So, Sutherland decided that he and I would be big, big buddies and the rest of our junior and senior year, he was always going to help me and he did.”  \n\nYou were one of the blood boys at St. Vincent’s?\n\n“Every other night.”\n\n\nBut that’s what they were called wasn’t it?\n\n“No, it wasn’t.”\n\n“We were lab, x-ray, and blood bank.  We didn’t know, we worked a lot; that was the biggest thing.”\n\nDid you enjoy it?\n\n“Yes sir.”        \n\nYou were doing something.\n\nSo what about your cadaver and gross anatomy during your freshman year?\n\n“I had a terrible cadaver; one side of the face had been plastered down and so that was my side of the face between me and my partner.  So, we had to go over here to try to get our anatomy straight on that side and then ole Dr. Banks acted like I was the one who had done it.  He’d say, “Why do you have one like this?”  I said, “You had my name on it” it’ all I could say.”\n\n What about the second two years of med school; did you enjoy that?  Was that different?\n\n“Well, I had _________, so that was nice.  Then that was the year that we must have, what was it, six courses at a time or something and then meet late in the afternoon or something.”\n\n“Specialty courses or sub-specialty courses.” \n\n“Yeah.”\n\nSo what about your second two years?\n\n“The second two years, we were married and she was on call every third night.”\n\nHow did you guys meet; just start with that.\n\n“At the blood bank at St. incents.”\n\n“She came in the blood bank to get some blood as she was working in pediatrics. And I said, “I better take that up there to make sure that everything is fine; you know.”  So, I had to talk to her a little bit on the way up.”\n\nWere you flirting?\n\n“I didn’t know enough to flirt then; but, we got married the 1st of September.”\n\n“The middle of October; last of October.”\n\n\n“I was in obstetrics for 4 weeks; that was my first thing and as soon as we got through wit h obstetrics we got married.  But, she was on call every third night see; so, we were over there with always an appendix, ovarian cyst, or something else bad in orthopedics.”          \n\nSo you had this young girl from South Arkansas; that’s a lot different from Little Rock or North Little Rock.\n\n“It was much different.”\n\n“She kept saying, “Why did you never learn to dance,” you know.\n\nSo, what did you do with your time most of this time?   You obviously went to nursing school and then became a nurse anesthetist.  What was your work circumstance at that point when you first started practicing?\n\n“I worked and gave anesthetics.”\n\nHe had mentioned earlier off tape that you rotated with some of the anesthesiologists as well.\n\n“I didn’t rotate; we were just assigned cases.  I worked a St. Vincent’s for a while and then Dr. Hickey, who was the Head of the University and St. Vincent’s also, got me a job at the University because I’d make more money.”\n\n“St. Vincent’s was paying $320 and the med school paid her $400.”\n\n“Yep.”\n\nNow, we’re talking about what time frame here?\n\n“Between 1952…...”\n\n“To 1953.”\n\nThe big Polio epidemic…..\n\n“Had just passed.”\n\n Both of you talk a little bit about the impact of Polio on you and your life.  You were in medical school I believe.\n\n“Yeah, but you cannot believe; we had a building, a two story building, with about 10 bedrooms in it and they emptied the residents out.”\n\n\nThis is the little building north of Espi?\n\n“Not EPI, University.”\n\n“Like on Saturday about 9:00 or","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479#t=0.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479/transcript/84896/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"o’clock, you’d be called up on Saturday morning and you’d walk over to see what was going on because if they were putting people in the lung, you’d stand there in the way to watch them because to make $1.00 an hour, you had to know what you were doing.  So, later on you could say, “I can do that” and they’d hire you to put one in.”\n\nDid you end up doing some of that?\n\n“Oh, we didn’t do much then, because I lived at St. Vincent’s most of the time.  But when we got up to St. Joe’s Missouri for an internship, I don’t know how many cases of polio that we had, but the Polio moved up there.  They had a real good isolation part of that hospital.  It was the Methodist Hospital.  They had a real good isolation; funny thing happened.  We had an OBGYN doctor named Williamson and boy he was dandy.  I had been helping him and I went out and changed clothes and everything when they called me to the ER.  I went down to the ER and there was this 20 year old who ended up being Dr. Williamson’s daughter.  She’d gotten married during the summer and she felt bad.  There was an OBGYN waiting there to look at her and he was just sitting here when I was talking to her.  I said, “I’m going to do a spinal tap on you unless you want your daddy to come do it, but I’m afraid you’re in trouble.”  She said, “What do you mean?”  This OBGYN man sitting there said, “Go ahead and stick her; I’m going to go upstairs and get her daddy.”  So, I got through sticking her and everything and he came down and she had Polio.  He said, “Well, let me get cleaned up; I’m going to take her to Kansas City.”  This OBGYN man said, “All the Polio is up here now and I think it bypassed Kansas City.”  So, it ended up she had a bronchial case and in three weeks, she was completely normal; which I think about half of them were that way.”\n\nDid she go in the iron lung? \n\n“She stayed with us at our hospital.” \n\nDid they end up having to put her in the iron lung?\n\n“No, they did not; in three weeks she was completely normal.  What really got me on the iron lung; I don’t know how the families would do it.  There was a Methodist preacher come across the river, from that little town in Kansas, but anyway about a 16 or 17 year old boy who was one of those raised “You ain’t going to stick no needle in me and blah, blah, blah” then his momma talk  to him for a minute and we went ahead; he had polio.  She said, “I’ll bring his brother in, but his brother is sicker than he is and as soon as you get through with him, I’m going to go get my husband.”  She went across the river and came back and her husband, boy he was sick.  We had him in the lung within 30 minutes; he was really having troubles.  It seemed like \n\n\nthe people up there were sicker; they were the sickest bunch of people with lots more death than we had in Little Rock.”\n\nHow long a time frame did that last; a year, or two, or three?\n\n“Well, it started in 1949.  When we started, I used to spend my Sunday afternoons over there sitting with Polio patients and stuff like that.  We learned how to change the stuff in those lungs and all.  It was just awful to think about it, but they’d pay you $1.00 an hour; to think about that now.  But that was all paid.”\n\n“There were a lot of post polio surgeries; just wards full of kids.” \n\nTell what you did in taking care of the lung and the patient in the lung.\n\n“Well, the biggest thing we had then was that you put them in the tank and you didn’t sit down at first because they were all just struck.  You almost had to shake them to get them to talk to you.  You’d be so busy that you wouldn’t realize sometimes how sick they were.  We had a man from Kansas City that stayed up there; he was with the National Polio thing.  His whole life had been spent with Polio and he’d be saying something and he said, “How’s that man down there with the iron lung and his son sitting there watching him?” I said, “Well, it looks like he’s pretty good.” He’d say, “He’s the sickest man I’ve seen; you really watch him.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t die tonight.”  Well, you know, it hadn’t even struck you that he was; you had him in the iron lung and he was breathing you know.”\n\nDid you have a way to monitor their oxygenation level? We didn’t have pulse ox then.\n\n“No.”\n\nDid you just look at their nail beds or look at the patient?  What did you do?\n\n“There were good nurses, RNs, and they would sit with one in the lung and they were always looking at this here or doing something; they messed with them all the time.”\n\nDid you do blood gasses at that time?\n\n“Oh, we did a CO2; it was horrible to do, because you had to work up and down with your stuff and you did blood and reunitrigens instead of NPANS and different things.  You couldn’t do anything near like a Chem20 that you can now.”\n\nWhen did you graduate medical school?\n\n“1953.”    \n\nWhat went into your decision about where you were going to do an intern at?\n\n\n“Well, I’d already been at St. Vincent’s for two years and it was just really amazing.  Dr. Hollenburg was the big surgeon and I was just getting to the lab right at 5:00 and he said, “Go do Dr. Hollenburg first and bring his up and then we can get started.”  Well, I was trying to find a good place to put Dr. Hollenburg; so, I put him in an empty OB room because there was air condition.  The old St. Vincent’s was not air conditioned.  I walked in there and he said, “Boy John, I’m glad to see you; come here and stick me.”   Bob Jones, you know, worked for him and he said, “Robert Jones has been over there and he’s over here; come stick me.”   I said, “Can I help you Dr. Jones” and he said, “Yeah, you come help him and maybe he won’t criticize everything you do.”  I said, “Well, we’ll hit it and see.”  So, I went back to the first side he did; I don’t know how many IVs we did a day, but I stuck him and we got everything going.  Dr. Cooper came in, he was out of Boston and came to Little Rock to take over the surgery there, and they talked to Dr. Hollenburg; he had a bleeding ulcer, that’s what he had.”    \n\nSo you finished medical school and did your internship at….?\n\n“St. Joe, Missouri.”\n\nWhat prompted you to go there?\n\n“Well like I said, I had already been living in Little Rock for two years and already knew the good doctors and bad doctors;’ you know, they usually are there.  So, I had some friends who went up there to intern and we went up there to see another part of the country.”\n\nWhere is St. Joe?\n\n“65 miles north of Kansas City.”\n\nDid you enjoy your internship?   \n\n“I had a good internship.”\n\nSo this would have been what year?\n\n“53-54.”\n\nWere you under any pressure after your internship or education?  Did you do any further….?\n\n“I didn’t have to worry about anything because I was going to the Air Force.”\n\nThat was the question; you were already obligated to go in the Air Force.\n\n“I already had my papers and already been accepted to flight surgeon school.”\n\nSo how long did you stay in the Air Force?\n\n“Exactly two years.”\n\n \n\nWhere did you spend your time?\n\n“Of all places; Greenville, Mississippi.  I delivered babies in the Air Force and the OBGYN man was from North Carolina and he’d say, “John, I got one down there and she’s going home in the day or two, just go in there and see if you can get her to talk to you.”  I’d go in and there’d be some plantation back from Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia and they may or may not talk to you.” \n\nSo you spent two years in the Air Force.  What were some of the things that determined what you were going to do in terms of what you were going to do with your life; where you were going to practice,  the kid of practice you were going to do, what kind of interest you had, OB, surgery, or those kinds of things.\n\n“Well, we had two OB men in Greenville; one was a John Hopkin’s boy from Puerto Rico and he was short, short, short; he got out a little bit ahead of me.  Then, the next oh boy was from North Carolina and he was a business man.  He said, “Ok, you’re going to take OB call.”  I said, “Ok.”  He said, “If you take OB call and you get a section come up, you can have the section.  But you can’t have more sections coming to you.”  I said, “Ok, that’s just fine with me.”  So, I would get to do a section instead of him doing it.  When I got home, I had never heard a nursing OB department; there were 8 black women, nursing midwives, who were delivering babies in Columbia County.  They got $30.00 to deliver the baby; there were some smart ones, I mean they were smart ones.  I was amazed at the smart ones.  We had two, Dora Bennett and that hard one that she worked with; boy they just did a fine job.  They knew what was going on.”       \n\nAs I have listened to these histories, it seemed like delivering babies and doing a section in those days was just like draining an abscess for most guys; I mean you just did what had to be done and didn’t think that it needed a certified specialists in OB, you just did it.\n\n“We had a real nice young fellow who came and had a three year residency in family practice at Fort Smith.  I didn’t do the first two or three sections with him, a surgeon did. I’m talking about Frank.  “Your daddy is the only one that can decide when Frank can start doing sections.” I said, “Well, we’ll see.”  So, I got stuck and that year, he did 50 sections; that was a lot of sections.”\n\nHow many total OBs did he do?\n\n“Oh, probably less than 100 it seems like.”\n\nThat’s a lot.\n\n“Anyway, he’d go ahead and somewhere during the course of the day or changing clothes, I’d said “Frank, don’t do this” or “Frank, don’t do that.”  Then, he got to where he’d say, “Let me go ahead and close up today and you can drop out if you want to.”  I said, “No, I’m alright.”  I’d sort of got his goat because I had told him that I would watch him scrub on 50 with him before I’d let \n\n\nhim know it, so I told him then, “I’m going to let you go, but I’m not going to scrub with you.  You’ve been a real good surgeon.”  He knew everything.  I said, “You get Dr. McMann to scrub with you, you better get him.”\n\nWhat ended up happening?\n\n“He moved to Fort Smith.  Isn’t he in Fort Smith?”\n\n“He ended up quitting here and moving to Fort Smith.” \n\nWho was that?\n\n“Frank Roberts.” \n\n“I think he went to work there as a hospitalist.”\n\nSo, you came here after the Air Force, was there ever any question that you were coming back to Magnolia?\n\n“No.”     \n\nHow did you think about coming back to Magnolia?\n\n“I live here.”\n\n“I just came; our family is here.”\n\nWhat year did y’all get married?\n\n“1952.” \n\nAnd John Jr. was born when?  \n\n“1953.”\n\n“He had twins; they were born in October.”\n\n“She was a twin.”\n\nReally?\n\nWhat are the girl’s names?\n\n“Susan and Nancy are the twins.”  \n\nWhat are their full names that they go by now?\n\n“Susan Cross and Nancy Whitmore.”\n\n\nIs Susan the nurse?\n\n“No.”\n\n“She’s a Med-tech.”\n\n“She’s the head of the lab.” \n\nSo when you came back and went into practice, did you go in by yourself?\n\n“Yes, I was by myself.”\n\nWas that ever a decision that you thought you might do something different?  \n\n“We had a; funny thing, we had a doctor that was ahead of me that was building a clinic.  I came home one weekend, it was just 160 miles from Greenville, and I talked to him and said, “Are you going to be through with the clinic?”  He said, “It will be November, probably.”  I said, “I thought I was supposed to get your clinic.”  He said, “Well, we just have had hold up and it’s just not working real good.”  I said, “Ok.”  So when I got home up on the square was an upstairs clinic between two stores and a dentist up there, two lawyers, and in the back there had been a family practice doctor.  So, I talked to the landlord and I rented the building back there for $75.00 a month.  We’ve always laughed about it because I went up there and it just wasn’t much going on.”\n\n“There were 100 steps getting up to it.” \n\n“There were 26 steps to get up.”      \n\nIf you could climb the steps you didn’t need to see the doctor.\n\n“So, people would say, “Where is your office?” I’d say, “Upstairs where Dr. Baker was.”  Then they said, “That building is still there?”  So, I used to tell them that the family just sort of took it kind of personnel and we decided that we wouldn’t discuss it to other people.”  It worked pretty good because I read a lot of books.”\n\nHow long did you stay up there?\n\n“Three months or four months.”\n\n“Not very long.”\n\nThat’s when you moved in the building with this other guy?\n\n“No, I went to where his clinic was downtown and he went into this nice clinic, which was across from the hospital down here.  It’s where our surgeons are now, that building.”\n\n \n\nBut, you got his old office at that time and out of the walk up.\n\nJohn Jr., were you born here or in Greenville?\n\n“Little Rock.”\n\nSo you are beginning to grow up through all this; when did you first start having memories of all of this?\n\n“I remember his first office when it was downtown.”\n\nThe walk up?\n\n“No, I just knew that that was where his office was; but his first office that I remember was down next to the barber shop by the Ford place at the McCallister building.  It was a little office downtown.”\n\nSo did your business pick up down there when you weren’t upstairs anymore?\n\n“Oh my goodness, it was just amazing.”\n\nSo this was the late ‘50s?\n\n“1956.”  \n\nWere you doing a lot of house calls?  Were you doing a lot of OB?\n\n“Oh, I loved house calls.  I made house calls until I quit working; I just loved house calls.”\n\nDid you go out in all directions or was there a limit where you went?\n\n“I went anywhere.”\n\nTalk a little bit about some of the interesting things that happened to you on house calls in the first few years.\n\n“Lord, everything in the world happened.  One of the funniest things; I had been delivering babies in that office up town and had gotten up and the practice was getting bigger.  The janitor of the East Side School over there, I can’t remember his name now, I think it was Jamison; but he came in the office and said, “That girl of mine done got pregnant and would you have the baby for me?”  I said, “Yes sir, I sure will.”  He said, “Well, I’ll get with you.”  I didn’t see him anymore and a few months went by and all the sudden one Saturday morning his wife came in the office and brought that girl.  She was obviously started in early labor and I said, “Your husband said that he was going to….”  She said, “I’m fixing to go out and get him and he’ll be in in a few minutes.”   There was two buildings there just four feet apart and you had to come down between the buildings and come in because I had a waiting room in the back of the office for \n\n\nher.  So, he comes in and he was about like me and wore overalls all the time.  He had on a Giberdean rain coat and this was like in August or something like that; he had this boy with him and said, “This boy wants to pay you, but he aint got but $50.00.”  I said, “Well, I’ll take $50.00 and we’ll see about the other later.”  The boy leaned up and said, “Will you take half now and half next week?” Well when he said that, this old man left the rain coat fall out and he had a 12-guage shot gun.  I never seen anybody doing that and he poked him in the leg a time or two with it and said, “I told you not to talk.”  So they paid me and I told my nurse, “Let’s check her.”   So, we checked her and she was in active labor; so, I said, “You close up, I’m going with them.”   I went on down on the hospital and had the baby.  Oh, I thought about that a long time.  I never came anywhere close I don’t think to having anybody help them pay with a shot gun.  I really thought that he was going to shoot the boy; it scared me to death.”        \n\nDid you have any really difficult or crisis like cases on house calls; like the young lady with Polio that you talked about earlier? \n\n “The biggest thing you would have; like I had an uncle in the village named Wesley Rogers, he had 10 brothers and sisters and at that time, I was taking care of about 6-7  of  them; the damndest family of hypertension I ever saw.  You saw stuff like that of maybe four in the family and every one of them always had high blood pressure.  While I was at the house seeing him, he went into fluid failure and I looked at my bag and had Mercuryhygen, which had just come out, I thought, “boy if I give him that Mercuryhygen and I don’t get any help…”  My daddy’s sister was his wife and she was always nervous; everything was always bad.  She said, “I mean he is bad.” He said, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” so I went ahead and gave him the Mercuryhygen and he wanted twice in about an hour’s time and it looked like he was going to make it and about that time he started trying to breath and all and it was coming out his nose and mouth; he was in tremendous failure, you know.  I never did get used to that.  I had two people I could have given a diuretic to and I said, “I’m going to have to get them to the hospital as soon as we can.”  I’d call the ambulance, but they’d usually die before we could get the fluid in them.”\n\nWhat about heart attacks?\n\n“I saw a lot of heart attacks.  I was always amazed at how good a heart attack can do, seems like.  I had one episode three or four years ago and I have had a lot of people who would tell me about their pain and I had that pain.  It just sort of makes you wonder when you get the pain.  But, I think the worst thing I ever saw was sick kids.  May and I went to a funeral home a few years ago when Jack Marshall, he was a tall slender boy.”\n\n“David.”\n\n“David; I spent the night with them one night when they lived over by Eastside.  I went back to the hospital twice and gave him adrenaline three times.  But, then I went ahead and gave him \n\n\nDecadrone twice and then I gave him Aristocort; he finally broke loose and was alright.  This guy who is a real good friend of ours, I went to school with him; I was talking to he and his wife and I looked up and his boy, David was about 6’3; a tall ole boy, and he said, “I’ve never been sick again.”  I said, “What?’ and he said, “That was the last time that asthma every got me.”  I said, “Well, I’m sure glad.”\n\nHow big was he when all the treatment was happening?\n\n“He was in the 10th or 11th grade.” \n\nSo, did you spend most of your practice by yourself?\n\n“Until he came in.”\n\nUntil Johnnie; so y’all practiced together?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nLet’s turn our attention to Johnnie for just a few minutes.  Talk a little bit about; you grew up in late 50-60s in Magnolia, right?\n\n“Yep.”\n\nSo when were you born?\n\n“I was born in 1953; June 23, 1953.”\n\nWhen are your first memories of being around or doing things?\n\n“Well, I have spotted memories here and there, I guess before I was real old at all; but I do remember our first house we lived at not too far on Olive Street.”\n\nDo you remember the address?\n\n“1010, 1011, or 1021?”\n\n“10 something; it was a ministry, it was not always there.”\n\n“I just remember Olive. I don’t remember the number.”\n\nIs your office still there?\n\n“My office is; the hospital owns it now.”\n\nDowntown on the square I mean.\n\n“It’s not a doctor’s office now.”\n\nBut is it still there today?\n\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhat is it now; do you know?\n\n“Is it even occupied?”\n\n“They have a loft.”\n\n“The people that owns the hotel; I think that’s their business office.”\n\n“Oh, the one downtown; next to the barber shop?”\n\n“Next to the barber shop; yeah.”\n\nOn the square?\n\n“No, it’s not; it’s a block office square.”\n\n“The original one was down on the square, upstairs; it’s still there.”\n\nDo you know the address of that one?\n\n“It’s on the south side of the square.  If you drive around the square it will say, “The Loft” and that’s the building.  There’s a drug store, jewelry store, and it’s a big sign that says “Loft.”\n\nSo your office was in the front or in the back?\n\n“Front.”\n\n“Front.”\n\n“His next office was a block over on Jackson next to a building downtown….”\n\n“The McCallister building was a five story and the hotel was five stories.”\n\nWhich was the hotel?\n\n“The hotel was further south.”\n\n“It’s on Jackson.”\n\nWhat was it called?\n\n“I think its Magnolia Apartment.”\n\n“In between then was four foot.  It was built a year later and they left us a four foot space.”\n\nJohnnie, do you have fond memories of growing up in Magnolia as a kid?       \n\n\n\n“Yeah, we talk about that a lot because I had children raised here too.  We were talking the other day that I can’t believe that my parents let me ride my bicycle to school.  I think I moved here when I was in 2nd grade.”\n\n“We moved here in 1960.”\n\n“But, I’d be here and we’d ride a bike or walk to school with my dog.”\n\nHow far was the school from here?\n\n“Two miles.”\n\n“Three or four blocks.”  \n\nIn the snow and it was uphill both ways.\n\n“I think we usually got; somebody would drop us off majority of the time because I remember riding in the station wagon with everybody going to school.  Back then, you didn’t get to ride the bus unless you lived so many miles from town.”\n\n“They pick up kids across the street now.”\n\nSo what did you do as a kid; what were your interests?\n\n“You know, I can remember riding bikes and riding all over town several days around.  Of course, a lot of the town here wasn’t developed as it is now and a block or two down the road here was just woods.”\n\n“This was woods when we built it.”\n\n“So, we played in the woods and we could ride our bikes to the college that had lots of ponds to fish.”\n\nDid you do well in school?   \n\n“I think it did good.”\n\n“He did well.”\n\nDid you like school?\n\n“Uh, I don’t think I disliked school, no.”\n\nDid you have any particular interests; sports, particular academic interests, art, music, or anything like that?  \n\n“Uh, I wasn’t into a lot of art or music.  I think I had a brief try at piano lessons, but she was kind of mean.”\n\n\n“She was.”\n\n“But, I wish I would have stuck with that and learned how to read music better and could play piano, but that was another story.”\n\n“Me too.”\n\n“I did play a lot of sports.  I wasn’t a great exceptional football player or anything.  I know I played baseball; he was of course our coach.”\n\nWhat position did you play?\n\n“You know, I think I pitched when I was in little league and then I…” \n\n“I think he did.”\n\n“He pitched until he was 10; of course, he would do what I’d tell him to do.  I said, “I want to see him hit the ball.”  Of course, he’s throw strikes.”\n\n“He also was the coach of the other team.  So, that got us in trouble.  I mean the other coaches were fussing because...”    \n\n Do I get the impression that we may be dealing with two head strong men?\n\n“That was part of everything that was going wrong.”\n\nDo you remember thinking about the fact that you were growing up as the son of the physician in town?\n\n“Yeah, I mean; yeah.  I did know that; I would hear that from friends and people who kind of like always think that because my dad was a doctor I would know about every illness, problem, or how to do things.”\n\nOne of the questions that we normally ask and this is usually when there is only one doctor in the room; how did you and the rest of the family adapt to daddy being working all the time?\n\n“Well, he was home for supper every night.  I mean he worked a lot but he wasn’t….”\n\n“Of course, I had three sisters and a brother…..”\n\n So when did the brother come along?\n\n“1961.”\n\nWere you working at the time?\n\n\n“No.”  \n\nDid you not work after y’all moved down here?\n\n“Well, I worked at the office some of the time to relive the help down there is all.”\n\nJohnnie, did you work when you were a kid?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nWhat did you do?\n\n“Well, I know I did a lot of yard mowing and then when I got old enough to get a “job”, I worked at a local grocery store for several years; I guess a couple of years in high school and some in college.  In college, I worked at the hospital while I was in college.”     \n\nAt what point in your life did you say, “Ok, I kind of want to do what daddy does”?\n\n“You know, I’m not sure; I think it was probably my second year in college before I kind of headed for sure in that direction.”\n\nWhat kind of other things did you think of going into?\n\n“I think I thought of architectural one time or maybe teaching was high on the list at one time.”  \n\n Did you guys encourage your children to go into medical school?\n\n“No, I don’t think so.  We had a side life that I have always been proud of my boy; we’re all Eagle Scouts.  They were raised in the scouts and all my grand boys are Eagle Scouts. We just thought of that as a big thing. ”\n\n“We’re all still involved in scouts.”\n\nI didn’t ask y’all earlier and I’ll throw it in now because this is; were you particularly a religious family? Does religion play a big role in your family?\n\n“Sure.”\n\n“I think I’d say yeah.”\n\nAnd still does?\n\n“Yes.” \n\nSo at what point did you start thinking about where you were going to go to college?\n\n\n“I guess in high school.  I can remember looking into going to several places. Fayetteville, I think daddy drove me up to Fayetteville a time or two and toured campus.  We went to Hendrix and toured there, being associated with the Methodist Church of course. “\n\nAre y’all Methodist?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nSo you looked at that school pretty hard?\n\n“I think I did.  I remember also mom’s cousin had a connection with Mr. Mills and kind of wanted me to apply to the Air Force Academy.”  \n\nYou mean, Wilber Mills?\n\n“Yes and I think I finally decided that was too far from home.  So, I ended up going to school out here; I just decided that mom’s cooking, laundry service, my own room upstairs, my vehicle, and I could go hunting and fishing was hard to beat.”\n\nWe know that when you started school tuition was $60.00 and room and board was $25.00; what was it when you started Johnnie at the same school?\n\n“You know, I’d say $1200.00”\n\n“I don’t think it was that high; I really don’t.”\n\n“I’m thinking $2600 or $2700 a year was probably.”\n\n“I think its $14,000 out here now and not being in a dormitory; that’s what you call outpatient.” \n\nSo you went to school here in Magnolia; did you enjoy it?\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nTalk about your education; a little bit about some of the people, as I really think this is important, some of the people who either in your high school or in college who had a big impact on you.  It doesn’t just have to be teachers; preachers, businessmen, your father; people who had a big impact on where you went and what you did.\n\n“Well, of course, I think family is one of your best influences. I had of course mom and dad and my grandparents were significant; on both sides. “\n\nDid they live close here?\n\n“My folks were a mile away.”\n\n“Mine were in North Little Rock.”\n\n\n“I remember we went to Little Rock and stayed there an extended time quite a bit.”\n\n“Yes, we did.”\n\n“So, I still have a lot of connections with the Goss family in Little Rock and North Little Rock region.  As far as high school, certainly there were teachers there that, you know, I would have to say were influential.  Some of the coaches meant a lot.”\n\nTalk about a couple of them.\n\n“One was Coach Don Hubbard; he was just a real strong willed fellow certainly, but I always appreciated through the years that him and some of the other coaches when I came back into practice, I became their physician.  I thought that was nice and the respect they showed for that.  Certainly at the college, there were several professors that kind of take you under their wing.  Out at the school, Dr. England, Dr. Johnson, and some of the biology and those in the science areas were always real good and tried to urge you along in the right direction.”\n\nSo you said by your sophomore year you had decided that you wanted to follow in your father’s footsteps, or at least started in that direction.  Did you start the application process into medical school then?\n\n“I guess when I was a senior, I did.”\n\nIn what year?\n\n“1975-1976.”\n\nYou graduated from high school when?         \n\n“1971. I did not get into school my first time I applied; I got turned down.  I wasn’t a 4.0 student by any means; I guess I was average or even a little above average; but there were several hundred trying to get in for 130 spots, or whatever it was.”\n\nJeff Banks wasn’t still there was he?\n\n“No, he wasn’t there, but Horace Marvin was there.  Now Horace, I think Horace helped me.  He was nice and in fact when I went for my interview, I think he was the one that interviewed me that time.”\n\n“I hate to interrupt but, if you remember I sent Marvin a book.”\n\n“That’s right I had a book for him; that’s exactly right.”\n\n“It was on bird dogs.”\n\n“I did.”\n\n\n\n“I’d seen him somewhere and he said, “What are you hunting?”  I said, “Oh, pointers.” He said, “I can’t get a good setter.” I said, “I can find you one.” He said, “No, I wouldn’t buy it.”   So, I had this book on setters and pointers, so I said, “Give this to Dr.  Marvin and tell him I said he can have it.”  So, he was glad to get it.”\n\n“But after my first attempt and didn’t get in, you start thinking of what to do next, as many go through, whether you go for further studies or go into a Masters.  I was kind of in my in between, not certain of what I was going to do.  At the time, there were a couple of other guys from Magnolia, some from Camden, and some friends who knew us; people were going at that time to Guadahara, Mexico. So, I looked into that and subsequently applied and got in down there.  Of course to get in school there, you have to go ahead of time and take Mexican history and Mexican pre-requisitions, just like you would for American college.  So, I did that and ended up doing one year of medical school; the first year of medical school.  A friend of mine from Morrilton, Conway now, we decided after a year that we’d try to reapply; even though when we signed up for Guadahara, you were supposed to go there for four years.  We took the test again and we got in our second year, so we started our second year there.  We were fortunate because there were 7-8 other guys who stayed down there another year or two.”              \n\nTed Hood went to Guadahara.\n\n“I didn’t know him and I knew most everybody from Arkansas   While you were there, you kind of….”\n\n So did you start back as a freshman in Arkansas?\n\n“I started back in my second year as a sophomore.”\n\nSo what did you think about medical school; your first year down there, and then your second year here and then your third and fourth year?\n\n“You know, I get tickled the first year down there and looking at how things are different, but at the same time about how things almost are now.  You know, some of the kids the first two years don’t even go to class.  They’re online or reading.  We had to go to classes, but really the main thing we were doing was studying for our step one or step two tests.  So when I got through that first year, we were taking the National Boards.  I didn’t take the MCAT again; we were taking the National Boards.   Then, we got in and were essentially; I never felt I was behind; the only behind part I had was that I didn’t have quite the same cadaver experience as others.”\n\nWhat was it like in your gross anatomy?\n\n“Well that was very interesting; the first thing was you went to a cemetery and you buy a bag of bones to study your bones or what most people did was get it from an upper level student that was leaving.  So, I had some of my bones from another student, but I didn’t have a lot of direct cadaver experience.  So when I wanted cadaver experiences when I was at the med school, I would slip down to the gross anatomy and say, “ok, yeah; that’s what I thought” or I’d go check.  \n\n\nCertainly as you got in your third or fourth years doing classes, you had more opportunities for cadaver work, so I really didn’t fell I was behind.” \n\nWhat were your clinical years like?\n\n“I thought it was the most wonderful thing there ever was.  I really enjoyed.”\n\nIs it what you expected?\n\n“Well, it was a lot more work than I expected; I think.  There was never enough time, but to me they were a breeze.  They were really good fun.”\n\nWhen you would come home during your junior and senior year after you had a little experience; did y’all ever compare notes?\n\n“I think at times.  I got to go down to the hospital with him and I knew a couple of the other….”\n\n“He’d go with me down there.”\n\n“I can remember with him, the surgeon here, or another older physician in town; Dr. Ruff or all the doctors, I’d go down and do surgery, deliver babies, and all that.” \n\nWe were interviewing J.C. Smith up in Ozarks, Arkansas and his father was a family practice surgeon.  He said that the day he got his application letter, his daddy threw it on his bed and said, “Alright, you came come and scrub for surgery with me now, this is your business now.”\n\n“His son, oh yeah.”\n\nI thought that was kind of cute; that’s a different thing when the parent is not a physician or if there is not anybody else in medicine.\n\n“Well, I had a different impression, I know, going into school than most people did of medicine.  I mean I really felt like all doctors operated on all things, all did babies, all did stuff,  all saw everything, and could do any and all everything.  You know, it came quickly apparent that that was not the way things worked.”\n\nAt what point did you start thinking about getting married and having children?   \n\n“In med school; I got married to Harriett.  She was Harriett Hardy from Little Rock.  I think she was originally from St., Louis but had grown up mostly since she was in grade school in Little Rock.”\n\nAnd you have children?\n\n“We have three.”\n\nWhen did they start coming along and what are their names and ages?\n\n\n“We had our daughter Erin; she was born when I was in a residency program in Pine Bluff in 1981.  The next child was David after I had moved here.  David was quite an experience because I had taken my pregnant wife turkey hunting in Mena and was staying at a friend’s home there; Dr. Dale.   I was just in practice here a few months; it was in ’83 and my wife was pregnant and we were going to one of the local doctors here, but she was due in December and this was early October.  So, we went turkey hunting out in the middle of nowhere.”\n\nDoes she hunt?\n\n“No, but one of my friends from Morrilton, Mike Koon who was one my roommates from school; he and his wife were going to meet us there and she went into premature labor.  So, I made a fleeting trip to Little Rock and he was born there; premature at 32 weeks. Of course, we had every complication known to man, but long story short, he is a CPA doing well and has a family.  We had one more child, Steven.”\n\n“Another Dr. Alexander.”\n\n“He was born in ’86 and he is married with two kids and is a veterinarian now here.”\n\nDon’t you have a daughter who is an OBGYN?\n\n“She is an OBGYN; her last name is Large.”        \n\n“She is in Fayetteville.”\n\n“She just moved to Fayetteville; sure has.”\n\nWell, y’all will be coming up to Fayetteville some.\n\n“We will be; we were up there a couple of weeks ago and sure very shortly we will again.”      \n\nWhere did you do your residency program?\n\n“I went to Pine Bluff; that was kind of a mixed thing.  AHEC programs had been going on for a few years and that felt like what I wanted to do.   Of course, Dr. Lee Parker was trying to get to go with him of course through daddy’s friend.  He thought I was going to Fayetteville and I thought every seriously to go to Fayetteville.  There was another friend of ours in the El Dorado program that had just started, Dr. Jake Ellis.  He was running the program over there, but I decided to go to Pine Bluff.  I felt that Fayetteville was really close; it was between Fayetteville and Pine Bluff.  I like the Fayetteville area and I loved Dr. Parker and the group up there that he was working with at the program at that time.  But, Pine Bluff seemed to have a little more opportunity for surgery, obstetrics, and that type of thing; indeed it did at that time, so I went there.”\n\nDid you run into Kirk Watson while you were there?\n\n\n“The name Watson sounds familiar; I’m not sure.”\n\nHe went to the program and then taught in the program for several years.   \n\n“It might have been before or after me.”\n\n So were there every any questions about what you were going to do?  Obviously you went into the AHEC program; you’re in a family practice program.\n\n“I think I always thought I wanted to come back here.  I thought it was a good place to have a family and raise kids.” \n\nDid you have any qualms about going into practice with somebody else, even if it is your son?\n\n“No, not the way we did it; I had plenty of room and had a good friend that was going to quit, Dr. Ruff.  I said, “If you quit, I get to buy it; the hospital can’t buy it.”  It’s on hospital grounds. He said, “Ok.”  So, he went to working with me and he was getting busy and I was busy.  He says, “We just don’t have enough room here.”  I said, “Go down there and tell John Ruff to go to the house and we’ll buy his clinic.”\n\n“So, I did; I bough Dr. Ruff’s clinic.  It was at that time and still is on hospital grounds.  We had an older hospital; our current hospital is 4-5 years old.  I bought that in 1986 or 1987 and subsequently remodeled it a couple of times.  My wife is a practitioner and so, she and I work together in the office there.”\n\nWhere did she graduate?\n\n“She graduated from the med center; in fact, we had her reunion last weekend.  At that time when she went through the nursing program, it was a five year program.  Then she went back to school, in fact she went to Case Western and did her Masters and got the APN.  She has continued to do all the advanced practice training.”\n\nSo at what point did you start thinking about slowing down?\n\n“It was within a year, I think, of when I said, “We’re going to have to quit using this paper, because the government now requires to put all these up on these disks and these computers.”  I think his comment was, “I’m over 50 and I don’t have to have a computer.”\n\nHe said that?\n\n“Now, I’m over 80 and I don’t have to have a computer.”       \n\n So how old were you when this revelation about practicing medicine with computers happened?\n\n“Well, I had trouble always because that was an irritation to me when you went through that.  I had a lady working in my office that had been six years running a computer in a hospital business office before she came to work for me.  So all I hear every day, 2-3 time a day, “I ought \n\n\nto do down and get a computer and bring it up here.”  I said, “No, we can’t have computers.”  I quit in ‘94.”\n\nDid you completely quit? \n\n“Not completely.”\n\n“First he quit stuff in the office and then he and my wife started the rural health clinic at the hospital and did that for a while.  Then, he worked the ER.”\n\n “I did Saturday and Sunday in the ER for five years.”\n\nHow old were you at that point?\n\n“Oh…”\n\n“62”\n\n“Yeah, I guess.”  \n\nWere you there all day?\n\n“I worked 12 hour shifts.”\n\n“We talk about that now a day’s a lot because one of the biggest problems in all the ERs is the wait.  Everybody complains about waiting in the ER and we still to this day get tickled because dad was working in the ER.   Dr. McMann, a retired surgeon, and a couple of early retired family practice docs, when they would work the ER, they could have 10-15 people seen, signed prescriptions and walked out the door before the nurses even had their paperwork filled out.  Now a day’s 10 people would take 6 hours to be cleared out the door.  It just works different.”\n\nWhy do you think that is?\n\n“I think it was because they knew everybody that walked in the door and they could look at them, spend five seconds, treat them, and send them on. They didn’t have to do lab and x-ray.  If they sewed up; they sewed up and it just worked different.”   \n\nLet’s talk a little bit about that as this is real interesting to me.  From the time you started practicing medicine in the mid ‘50s, there was a kind of blossoming of availability of medicines, technologies that had started back in the‘40s; by the time you had quit, there had just been a dramatic change in medicine and technologies.  What are some of the things that really changed how you practiced medicine?\n\n“Well the biggest thing was the people that you were seeing; it was amazing how many doctors they had been to in the 20 years before they saw me.  I may have been in Magnolia, Little Rock, Texarkana; but they’d done seen everything different.  It’s like what medicine did to Johnny and \n\n\nthem; they gave them this new thing and said, “We’re going to let y’all be the first ones to use it.”  So, he’s using the one now that I signed off on; I filled it all out and mailed back to him.”\n\n“He’s talking about; I had participated in the CMS Medicare, the  PRCRIM, the CPCI Pilot Program for Patient Center Medical Home and Extended Care and Patient Care Initiative Program.  They send questionnaires to patients.”\n\n“Yeah, but I just like medicine.  I like being a doctor in a small town.  Our church was part of our lives here and it went just well.”\n\n Do you remember the very first CT Scan you ever saw, heard about, or thought about?\n\n“The Arkansas Family Practice people; I never did figure out where all of them came from, but when they first started about having a CT Scan and we were going to do this; I said, “Well, what is that one?”  They said, “Well, think of a window screen and the rays coming over there and hitting that so it’s going back a third row down.”  It was so funny when you go to the Arkansas meeting, the first was to be the CT scans and then the other and you’d have to wear…if anybody wanted to talk that stuff, I could talk to them just as good about doing those things and getting those films and be comfortable with them as anything else.”\n\nDo you remember the old radio-nuclear-tied brain scan that you would get that didn’t show anything; just a great big hole.  Do you remember that?\n\n“Yes; talking about x-ray, of course I remember growing up seeing his x-ray machine.  It was a monster; in fact, I think we still have it out in the barn.  I think it took 220 volts of electricity.  The office I bought was built in ’44 and the x-ray machine in that office when I bought it took I think like 3-phase 440 volts of electricity.  I hate to think about how many people got radiated when they turned that thing on.  Then, the x-ray I have now takes a 110; it’s just the technology.”\n\nIs it digital?\n\n“It is digital.”                  \n\nAt what point did you stop developing your own x-rays?\n\n“He didn’t.  I learned to do x-rays dipping his x-rays.  When I put an x-ray in, when I went into practice and that was a big deal putting an x-ray in.  It was a big expense and then I had to get certified by the State, put lead in the walls, and all that, which apparently nobody did.  But, I had dip tanks until about 10 years ago and then went digital.”\n\n“I took x-rays at St. Vincent’s.  I was lab, x-ray, and blood bank.  Joe Norton; that was the prize right there; they were going to run me off one day because I took an x-ray that both bones were fractured and my x-rays were like this….in the same film.  They were bent in the lateral.  The Rhineharts, there were three of them; they said, “Who do you think is going to read that film?  \n\n\nMy God that is the worst cracks, I’ve seen.  Is that bad?”  Dr. Norton was behind me and he pulled on my pants.  So, I shut up; you know.  I decided that I wouldn’t say anything else.  It was so easy because the Rhineharts wanted every film just like it had been taken by a professional.  The water was always the right temperature, which is a bunch of crap; but you know you see all that, this done, this done, this done”\n\nWell come by their conceit honestly; there has been a Rhinehart involved in radiology in Arkansas since 1920.\n\n“You see, Joe Norton went in with them and there were three Rhineharts and Joe Norton.”\n\nLet’s talk a little bit about your office staff.  When you started what kind of office staff did you have?\n\n“I hired a girl who was 18 years old from Emerson two weeks after she graduated from high school.  I ended up with a nurse out of an LPN school and she was smart.  She knew how everything was supposed to be and she was a dandy.  I hired nurses, RN, after that.  But that LPN had all them beat because she could just figure it out.”                 \n\nJohnnie your father started in ‘57 and you started in ’83; we’re talking not quite 30 years, what was your office staff composed of when you started?\n\n“Of course, I had two girls, I guess, working as secretarial type in the office and then an RN.  My wife helped some initially and then we grew from there.”\n\nNow you said she is an APN; when did she start actively working in your practice?\n\n“I guess since I have been in practice she had worked to some degree in the office; in between, of course raising kids, which limits your time.  As the kids got older, she went back and finished her advanced practice certification and she started working more regular initially through the hospital. In the mid to late ‘90s…”\n\n“She and I ran a clinic together.”\n\n“Yeah.”     \n\nDid your wife have to live in Cleveland for a length of time?\n\n“Yes; it was a combination of online and they would give her study plans and projects of a Masters program.  Then, she worked in conjunction with the med center.  Dr. McSweeny; the nurse that is up there now, she worked with her on a research project and then she would go to stay at Cleveland 2-3 weeks several times.”\n\nSo talk about the rural health clinic that was created.\n\n\n\n“Well, it was a Medicare/Medicaid clinic and we had an LPN helping us.  We were seeing the people that occupied the emergency room no telling how many hours and all day, but we could see them and then a lady that was over his wife was the one who I would talk to and she’d say, “I don’t want you to look at every chart.” And I said, ”Well, I’ll look at 10% and then if I know an interesting one or they tell me an interesting one, I’ll look at that one and I may write on that one.”  She’d say, “That’s fine;” that’s as formal as we got.  We saw a lot of people for them.”\n\n“I think the purpose of the clinic, much like any of the urgent care, was trying to take the load off the urging load of the ER.  At that time, rural health clinics were started and it was hospital based.  On the hospital grounds and again trying to divert that population to see regular primary care instead of just going to the ER for primary care.”\n\nDid it join the _______?\n\n”Actually it is, but when the UAMS AHEC moved to Magnolia a couple of years ago, they actually bought the rural health clinic and incorporated that into the UAMS clinic here in town.”\n\nWhere is it in relationship to the hospital? \n\n“Where my clinic was; the hospital owns it and it’s already been in that clinic.  It’s the 3rd OB now in that clinic.”\n\n“The UAMS clinic here in town in on Washington.  There used to be and still is a manufacturing plant outside of, less than half a mile, from the hospital; three or four blocks.  They renovated their office building to make the UAMS clinic; very nice.”\n\nIs this hospital owned by any other entity? \n\n“Its city owned.”\n\nHave there been overtures from other hospitals trying to buy this hospital or the doctor’s practices?\n\n“That’s a good question; I’m currently on the hospital board; so, we are looking at all things to you know sustain and maintain.  Several years ago, the hospital had a very loose association with another hospital in a nearby town in Texarkana; that didn’t work well.   Since that time, we are more or less still independent; city owned and supported by of course revenue generated.  There is a sales tax that helped build a new hospital.”\n\nHow many beds is the hospital?\n\n“It’s listed as 49 and under bed at this time.”\n\nIs there an ICU?\n\n“It has a 6 bed ICU.”\n\n\nIs it adequate for the town?\n\n“It’s more than adequate.  It’s a blessing and just a wonderful facility.” \n\nSo when did you stop doing OB?  \n\n“When I closed my office.  It’s kind of silly but back up a little; I got ready to do all this so I wrote my insurance company.  The insurance company wrote me back and said, “You’ve never had a complaint.  We don’t have anything on you, so you close your office when you want to and we’ll pay anything that comes up.”  Then I talked to them about obstetrics and they said, “You’ve got to pay for the next three years; but whenever you’re ready, you pay us those three years and we’ll get the dates straight and that will be it.”  I had three babies due in July and I delivered those three babies and my insurance went to September or something like that.  So, I said, “Stop it and send me some money back.”  They said, “We’ll stop it, but you can’t get your money back.”  I really wasn’t too surprised.”\n\n“Of course.”\n\n“So, they took care of it.” \n\nWas there any sadness to you to stopping practicing?\n\n“No, I was ready to quit.  I had been working hard for a good while.  I had me a little horse farm; I had been raised around horses and mules.  I was just having the best time, so I was glad to go out there.”\n\nDo you still do that?\n\n“A little bit.  Two of my daughters are taking care of it now.  With the mule last spring, we raised her since she was four and she was just really nice; I still don’t know all the things she did to me, but I ended up face down and the ambulance came and got me.  I knew the 3rd day later, I kept complaining about my pain and Johnnie and this surgery friend told me I had 15 broke ribs.  I said, “Well, ok.”  I did have.”\n\nBut you got over that?\n\n“Amazingly enough on x-ray the other day in my son’s office, the lateral film you have your heart shadow and you have a little triangle with all the stuff; we hadn’t seen that since the first x-ray.  When he saw that he said, “Look.”  I saw it and he said, “All clear” after all those years.  Over here, we saw ribs that were fractured in two pieces and laying between them across maybe another rib, there was an artery with that one and it sent me dribbling blood.  If you can imagine, there were two inches filled up in the left.”\n\nWhat was the most gratifying part of practicing medicine?\n\n\n“Oh, it made things better for my family.”\n\nDid you get compensated well for practicing medicine?\n\n“I thought I just got all my presents and all the things I was supposed to get; I just got all of them.”            \n\n Same question for you Johnnie; what was the most gratifying part for you practicing medicine?\n\n“You know, probably obstetrics and the families; taking care of folks.” \n\nDo you still do obstetrics?\n\n“I quit last year.”\n\nWas there a particular reason you quit?\n\n”I think since I have four grandkids and one on the way; it was just a time thing.  I think I just said, “It’s time.”\n\n“They paid $6000 and raised him what $20,000; how much did they raise your OB insurance?\n\n“More than that.”\n\nWho is your insurance with; _____?\n\n“Yes it is and they’ve been very good. It’s certainly a substantial break when you quit surgery.”   \n\nI lived in Smackover for a year back in the ‘70s, so I am kind of familiar with this country a little bit.  Is there anything unusual about practicing in Magnolia, Arkansas or extreme South Arkansas; things you see that other people wouldn’t see?\n\n“You know, I think we have a lot with the oil and the Bryan Industry, and some of our local industries that are unique probably; especially the oil field, the salt water, all the related drilling and maintenance companies that go with that.”\n\nWhat do you mean salt water; cracking?\n\n“No.”\n\n“Salt water.”\n\n“We have Bromine; they get it out at 7000 foot and it takes a tremendous amount of water to take the Bromine out of it.  Then you got this water that you got to do something with it.  So, they take all their junk and bring a pipeline out to my place, like 6 miles, and you can see it now \n\n\n\nthat it’s busted, but it goes in the ground 7000 feet, 20,000 barrels a day.  Of course, Bromine barrel is like an oil barrel; it is 40 gallons not... I have a Bromine plant on my farm and it broke last year in the top of a pipe.  It came out of that pipe and went 90-95 feet like that and came down over yonder.  It came down over two acres of mature pine trees that are over 80 ft tall. They were all dead within the week.”\n\n“The Bromine industry is, like I say one of the byproducts of oil is salt water; so they extract the Bromine and several other chemicals; there is a lithium plant, and they make everything that you can make Bromine out of.  They make Methalbromine, fire retardants, paint additives, medicines…”\n\nHow does that show up in your office; what kind of injuries?\n\n“Of course, initially toxins from Bromines; chlorines related.” \n\nHow do those patients present?\n\n“Various respiratory or toxic; but what we’ve seen through the years changes in safety and manufacturing.  I’d have to say that it was probably one of the safer plants around for the workers.  Now for the environment, that’s a whole other issue.”\n\nDo you see any chloracne? It’s an intense form of acne that looks like the worse case of acne you’ve ever seen.  It happens to some of the oil field workers.\n\n“You do see those at time, but not like it used to be.  We’d see that and a lot of neurological effects from the methobromines.” \n\nAny heavy metal intoxications from the water?\n\n“I don’t think that’s came through defiantly; we’ve always done a lot of testing.  Of course around here anytime something happens they always blame in on the chemical plant, but probably not.”          \n\n Do you have to become kind of a junior toxicologist?\n\n“Yeah, you become familiar with what I call the MSD sheets to know that; but again they have their own doctors on site to take care of most of it and there are safer than they used to be.”\n\nThey have doctors that work there full time?\n\n“They have a couple of doctors; there is at least one that’s there in practice two to three days a week and sees people.  They employee about 1500-1800 people.”\n\nSo that’s a big part of your economy.\n\n“That’s a major part of the economy.” \n\n\nWhat else makes up a big part of the economy around here?\n\n“Timber.”\n\n“Salt logs; I have 200 acres, I’ll show that to you.” \n\nI want to ask you about your overalls; you talked about this earlier, did you ever wear your overalls to the office?\n\n“No.”\n\nHow did you dress to go to the office?\n\n“Well when I first got here, or the first 20 years, we had Dr. Wilson’s clinic with Dr. Wilson, Sizemore, and Row.  They had a shirt, tie, and sports coat every day.  Dr. Houston, he’d dress and Dr. McMann, he’d dress.  I ended up finding blue khakis and regular khakis with t-shirts.”\n\n“Shirts like he has on now.”\n\nNow one of the things I wanted to ask you about and this may be too much ancient history; I read about two groups of physicians here.  Johnny Prince, do you remember him? \n\n“There is no Johnny Prince.”\n\nThis would have been a long time ago.\n\n“No.”\n\nWhat about the Beasleys?\n\n“There were Beasleys, but they were not in medicine.”\n\nThere were a series of Beasleys who practiced medicine here many, many, many, many; back in the 19th Century.  I just wondered if they were a part of ….\n\nTo both of you; would you do it again?\n\n“Oh yes.”\n\nWould you do anything different?\n\n“Right now, I don’t think I would.  I think when I first started I had questions about either going into surgery, OB, or doing something else; but at this point, I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”       \n\nDo either one of you have any subjects that you would like to add?\n\n\n\n“I will say one thing; when I quit obstetrics, the hospital administrator took the books and he called me and said, “You had 4,000 deliveries” and I said, “Well, thank you.”\n\nThat is something to be really proud of. \n\nI want you both to just pretend we’re not here; you’re talking to your great, great, grandchildren.  What would you have to say to them about yourself and the practice of medicine and what you hope for them? \n\n“Well, I relate all this to television now and I told my wife the other night that I figured out what’s going to happen.  I said. “About the middle of October knuckle head is going to get out and the TV is going to go like this; they’ll send 77 people that belong to our last two presidents and the son that was the Governor of Florida is ready to go.  The Republican Party is coming in and he gets elected President.  To me that’s just part of what we’re living in.”\n\nJohnnie, what about you?\n\n“Well, I‘m going to go a little bit deeper than that subject. I think that when you come into practice, you feel like you know everything and you got so up to date that there are a lot of things that you learn when you start practice.  I like those to know that you continue to learn and stay up to date and fell like we’re doing the very best that we can.   Some of the things that we do now I’m sure in 20 years may look archaic but at the present time, we feel like we’re up  to date and trying to do the best we can in the best direction.  As they say, “Do no harm and try to do some good; go forward in that direction.”   \n\nThank you both.  Thank you very much; that was wonderful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161638/file/293479#t=600.0,8499.9915"}]}]}]}