{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/vx05x26z0n/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Steve Strode and Peggy Strode"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2021-06-01 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas","rural family medicine","family doctors","physicians"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians (corporate name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/196/851/small/Strode_SteveandPeggy%286-1-2021%29.mp4_1689100729.jpg?1689100731","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Strode__Steve_and_Peggy_(6-1-2021).mp4"]},"duration":11345.56757,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/196/851/small/Strode_SteveandPeggy%286-1-2021%29.mp4_1689100729.jpg?1689100731","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/196/851/original/Strode__Steve_and_Peggy_%286-1-2021%29.mp4?1689100708","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":11345.56757,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851/transcript/45035","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Dr. Steve Strode and Peggy Strode [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851/transcript/45035/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dr. Sam Taggart: Good evening, my name is Sam Taggart and I am in the home of Dr. Steve and Peggy Strode in North Little Rock, Arkansas.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Sherwood.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I’m sorry; excuse me, Sherwood.... EXCUSE me.... (Laughing).....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: There are some folks around here who get real touchy about that.\n\nPeggy Strode: Uh huh....... (Laughing)\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It is Tuesday, June 1, 2021 and we are here interviewing in several ways: Steve has been involved in the education of family doctors ever since he got out of his residency, I think; right or close?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah.....yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He is a family doctor himself and this is just to find out about him and his life; how he has lived his life and if it has lived up to his expectations.  My feeling generally is that the best place to start is at the beginning.\n\nWhen and where were you were born?  What were the circumstances of your birth? Talk about that and then talk about your parents some.   \n\n \n\nDr. Steve Strode: I was born in Dallas, Texas on January 4, 1949 in the obstetric part of Baylor University Medical Center there in Dallas.  Baylor’s Medical School used to be in Dallas and then soon after WWII, some real rich oil guy down in Houston said,” I’ll pay for your relocation.” Eventually this is going to tie in because I went to school in the school that grew out of the remnants of those who did not want to move to Houston when Baylor moved.  But, it continues to be called Baylor University Medical Center to this day.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Talk a little bit about your parents; where are they from and what nationality is the name Strode?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh, English apparently and apparently from kind of the southwestern part of England.  There are people in the family that spell it, Stroud...S-T-R-O-U-D and then, we have always been S-T-R-O-D-E; there are more Stroud than there are Strode.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I was going to say that there are a lot of Strouds in Little Rock.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And in the state of Arkansas...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah and there are a few Strodes that, you know, I may well assume that they are a distant relationship here in Arkansas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you know when your family came to the United States?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No, with the exception of my maternal grandmother’s folks, the Tiptons; they came over with an Irish family with the story that they lost one of their children and that infant had to be buried at sea.  It’s a kind of sketchy family history that we can get into later.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What were your mom and dad’s names and about when where they born?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Royal Strode was born in the McKinney, Texas area in 1907 and was one of four siblings.  My mother grew up just almost to the Iowa border in north-central Missouri; in Milan, Missouri...not Mulan, but Milan....which apparently has had 1,700 people forever.  Both of those folks, their dads abandoned the family.  With my father, I think it was when he was 9 and my mother was about the same age; it presented terrible problems for both of them.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What was your mother’s maiden name?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh; Maida Summerville.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You mentioned the name Tipton...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, her mother was a Tipton; Maggie Tipton-Summerville.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did they have other brothers and sisters?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: My mother was an only child and my dad had two brothers and a sister.  According to the sketchy family history, scarlet fever was running rampant and killed his sister when she would’ve been in elementary school and left my dad without hearing in one ear.  Then, he had a brother who died in his 30s, that is really sketchy as to what happened there, and then the only uncle that I knew, who taught architectural engineering at Texas A\u0026M, died in his 50s.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How did they end up in Texas?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Um, the story of the Strodes is that they came either from Kentucky or Tennessee before the Civil War and settled in the area near McKinney, which was not a slave holding area at all; I mean, Texas was still frontier in the antebellum age, but it was small farmers.  I think the Strodes built a mill of some-type, but the Civil War still wreaked havoc on their livelihood by the time the war was over. There were people from the Strode family that were in the Confederate Army and then there were people in the Tipton family who were Union soldiers.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Well, if you’re coming from that area in Missouri and then at Texas where you are right there on that border; that all makes pretty good sense.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah.\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: Now, you haven’t mentioned any medical people in the family.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: None......none; my mother’s father had a law degree....I’m sorry, his brother got a law degree from the University of Texas in Austin.  But at one point in time, you could read medicine and at one point in time, you could read law and LaVerne, my grandfather, managed to pass the bar and did it so well that he set up the Dixie University in downtown Dallas, which was a prep school for people to read the law and take the bar exam.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Huh....\n\nWas he still alive when you.....\n\n Dr. Steve Strode: Uh, he died two years before I was born; my sister who is five years older met him, but I never did.  (Laughing).....The Texas legislature passed a law that said, “No, you have to go through law school” and that shut down that enterprise.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So was there; when you were growing up....I’m getting ahead of myself, but was there a lot of extended family around?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No....no, no, no; I mean, we had contact with the uncle who was the A\u0026M professor and we actually did have contact with LaVerne Summerville’s second wife....the widow and her only son....so, I had a half-uncle. We had contact on Christmas and Thanksgiving with Lavern’s brother who lived in Wichita Falls and didn’t have any kids. Now, I forgot about this medical connection; Wayne....Steven Wayne Strode.  Wayne Summerville; my mother was paid maybe $200, which was a lot more money back in 1949, if she would name a child after her uncle Wayne because they were childless.  But she went, she told me, through great lengths to try to figure out how to try to avoid me having nicknames based on my real name; so, that’s my middle name...Steven Wayne Strode. But, he was an ambulance driver; not a volunteer like Hemingway, but he was in the US Army in France as an ambulance driver in WWII. LaVerne was in the Army and I don’t know if that was after that or what, but he got training....who knows, it might have been right here because Camp _______ was such a big training area; but, he never got overseas.\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What did your mom and dad do; what kind of work?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Dad was an architect, a solo architect, and he had a really hard time.  After his dad left, his mother’s father kind of took them in under his wing; but it was always presented to me that it was kind of begrudgingly.  Dad had managed to take some...he was not like me much at all; he was valedictorian, and a baseball star, and a football star at McKinney High.  He kind of ran away from home to go down to A\u0026M rather than just staying around to be a store clerk or \n\nwhatever.  The family had money, but there wasn’t any interest of his grandfather to support his education ever, but somehow daddy got through A\u0026M and got an architecture degree.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: This had to be in the ‘20s and ‘30s?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: He graduated in ’29.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right before the depression...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Right before the depression, yeah; so, dad was a very dedicated Aggie.  One of the tragedies, I think, is that at least at that time, hazing was pretty horrible.  You knew that you were in for three years of hazing at Texas A\u0026M, but then you got to be a senior and everybody was in the Corps...you got to have a sword, wear your boots, and you got to push everybody else around as a senior. Dad was even elected, he may not have been elected, but he was at least qualified to be in the Ross; I’m sure there was a different name for it back then, but the kind of honors society...”The Sul Ross Volunteers.”  He was a military leader for if not the Republic of Texas, but soon after it was a state...as a confederate and there is a Sul Ross University in Texas still....but that was the honor’s society for the Corps.  So, my dad goes to summer camp between his junior and senior year and in the physical exam given to him there they said, “You have a perforated ear drum and the Army doesn’t want you.”  So, he had the choice of still wearing the uniform, but it would’ve been with the 4-F patch equivalent on it or being one of the rare civilians and he chose to give up the Corps and the uniform.  But I think, he and I were never close and I never had the sense to ask him to write questions that he didn’t want to talk about....but anyway, I think it must have been just a terrible blow to put all that in and be all that dedicated to the Aggies and just then have the rug pulled out from under him.\n\n      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did they hold to it during WWII or did they go on and take him in for service? \n\nDr. Steve Strode: He would’ve been like 34, I think, in 1941.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok and children...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: So, he graduates with an architectural degree, at that time it was 4 years instead of 5, and was looking around for a job and then.....what was it, Sam, in October or September when the stock market crash happened?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Then, it became just virtually impossible to find a job; he was literally digging ditches for a while there in late ‘29. So, I don’t know how long this takes, but FDR gets into place the efforts to give people jobs as well as doing civil projects and they put in a lot of dams in central Austin, around San Antonio, and that area and he was hired to do that; not as a common laborer, but to use his architecture skills. Then before WWII, he was working for the federal government based in Washington, D.C. helping to design and build the labor department offices. So, he was \n\ntraveling some and when WWII came along and they weren’t going to build any labor department offices anymore, he went to work for the department of the budget. My mother was there.....her dad had said, “You graduated early from Milan; come on down to Dallas and I’ll get you started in college”....(Laughing)...She wanted to get out of Milan and she sure was attracted to the idea of college, but he never came through with any of that. She worked as a secretary, now I guess it would be an administrative assistant; but at some point, she was in Austin...he was in Austin...and he’s her boss.  He had been married before and I only found out about that when I was a senior in high school; no kids.  But, they snuck off to Round Rock, Texas...which is now the bustling huge town where Del Computers is located just north of Austin...to get married on the sly; both of them thought that this wouldn’t look good for the boss to be marrying his secretary.  But anyway, they eventually get up to Washington, D.C. and my sister was born there in 1944; my only sibling.  Dad was working for the department of the budget and mom was a secretary in the executive office building, which was right across the street from the White House; she was phenomenal with a typewriter and said that there would be 7 to 9 carbon copies made and sometimes for FDR’s signature himself.... and you just could not make any mistakes.  You know, when I fumble around on a keyboard”......(laughing).... “I imagine my mother up there in heaven thinking, “Oh my gosh, can you even.......”\n\n         \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How do you survive?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...she never wanted; the time came where computers were taking over and everybody was telling my mother, “Oh, it’s so much better than the typewriters; the IBMs electrics and all these other things.  You’ll just love it.”  My mother was like, “No, no, no; I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to make that change.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So when you were born, you had your sister and you were the second child.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Were there other brothers and sisters?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That was it.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: That was it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And you lived in...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Dallas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You lived in Dallas because you were born at Baylor.\n\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah; so after WWII and I’m not sure how long after that, they moved back to Dallas and my father worked with some other architects for a brief period of time, but he is a real loner, both socially and you know, he wanted to run his own shop. For a time, he had a draftsman working for him who was a really nice guy.  He made a living, and it was a pretty good one, when the suburbs around Dallas were just starting to grow in the boom of the ‘50s and the ‘60s.  One thing dad would do, although he was a loner, would say, “You’re coming with; I’ve got to go see this job up in Cedarville, Farmer’s Branch, or whatever” and so, I learned then to always have not just a book, but maybe two or three in case I got bored with one; because the trip there wasn’t short and the time I’d be sitting in the car ... (Laughing)...wasn’t short.  So, I’m glad I learned that habit early.  As you would imagine for a solo architect, and this is true for architects today; there are booms and busts; so, there was never a great solid feeling of security in the family.  I joke with my sister about how she was so much faster than me at just catching on how the family worked and you know, there were times like, “Steve, enjoy this meal; we may not have much tomorrow to feed you” and then, my father would bring home a car that he purchased with cash a few days after that.  So finally, I grew up to the point of thinking, “I’m not likely going to starve around here” even though I’m sure it was anxious for mom and dad.\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you remember much about your small childhood before you went to school; things you did or people who you played/communicated with?  You said that you didn’t have an extended family.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Right, not very much; the few memories that I have date back to being five.  My mother had taught me to read and there was not kindergarten to speak of back then; but, she thought “well, since you’re already reading” and dad was pretty tight with money and amazingly agreed to this, she would put in a private Episcopal school where a great aunt taught. So, I started school at 5 ½ and I’ve certainly got some memories of being in the first grade.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you remember getting your first library card?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No; no, but I do remember that I was not as much of a book addict/hoarder back then...but there were always books around.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You’re suggesting “as you are now”.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: As I am now... (Laughing)......as Peggy would certainly agree.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)....ok.......\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, I went to libraries and stuff like that; there is no question about that.  There was a time where I guess I must have been in high school, but before I could drive, and my sister was at SMU pursuing an education degree; one summer, I think it was, she was taking a course and the nickname was “Kiddy Lit”....so, she would be going to the library frequently to pick up these \n\nchildren books and I would tag along with her. But, I remember then that she said to me, “You ought to read this one” and it was “A Wrinkle in Time”....what a wonderful book.\n\nPeggy Strode: When you were talking earlier and asking about doctors in the family...I mean...Dr. O’Bannion....wasn’t he....”\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh, yeah...yeah....yeah..... And Dr. Cook; I’ll get to those, but good.....I need those....both influential people....  \n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s what I said; that’s your role...... (Laughing)\n\n(All laughing).....\n\n...That’s part of your role.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Then, I went to public school for second grade.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Again, this was in Dallas?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: In Dallas, North Dallas; Preston Hallow neighborhood and we were in a house that both of my parents always considered as an embarrassment that it would be an architect’s home, because they had their little....gosh, probably what......about 1,300 square foot original house and then, they had an addition built on that that was about the same size.  But, it always looked just kind of ...these two discarded places just stuck together; my father had purchased the brick to do the outside, but he never got around to putting it up.\n\n \n\nPeggy Strode: And the thing about your mom and dad; when they would have a fight, she wouldn’t help...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh yeah...so, an architect has to do specifications and this was the day of the ditto machines; is that what they were called?.....Where you would do a stencil and then, you would roll the individual pieces of paper under the stencil and they would get inked and so, you couldn’t make any mistakes there either...but, she would do all of dad’s specifications in her spare time at night....he was doing schools and churches for the most part in these towns and my sister and I used to joke that you could tell when it came to the time when the specifications would list the paint colors for the exteriors....if they were getting along, they never got along well; but if they were ok, mom would be influencing my dad’s choice of those colors and it would look better.. (Laughing)....If there was a school and it was like, “Who picked those colors out?”....well, we’re not going to tell anybody, but it was dad doing it by himself....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That was your father.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....yeah... (Laughing)... But I remember when Plano, Texas downtown was three blocks long, had a brick street, and there were tamale vendors out there.  Lancaster was south of Dallas, he did a lot of work there; just a number of different places.  Occasionally, he would get something in like Amarillo or that type of thing; but for the most part, it was in those suburbs that was kind of his niche.  I know it must have been very hard for him to go out and do the sells part with the school boards and the church and stuff.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Looking back on it, do you think of yourself and your family when you were growing up as poor, middle class, or well off?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Middle class and dysfunctional....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: When I was in sixth grade, I think, my mother decided that she would go back to work and for a short period of time, she was a secretary in Dallas for the Department of Agriculture and then, went to SMU; that was a tremendous benefit to my sister and me because when we went through...Nancy graduated in 1962 and I graduated in ’66....if you were a staff brat...not just a faculty brat, but a staff brat...you got a full tuition and at that point in time, as I would expect  you to remember, scholarships were not plentiful at all.  So, there was no question about where we would go to school and we were going to this rich kid’s school when, you know, we were solidly middle class; but, hardly, hardly affirmable in a city that has always been so focused on affirmable...especially north Dallas.  But, it was a good education.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you remember much about your grade school years; did you enjoy it and were there any particular people: preachers, teachers, or family members who had a big impact on you and what you ultimately became?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, my mother certainly had a big influence.....Peggy and I joke about maybe we saw people with either a white handle or a black handle; fortunately, she would change the hats out from time to time.  My dad and I; you know I really..when I get to heaven, I have this hope that I can run to dad and say, “I am so sorry that I was such a jerk as a son”....he was a jerk as a father in a lot of ways, but you know, I gradually came to see that I was just as much of a jerk as a son.  Across the street was a guy who was just a few months older than I was as a kid and his brother was two years younger; but because I had gone to that private school route, I was a grade ahead of Jimmy Mitchell....but, he had a tremendous influence on me because he was always, always wanting and interested in interacting with me.  Where he had all sorts of athletic skills.... believe me, I had no athletic skills what-so-ever...trying to think of how many athletic games or how could you play football, baseball, or all these other things with just two kids...three kids if you count his little brother.....One of them might could be a water boy as I might’ve been able to do that. But, Jim was always there; when I went to medical school, he went to dental school...but, I do think that he really helped me out. I basically think that I enjoyed elementary \n\nschool pretty well until I got to the 5th grade.  In retrospect, I think I got increasingly depressed and that stayed with me through high school.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: 12, 13, or were you that far along?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well in 5th grade, I would’ve been 10..... 10 through 17 when I graduated from high school; when I got to college and my parents were nice enough to let me live on campus at SMU for a couple of years, it was just...you know, it was just, “Oh, that’s amazing; you mean, everybody wasn’t happy?  You mean, there were other kids who thought, ‘Gee, I’d be better off dead?’ at that time of life.”  I never, never even got to the point of “Gee, I’d like to kill myself” but there were certainly a lot of times that I thought, “Well, if I just dropped over dead, it would be a relief.” My mother and my dad were fighting, fighting, fighting; they always would fight.  My sister was smart enough; I mean, she got away from the family right after she finished college.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How did she do that?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Married...but, I think Nancy was just able to figure the family out much earlier than I did.  She was five years older and you know, we were kind of passing in the night so-to-speak and stuff like that and didn’t  sit down to have a heart to heart conversations until we got much older. But, I’d get tied up in the fights and you know, I’d side with my mother and that would make my dad even madder....ya-da....ya-da...ya-da....and then, I’d feel guilty about my mother being in that situation; thinking it was all my fault and stuff. So, my grades really slipped, particularly starting about the 6th grade, and they said, “You’re out of the..... ”.....oh what did they call it; there was an academically gifted class that I was in up through the 6th grade, I guess.  It was just stupid stuff, just not finishing homework and stuff like that.  Then junior high, I think, was emotionally harder and high school was a little bit better; I still viewed Jimmy Mitchell as just a rock.  He wasn’t a saint, but he was just always, always...I could depend on him and it wasn’t even that I’d get with him and say, “Oh, let me tell you about”...”Oh, the situation across the street is”....but just have a constant, dependable, friend. So, I graduate... my high school class was really white; we had one Hispanic kid whose family was well-off enough that he had a corvette...a corvette in the mid ‘60s....whoo; wow...and I don’t know how Dallas managed to do that.  Rounder’s was on the board of education in ’53, the Little Rock crisis was ’57; but Hillcrest High School was literally white and I don’t think the class of ’66 was the last white class either. You know, I had a pretty good education.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did your education in your school prepare you for what you ended up doing for the rest of your life?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...I think so; I was a national merit semi-final.  I managed to somehow figure out some ways with standardized testing that...I was never frightened about them and did fairly well; that just shocked the teachers of the school. They were like “How did he...?”  So, you know, there was \n\nonly a few months left in the senior year, but it was like...”So, you haven’t been living up to your potential at all.”  But following my sister’s lead, I thought, “Ok, I’ll go to summer school before the fall semester at SMU” and that would’ve been in ’66.  The subject that I just disliked the most was math and I had to have three semesters of calculus, four of biology, a Bachelor’s in Science; I mean, you and I know how much calculus the doctor’s use.  Statistics...I always, you know, thought over the last....this academic career...why in the world don’t we even give a basic statistics course in high school so that you can read and understand the paper better; but certainly if you’re going to be a consumer of medical literature, you should have statics. But, I at least had the sense to tell myself, “You’ve got to get serious.”...... “You’ve got to get serious about this kid; you can’t just say, “Oh, I’d rather do something than do my homework” or “I’ll get around to the homework.”   \n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But this was ‘64, ‘65, and ’66.......?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I graduated in ’66.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, that timeframe; but you also had the extra added thing of Vietnam looking you in the face.  \n\nDr. Steve Strode: I did; I did and I had actually joined the ROTC unit at Hillcrest High before the Gulf of Tonkin and all that.  Yeah, I went in and SMU had an Air Force ROTC; so I went in there and since I knew how to march, they made me the color guard.  I had no idea whether I’d be able to make it as premed.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Let’s back up a little bit.......when did you start about thinking about what you wanted to do with your life?  Your father is an architect and your mother is talented, very smart, and can do anything she puts her mind to; when did you start thinking, “Ok, this is kind of what I want to do with my life”....?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: The message I got expressly from my....well two messages.....one is “do something that you want to do, even if it’s digging ditches; if that’s your love” ....which is a nice thing to tell a kid and then....“You might as well think about going into a profession.”  My father never said anything about me going into architecture, but he was kind of a dooper; you know, he really.....he was invited by the guy who was giving him art lessons when he was in high school, I guess it was for free according to the family story of how they didn’t get any advantages, who said ..”I’m getting ready to go over to Europe and I’d like for you to come with me because you’re just very gifted” and the family said, “No, we’re not going to spend money on that” ....then, he gets to A\u0026M and they said, “Well, you know, we don’t teach people how to be artists here, but we can teach them how to be architects.”  For the longest time as a kid, I thought Texas A\u0026M stood for Texas Architecture and Military College; because that was all that I heard.  But, he would doodle a lot while he was watching television and some of the doodles were \n\n__________ and some of them were architect; but I thought, “You weren’t happy with this”...”You weren’t happy in this job” and I have absolutely no artistic talent...I don’t want to do that.\n\n       \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You didn’t doodle?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I didn’t doodle even....so my mother would say, “Well, you know, you’ve got the great uncle; he even had my dad who were lawyers...you don’t have to do law, but its great preparation for anything that you would want to go into”...nudge, nudge, nudge....The only lawyer that I knew about was Perry Mason on television and I knew that I did not want to be Perry Mason on television; for one thing, it was kind of a boring show because he always won and that was when I kind of thought, “Well, you know, I love biology; how about something health-wise.” I got to tag along with a vet a little bit and that was cool.  l worked my way up to the point of thinking, “I could be...maybe, I could be a dentist; maybe I could get into dental school.” My family was a large extended family until my grandparent’s generation...well, three of my grandparent’s generations...I had lots of great uncles and aunts and then, everybody just for the most part quit reproducing; so very, very, few cousins.  But, there was a nest of them in Longview, Texas.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Cousins...?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Great uncles and great aunts...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Family....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah; yeah, they didn’t reproduce.  One of the great aunts had married a doctor who went to the University of Texas Branch at Galveston when it was Texas’s only medical school and he located in Longview with the oil boom.  The story was that Uncle Cook had even delivered babies in covered wagons and this type of thing.  He was an early.....they called him an organizer, and that may be kind of overblown, but at least he was a very early member of the Texas Academy of General Practice and was pretty early to have a group practice as I understand it; so, he was like three other GPs in Longview.  Longview then, with four great aunts and their husbands, was someplace where I ...I had a cousin; did have a cousin, a second cousin, who was the daughter of the very youngest great uncle and so, she would like to go and visit Longview and they would take me as company for her and so forth.  But, it was a way for me to get away from home and it was wonderful to have adults who would treat me as a kid, but you know very nicely as a kid and ask me questions and stuff like that. Uncle Cook, as I understand it, did have a bit of an alcohol problem.  One evening when I was down there and it was just me, not Sarah along with me, we went to a restaurant in town that they really liked to go to.  Besides the meal all the...the two great aunts and uncles by marriage...were having a number of drinks and Uncle Cook eventually said, “Well, Steve, what do you want to do when you grow \n\nup?” and I said, “I think I want to be a dentist.”  He said, “Why would you want to do that?  Why would you want to have your fingers in somebody’s mouth all the time?”   \n\n(Laughing)\n\nHe said, “Have you ever thought about being a doctor?” and I said, “I don’t think I’m smart enough to be a doctor.”  He said, “Oh hell, son, somebody’s got to do it” and that was just a tremendous influence on me, because then it was like, “Well, I could try.” \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Sure....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: And at least I got couple with, “Gee, I’m taking my first summer courses in college and I’ve got to get serious about this.”  Then my mother, bless her heart, finds out that there is an aptitude panel of tests that is available through the psychology department at SMU and so, that summer I went there.  I think it was like 2 to 2 ½ days of tests; I think there was an MMPI,  and ________ search, and I remember where we were....you basically had this wooden jig saw puzzle, some old physiological test that you recognize that the pieces go together as an elephant and how long it takes you and this type of thing. You would check numbers and....they went through a very extensive matter of tests.... (Laughing)....and then, they get to the conclusion and mom is there and I’m there and it’s like, “Well, you don’t have any artistic aptitude“......   \n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Surprise, surprise.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah and “You don’t really have any facility with numbers, so don’t think about being in accounting”....and they just kept going and said, “You told us at the start of this that you were thinking about being a doctor, why don’t you just give it a try.”  \n\n(All laughing)......\n\n“Ok.....ok; so, I didn’t get into my sister’s husband’s fraternity at SMU.  SMU has always been so ________ orient, which was a blessing.  At the time, I was like, “Oh, I’m so depressed”...”I’m so depressed” and now it’s like, “Whoever threw that black ball when my name came up, it was such a gift; such a gift.”  But, I got through SMU.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Had you ever thought about going anywhere else to school?  You mentioned Texas A\u0026M and I know that you had real economic reasons to go to SMU because your mom was working there, but did you ever think of going anywhere else?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: My dad would take the whole family, until my sister learned how to escape, down to College Station when he would....it took me a long time to figure this out....when there would be reunions of the Sul Ross Volunteers and his brother was teaching down there at that time.  So, you know, there was kind of a “Well while we are down here, why don’t you look this place over.” I told people that my dad was a very dedicated Aggie, but he was even more dedicated to being basically on the cheap side and .....  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And it was going to be expensive.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It was expensive...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Any tuition would be expensive.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right...right.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah...yeah; I got lots of offers, which was really an ego boost, just because of that national merit semi-final.  Brown was one and Pepperdine, which I hear is real popular nowadays because its right on the beach somewhere in the L.A. area...and a bunch of others; I mean, there were like 35-40.  But, there was never any serious thought that I’d go anywhere else.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: During high school or college, did you work?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh...before my senior year in high school, I was a package boy when they opened up a new Tom Thumb Supermarket about a mile from my home and at one point, I was their janitor; not a very good one.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But you had some experience in working and making your own money.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah....yeah...yeah....then, speaking of looking at colleges, I think, I had a..... it was one of those times when the family was going to go to Indiana and I said, “I’ve got to have this weekend off” ...they said, ”Well, why don’t you just not come back”...”Ok.”  Then, you know, I would go to summer school each year, which allowed me to graduate a semester early; my dad doing all of these little towns around Texas came to me with an idea for the summer after my sophomore year...when I knew I was going to take organic chemistry and I thought, “well, ok, just take one course”....he said, “I know these doctors in Wylie, Texas”...two GPs, a clinic, and hospital... “They are willing to see if there is something that you could do if you wanted to this summer.” So, I would drive 20 miles or so...organic was like 7:00 o’clock in the morning in the summer, it was awful, and then, there would be 3 hour labs.  But, I’d get off around noon and then trot off to Wylie and I was their lab assistant.  Two GPs; you know in response to try to think about people who were influential, I thought about Dr. Trimble and Dr. Hilley.  It was kind of a Pen and Teller; they didn’t do magic tricks and it wasn’t that Dr. Trimble was , you know, huge compared to the other GP; but one, Trimble was very outgoing and Hilley was very quiet. He did the anesthesia and Trimble did the surgeries; but, it was certainly a chance to get not only a picture of general practice, but rural.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....how old were they?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: They must have been in their 50s while I was there; but, you know, really nice guys.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But they had cut their teeth at an earlier time; like the ‘40s and ‘50s. \n\n \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah; yeah, they may have graduated in the early ‘50s and I was there in ’68; but, I think it would be right that they were about in their 50s.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So how did you do in organic?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: (Laughing)....So.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And what are your impressions...I ask everybody this, because I really want to know....what was your impression of the guy/person or people who taught you organic chemistry?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh my goodness...Harold Jeske...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)...Everybody knows the name of the guy, they may not know any other teachers, but they always know the teacher who taught them organic...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, it’s kind of like when I’d interview applicant s for the residency program; I’d always say, “What’s your favorite course in medical school?”... “What was your least favorite”..... “Biochemistry” ...”biochemistry” ...”biochemistry.”   So, Harold Jeske was a very...he was chairman of the chemistry department and a brilliant guy; he was very powerful within the system...not only being the department chair....but I think being the top dog faculty member that interacted with the coaches and he was head of the premed committee.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: SMU was not that big of a school; was it? Was it or am I way off?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: There were about 7,000 students.\n\n \n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: Ok, so it’s a pretty good sized school; I was thinking it was smaller than that.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I assume that it is bigger now; but there were about 7,000 students at that time and that included the graduate students and the theology students.  So, I....somebody and I guess it was shortly after Dr. Jeske actually had a book published about his biochemistry...not on the Vanity Press, but a small press....one of the things for which he was known is that he would let it be known that the more red in his tie the day of the test reflected how tough the test was going to be; a solid red tie was great news and a solid black tie was really scary.  He must have had all sorts of black and red combinations.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, this is him talking about that?  You said he wrote a book about it and that....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh no, somebody else wrote this about him.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Somebody wrote the book for him.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah.....but the name of the book is, The Man in the Red Tie.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: He would...I don’t remember him ever saying anything about, you know, “Oh well and you can look forward to this”... it was just he had such a strong persona on campus and everybody knew about how that made him; so, he would change his tie between classes.” (Laughing)  So, I was taking this course in the summer and I ‘m not doing real well because chemistry is not as bad as math, but it was still really tough for me....so, one day he calls and says that he wants me now; he said, “Steve, I understand that you’re going out to some rural general practice clinic every afternoon and working.”  I said, “Yes, sir” and he said, “Your grades in organic can certainly be improved”...Yes, sir.”  He said, “I bet you’d rather give up the organic course than give up the job in the clinic” and to confess that I don’t always tell the literal truth, “Oh no, Dr. Jeske”.... \n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing) Of course not....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: (Laughing).. “So, I wonder if, you know, I was kind of on the border and he went ahead and gave me a “B.” But, he was a wonderful, wonderful, guy and.....”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was he...a lot of times in a lot of different schools; I know in Arkansas, the organic teacher has some impact on med school selection.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: And as head of the pre-med committee, he had a whole lot to do with that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah and did he let you know that?  Or did he let you know that in oblique ways?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, he was really nice about it; I still managed to graduate with a 3.7 and I had made the highest.....I was good on standardized tests and I made the highest MCAT score at SMU for apparently a whole slew of years; so, it was like, “Oh well, he’s not impressive in obvious ways”..... (Laughing)...”Maybe, he will bloom when he finally gets into medical school.”  He really wanted me to go to Southwestern there in Dallas and it was, again if I could get into Southwestern, it was the cheapest offer.  Sam, I paid $350 tuition for my first year at Southwestern, because the West Texas sweet crude was flowing well and they only had to support Galveston. Baylor had just changed to, kind of, an amalgam between a state school and private school.  While I was there, they started the second school in Houston, a state school, and for the first couple of years, there were like 11 students in my class to go down there and start that.  San Antonio had just started, but you know, there are umpteen medical schools in Texas.\n\n          \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What informed your decision.......no, let me back up just a second.....you said that the fellow funded the school and moved to Houston; it was Southwestern, the school that was left behind. \n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I’m so glad; it gave me a chance.  Yeah, there was a smattering of faculty who said that they didn’t want to move and was there any way to be able to keep the medical school going in Dallas at the time.  They managed to rent some WWII surplus Quonset huts in the Dallas area; it may still be the case that the county in Texas is responsible for indigent medical care and so, Baylor was using the county hospital. Then, they pull out and so, the city father would certainly have an interest in trying to keep something going.  But, you know, the history of Southwestern, and they are very proud of it and I think they have a right to be, is that from those dismal chances of pulling anything off, they managed to get a medical school going.  The chairman of the internal medicine department, who was in that job for decades, had come from Yale; I think. Just think about going from Yale to this little po-dunk effort; but, you know, it became very powerful.  There was no question that research was the forte there and one of the guys that was a brand new attending, fresh out of a genetics fellowship, goes on to get a Nobel Prize.  So, you know, we felt that it was kind of a side-line away to be a medical student; but, it was such a different environment from what it is now.  Jumping forward a bit....when I came to do residency in Little Rock, I was really impressed that this medical school seemed, at that time, to put much more of a focus on education of medical students and I hope that was your experience.\n\n           \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yes, I think so.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: But, I feel very proud and have gone back for the last couple of every 5 year reunions; not only is the effort impressive, but what they are doing now to even be a stronger research institution and bringing in a lot of new stuff in education......I think it’s not just window dressing.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I don’t mean to be interrupting you here, but there are...we are going to be talking in a little while about your work as a teacher of family practice or family associates and you’ve already mentioned that medical centers were popping up around Texas in this time frame. Was Texas going through some of the same kinds of things that Arkansas went through that created the family practice program and the AHEC program? Was Texas going through those same kinds of things?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yes, Sam, but I think that...and maybe it’s because of more money....I don’t know how much of the oil money is still finding schools, but instead of having area health education centers to spread beyond the walls of the medical school campus, they just kept putting up medical schools. You know, there is one in Lubbock; the one in Lubbock, from the start, had branches in St. Angelo, in Amarillo, and in El Paso.  There is a DO school in Fort Worth.  There is a school in the Rio Grande Valley.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: A DO school...?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh no; I’m sorry.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok....yeah...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: The only DO school that I know of is in Fort Worth and it’s affiliated with the University of North Texas where Peggy went for her first four years.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...the reason I asked you about that is because I’ve seen a few small articles about the fact that DOs have played a significant role in rural health in Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.  Did you have any contact with that in your training?  \n\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No; now, I had some SMU classmates that went to DO schools and I guess, I’ll plead ignorance. I’ve certainly learned a lot since then; but at the time when I was applying to medical schools and Dr. Jeske was encouraging me to really go to Southwestern, the thought was, “Well, if you don’t get into an allopathic school, there are DO schools.”  And there are a lot of people that would go there, because dad had some family connections.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Do you remember the word “allopathic school” being used or is that something that you....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Picked up since then...\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Picked up since then.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....yeah, not back then.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That was going to be my question.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I interviewed at Baylor and could’ve gone there; but it would’ve cost.  I interviewed at Vanderbilt and got in there, which I’m very proud of, but that would’ve cost even more.  You can’t beat $350.00 for a year’s tuition to go to a good medical school.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: No....no....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: So, I’m very excited....very excited to go to medical school, because it was not something that I felt that I could expect.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you stay long enough at SMU to get a degree?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What was your degree in?\n\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Bachelors of Science in Biology; I got it in 3 ½ years, but that was because I went every summer and that allowed me to work for the clinical laboratories in Hartland Hospital, the public teaching hospital back then.  I did that from January of ’70 until August of ’70 when medical school started up.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Going back because we kind of skipped over this a little bit; we don’t need to go back and revisit the parental things, but crises along the way that would’ve pushed you in one direction or another.....family...money... \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Boy was I lucky, not really; you know, beyond the family where there was all this strife going on..... Most of the trouble that I made was of my own making.\n\n(Laughing)...\n\nNot that I was getting into trouble; but, you know.....not doing homework and getting a bad math grade and ...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But obviously though, Steve...if you ended up with a 3.7 in college, you were doing pretty well.\n\n Dr. Steve Strode: Yeah....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Academically, by this time in college, you were doing pretty well.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah; when I get to college, I was doing well. One thing I remember, there was another kid who was a national merit semi-finalist who also was...he....Eddie actually got this; Eddie and I had been, you know, kind of good acquaintances, but became friends and he eventually...when the ‘60s really starting going, he was a good guitar player and just disappeared into New Orleans to join the music scene and I’ve been remised in not at least going to the web to try to track him down....but, I remember him saying one time, ”you know, Steve, you and I are smart enough to know the problems; we are just not smart enough to know the answers.”..... (Laughing)...That has been so right...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So talk about medical school; that first two years........\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh......well, it did feel very much like college as a science major; lots of hours in the lecture hall.  I confess that when I really kind of..... like the old farsighted cartoon where my head is full....”yeah, I got to leave this classroom; my head is full.”  But when I got to that point, even though I was never much a comic book fan; for some reason, I would fantasize about being plastic man and just being able to turn into this puddle and slip down the stairs, slip under the door....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s a great metaphor..... (Laughing).....\n\nWere there any teachers during that period of time who had a big impact on you like that organic teacher that you had in college?  Any teachers who in your class work would get/peak your interest in thinking, “Well, I might look in this direction” or “I might look in that direction” on what you might want to do? \n\nDr. Steve Strode: No....uh, I did not; which gave me some problems when it came to asking for recommendations.  I’m a pretty shy guy and then....I don’t know what UAMS was like back then, I hope it was better; but at Southwestern, roundsmanship was just the big game in town.  You know, if you didn’t know an answer or if you got the wrong answer, it was kind of vicious....a vicious response from so many of the faculty; so that if there was someone who really wasn’t into that game, they were remarkable.  Very smart people and I think it was the culture at that time; but, I can still remember saying some things that in retrospect were kind of dumb and they just growled...so, I just kind of clammed up.  So, another aspect of life is that I had dated very little......\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That was exactly what I was thinking I needed to ask you; so, when did this all start?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah.....Yeah, I dated very little and at one point just said, “Well, I’m going to quit even trying” and I think it was maybe even as long as two years in college where I didn’t even try.  Ecology was just becoming a big thing in biology in the late ‘60s and SMU had hired some new faculty and then set up a program with the Dallas Museum of Natural History; during the summer...I can’t remember if this was the first year that they did this or the second year; no more than the second...but, you could take six course hours of ecology by going to the Big Bend area, just to the site of the Big Bend area; that’s a national park, not just a state park.\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh, I know about Big Bend; yeah.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: So, there were a bunch of folks who signed up for that, a vast majority from SMU but there were a few people from out of state, and that was a good experience to get away for a while.  But, Corinne Merrill was in that group....the course was over and everybody comes back to Dallas, but we’d formed kind of a social circle there and stuff and I remember that somebody suggested that Corrine and Larry Root, who went through medical school along with me...and I go to see “Easy Rider” at a matinee.  We did that and then not too long after that, a girl in the group said, ”You know, Corrine is really interested in somebody who was at the Black-out”.....it was the Black-out Nature area that we went to....and l said, “Larry?” and she said, “No...She is interested in you.”   I didn’t think anybody would be interested in me; so, it was really a shock.  But at any rate, we started dating and got married on August 1, 1970 with med school starting in about two weeks.  Med school starts and at the end of the first week, there is an astrology quiz; I had studied as I was used to studying in college and would do pretty well. So, they put the test results in our cubbyholes and I had a “D”...(Laughing)...at the same time, there was an announcement that said, “The College of Medicine is starting it’s psychology clinic offered free for medical students” and so, I thought, “Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? Am I going to flunk out of medical school after I tried so hard to get in here?”  So, I go and meet with the psychologist, who was a nice guy, and he listens to my plight and he said, “You know, you haven’t had to work terribly hard to get here; but now, you have a lot more competition and it’s up to you....you can put in a whole lot of energy and try and you can be at the top of the class if  \n\nyou want to or you can decide basically where you want to be in class and how much effort you’re going to put into it.  Oh, by the way, I can set you up with a psychiatry resident and get you some personal therapy”....”Ok”...well that reframes it a little; some cognitive behavioral therapy there and the psychiatry resident, Wayne Jones, was really a great guy. So, all through most of my freshman year and all of my sophomore year, I’m getting medically free therapy and at the end of that, he said, “You know, you’ve gotten about as much out of this therapy as anybody could.”  But, _____ was really increasing unhappy and so...\n\nPeggy Strode: Corrine...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Corrine was increasing unhappy so that it’s like August of ’71 when she says, “I think I want a divorce” and I moved back home.  Then, we had talked and I got to move back and I left her a note because she said, “I think I want a divorce and oh by the way, I’ve been talking with a lawyer and by Texas law, you have to pay for it”...(Laughing)....“But the lawyer is going to give you a discount.”  So, I wish the best for her and we’ve got an about once a year Christmas greetings-type....\n\n            \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was this the end of your second year of medical school? \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, the divorce was like November of my second year; but, I think I was so immature.  Now, she says that she was immature and I say, “Oh, I was so much more immature”...that it was probably just a good thing.  Then, she has had such a unique background because she stayed working in the labs at Southwestern for a while and then, she went and got a Masters in Social Work at UT Arlington. She ends up being a nanny for somebody and then, goes out to the University of California at San Francisco and is like an administrative assistant in some kind of research function...but, she ends up at Eastern Virginian Medical School in Norfolk, it was just starting up, and goes to medical school and becomes a family physician.  Somewhere in there, she goes as a pilgrim to India and settles in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina because there is a big population of Hindu immigrants in Myrtle Beach.  Then, she ends up with the allopathic training, but becoming a homeopath; so, you know, she says, “Well, I’ve really been confused about what I want in life” and that probably had some bearing on our marriage.    .... (Laughing).....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...\n\nAt some point, you had to start thinking about family practice and being a family physician; when was that?  \n\n Dr. Steve Strode: Um, so it was a good experience with Dr. Trimble and Dr. Hilley; they were GPs.  I never got close contact with the great uncle by marriage, Uncle Cook, but he was a GP.  I knew surgeons were born and not made; so, that was easy to rule out.  I didn’t want to either not talk to people at all or just talk to them when they are comatose; so, it was easy to say “no” to pathology and “no” to anesthesiology.  Anesthesiology and OB/GYN seem to be from a distance kind of boring \n\nor absolutely terrifying.  So at the end of my sophomore year, I’d say, and certainly into the junior year, I thought, “Well, I like Peds.”   If you take away all the gamesmanship, internal medicine is kind of  ______ .  Psychiatry, I found intellectually stimulating.  I had joined the equivalent of the family practice interest group, because they were calling it family practice.\n\n              \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: This was what year?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: This would’ve been ‘72...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: The AAGP turns into the AAFP about.....‘69?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: ‘69-‘70, yeah....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: What was his name, Dr. Stern; the guy that was the family doc that was the content consultant for Marcus Well, MD?  The Dallas Academy of Family Physicians, or whatever, brought him in for the medical students to be able to hear him and that was cool.  So, I kind of had a leaning that way; but boy, Southwestern just did not see any reason to have family physicians.  Even some of the friendlier faculty members, later on when I was headed in that direction, would say, “You know, you have pediatricians to take care of kids, you’ve got OB/GYN to take care of the women, and internal medicine to take care of the adult men and women...you think you’ve got to go to the arctic circle or somewhere?”  They just didn’t see any reason for it at all and so, I was swimming upstream at the time; but boy, it was exciting at that time to be looking at family practice.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When did teaching come into your view?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh, only in the very last few months of my residency program.  So the summer after my sophomore year, I had lined up a job/preceptorship job with a well-recognized family doc in Garland, Texas; one of the suburbs.  Here up pops another distant family member, by marriage, who is a general surgeon out in west Texas; Snyder, Texas which is between Lubbock and Abilene.  He said, “What are you doing this summer? I went to Southwestern and I know that you’ve got this much time off”...ya-da...ya-da...ya-da.   I said, “Well, I have this preceptorship lined up” and he said, “I’ve talked to the hospital administrator and we’ll pay you something”..... “Ohhhhh”....”Ohhhhh”.....    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s different... (Laughing)...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: That’s different.   Now my mother, bless her heart; when I was in my sophomore year, my dad had a stroke...a horrible stroke and I didn’t find out until just a couple of weeks ago, literally, from my sister that he had decided that since he didn’t feel any better taking his blood pressure medicine, there was no reason for him to continue taking it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: But, he has this...he is out in one of these small towns and had gone into the post-office...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How old a man was he at that point?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Let’s say 65, maybe; he was at the point where he was considering retiring from architecture and he was talking about doing a frame shop.  You know for picture frames, which was terrifying my mother; the idea of sinking money into that.  So, he gets back into the car, he has the stroke, ands slumps over; this is in front of the post office in the middle of whatever small town he was in, Farmersville or somewhere like that around Dallas, where he was still doing business as an architect and people just pass by. So, eventually 5 o’clock comes around and somebody says, “Well look, this guy must have just fallen asleep or maybe he’s a drunk”....or something like that and they go out and they can’t arouse him.  When he gets to Baylor, a good place to go, there’s curling’s ulcers that come along with a stroke and he had a big GI bleed.  My mother is pretty much living in the intensive care unit and at one point, there were like seven different specialists involved in his care.  My mother would describe to me well how she would in essence be lying around in wait to try to catch the specialists because they were taking care of him in the intensive café unit and didn’t want to spend time talking to his wife; that was one point where I thought, “You know, you don’t have to move to a rural area; there is a”......it would be wonderful to have a family physician who could talk to these specialists and then be willing to come out and talk with my mother and all about dad; because, we are just in the dark....”is he going to die?” ...”Is he going to live?”...”is he ever going to wake up?”  So, that was certainly a factor.  He does come out of it, they put him in Baylor’s rehab, and he gets to the point where I think with a brace on his foot and canes, he is able to walk again.  It affected his speech some and obviously affected his frontal lobe some, but he was making progress.  Then they moved him to a nursing home and then, my mother moved him to a better nursing home; but as so often the case, dad was saying, “You’ve got to take me home”....”You’ve got to take me home”....”You’ve got to take me home”....”You’ve got to take me home.”  Which my mother did and then, he gave up all the walking, exercising, and stuff like that; my mother fortunately had enough resources from what my dad had saved up that she could hire some home aids.  She really encouraged me to just go ahead and be a medical student that she had everything held down, which I think was saintly.  So eventually, he has another stroke and is in ICU for about a month and dies; but that experience was like, “Yeah, even if I was to live in Dallas, there is really a need for somebody that would be able to help families figure out what is going to happen with families and family members.”  So, I go out to Snyder, Texas and mom said, “That’s fine; go out there for however many weeks you can stay there and enjoy it.”  My relative is the general surgeon and so, I was scrubbing in and that was fine; then he said, “On this day of the week, why don’t you spend it with Harry Ward”...not Harry Ward the hematologist/Chancellor, but Harry Ward the GP in Snyder, Texas...who was a jewel of a guy.  At first, I thought it was kind of \n\nboring because he’d say, “well what do you think we ought to treat this kid with for his ear infection?” and here I was at the end of my sophomore year and I didn’t have a clue; but, he kind of caught onto that and dumbed it down for my level....then when I did have breaks at Christmas and other times, I’d go on out to get a little bit more money.  I had worked one Sunday, 7-3 shift, in the clinical labs at Parklone during my freshman and sophomore year; I wanted to contribute something and in retrospect, I could’ve been studying during that time... but, I needed to do that.  I stopped that after the end of my sophomore year, but the little bit of money was nice.  They were just really nice to me out there; oil was flowing well at that time and the community was doing well.  Dr. Ward said, “You know, we could go into practice together” and up until close to the end of my residency, that is what we were planning on doing.  I meet this wonderful woman in the last part of my junior year; she was a Baylor nursing student and had gone to......do you want to tell this or do you want me to tell it?\n\n           \n\nPeggy Strode: What....go ahead.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: About your course through college....\n\nPeggy Strode: Oh...you can go ahead.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: She started at the University of North Texas in elementary education and was fortunate enough that they had some student teaching experience built into the first year and she realized that that was not her niche; then, she came to the idea of nursing and transferred to Baylor.  One thing we’ve always joke about is that she went to Waco twice; one was for a football a game and the other was for graduation because the Baylor School of Nursing is at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.  They post her at the oh-so-romantic Dallas Veteran’s Administration Hospital, which is quite a bit south of Dallas actually.\n\nPeggy Strode: It wasn’t too far from where I lived.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: She was living ....\n\nPeggy Strode: On the other side of the tracks...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: On the other side of the Trinity River, not the tracks......So, I was going through part of my internal medicine rotation there at the VA and she was in, I guess, the medication room or something like that; I bopped in there and started talking with her, which was really an important thing to do...but I managed to get contact information and we went on a date.  We went on a second date and then, she informed me that she really had a boyfriend who I eventually found out was a med school classmate.\n\nPeggy Strode: It wasn’t a boyfriend; it was somebody that I dated.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: (Laughing)....\n\nBut, I wasn’t getting a third date at that time.\n\n(Laughing).....\n\nPeggy Strode: I kind of liked him better...... (Laughing)....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: So, there was a tradition at Southwestern that was kind of on the side....not encouraged, but not discourage....some of the faculty had managed to secure rotations in Great Britain; they would tell students in succeeding classes about who to contact and I still had some money saved up from these various activities and really thought that that sounded liked a grand idea.  I had never done any significant travel before and my mother, bless her heart, was willing to let me go; her little boy.  When I would be sending a letter back on a really thin international paper, she’d get it maybe a week later or something like that; but that was.......and the senior year, back then, was surgery for a few months and maybe a couple of other requirements; but, there was a lot of room for electives.  Audition electives, if that’s what you wanted to do.  So, I.....in July of ’73, I go to Aberdeen, Scotland for a month of psychology.  I met up with med school classmates and we bopped around France, Italy, and Ireland before I come back for another month of psychiatry in London and then, I go to Oxford for six weeks of cardiology; it was just a great time.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Sounds like it; it sounds fun.  Just sitting here listening to it, it sounds fun.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah and for the most part, I was living in student dormitories and eating in the student cafeterias; I was basically being subsidized. It wasn’t free, but it was still pretty dirt cheap under those circumstances. Subsidized by the United Kingdom to be able to do that...but, I came out of all that and felt that I really wanted to be a family doctor.  I would fully expect that your experience was the same as it was a very exciting time to be considering being a family doctor.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Uh huh...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Being a child of the ‘60s, it was kind of countercultural.  It was power to the people.  It was bringing in something that was both new, but had that long tradition from general practice.  What it did mean was that, you know, I thought, “Oh, I must be practically unique in my medical school class to want to go into family medicine”.....as it turned out, there were a fair number of others who wanted to go into family medicine and a fair number of people in the country who wanted to go into family medicine.  So, I get back in mid November and had the time and the money to go interview at four different places; they all turned me down.  As a faculty member, I had certainly participated in the scramble; but at 1974 at Southwestern, everybody went into their cubbyholes and pulled out their envelope and there was nothing in mine..... (Laughing)....”There was one classmate of mine who was in the same situation and somebody \n\nwho was brand new faculty, very nice and very sympathetic, was assigned to our plight and he said, “Well, I’m just going to start making calls.  Steve, would it be ok with you if we got Gladys squared away first?” and I said, “Sure.”  That took a couple of hours and he said, “Why don’t you go for lunch, I’ll go for lunch and when we get back, I’ll work with you.”  He came back from lunch and he said, “I talked to the chairman of psychiatry” and I guess it was just because that psychiatry resident must have been getting supervised for all that theory; but he said, “He is willing to offer you a psychiatry slot.”  It was still a time where it was, “Freud thought this”...”Freud thought that” and this type of thing; which I found fascinating.  When I was out there in Snyder, Dr. O’Bannon said, “Why don’t you go this afternoon, because we have a itinerate psychiatrist coming every other week”...”Ok”.  So, you know, he’s a real nice guy and he brings his dog along for the clinic....these people come in for their pill checks and it’s a whole afternoon of that.  Finally, it gets towards the end and I’m kind of squirming and I said, “Do you ever get bored with this?”   He said, “Well, you know, after awhile...it’s just kind of like you’re talking to old friends” and I said, “Ok.”  But then I thought, “Ok, reading about psychiatry sounds fascinating, but I don’t know that the reality is going to be my niche.”  People who just flat out act crazy makes me nervous anyway and the idea of family medicine incorporating behavioral science, what could be more up my alley?  So, the faculty member calls John Tudor and he and I talk on the phone and he says, “Well, we’ll give you the position if you want it.”  Tudor had decided, on his own as I understand it, that he would offer rising seniors at Arkansas that they can start their family practice residency their senior year; but, he had not cleared that with the Board.  The guy who ran the Board for decades was a real stickler of “Not only are these the rules and its best that everybody lives with them”; but, “Hey, I’m power.”\n\n             \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Pete Sacona... \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Pete Sacona; yeah, very good.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Oh I know; I knew Pete Sacona very well. I knew of him.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....Yeah....so, I guess it was during my first year where there were people who were at my level, because seniors were rising up, and then there were the people who were basically of the same cohort...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What was your first year here in Arkansas?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh, in ’74...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, I had just walked out the door.\n\n \n\nDr. Steve Strode: O...k.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I had just walked out the door when you walked.......of the family practice residency.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh really; so, you took it there as a senior?”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Actually, no..... ’73; I took the senior year, the next year, and then, I walked out the door.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok; well, I expect that you came to the conclusion that you were pretty much repeating the same thing three years in a row.\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: I didn’t have any choice; the Army said, “You’re going.”\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oooooh...ok.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: The Army said, “You’re going” and that was the only reason; I would’ve stayed.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok...yeah?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But, no; no, I think it’s interesting.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, that kind of surprises me some, Sam, because the first two years of medical school everybody in the class said, “Well, look what’s happening in front of us; you’re either going to be drafted as a GMO after one year or you can go the Berry Plan.”  Then, Nixon said, “Oh, I won” and starts pulling everybody out, but they didn’t win.....   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart:  I was in advanced ROTC in college; that’s why I had to go.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: They didn’t give me any money.  I went for two years, but I owed them two years, and they said, “See ya.”\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok; I got ya.  I just went for the first two years of advanced ROTC because I thought it looks like I may be able to get into medical school, and a few more commitments that I made, and there was no tuition that had to be paid...but, it was kind of a strange situation....the faculty was really strange, I thought.  Arlo Kuhn and I both came in as people who didn’t match...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Arlo Kuhn took that house that I lived in.  As I was walking out of the house, he took the house in the Heights that I was living in.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Was it on Midlin?.....Midlin?”\n\n  \n\nPeggy Strode: Uh huh..\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah.... (Laughing).....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah....is he still there?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I have no idea.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: The last I heard, he was and I think he’s added to it.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: (Laughing)....But, this is too.....we missed each other, by that much....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....\n\nPeggy Strode: Wow...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah and at that time, it was “Tell us where you want to go; St. Vincent’s or Baptist?” and I was like, “I don’t know.” Apparently you would try for St. Vincent’s because it was the carried trade hospital and everybody else went out to Baptist.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Well, as I was leaving, they had just opened Baptist.  \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: We were the first house staff in the new Baptist five months before you got there. (Laughing)....I think that’s funny. \n\nDr. Steve Strode: That is wild...that is wild.  So, I based at Baptist.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Who was your....usually in each class of 8-9 people, there was  5-6 who went to Baptist and 4-5 who went to St. Vincent’s; who were the people who went with you to Baptist?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, Arlo was there.....uh.....Randy Russell who has down in Lake Village for a long time; he may have been a senior first, but he was in my residency co-work.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He is the kid who went in with Jim Young; James Young, I think.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Isn’t......there is a Young in....\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: In McGhee...\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: In McGhee, yeah; but, Randy went to Lake Village.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Somehow, they were tied together.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh, could be...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, I think they were tied together; I don’t know how...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, Randy may have started out at one and then moved to Lake Village after.  Gary Russell ended up in Cabot.  Somebody else ended up in Bentonville. (Laughing).....A year ahead of us, in some way, was C.C. Garner from Beebe, Arkansas and Arlo Kuhn just thought that was hilarious; he said, “What kind of place have we moved in?  We’ve got a C.C. from Beebe...\n\n(Laughing)....\n\nThe experience there in Baptist; it worked out pretty well for me because there were two docs in practice together that just had the residents do their H\u0026Ps and other scruff work; they didn’t teach worth a darn and some of these guys would end up being with them for 2-3 months at a time.  But, I didn’t get assigned to that and you know, rotated without them at night... Baldwin; Max Baldwin...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: The pediatrician...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: McKelby.....the LRDC people; it was really, really, a pretty good experience when it was....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: The LRDC people, when I was there, were really good; I thought they were excellent.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And Dr. Chairs and Wingert were good.  I mean, my experience with them was good as surgeons; I really enjoyed them.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, it was a good experience for me; but, it really brought home that if you were in a nonacademic situation, you could either get the best education or the worst.\n\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Or the worst, that’s right.  So, you went there as an intern level person; you started the program....your first year was your internship year.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yep... So, Tudor went off, maybe it was the end of my first year, on sabbatical and while he was gone, Tom Bruce replaced him and went....the way I heard it, not directly from Tudor, was that he comes back and was shocked that he no longer has the position in the department and they said, “Oh well, you can run the emergency room” which for years after our residency experience, was and is kind of whoever we can force into it.  No teaching there, you just stay busy all the time.  Then, it was Ben Salzmann; Ben Salzmann was such a wonderful, kind, guy.  I remember one time when Arlo and I both went in to him and basically was just kind of complaining that the level of education didn’t seem to match our expectations... (Laughing)...and you know, nobody is referring to the New England Journal for this and that and he said, “Well boys, it sounds like y’all just need to go into internal medicine”.... (Laughing)....but, we didn’t; he was just so nice.  When he was director of the health department, somebody in the health department as an aside conversation said, “You know, I think if he gets one more plaque and attaches it to his office wall, it’s all just going to implode in on him.”  \n\n       \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah....right.  Just as an aside, I’ll probably edit this out, John Tudor shouldn’t have been...he couldn’t...he may have been aware of what was happening; but if you go back at just the archives at the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians, you will see that he was being fought tooth and nail by the surgeons who dominated the medical center. \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oooooh...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: In that period of time when I was there, those two years, he was being fought tooth and nail and he had trouble making decisions; he really had trouble making decisions and that caused that stuff to turmoil.  There is a letter in the archives at the Center that is signed by all the residents, just a few months before you got there, including my signature supporting him.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Wow.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Because, they were trying to kick him out at that point.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ewww...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: They were doing their best to kick him out, because he wasn’t ...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Now, was this Campbell?  Was he the Chair?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I think it was everybody.  It was everybody; it wasn’t just....they weren’t getting any support out of any of the specialists; the internal medicine department, the surgery department.  He wasn’t getting any support and some of it was very personal about him.   \n\nSo, you go into the residency program; a brand new residency and goes through 3-4 years of pretty intense turmoil....going from either all Baptist or St. Vincent’s...some at the VA and some at the Medical Center....and then, Ken Goss gets there.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Before Goss, there was Robert Nordaling.  I can’t remember why Salzmann stepped aside; my impression was that he wasn’t forced out.  My impression was that there was something; maybe it was going to the health department that was more appealing to him....and Nordaling had been in Wisconsin and came down; it was still turmoil because he brought in a social worker that he had worked with on faculty and made him the residency director. There were faculty that may be didn’t impress us a whole lot and I think part of that is you know, me being kind of snooty back then, but at least it was an MD; here is this guy that was kind of a good ole boy social worker.  Nordaling has this....he invites me to come over one evening for tea or something like that, which I thought was real unusual...this would’ve been in the spring or maybe even winter of my last year of residency.  There weren’t too many people staying around for the whole three years of residency and I can understand that; they were eventually able to get more rotations at the VA and more rotations at Children’s and the quality, I think, of the rotations out in the private sector was improving.  It was definitely coming along and so, I never thought about leaving early.  I was honored when the family GP back her in Dallas, once when Peggy and I were visiting, said, “Oh, come over and visit” and he said, “I really want you to”...I’m not sure whether it was “join my practice and I’ll only be here for a short period of time” or “take over the practice”....and, I said, “I’ve got one more year of residency to go and then I’ll be board certified”...”Well, I can do this”..and  “I can do that”...it was a good part of Dallas and he was a really nice guy for taking care of me from my pass from the pediatrician to the family doc, it just may be elementary school.... “But, oh no; I really got to finfish this residency program. “Nordaling was just kind of a strange guy, but I think he had the best of intentions.  There was another case where he said, “You know, there is somebody in your residency cohort who would make a great faculty member; who do you think that is?” and I said , “Arlo Kuhn” and he said, “No, you.”  Peggy and I had been out to Snyder and were all planning to go out there when I thought, “Well, you know, I kind of enjoy the opportunity to teach and I sure enjoy trying to teach patients, but I don’t know as faculty.”  We struggled with it and finally came to the conclusion that if I was making a mistake, it would be easier to leave academia to go into practice then to go from practice to academia; so, I said, “Ok.”  He said, “I want to get you prepared for this; so, here is some really good departments of family medicine where you can go and spend some time”...the very last part of the....\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: This was Nordaling?\n\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Nordaling and this was the very last part of the residency and for the first few months after the residency program; but, they paid me.  We had a house by then and we had Shawn by then.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When did you guys marry?\n\nPeggy Strode: When; in ‘74.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, about this same time...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh...well, this would’ve been in ’77.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, you married when you first went there or first came to Arkansas.\n\nPeggy Strode: Right, we had.......yeah.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: In ’74...yeah.....yeah...yeah; I’m sorry.  I had moved in June and we got married on September 21, 1974.  Peggy had kindly put up with me, kind of, saying, “Oh”....after dating for a few months...what was it that you’ve told me I said, “Oh, I think we ought to get married.”\n\nPeggy Strode: No, you said, “Well, I thought we’d get married”.......never asked.\n\n(All laughing)....\n\nUntil I made him.... (laughing)....when he gave me the ring...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Then, I did it in front of her mother, which I thought was the right thing to do.\n\n(Dr. Sam Taggart: Laughing).....Unless you know the answer.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Unless you absolutely know the answer....\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah...yeah.\n\n(Laughing)....\n\nI think it is a legal joke that if you are a lawyer in court, you never ask a question unless you know the answer.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So you did your residency program and then, metaphorically flipped a coin and said, “I’m going to go into academia for a while.”  What did you learn when you went off....where did you go and what did you learn?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh, I had been......I was flown into Charleston.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: South Carolina; what a horrible place to go... (Laughing)\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....yeah, somebody said New Orleans without the dirt.\n\n(Laughing)....\n\nBut, Nordaling decided, for some reason, it was better to send me to London, Ontario and then to the University of Rochester; so, London was supposed to be for four months and Rochester for two.   At that time, there was a wonderful Chair of Family Medicine in the University of Western Ontario and it really deserves to be recognized as one of the pioneer departments; at that point in time, it was a two year post graduate program up there and you would do six months solid clinic, six months hospital, six months clinic, six months hospital.  London is between Toronto and Detroit, a nice town, and we were up there with Shawn for his first birthday while we were on the road.  We had our first dog and Peggy was just a trooper to put up with all that.  They had, up there, a much stronger tradition of general practice being respected throughout the country and the medical system.  They had, although there were certainly people who were fleeing from socialized medicine in Canada at the time; it was still already in a situation where the government in consultation with the medical community, the hospital directors, and so forth would decide, “Well, so here is the pot of money we have to spend on healthcare and how we are going to divide it up.”  So, I was really impressed with that.  It took me most of the four months that I was there to realize that I was working in the poorest part of the town, because you recognize when you’re in a poor part of town in the states; but at least up there, the poor part of town looked pretty nice. Peggy was juggling child and doggie....and then, we were to go off to Rochester where there had been one of the early staves of family medicine...who had left maybe a month before I got there.  I ran into someone years later who managed to recognize me and said, “Oh, you were the guy who just kind of sat there for several weeks in the University of Rochester Family Medicine Clinic” and I said, “Yes, indeed, I was.”  Maybe after about 4-5 weeks, we thought, “I’m not learning anything here”...the people are fairly nice, it’s nice to be back in the states for some reasons, and the people who were renting our house who were \n\nfriends just quit paying us; so, finances were tighter.  Nordaling originally had planned for me to work with a practice that he really respected back in Wisconsin for six months; so, I’d have six months of academia and six months of a model real world experience and then to come back and teach. While I was up there in Canada....as the story goes, Nordaling had gone to Tom Bruce at one point, I think probably while I was; before I went up on that Quicide Fellowship as I called it, and said, “ I really demand....ya-da....ya-da...ya-da” which didn’t go over very well.....But as the story goes, while I was up there in Canada, Nordaling went back to talk to Tom Bruce and said, “I demand....ya-da....ya-da....ya-da” and Tom Bruce said, “The second time anybody issues a demand like that; they’re out.”  So then, it really was chaos and I was up there in Canada thinking, “Well, are they going to keep paying me such as is?”...“Will I have a job when I get back?”....”What kind of place is it going to be; because, it has always been kind of struggling.”  When I get back, Ken Goss has been hired and there was another guy that was in competition, very over verbal to be able to be Chair, and either there was no chair or in some way maybe Ben Salzmann was kind of a victor ahead of him.  The guy that lost....\n\n                      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Dick Norton; Tom Brue and Dick Norton write about that in their book about rural health; they talk about that very time.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh; really?  I read the book....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It’s in there; I saw it.  In fact, I saw it last week.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok, well that’s good; it needs to be documented.  The AHEC system had just started while I was still a resident and they brought in the pediatrician......maybe, I’ll think of it before this is all over.  There was a Dean of the Medical School, as I understand it, who was very excited about the possibility of the AHEC system getting going.....Shory?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Dean Shory; yeah...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah; so, he was supposed to be the first AHEC director, but then he died; I think...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I don’t know...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Or something took him out of the picture; so then, it was that they were scrambling to get Roger Boast.  Roger Boast, a nice guy, like Ken Goss, a really nice guy, both had egos that they could trip over quite easily; bless their hearts.  We had a couple of people who left the Little Rock Residency when the Fort Smith Residency got started; it was the first one to get going and certainly always felt like competition between the AHEC effort and the department effort... because, there was competition between Boast and Goss that didn’t help the situation.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: It’s a shame, because I think it might’ve worked out differently if there had been possible cooperation......and to the credit of Tom Bruce.  He at least recognized that there were political \n\nreasons, as well as just for the good of the people of the state reasons, to get a stronger primary care effort going.  Southwestern, I think, worked out; they were affiliated with the John Peter Smith Program and so, you know, it was safely over there in Fort Worth. I had some classmates who went over there; Joe Stallings went there and did.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What was it like working with Ken Goss?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh.....pretty good.....\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How long was he Chairman?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Wow......so, I come back in the fall of ’77; actually, I came back and couldn’t go to that Wisconsin deal and that was fine because Peggy really needed to be back in our house.  So, they sent me out to Tom Worthen’s clinic in Jacksonville; Tom was a very good doctor and Rex Moore was in that practice and a very good doctor.  You know, I learned there and it was certainly nice to be working within a clinic and seeing things that were running well and seeing some things that weren’t...from the perspective of somebody who was a working doctor as opposed to just a student; that would’ve taken me into the spring of ’78.  At that time, I guess Ken had finally been appointed and there was an effort...everybody that was teaching in some capacity to try to hold the place together before it sank.  There was a case where I talked to Ken and said, “What if I work in this clinic and see if they will release me to come and teach here sooner rather than later”  which would’ve also relived them of having to pay me something.  So, I guess maybe I was out of that practice from 4 months instead of 6, or something like that.  Ken had his ideas of how he wanted things to work, but there was no discussion of strategy; I don’t know if he had a strategic concept...\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHow long did he stay?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: ’78....at some point, I think, he was chair.... and I think, he was there until ’89 or ’90.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So a good long time.....\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s what I thought.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, that was a big chunk of your young academic teaching life.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How did that work?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I had been there for several months and it was working ok; I kind of felt that it was held together with ...what’s the old joke, “Bailing wire and bubble gum.” But, we had some good, good, residents who were coming through and that certainly helped.  Arlo did a turn as the ER \n\nDirector and then, he came over to teach full time and some other people came in; but, it was too inbred to be ideal.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: By this time had Paul Wallach and the guys who had come...Tom Worthen taught for a while, Paul Wallach taught for a while, and Mildred Ward as there for a while...had they all pretty well gone by this time?.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Mildred was around for the first year.  Wallach, I think, left just about the time that you left. If Worthen had been teaching or actually been coming to campus, or the clinic, to reach; he wasn’t there when I was...\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He stopped before that time.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah... So, Ken brings in this person who was advertised to be from Harvard, just a very disruptive individual, as an MD factuality member; well, it turns out that he had worked in a primary care clinic that belonged to Harvard.  He brought from Massachusetts with him, the 16-year-old daughter of people who were his friends and patients, and they would have assignations in his office at the clinic; I just found that really repugnant. I didn’t.....I had not known Ken for very long and I thought, “You know, if this is what he sees as the future of this program”....and by that time, it was 1980 and I’d been teaching for close to two years.  Two of my residency mates who set up a practice in Sherwood said, “You know, you ought to come work with us” and....\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Who was that?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Roland Anderson and Sam ______ who had grown up in East Africa with Pakistani parents, went to med school in Pakistan, then went to DC for an internship, and came to join the residency program; he was a good guy.  We had one other foreign medical graduate while I was there and she was a really nice lady; everybody else was domestic and for the most part from Arkansas...not much success in being able to recruit in from elsewhere; but wonderful people this residency had.  Anyway, I just decided that I’d had....things weren’t looking good in the crystal ball and Roland and Sam wanted me to come; so, Ken agreed...I said, “what I’d like to do, I really enjoy teaching, but what I’d like to do is teach one day a week.  Instead of having a day off, I’ll come in and teach” and he thought that was ok.  I had to meet with Tom Bruce, because Tome Bruce thought I was just going to try to steal the patients away; I didn’t come right out and say, “Dr. Bruce, if you’re trying to make money as the family physician, you would not do it by stealing away the patients that are coming to the family medical center, but he agreed with that.  So, I really enjoyed the one day a week; I was being paid by the University and that was nice.  Then, I brought... I encouraged Roland and Sam to hire somebody who had just finishing the residency program, Kirk Riley...who it turns out was the only one who stayed with that clinic until he retired.  So, there were four of us, two of us were brand new and one person had just left the practice; it was doing well.  I was there for four years and I had put in sweat equity, fully \n\nvested with the clinic, and then, the AHEC Director of Pine Bluff contacts me and says, “Oh, I’d love for you to come down and be the residency director”....... \n\n           \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was it Tom Miller?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yes....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, I know....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: A wonderful guy...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: A wonderful guy and it was like, “Oh, my goodness.....well.....I’d always thought of how nice it would be to be a residency director” ....then, Ken Goss finds out about that and Tony had left; so, I’m struggling between Ken’s offer and ....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was Mark Caplin already down there?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No, but I don’t think it was....maybe, he was even a resident then.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Or was Kirk Watson still down there?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Did Watson go into private practice?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, he came into private practice with me in ’89 or ’90, somewhere along that time, and he’d been teaching in the program for like three years before he came and joined us.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh wow....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, we have all these connections.  \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, that makes it so much more fun.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And he’s my doctor...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah?..... Oh, that’s great......that’s great.  If I had it all to do over, Sam, I would’ve stayed in that practice and I would’ve taught one day a week.  My mother had said, “You don’t want to be a teacher at the University level, because there is so much bad politics” and Peggy has been working on me for decades to try to be less naive...  \n\n(All Laughing)....\n\nBut, I kept thinking, “Oh, the community of scholars” and “searching for the truth and parting that”...I was just so fired up about family medicine as the concept that I thought, “I want to do something really good for family medicine” and it wasn’t that I thought, “Oh, because I’m such a hot shot, I’ll be able to do it” it was just “I just love this concept” and when we were getting going....when family medicine was going and the academy of family medicine was getting \n\ngoing; there were all sorts of things that fit to that and I think that that was not my naiveté that family medicine was just really, really exciting.  I’ve got family docs that are not so good family docs, but what an opportunity to take better care of people and take care of their....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So, did you take the opportunity in Pine Bluff?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No.....I did not take the opportunity.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You stayed in the one day a week at the Med Center?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I stayed there and made it full time.  You know, it was like,”Ok, I can stay here and I can see people, but if I go back and teach again”..... and it looks like things are going to be better...”I can influence all these family physicians who can take care of a much larger group of people.”  Eventfully, it was the AHEC opportunity...and it was like, “Oh, I could have an influence on six different family practice residency programs and take care of a huge amount of people.”  If I could wind the clock back, I think, and had been much less naïve and I’d say, “I enjoy teaching one day a week.  I don’t have to be involved in all the crap that goes along with academia. What I would try to do is really model a practice and have med students rotate there; it may not have been “the” model, but at least “a model”....if I put my energy into that.”  But, I didn’t; I go back to teaching.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: And that was what year?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: That would’ve been in ’84; so, I was in Sherwood from ’80 to ’84.  I started out as the clinic director and before long, I was the residency director and did that for a number of years.  So, I’m Acting Chairman...in say 1989; I don’t think Goss was forced out, I think Goss said, “I’m going to take a sabbatical and then, I want to come back and I won’t be the chairman anymore.”  So, he goes off to South Africa to be a family medicine teacher there and when he comes back, they have picked a new Chair; I think he really regretted not pulling the chains of power, such as they are, in the departments anymore and I think wisely for him that he didn’t stay around much longer.\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Didn’t he die fairly soon after he left?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was it a long time?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, I stumbled across...I’d sent a letter to his widow and I stumbled across her reply to me...I keep too much paper; but, I want to say maybe it was late...maybe, it was 2005, 2006, or something like that.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok; so, it was a good long period....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Where did he go from here?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: He stayed here for a while and then, he had six kids; I think.  His story was that the world....the great; he didn’t call it, “the greatest generation” that came after Tom Brokaw’s book....but, if you survived WWII, then you and your spouse....most felt that it was kind of a need to have lots of children to replace those who were left in Europe or left in the Pacific.\n\n  \n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: So from the time you started teaching in ’78, when did you....have you retired from teaching or do you still teach?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: No, I’m retired.\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: When did you retire from teaching because I want to ask you a question about that timeframe?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: So, I was Acting Chair and Steven Spann was picked to replace Ken Goss.  I saw, being the acting Chair, to try to hold things together before they fall apart and then, we get a better leader in.  It was too soon for me; I didn’t want to be the real Chair at that time....maybe at some point, but not now.  Spann went on to be the Family Medicine Chair at Galveston, the Family Medicine Chair at Baylor, and now is the Dean of yet another medical school; the University of Houston is now having a medical school.  So, it will be the third medical school right there in Houston.  He is kind of an unusual guy, but obviously very bright and a real leader of medicine; but, he had gone to I. Dod Wilson and said, “This is what I need to be able to build a decent department” and he said, “I’m not going to give you that money.”  So, I think, word gets out that that was the way that Steven Spann was treated, who has a really good reputation, and I. Dod picks Jeffery Goldsmith from California.....who I think probably has a personality disorder; although, I wish the very best for he and his wife...    \n\n(Laughing)...\n\nArlo had a wonderful ability to just kind of roll along with whoever was brought into the department and pretty much ignored them, I think.....not Steve Strum.  Not Steve Strum; he just couldn’t handle the people who were rubbing him constantly the wrong way.  In the midst of trying to decide what to do, Charles Cranford is the AHEC Director, who is a dentist and I always felt real uncomfortable about that, said, “Can I get you to come and work part-time as a physician within AHEC Central and, you know, you can help with the residency accreditation and aIl this type of stuff” ....“All right, I’ll get at least one foot out of here” and then, I gradually just moved until I was full time with.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Now wait a minute; that is the first time I’ve heard you say that, “That will be my first step to just get myself out of here”....... (Laughing).....You were getting tired of it.\n\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, that’s the first time I’ve heard you say that.  I’m not trying to pin you down and make you say something you don’t want to say...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh, no....that’s absolutely true.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, what year are we talking about here when this happened?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Maybe, it’s ’92.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, so from ‘78 to ’92; we’ve got about a 14 year span there.  How was teaching residents changing during that time frame?  The actual time you spent with them....the techniques you taught them....how you taught them to practice family medicine.  \n\n \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Through accreditation requirements; so, the Accreditation Council for graduate medical education as well as at that time what I saw as a really nice _____ within family medicine to teach in new and make old better ways.  Then, there was both the push of the requirements and the pull of can we teach better; I regret that as, you know, someone who was certainly active in the department here for some time, that we couldn’t be more at the forefront of teaching billing and coding, the practice of management....\n\n   \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Why couldn’t you do that?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: We didn’t know how to do it.  Plus having been director of the clinic for two _____, it was not a good laboratory; that’s not pointing my finger at anybody, it was just really hard to try to say, “Let’s see the number of patients that are even required by the ACG” while you’re just trying to keep you head above water with the number of patients that are coming in and that type of thing.  So, you know, I think we did a pretty good job about saying, “Oh, this is how this person’s blood pressure is doing” or “how we’re encouraging them to lose weight” or something like that; but, I never felt that we were really good about saying, ”Now you are really on top of things when you go out and practice.  You can teach your partners, if you’re going to have partners, something about better coding.\n\n   \n\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: It was during this time frame, the mid ‘70s to mid ‘90s, that the number of women accepted into medical school increased.  By 2000, they were up to about 50% of the class; did you see the same thing happen in teaching?  A significant number of women in training that you weren’t seeing earlier?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I think there was a pretty close parallel.  When I was a resident, it was unusual.  In my medical school class, there were 8 women out of 110; but then, I think that this residency program in Little Rock, as well as family medicine as a whole, as I understand it has pretty well followed the curve up to about 50%.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I don’t mean to sound sexist; every time I say something like that, I sound sexist.  But do you think the increase in number of women in the teaching program changed the nature of the program?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I think for the better.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Ok, in what way?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, a different perspective and not that I see that a woman coming into a teaching role as a family practice teacher is going to respond in this particular way and circumstances, but I think it just brought in different points of view and different life experiences and that’s a good thing.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: We try to keep in mind that there should be a balance between people who has had a real world experience and those who didn’t; but, I think also just because there would be a different perspective there.  When I had, you know, the little Quayside fellowship, I got a little bit; but not as much as I got in those four years of practice basically full time at Sherwood.  Then to have women on the faculty who had real world experience and to have people who had not done all their training right there in Little Rock was good.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: At some point during this process, I know the numbers are there, you got involved in the Arkansas Academy of family Physicians and became President in July of ‘93.  I’d like for you to talk a little bit about the major issues that faced the Academy during your time frame; if you remember them, if not I have notes to remind you.  Here are some things that I came up with by looking through the minutes:  Managed care and Medicaid; that was a big that occurred...   Nurse Practitioners and the training of nurse practitioners making the shift from physicians training nurse practitioners to nurses training nurse practitioners...osteopaths and their ability to practice medicine in Arkansas...the changes in continuing post-graduate education and the programs that were presented to physicians out in the state;  that seemed to be one of your interests/one of your committees that you where head of...OB privileges and hospital privileges in general; any willing provider was the big issue in the early ‘90s to ’93....the availability of physicians and physicians with nurse practitioners in medically underserved areas.  You also had some dealings with Dr. Stead and the TB clinics that he was doing and there were a number of family doctors, like Dr. Collins in Forrest City; people who were providing assistance to any of those issues...do any of those issues; I mean, they all ring a bell for all of us....anybody who was practicing medicine....but, do any of those issues ring a bell with you about your year as President/or being on the board either before or afterwards? \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Uh, if I can take it in layers?.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: You can do it anyway you want to...  \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok; one thing I can remember discussing with Carla was the desire to have functional committees within the Arkansas Academy and I think it probably still continues to be an issue.\n\n        \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Was Tom Honeycutt still around at that time?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yes.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: He was still there and that dominating force who was there all the time.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, I wouldn’t choose dominating; he was a very influential source and I expect if Carla has discussed that at all with you, she saw herself as coming in ...mid ‘70s; maybe....\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: She came in ’84...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Oh, ok; and just from banking and just not knowing anything; Tom Honeycutt benignly came in and devoted a whole lot of time in getting her up to speed.  So, Tom would certainly attend meetings for a long period of time and you know sometimes would say, “Well; way back when” and “this is the way did it” and stuff; but I always thought that it was not with an expectation or that he would be really disappointed if we didn’t follow through on that.  But how do you get a membership-based organization of people who are really busy to have a functional way to say, “Well, there is something between the guy/gal out there in the trenches of family medicine who is not coming to the board meetings and maybe does/doesn’t come to the CME meetings and the person who is the President/President elect/past President”....Carla could kind of make dates and decisions; I couldn’t figure it out and I don’t know that they’ve figured it out.  I still don’t know; “Oh well, if I was president today, this is how I’d do it and it would work.”\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you enjoy your time....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Being on the board and working as President... \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Because, that was right in the middle and there were lots of things going on within the residency program.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah.....yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Did you ever feel as a teacher or as somebody directly involved, because when I looked at the board minutes and all the notes going from the beginning....over, and over, and over again....there were times when it appears that the Academy felt like it needed to be the final say-so; they needed to say, “You do this” ......and then, the residency didn’t do it. (Laughing)...  There were some discussions about “you should do this” or they’d call Tom Bruce and he’d come over and talk to them; they’d tell him what their demands were and what they...kind of like what you said, “make this demand twice and you’re gone.”\n\n(Both laughing)\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...  When I was in the first year of residency, it was certainly my impression...and I think this is true..we were the only residency in the state at the time and the Arkansas Academy was requesting a resident representative to come to the board.  I raised my hand along with one other guy and I managed, it was one of the few elections that I had won, a true election; but, I managed to get into that slot.  I don’t remember coming in as a board member that that was going on at that time, but I don’t doubt at all that that may well have been a year or just  six months before I got into that position. Gosh; so, I was in private practice from ’80 to ’84 and I do think that it was an incredible privilege for me to be able to practice in what I think is the tail-end of the golden age of the practicing physician.  In those years collectively, I think physicians had significant influences on hospitals and I think it is virtually nothing now; unless, you are bringing in such volume of surgical business that they’ve got to listen to you.\n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What about the privilege issue; the OB privileges and surgical privileges?  That was continuing to be a problem when you were President; I mean, it had already started long...well, it started before the end of WWII, but it really revved up and was still an issue that was talked a lot about.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah and still you know somebody will say, “I’m a complete family physician because I do surgery and I do OB” but I think the reality is that that is more and more unusual; so, even when I was a resident and you know a facility remember, most of our residents would say, “I’m struggling to get these required deliveries in; I’ll do it because I have to do it, but I don’t intend on doing any surgery or obstetrics when I get out into practice.”  There certainly were some folks that finished up that residency and did go on to deliver; more power to them and more power to people like Joe Stallings who is an advocate of family medicine delivery and delivery privileges ever since.  I’ve always been real with being pretty cautious and nervous and then thinking, “Would I be doing the best job that this person could get if I was the one delivering the baby or doing the surgery” and so, it was easy for me to say, “No...no...no...” and here I am in an urban area; so.  There are neurosurgeons around and....\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So when did you start to think about retiring from your teaching in the family practice residency program and those types of things?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah; so, Charles Cranford had been the AHEC director for a long time; I’m not sure exactly the year that he came in, but in 2008, he steps out of that position.  They hold, you know, he is the director of dental education efforts on campus and stuff like that; so, he had a good golden parachute.  Then, they do a search and through a search firm, as I understand it, they end up with two candidates; one is a family physician and the other one is, I think, a \n\npsychologist.  I had not been doing clinical practice when I made the complete jump to the AHEC, because there was no way I’d be able to see any patients from here in Little Rock; I miss that, but I still felt that you know my having some ability, as I saw it, to try to help the faculty, all the different AHEC programs, and doing public education stuff.  Shortly after 9-11, there were all sorts of focus on preparedness for terrorists and stuff like that and I was coordinating those educational efforts with EMS, fire departments, schools and everything; it was an exciting thing to be in and so, I wasn’t bored; I just missed the clinical part of it.  At any rate, they hire Mingle as the new AHEC director; he was the family physician who came from the University of St....the Catholic medical school in St. Louis; I’m blocking in the name of it now.  But, he was another person who I think probably had a personality disorder; most family physicians are really nice guys and ....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Right, just normal people....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Just normal people...this place, especially under I. Dod, just ...not a big fan of I. Dod and maybe there is the old added issues of trying to hire people that remind you of yourself; maybe, just maybe...but, he was something else.  I was only there for a few months and he said, “I’m eliminating your position; now, you might be able to find a job teaching in Texarkana or Pine Bluff, but there is no place for you on campus.  You do have tenure; but if you bring or try to play that card, I will simply go to the Board of Trustees at the University of Arkansas and say that this is a financial emergency and that is why we need to eliminate your job.” So, I was scrambling and threw out some appeals, but finally did land a job where I could start working at primary care at the North Little Rock VA in July of 2008.  Fortunately, you know I could stay on campus and have a salary and try to bring things to a conclusion that I have been working on for the last 4-5 months or whatever and then went to the VA.  I didn’t expect it to be “Shangri-La,” but I was really disappointed with what I saw.  It was great to be back in the trenches, I liked the people that I worked with, I liked, gosh, 98% of the people; I mean, nice old vets...occasionally somebody came through that you just hated to see....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah...but, that is true everywhere.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, that is true everywhere....but, they had a system that was just twisting things all around; like it’s good to say that there should be clinical parameters for diabetes control based on A1-C levels and it is good to say that, you know, blood pressures should not run above a certain level, and stuff like that; but where it became twisted within the VA, and it was a real education for me, was that even when they started out, I think, saying, “Well, get that AI-C down to 7 or lower” and then after a few years the experts said, “He is just having too many hypoglycemic  spells and there is no particular advantage; let’s go for 7.5”....fewer hypoglycemic spells and probably still giving the vast majority of the benefit, but the VA says, “It’s 7.0 and we’re tracking everybody’s patients”....that translates to, “We’ll give you a grey card”...but, it particularly  \n\ntranslates to “the bonuses of the bosses.” How are you supposed to take blood pressures, well you see them for five minutes and then they are not anxious anymore and relaxed and stuff like that; so, where does that take place?  But on the other hand, I would suspect that when you were practicing, it was like, “Oh my gosh, look at this blood pressure; let’s let them sit here for a few minutes to see if it will come down.”  At the VA, it was just run in and run out, and so, you’d have some of these people who, bless their hearts, were veterans of WWII and “well, just keep giving them medicine until you get it down to levels where their bones are comfortable.\n\n                \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Or they couldn’t stand up.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah....yeah or they fall, break their hip, have a stroke, or something like that. So, I eventually got to the point where I just had this red....the brain finally kicked in and I said, “I’m about 3 months from waking up at 4am in the morning wondering who is going to die because of the quality of care that I’m delivering out here; I’ve got to get out of here.”  Your friend and mine, Carla Coleman; I mentioned my plight to her and she called me at one point and said, “You know, they are advertising for physicians with social security disability” and so, I started at the VA in July of 2008 and left there in November of 2009.  Then, I was 10 years in a very clinical situation with social security disability and retired from there basically at Thanksgiving in 2019. \n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What’s E-Doc?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: E-Doc....E-Doc...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I saw that on your resume.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah...So, you know, UAMS in keeping up with all the other medical centers in “how can we raise money?” and I know that is a struggle and I respect the people who are trying to figure out how to do that; although, I think education has suffered tremendously...but, they had a business incubator even back in...I guess starting back in the late ‘80s or something like that; Charles Smith, a family doctor but who was never active with other family doctors in the state, was a hospital medical director and one of his patients was Charles.....maybe, I’ll think of it...but, he was head of Axiom.  Axiom had moved from Conway to having its headquarters here and it had a lot of people and was going great guns. He gave Charles Smith the credit that he thought, “Well, one way that you might lower employee medical costs when you are self-funded in the company would be basically through education.”  Email was coming along great guns about then and so, Charlie starts it out for himself ; the head of Axiom said, “Well ok, I’ll pay you x-numbers per month for all of my employees to have the ability to write an email question and you, Charlie Smith, will read that and get back to them within at least 24-hours.”  I was the second doc brought in by Charlie Smith; so, goodness knows that there are all sorts of tele-health out there now, but the nice part and the real part of E-Doc that I’m working with is that there is no doctor/patient relationship. So, there is no need for me to carry malpractice insurance; it is receiving a question....being able to respond, not at the moment and be on like 2\n\n24 hours call, but synchronously to be able to get back with them and say, “Well, here’s what I’d do about this pain that you are having in your leg”.....it maybe “So, you need to go to the emergency room” or you know, “it sounds like it maybe this or maybe that” and “what are you trying now, you might try this or that” or “send me a picture of the rash” ...this type of thing; so it makes me continue to think like a doc, which I love, and it be able to educate, which I love...\n\n     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: How much do you work at it?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I think it’s about 10% and maybe even a little bit less than that here lately; a year ago when the pandemic was rolling and going, it felt on the two days a week when I was receiving all the initial stuff, it was like a full time job....but now, it’s 10%.  There was some money in there and I put sweat equity into that at first; so, I’m a stock holder in that for what it’s worth.  But, it’s been great and I really think Charlie for letting me do that; I think even he through E-Doc America has the Call-A-Doc where you can get a prescription, but he’s never asked me to do that and I don’t want to do it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That would be hard.  To me, that would be hard; very hard.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah and then, boy, you’ve got a doctor/patient relationship formed there and that means you could get sued and ya-da...ya-da...ya-da.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: So you’ve been in family medicine almost since the inception of the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians....I mean, the American Academy of Family Physicians....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah, not the Arkansas Academy of General Practice....\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: No, no, no; not the General Practice...not that first 40 years....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: But...I would be involved in the Academy of Family Physicians; yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: What do you think the future is for family physicians?\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Sam, I’m really scared.  I ran quite unsuccessfully to be on the Board of the American Academy of Family Physicians in 2009; it’s another case of being naïve and reading tea leaves vey wrong, but my whole platform was to say, “We are the only specialty that could become extinct.”  The pediatricians will still provide primary care, the internists could if they wanted to, and then you have all the specialties and sub-specialties...are we going to have a left knee surgeon and a right kidney nephrologists and this type of thing?  There is always going to be a need for them, but we’ve got to be aware that the way things are going, even 10 years ago, is that decisions are not being made by health providers, its being made by the politicians and by the people making the big bucks; the big hospital chain and the health insurance companies.  The middle levels are going to be saying, “We can do it and we can do it cheaper” ...so, what do you need these family doctors for?  I think it’s time to be true and I made a pitch, I was on the American Academy of Family Physicians commission on health of the public and science shortly before I ran for that job and so, I at least had the privilege of throwing my opinions out there for part of the academy leadership to listen to and I said, “what we need to do in education, even if it does mean looking towards a 4 year residency, is to make the family physician somebody who is very well trained to be able to direct a healthcare team, to be able to have principals of public health so that  they can look at population health and not for just the individual in the family, to have a much more robust idea about management of organizations, so that the money people could say, “Well, ok; you’re making a pretty good argument and you’ve got some figures to back it up” ..to say that if you got that person on the head of a little bitty primary care pyramid, then that is going to be better than somebody who would be a PA or a nurse practitioner.  But now, you know, it’s from the last legislative secession certainly that it’s nurse practitioners, by legislative fiats, that should be head of primary care teams with the doctors working under them; if there is a need for any doctor to be working under them.  I really continue to be scared of that and I mean just out of real love for family medicine; I hate that that is a possibility and I admit to having a paranoid streak and maybe that is taking over, but I haven’t changed my mind in the last 10 years that that is not a possibility.\n\n      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Is there anything else that you would like to add; I’ve about exhausted you here, but is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven’t covered?  I have two more questions that I want to ask at the very end.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: But if you have other things you would like to include, go ahead.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: I have two children.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s right; we talked about Shawn, but we didn’t get to the other child.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Yeah...yeah; Shawn is a lawyer and he has three children.  He is married to a psychiatrist and when she was a freshman....they had both gone to Hendrix and she did one year at the social work school at ULAR and then said that she wanted to go to medical school.  When she gets into medical school, I said, “Oh...oh...oh...oh, at least look at family medicine and let me send the two of you to Kansas City for the student resident deal, which they graciously went on. It was not her cup of tea and that’s fine, but eventually found out that they spent at least part of the time at the casino on the river in Kansas City.  He was a deputy prosecuting attorney for Pulaski County there for a while, then he was with the attorney general’s office, and then just this year, he has gone to be the deputy prosecuting attorney for Garland County with three kids and the oldest one starting Catholic High next year.  Colleen is two years younger and I intentionally never counted up to see how many years it took her to get her degree; but, she did.  She started at Hendrix and ended up at UALR and has a psychology degree.  I have learned that with a Masters in psychology, you can do somethings; but with a doctorate, you can do a lot more things.  At a bachelor’s level, you can find basically a minimum wage job and she has stalled.  \n\nBut, Peggy has really helped me to grow old and I know that we’ve talked about her working on my naiveté and this and that; she had been both tolerant, but nudging in ways that I needed to be nudged.\n\n  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Alright, I have two other questions that I would like to pose to both of you; now remember.....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Come on over here....\n\n \n\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That would be nice for you to go over and sit with him; that would be good to have that in this situation and I think you will see why in just a minute.\n\nOne of the purposes of these recordings is so that you can give it to your grandkids and you’re your great grandchildren; that’s what it’s for.  I will make two DVD copies, which most people don’t have DVDs anymore, but you will have two.  You will have a thumb drive with the video on the thumb drive plus an E-copy of the transcript.  Plus, I will give you a paper copy of the transcript and you can make as many copies of them as you want to.  But, these are designed for your family and for you and if you have a public library and want to public archive them somewhere else; I’m going to archive them in 3-4 different places...the American Academy of Family Physicians in Kansas City, the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians in Bentonville, and at the Historical Research Center and these will go under “For Every Family a Family Doctor”.  \n\nBy the way, I wanted to tell you one other thing; R. B. Robbins....you may remember him, he was one of the original 5 or 6  originators of the Arkansas Academy of General Practice and a physician from Camden...using a football metaphor in 1948...\n\nDr. Steve Strode: That’s when the AAGP started.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Yeah, that’s right.  He, using the football metaphor, said, “The general practitioner is the quarterback of the football team.”   What he didn’t say and would’ve said 25 years later if he was still around is, “In 25 years, the general practitioner is still the quarterback of the football ram, but somebody else is calling the plays.”  (Laughing)....And that is what you were saying a couple of minutes ago.\n\nOk the two questions that I want to pose to both of you, you can either both answer or one of you can answer it. In 50 years from now, you are going to be a picture on the wall and somebody is going to say, “Who is that old man?” or “who is that old woman up there in that picture?”  What do you want them to know about you as individuals or as a couple?    \n\n Peggy Strode: I don’t want me to be first.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Ok; I would hope that integrity is something that is very important to you or that you would embrace.  So many times success is measured in wealth, power, or influence and if that is what you are pursuing, you will never have enough of any of that.  In so many instances in this world, which is a tough place and I expect that it will be tough 50 years from now if not tougher, you would have the temptation to give up your integrity or walk away from your integrity rather than maintain it.  Faith is important; faith is important in yourself, your family, and in God.  Don’t read just snip-its of the Bible, but read the whole thing and be a student; you can live without religion, but your life would be so, so, so much richer with it.  Marriage is hard work; marriage will come with times where you think, “this guy is acting like someone entirely different that the one I married” and you can act on that and maybe never get married or have a whole series of marriages....but if you invest yourself in someone that you love and feel is your best friend, then it’s a wonderful, wonderful, adventure that you will have.  My mother was nice enough to encourage me to go into a career where I would embrace the career and I hope that that is something that you can do.  I understand that there is a tradition....King Solomon, when he was discouraged, asked his advisers what he could tell himself when things were really bad to help him do better and his advisors went to a goldsmith; the goldsmith was the one whose idea was to put on the ring, “And this too shall pass.”\n\nPeggy Strode: So, you want to know what I want them to know about me?\n\n    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s correct...\n\nPeggy Strode: And what I want them to know about our marriage...?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: That’s right.\n\nPeggy Strode: Ok, for one thing; did he mention that the other grandchildren....I mean, if this is going to go to grandchildren/ great grandchildren...you mentioned that Shawn and Natalie had three kids?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: Uh huh....\n\nPeggy Strode: Ok, I just wanted to mention it because I didn’t hear that out there and I don’t want to leave anybody out.\n\nDr. Steve Strode: With one going to Catholic and the other two in Immaculate Conception, which is Catholic’s Elementary; K-8 school.\n\nPeggy Strode: Did you mention Layla?\n\n(Gasp)...\n\nOk, we have a granddaughter through Colleen’s relationship and her name is Layla; she is 15 and the same age as the twins.  I just wanted to get them in and not leave anybody out.  What do I want them to know about me; it’s really hard.  I think my greatest joy was raising Shawn and Colleen; it was so fun and I was so involved.  I also enjoyed working as a nurse as an ultrasound tech.  I loved baking and I loved dabbling and learning new things.  I dabbled in photography and very little....\n\nDr. Steve Strode: Calligraphy...\n\n\nPeggy Strode: Calligraphy is my latest thing that I started during the pandemic.  So, I’ve enjoyed learning new things and don’t .....You know, I was always afraid that I couldn’t do anything good enough and so, I would hope that my children and my children’s children would be able to enjoy learning and not be afraid to pick anything up. Our marriage; if I could write a book about how to pick a spouse, I would say.....our marriage has worked out great and we worked hard at it; but, it has been a learning experience and I think that we were so lucky that it did work out well and that we did find someone suitable.... but, I would ask anybody that was going to pick a mate to know them really well and know things that I didn’t know until after we got married....which worked out great for us...but, yeah; I would just want  them to know somebody.  I thought about writing a book about “Everything I think you should know about your mate before you marry.”  \n\nDr. Steve Strode: Well, that’s something else you take up.\n\nPeggy Strode: I’m not doing that.\n\n(Laughing)....\n\nI thought about it....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: I thank the two of you for inviting me into your home.  I have thoroughly enjoyed it; it’s been very interesting as I didn’t know most of these things about you guys.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/99124/file/196851#t=0.0,11345.56757"}]}]}]}