{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/zg6g15vp91/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Les Anderson"]},"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":["2021-06-26 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas","family doctors","rural family medicine","physicians","veteran","Air National Guard","missile silo"]}},{"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/000/194/235/small/Anderson_Les%286-26-2021%29.mp4_1687895217.jpg?1687895219","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Anderson__Les_(6-26-2021).mp4"]},"duration":6247.77487,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/194/235/small/Anderson_Les%286-26-2021%29.mp4_1687895217.jpg?1687895219","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/194/235/original/Anderson__Les_%286-26-2021%29.mp4?1687895198","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6247.77487,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235/transcript/45031","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Dr. Les Anderson interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235/transcript/45031/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eDr. Sam Taggart:\u003c/strong\u003e Good evening, my name is Dr. Sam Taggart and today we are in the home of Dr. Les Anderson of Lonoke, Arkansas.  This interview today is to some extent about the Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians, but mainly it is about him, his family, his practice, where he grew up, and the place of his.....he is one of the preverbal folks who grew up somewhere, went back there to practice, and has stayed there the rest of his life; a model that can easily be.....if they could find a way to make sure that everybody did this, there wouldn’t be a problem.  Now Les, 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 what you remember.    \n\nDr. Les Anderson: I was actually born in Blytheville, Arkansas.  My dad was in the Army Air Core up there and he was an instructor of the B-25s in Blytheville right after they opened the base.  He and Governor Beaty’s son, Frank Beaty, were the two instructors assigned for Blytheville, Arkansas when they opened it and they went in and built the base from a cotton field up.\n\n \n\nHuh...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They started out laying just metal strips on the ground to bringing B-25s in that they shipped in tents.  Nobody knew how to put up a tent and my dad said, “I know how to put up a tent. I used to have a portable roller rink in North Mississippi and we would go around every Friday and Saturday nights and set up this roller rink up under a tent and change people to skate.  I’ll show you how to put that up.”  They named him “Omar, the tent mate.”\n\n(Laughing)....    \n\nMy mother was teaching junior high school English in Blytheville at that time.\n\n \n\nNow were they already from Lonoke?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, my mother......\n\n \n\nThey weren’t from Lonoke; ok.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Dad was from Yazoo.....actually, dad was born in Henderson County, Tennessee in a little community called Law just west of Lexington, Tennessee...between Lexington and Jackson, Tennessee.  His dad was a merchant and ran a saw mill; you know they had a lot of things going and they farmed a little bit. He was born there and then, they moved to Belfort and back to Yazoo City, which is where he actually grew up, and so, a lot of his family still lives in Yazoo City.  Mother was from Conway and my grandmother was a music teacher at Arkansas StateTeacher’s College and my grandfather on my mother’s side was a grocer; he owned a little mom and pop grocery store there in Conway for years until he got to where he was ...\n\n \n\nWhat was the name of it?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: R.C. Neal Grocery; his name was Roy Neal and it was R.C. Neal Grocery.  I can remember going up there and staying with my grandparents in Conway when my dad was deployed to the south part of the United States to train on a new air plane that they wanted to send to the Pacific and he was there when they dropped the bomb and the war was over. So, he came back and he and his brothers started buying up old Army Surplus equipment that had been in stockpiles in North Mississippi.  They got the idea that maybe you could sell bait; they saw all these minnows in the streams and were damming these ponds up to contain them and so, they started selling fish, the bait fish.  That is how the bait minnow industry got started with he and his brothers doing that.  They would drive to Missouri to an established hatchery up there, get the bait, bring it back, and deliver it to the bait shops on the way back to Yazoo City. My first remembrances of Yazoo City was all my cousins down there; there were like 9 of us and we were all about four years of each other and we played and had a good time in the hill country out there north of Yazoo City.  We had nothing, pretty much.  My closest friend south of me was a black family and we all played together.  Mother and dad went out to eat and they’d take us down to the black family and you know, they would keep us until they got back.  We played with them, slept with them, and they’d come up and stay with us; you know, it was.....I had......racism was not a term in that part of Mississippi at that time.\n\n \n\nRight...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: But, we moved from there to Memphis when I was six and my dad and his brothers bought a bait shop up there, sporting good /bait shop, and started selling bait there off of Bellevue Avenue south Memphis and I started school at Whitehaven Elementary. \n\n \n\nI was going to say, “How old were you when this happened?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Six; I started school at Whitehaven Elementary and went from September to April at Whitehaven and then, dad and his brothers bought the land over here and started a fish farm; so, we moved to Lonoke in 1951 and I didn’t finish the first grade.  When we got over here, they were just 4 weeks of being out of school and so, we went to the school and talked to the principle and superintendent and they said, “No, you don’t need to put him in school for 4 weeks” and so, I thought “well, I’m in the second grade before next year.” So, I kept telling everybody....\n\n \n\n \n\nThey can’t get away with that now I don’t think.\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, they couldn’t; but, I keep telling everybody that I didn’t finish the first grade.  But, I went to school here and graduated from Lonoke in 1962. I went to the Arkansas State Teacher’s College....\n\n \n\nI’m going to back you up a little bit, ok, because I want to know more about your childhood; I really enjoy this part of it a lot.  Tell me about those first few years of your life.  Were you happy and did you have a good time?  Who did you play with?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Oh gosh, yeah; in Mississippi when it was just the cousins and neighbors to play with, we were kind of like a band of roaming vandals, for the lack of a better term.  If something went missing or was broken, they knew who to come look for; it was one of us.  The house we lived in was backed up on a gully and if you don’t know what a gully is, it is a big wash in the hill country of Mississippi that is all sand.  So, we would dig caves in the gully, go down into the pasture where granddaddy had some cows, and I had some pigs and we’d go down there and play with them.  We had an incident one time where there were two of us going down to pick apples in the pasture and we didn’t know that granddaddy’s bull was in the pasture; we didn’t see him and normally, he was put up. So, we were walking down the fence row headed to the apple tree and here comes this black gentleman who worked for my granddaddy who grabbed us both up under the arms and jumps the fence with us; then, the bull goes by.  He says, “You boys don’t need to be down here when the bull’s out” and I said, “I think you are right.”   (Laughing)....But, we didn’t pick any apples that day.\n\n \n\nDid you have brothers and sisters?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I had one brother.\n\n \n\nHow old was he compared to you?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: He was three years younger.\n\n    \n\n \n\nWere you close?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Oh yeah; I mean, he lives here and we’ve always....\n\n \n\nOh that’s right; you said he runs the ______ business.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right; so, his kids and my kids grew up together and now, our grandkids are growing up together and so, it’s......\n\n \n\nWas your family religious?\n\n Dr. Les Anderson: Yes, very; my great grandfather on my mother’s side was a Methodist minister and my grandmother scripted me to be a minster, but it didn’t really fit me very well..... (Laughing)...  \n\n(Laughing)....\n\nThen she said, “If you don’t want to be a minister, why don’t you be a doctor?” and I said, “Well, I’m not sure that I want to do that either.”  But, I think...they all wanted me to be one or the other.\n\n \n\n \n\nWhere did your family come from?  Obviously, you came from Mississippi to here.....from Mississippi to Memphis and then to here or at Blytheville.....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right.\n\n \n\nEnglish, Irish, Scotch, German?  It looks like there are a lot of Germans around Lonoke.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Ok; there are a lot of Germans.  My grandmother Anderson was a “Busch” and she was a second generation immigrant of Germany. The Anderson side of the family; we were in Ireland three to four years ago and got to go to the Mellen Center for Migration Studies.  If you ever want to look up something really, really, neat...log into their website; they have probably the most resources of the western European cultural.....\n\n     \n\n  \n\nThat is the one right outside of......that’s cove right outside of Cork?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah.\n\n \n\nYeah; yeah, I have been there.  That is a neat place...a wonderful place.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: So, I read and made the tour of the reconstructed village there, you know, and we went up to the center.  We got a dose to start with and gave them our family names and our sir names and we checked.....the first Anderson that we could find who came to the United States was one of Oba Forbs’ guards when he opened a penal colony in Georgia.  The name “William Anderson” or “W.L.”....William Lee, they alternated; there was a William and the next generation was Lee...then William and next generation ...we found a William Lee Anderson and so, we are pretty sure that he is kind of the start of that side of the Anderson family.  The Busch side, I couldn’t do much with it; it kind of dried up sometime in the early...\n\n         \n\n \n\nDid they change the name when they came this way from Busch to Bush?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah, some of them did and some of them didn’t.  You know, we have Bush’s and Busch’s that are related; so yeah that did happen, particularly those that came after WWI.\n\n \n\nWe have three families of Richey in Benton and they all spell their name differently; but, they are the same family.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah.....yeah.\n\n  \n\nThe same identical family....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah and you know that is kind of odd that we run into that.  My mother’s side of the family; we actually had one of the ...he was a history professor at Purdue and he wrote the book called, “The Lucy.”  My grandmother’s name was “Lucy” and her grandfather was the minister, “William Banister Lucy” and they were from Paducah Kentucky.  He was a circuit rider preacher for northern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.\n\n \n\n \n\nMethodist or Presbyterian...?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Methodist, he was Methodist; yes.  So, her family was from Paducah and the “Lucy” side of the family, they were able to trace it back to the 1200s.  There was a guy named Henry Deluce who came across during the Norman invasion of England and he settled, after the war, in Southern England.  He had a manor house, which is now ran by the British government as a historical site; called “The Charlicote” and that is the Lucy family homestead there.  They changed their name from “Deluce” to “Lucy.”  My grandfather “Neal”, we had trouble finding....my grandfather on my mother’s side was named “Neal”....well basically, it’s Irish; but, the records from most of the Irish culture back through then and then studying millions....kind of like Neal, back Neal...we found three different spellings and then you get into the_____  and this kind of thing, but they all basically go back to the same clan back in the early times...but, it is a really tough name to trace.\n\n    \n\n \n\nMy oldest son loves......he is an anthropologist and he loves genealogy. What he has discovered about our family is that we were mercenaries; no matter where we went and no matter what we did, the “Taggart” family was mercenaries.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah....\n\n \n\n..... (Laughing)....We weren’t good farmers and we weren’t good.......(Laughing)...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah....well, you know, that is just the way it was back then.  We were in Trenton, Tennessee last...well this week...I went over there to testify in a malpractice trial against a doctor, you know to defend him.  I went over there at the request of his attorney and so, we were in that trial and while we were waiting, I got to wandering around the court house.  There were like four Andersons......Trenton is just north of where all my Anderson kin was and so, we found these plaques and one was a county judge, one was a confederate soldier who they had him wandering out there to him......so, it was really kind of interesting.  I still have relatives in Pine Bluff, Tennessee and Jackson, Tennessee and Lyle and Lexington; any Anderson in that part of Tennessee is probably related to me.\n\n  \n\n \n\nI don’t know why I’m asking you this question; I guess just because of Jackson, Tennessee and all that...did you have any Native American blood kin that you know of? \n\nDr. Les Anderson: We have; here again this goes back to the Neal side of the family that we don’t....supposedly, my granddaddy’s father married an Indian lady.....no, my great grandfather that married an Indian lady.  We don’t have any proof of that and there are no records that date back to that.  Then on the Lucy side of the family, there was supposedly a marriage between a Cherokee lady and one of the Lucy clan; so...but, you know, I don’t have any proof of any of that and this is here-say that was passed down through tradition...oral tradition through the.......\n\n \n\nSure.......now, you mentioned that your grandmother had decided what you were going to do at a very young age; tell me a little bit about people in your early years before you went to school and in  elementary school that had a big impact on you: family members, preachers, and those kind of things.\n\n   \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Ok; uh, I guess probably...I had an uncle who was a family practice doctor in Fort Worth, Texas and a cousin, Dennis Lucy, who is a professor at UAMS.\n\n     \n\n \n\nYeah.....and he is kin how?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: He and I are second cousins; his daddy and my grandmother are brother and sister.  So, he had a big influence on me.  In high school.....\n\n \n\nHe is probably 15-20 years older than you?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: He is exactly 10....no, 11 years older. Then, I had a science teacher in high school, Jack Dobson, who was a football coach and science teacher back then...it was...\n\n  \n\n \n\nHere in Lonoke?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Here in Lonoke, yes...he left school, left the teaching position, and went to Med School. He and I kept in touch over the time he was in med school and actually went into practice over in Fordyce for a while with his dad. But, he had a great influence on me because he kept saying, “You need to do this” and “You need to do that”.......first he said, “You need to teach science” and then he said, “No, you need to go to Med school”.....I think he talked me into going to college even sometimes ..... (Laughing)   \n\n \n\nWhen you were a kid...again in the early years, did you think you family as being poor, middle class, or well off?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, when came to Lonoke, we were basically kind of middle class.....you know, we didn’t have a lot of assets and we borrowed a lot of money to build the farm out here.  Of course, the two banks in town at the time wouldn’t loan to us as it was a risky business and no one has ever done this...you know, “We don’t think you’re a good risk for a loan.” So, he went to the First National Bank in Little Rock, Bill Bowen was the president of that, and Bill came down and dad showed him what he wanted to do and Bill said, “Yeah, we’ll loan you the money.”   He and BillBowen were just buds from that......you know, he’d come.....he’s been in our....actually before that, we’d been over to his house and his son’s name is Scott Bowen; you know, the orthopedist.\n\n \n\nYeah, I know Scott.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah.\n\n    \n\n \n\nNow, are you guys any kin to the Andersons who ran the restaurant in Beebe?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No.\n\n \n\n \n\nIt is a different family?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: That was Bruce Anderson and we don’t know of any direct kin; so.\n\n \n\nAt what point did you start thinking about “I really am enjoying this”.....any interests in school or outside of school?\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Uh.....I think probably when I got to college.  I really wasn’t; I didn’t have any commitments as far as going to med school or anything like that and this was during the Vietnam war and I didn’t want to get a degree and .....\n\n \n\nAnd didn’t want to go to Vietnam....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I didn’t want to go to Vietnam and so, I had two fraternity brothers who were pre-med; Bill Payne was one of them and then, Fred Robinson was the other one.  They kept saying, “We’re going to med school and you need to go”...”you need to go”....”you need to go.”  Well, they went the 90 hours, didn’t complete their degree, and went the year before I did; so, I went down and made rounds with them, a couple of times they were doing dissections on one of the cadavers, and this type of thing.....but, they were just really encouraging to me and so, they made a big impact. After I decided that I was going to go pre-med, I had a professor who I’m trying to think of his name now....it’s sad when you get old and forget things...but, the professor who encouraged me said....Dr. Buffalo; it was Dr. Buffalo and he said, “You need to go to med school.  Your grades are good enough and I think you will get in.”  So, I don’t know....I had another professor named Richard Collins who said, “You need to go to ______ school; I’m fixing to leave and go to Southern Illinois to get my doctrine and once you graduate, I’ll get you a graduates assistant job up here and you can come up, be under me, and we’ll do catfish projects together and ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.” I said, “We’ll, that sounds pretty good too” and so, I applied to ______ school and got accepted at the University of Southern Illinois; I also applied to med school.  This was on Christmas break and I graduated mid-semester; so, I was still poking around trying to decide what I was going to do for a semester before I started med school.  I went to class that morning with Julian Ethridge and Dickey Henderson who said, “We got our acceptance to med school” and I said “Wow, that’s great”... so, I hope footed on over the to the post office and checked with no letter...”Dang.”  Cheryl and I were dating then and I said, “You know, I guess we probably want to go to Illinois to fishery school” and I just kind of nonchalantly thought, “Shoot; dad-gum-it.”  Dr. Buffalo said, “When you come back, I’ll put you on as a graduate assistant and you’ll make $150.0 a month.  We’ll pay you to teach the lab and run the microbiology part of the program.”  So I went back to school, we got back Sunday night, and when I went over on Monday morning and opened my mail box....sure enough, I had gotten my acceptance; they just hadn’t put the letter in the day I left.  So, I called Etheridge and Henderson and said, “Yeah, I got my acceptance too; so, we are all good.”\n\n                  \n\n \n\nLet’s go back to high school a little bit; did you enjoy your studies? You said that you weren’t real serious, but did you enjoy it and make good grades?  Were you interested....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I made good grades; I had mostly “As” and occasional “Bs”. I wasn’t very athletic; I played one year of junior high school football.  We had a game over at DeValls Bluff right after a big rain; we had basically one ball game and so they put all the scrubs in, like me....so, we got out there and made a tackle and my face was in the mud and the water and I couldn’t breathe......I said, “You know, I don’t want to place this game; this is not fun”....so....\n\n(Laughing)......\n\n\n \n\nWhat informed your decision on where you were going to go to college? That is a big decision.....\n\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right...well, I think the biggest influence was the fact that probably half of my graduating class went to Arkansas State Teacher’s College; there was like 12 of us who went up there all the same year.\n\n \n\n \n\nHow big was the class?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Uh, 53...just an interesting thing, kind of an aside here...in our class of 53, we had 3 medical doctors and a chiropractor.\n\n \n\n \n\nIsn’t that interesting....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It is.\n\n \n\nWho were the other two doctors?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Margine Burgess was one of them and Dickey Reed was the other one; they are both dead now.  Margine died of suspicious circumstances and Reed had prostate cancer and died. But anyway, it’s...from that point, you know, I was just kind of “well, I don’t want to go somewhere else where none of my friends are. The only other place most people went was U of A and there were only like 3-4; they weren’t people I really liked or hung around with and so, the rest of them went to UCA.\n\n  \n\n \n\nDid you have an extended group of friends in high school that you’ve kept up with?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I did and still do; there are 3-4 of them here in town still.  Two girls that I graduated with are still here and a guy who I have been friends with forever is still here.  Several of them have passed; that’s kind of sad. Actually, my best friend in high school was a fellow named Jim Hoggard; he was one of the ones who went to UCA with us and was actually the Mayor of Conway at one time. He died of a coronary at like 64 or 65; he was really young and that was a shock to me. It was one of those things where I wished I’d had more time to spend with him.  I had another friend who was actually two years older than me; he and I used to fly model airplanes and get into all kinds of things.  We had motor-scooters at that time and we were mobile; we probably covered every road in this county on those motor-scooters...just going out to see what was going on.  Charlie Suggs and I would go to these model airplane meets in Little Rock and fly model airplanes to try to win and get this..... \n\n    \n\n \n\nYou mentioned your mom and dad; your father was in the hatchery business....what kind of work did your mom do or did she work?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: My mother was actually the bookkeeper for the ________ and so, she paid the bills, kept everybody in line, and made sure that when we turned in time sheets that they were actually there, and stuff like that.\n\n \n\n \n\nDid you know, you obviously had that decision between going into hatchery school and going into medical school....did you feel strongly about either one of them?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Initially I thought probably the fishery-situation, but I got around guys who were actually going to medical school; we kind of bonded in college and kind of supported each other.  You know, we studied together; we were basically taking the same science track while in college and so, we got to study together and talk about this, this, and this....you know, it just seemed like a good feel at that point.\n\n    \n\n \n\nNow, you’ve already mentioned Cheryl, your wife....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right.\n\n \n\nYou’ve brought up her name on several occasions; when did ya’ll start dating and when did you start thinking about the divining side of life?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Alright; Cheryl and I actually met in Batalla...she was in the fourth grade and I was in the sixth grade.  \n\n(Laughing)....\n\nI was there by force; I had to......”If you don’t go, you don’t get to do such-and-such”...so, we danced with each other and you know, we were friends, but she was two years younger than me.  So my group of friends; it was kind of in that between age of _________; you know, just that 11, 12, 13 age group...but yeah, we talked with each other and was friends and we grew up.......my first date with her was after a senior high football game.  She and I sat together and we talked and I said, “Well, can I take you home?” and she said, “Well, I’ll have to ask my daddy.”  Her mother and dad were sitting behind us and so, she goes up and asks her dad; I just got in the car.  I was hot stuff and had a red and white Chevrolet sports coop......so, I said “Can I take Cheryl home?” and he said, “yeah, but I’m going to follow you.”       \n\n(Laughing)....\n\nThat was perfectly fine; you know, I never even asked where she lived.  So, we go out to Cheryl’s house and her mother and dad fixed some snacks, we talked, watched TV, and that type of thing.  At eleven o’clock, they said, “You need to leave” and I said, “ok” and got up and left.  So, I started calling her and we started dating; we actually dated off and on for eight years before I asked her to marry me.\n\n \n\nWhen was that in terms of medical school....was it after medical school?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, we were married during medical school.  We started dating in 1960 and got married in ’68.  I was between my freshman and sophomore year of med school when we married.\n\n \n\nWere there any people in college, any teachers, who had a big impact on you that you haven’t mentioned already?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Uh.....not really; of course, I stayed primarily to the sciences and just did enough liberal arts to get my degree and get out of there.  But most of the guys...most of the professors, who were in the science and biology departments, were just very encouraging.  You know, William Burges was a guy who I was trying to remember the name of and he had...the story goes that he had tried to get into med school several times and never made it; so, he taught biology at the Teacher’s State College of Arkansas..But, he was a big encouragement to me.  Richard Collins was the guy that was going to fishery school and was encouraging.  Dr. Buffalo was the head of the department of _______.\n\n \n\nNow you mentioned when we were talking earlier about Dr. Holmes here...that he was your doctor when you were a kid.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes.\n\n \n\nDid you have any impressions of him and did that have any impact on you going to medical school?  Or what you did?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, Dr. Holmes was....you know he was....he seemed very aloof until you got to know him.  He was a guy who wasn’t a good conversationist; you know he went in, “what’s wrong with you”... “What do you need?”....write you a script, and out of there.  But, he and my parents were good friends and so a lot of this involvement with him socially, with me as a kid and him as an adult....going to Hot Springs to spend the week and taking the boat to ski and this type of thing.......once you got him out of the office, he was a totally different person.  He was very warm, and very friendly, he like to tell jokes, and was really a neat good guy.\n\n          \n\n \n\nIn my reading, it looks like Lonoke has stayed at a population of around 4 to 5 thousand for the last 50 years.  \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, there was actually...when we moved here, there was 1700 in 1951.\n\n \n\nOK.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It grew a little bit when the Remington Plant came in, but it has always been kind of an older population; you know, older people who have lived here all their lives.  When we actually moved to Lonoke, there were 4 doctors here; four family doctors here....Dr. Forum, Dr. Kelly, and Dr. Mitchell. They all were practicing here in town and all but one of their offices is still standing.\n\n \n\nWhat kind of degree did you receive in college?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: BS in Science...\n\n \n\nBachelors in Science and I think what you said was that you just took whatever liberal arts you had to take.....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah..enough to graduate from a liberal art school.\n\n \n\nDo you remember in college your organic chemistry teacher? \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Oh yeah....\n\n \n\nWho was he and tell me about the course. \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Dr. Manning and he had just completed his PHD from the University of Mississippi; this was his first teaching job.  He was one of these guys who wanted you to do it exactly right; you know, you didn’t get credit for possibles or this type of thing.  I took organic during the regular session and I made a “B” in it and thought, “well, that‘s not going to get me in med school” and so, I came back that summer and went to summer school..  My college roommate that I had for three years went to summer school and I thought, “well, I’ll just go take organic during the summer” and I made “As” in both part 1 and part 2.”  \n\nBecause you didn’t have anything to distract you..“That’s right; I took organic chemistry and that was it.  It started at 7 o’clock in the morning and was in the new science building then; it started at 7 o’clock in the morning and was through by 1 o’clock in the afternoon.  It was a two hour lecture and a three hour lab. \n\n \n\nOther than the chemistry that you learned from organic chemistry, did you learn anything else in organic?  \n\n \n\nDr. Les Anderson: I learned the basic.... kind of where the metabolic entities begin; you know the organic side of chain reactions and then it kind of went into biochemistry, which I took up there too.  I really did....my biochemistry teacher, I mean, he was excellent. He and Dr. Manning were doing the classes and the two courses really did kind of dove-tailed each other.  Once you took organic and then took biochemistry, you saw how all these reactions that you’d poured out and the chemicals that were in one it, how they played a role on what you were doing....so...\n\n   \n\n \n\nWere there any other courses in college that really were difficult for you, hard to get through, or anything like that?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Not necessarily hard; there were some I liked better and I studied harder for and made better grades.  I like history; yeah, history was one of my favorite things.  I like to read history and I had a couple of history professors who were very good and taught well; you could take good notes and learn a lot from them and they covered a lot of territory.  Some of them would get bogged down and you would never finish the book-type of situation, but Dr. Rook and Dr. Fisher were the two of my favorites.  They... \n\n \n\n \n\nWas there ever any question, you talked about the fish hatchery work and then medical school; was there any question of where you would go to medical school?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, I applied to three schools; I applied to Tennessee, I applied to Ole Miss, and I applied to UAMS.  I made the alternates list at Ole Miss, I got rejected from Tennessee, and accepted by Arkansas.\n\n \n\n \n\nDid you work while in high school and in college?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I worked on the farm; during the weekends, vacation, or summer during college, I’d be back here driving a truck, mowing, or hauling fish back and forth from the airport for air shipments and stuff like that.  Dad kept us busy.”... (Laughing)....   \n\n \n\nWas your dad’s business successful?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes.\n\n \n\nI can remember hearing about Anderson Minnows and _______all the time as I was a child; not as a child as a young adult.\n\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right; yeah, it really started rolling during the early ‘50s and it got to the point that when I was in high school, every time he needed help....on Sunday mornings, he’d have to rush the crew off and he and I would go out before church and unload trucks.\n\n \n\nIf you look at; I love DeLorme maps...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right\n\n \n\nIf you take a DeLorme map and look at all the places around Lonoke; I mean, there is just one fish pond after another.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right....\n\n \n\nOne fish farm after another...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Exactly...\n\n \n\nDid that start with your dad?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It kind of did, but there was one guy already over here that was raising gold fish; a fellow named Roy Pruitt.  He had about 40-50 acres of gold fish that he was raising and so when dad was over here looking at land, a piece of property directly across the highway from the Pruitt’s, he was wondering what he was looking at.  It was a section and a half that he was trying to buy and trying to come up with a price for.....he ended up paying $40.00 an acre for that piece.\n\n \n\n(Laughing)......For basically rice land...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Basically rice land and some timber land; that’s right....about half of it was cleared and the back half of it ran on via-meda for about three courters of mile and it was old cypress...old timber growth that had never been logged or anything.\n\n \n\nSomebody listening to this might not really understand this very well.  My father was a rice farmer over in Augusta; he was a share cropper.\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah...\n\n \n\nThe water table, they had to go down to about 110 feet to get a good steady flow of water; 1200 gallons, that kind of thing.  I bet you by all means, you ride around here on Highway 70 and the water is about that much lower than the road.   \n\n \n\nDr. Les Anderson: (Laughing)....That’s excellent.\n\n \n\nThe water table has got to be high here.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: When we first moved here, you could get 2500 gallons a minute at 60 feet.\n\n \n\nYeah, I bet...... (Laughing)...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: And it had......we had electric pumps on them and then, we went to natural gas powered units.  Now, we’ve gone down 140 to 200 feet depending on what farm area it is and had to get staples and submersibles in there to get the water up...hoping to get 500 gallons a minute. \n\n \n\nWere y’all affected at all by the contamination from Jacksonville in _________? \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Uh, not directly; I think there was about 10 years that there were signs out there that game and fish had put up about “possible contamination.\n\n \n\nBut you never saw anything that you were aware of as far as.....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: We didn’t see anything as far as getting into the fish culture side of it; no.\n\n \n\n \n\nDid the government test your fish?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, they never did.\n\n \n\nHuh.....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No.\n\n \n\nSo you worked on a fish farm; I’ll tell you about my experience with that later....it is something similar. \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Ok.\n\n \n\nWere you in the armed forces?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, I was in the Air National Guard here in Little Rock.  We were the 189 tactical recon group and they were flying R-101s-the voodoo; you know, it was pretty neat to ride in the backseat of that thing occasional.  If there was an empty seat, they’d call up to the dispensary and say, “Anybody want to ride backseat with so-and-so?” Yeah, you go out......\n\n \n\nWhen did you sign on for that?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I actually went in the National Guard right after I graduated from med school and before I started my internship; there were like four of us that actually did that.\n\n \n\nWhat year was that...’67 or ‘68?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I guess it would’ve been... I graduated in ’71; so, it would’ve been in ’71.\n\n \n\nOk, but there was still a big push for people to go into the service at that point because Vietnam was not over yet.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Vietnam was going on and there....we all; all our med school class except the women went down to the Athees Center and took physicals before we ever graduated med school and they declared us fit for service.  So, I said, “Well, let me see what I’m going to do” and a lot of my class was pre-commissioned; they were ROTC in college and already had commissions to go into the armed services college residency programs. But, there were like four of us who we just got in there and asked for the Guard; you know, we weren’t all in the same unit. Faye Bozeman was a classmate and he was at the Fort Smith unit.  Tom Wallace, a ophthalmologist in Hot Springs, was in the Hot Springs Unit; there was a weather flight over there then, and I got the luck of the drawl and was in Little Rock; so, I went out to the Little Rock Air Force base.   \n\n\n \n\nHow long were you on active duty?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I was there for seven years and we went......the last year was quite a crazy thing; we got rid of the 101s and went to the KC-135s and became a SAC unit.  Well, SAC didn’t have any medical facilities at Little Rock Air Force Base; it was all Mac-Attack.   ______________   So, I...through the luck of the draw...got to go out and inspect several of our missile sites that had to be inspected each year. So, I had my new detail and I had my two corporals, me, and my first lieutenant and we’d go out to missile sites and check their medical out and check their emergency room stuff; you know, they all had to be self-contained.  They had people who could sew up a laceration or something like that actually in the silo at the time.  So, I had to go in, do the inspection, and do the write up and I think I inspected up to three silos during that time.\n\n      \n\n \n\nWere you in the service when the one exploded up close to _______?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, I was actually working in the emergency room at Jacksonville that night.  They put us on notice and we called in several of the other doctors who were working the emergency room and a couple of residents from the surgery residency at UAMS came up; Knox Dare was one of them and John Motes.  They came up and stayed in the emergency room until the plan blew up and we knew that there wasn’t anything going to happen; so, they let them go and I had to stay and work the rest of my shift in the ER that night.\n\n    \n\n \n\nLet’s back up and talk about medical school; was medical school what you were expecting it to be when you got there?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, the first two years is what I tell my students, “Yeah, I went through two years and had no formed stools.” \n\n (Laughing)....\n\nAfter that it was fine; you know it was just.....the basic science part of it was about what I expected.  I was kind of in the middle of the class grade-wise; I think I was like 35 in my graduating class. So, I had ahead of most and behind some.....\n\n \n\nWere there any teachers during that first two years who had a significant impact on you; again like we talked about high school?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, I had developed friendship for sure; Howard Suzuki, you know he was a big duck hunter and when he found out that I had places that he could come duck hunting, he kind of snoozed me.   \n\n(Laughing)....\n\nHe said, “When you going to take me duck hunting?” and I said, “Well, when do you want to go?” “How about this Saturday?” and I said, “Well, we have gross lab till noon on Saturdays.” He said, “We can go in the afternoon can’t we?” and I said, “Yeah, but you’re not going to kill many ducks in the afternoon.”  So, he said, “Well, what about Sunday?” and I said, “Yeah, we can go on Sunday.” So, he came down and hunted with me two or three times; he was a hoot.  You get him out of class; he was a hoot...a totally different person.\n\n \n\n \n\nHe wasn’t quite as stern.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, he was not.\n\n \n\nOut of class, he wasn’t quite as stern.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: He was a lot of fun and I’m trying to think if there was anybody else who was really impactful; but you know, you go through things so fast and you have different opinions when you get to the clinical side of it....some of them are good teachers and some are not. You know, I really liked Joe Bates, but most of my classmates hated his guts. He was very good to me and I....he gave me good grades and I guess he liked me.\n\n \n\nThis is again just a personal aside....but, he and I became very good friends and he has been my mentor ever since medical school.  It began as the same thing; it was just that I really liked him and still to this day.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, you know, he had a reputation and I think he liked his reputation as being a hard ass and this type of thing.....\n\n  \n\n \n\n Oh, I think he loved it.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: But the ropes he recommended; I had him on two different rotations at the VA and he couldn’t have been nothing that nicer.\n\n \n\nWere there any crises along the way, either home or financial, that would’ve changed your path in one direction or the other?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Really not; I had nothing that disrupted the flow of my education.  I didn’t have to work, but I worked because I was helping my family farm.  Of course, mother and dad were helping support \n\nme.  Then when Cheryl and I married, we were renting a little house there on Cedar Street, a block and a half from the med center, paying $100.00 a month.  After a year and a half, we had our first child and so, they helped support us. Her parents helped quite a bit too.\n\n \n\nWhere are they from?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They are from here.\n\n \n\nThat’s right....of course, you told me that already.  Her father followed you back to their house from the football game.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right, he was a rice farmer and bean farmer and they lived outside of town; they are great people and good to me and just always helpful babysitting wise.\n\n \n\nWas there ever any question about what you were going to do medically; like where you were going to go, what kind of specialty you were going to do, and that kind of thing?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, I was influenced a lot by OB/GYN and that was one of those situations where I did my senior year OB at St. Vincent’s.  They weren’t delivering babies at UAMS at that time and they would send two students every few months over to St. Vincent’s; so, I got to do a ton of deliveries and I got to meet all the GYN guys here in Little Rock. They said, “You know, you should be a GYN” and “you need to do this”, “you need to do this because you’re good and you can handle this”...I said, “yeah, but staying up all night, delivering babies, and this type of thing doesn’t really appeal to me” and family practice had always been kind of in the back of my mind.  So, I started my internship at St. Vincent’s and I was being courted by several different doctors to come take their practice and this type of thing.  We went up to Fayetteville and Missouri and interviewed up there and went to....Clarksville, Arkansas and interviewed up there.  We went down to Monticello and interviewed down there.  We went down to Dumas, Arkansas and they said, “We’ll give you a house to live in and we’ll pay you more than anyone else has offered you; one of our family doctors is leaving here and we need somebody to go into practice with Dr. Wayne Buzbie” and I said, “Ok.”  So, they really courted us hard; they sent the Chamber of Commerce president to meet with us and talk to us, we went down there and they took us to the country club, and it was just ...it was one of those things ...”you know, this is a pretty good deal and it’s got to be what I want to do”.  This was like mid October or September, somewhere along there....September-October time frame and so, I went down there and made rounds with Dr. Buzbie and his partner.  He was still delivering babies and doing his own c-sections and this type of things and he said, “You know, you’ve got a built-in situation here” and I said, “Ok, but I want to think about it.”  That was probably late November and I was making rounds on New Year’s Day at the hospital, I was on call, when I get a phone call from the hospital director down there.  They said, “Well, have you heard the news?” and I said, “No, what?” and they said, “Dr. Buzbie dropped dead this morning.”  Dr. Buzbie wasn’t only but like 58 or 59 years old and I said, “You know, I don’t think that that is a situation that I want to get into being the only doctor in a town that is doing OB and this type of thing” and they said, “Well, we’ll recruit you another doctor” and all this kind of stuff and I said, “I’ll go home and talk to Cheryl about it.”  She said, “No, I agree. I don’t think we need to go.”  Well about two weeks later, I was doing rotation at Children’s Hospital in pediatrics and I get a phone call from George McCrary up here at Jacksonville and he said, “Have you decided where you want to go practice?” and I said, “No, the situation that I had picked has fallen through and I don’t think I’m going to go to Dumas.” He said, “Well, why don’t you come up and talk with us.” There were three of them at that time: Phil Durham, George McCrary, and Albert Johnson and they took me out to dinner, wined and dined us, and took me up to the hospital.  They said, “Well, do you want to moonlight some?” and I said, “If it fits into my schedule, I will come out here and moonlight for you guys.”  They said, “We are going to Fayetteville to a ballgame this weekend, do you think you came come out and make rounds on our patients and cover OB for us?”  So, I did that a couple of times with them.\n\n \n\nWhat year would this have been?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: That would’ve been in ’72; the spring of ‘72.  So, I went out there and made rounds, talked to all the nurses, talked to the hospital______; of course, the hospital _______started following me around like a puppy dog....“Don’t you like such and such” ...“Do you like this?”...“Don’t you like”..and I said, “Yes....yes, it’s fine” and so, I came back and told Carol, “I think it’s a pretty decent deal” but Cheryl said, “I don’t want to move to Jacksonville” and I said, “I don’t want to move to Pulaski County.”  I said, “Let me work this out and see if they will let me live in Lonoke and commute back and forth to Jacksonville” and that is how that worked out.  I went into practice with them on July 1, 1972. At that time, Albert Johnson left the practice to go by himself; he was a cantankerous old guy and one of those guys, you know, who has to run the _______.\n\n               \n\n \n\nNow this was about the same timeframe that Jim Webber was getting started up and ..... \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah, Jim had been there like 2-3 years before I got there.  Jim was actually the flight surgeon at the Airbase and when he got out, he just went into practice there with Jack because he had been moonlighting there at the hospital with several of the doctors.  He initially went in the Dr. Worthen and Dr. Moore and they kind of clashed as far as personalities; they were all too type-A and he just couldn’t bend enough to stay with that practice.  So, he had actually just gone into his own practice when I went up there and he had a little clinic just two blocks from where our clinic was.  He was always coming up and visiting when we’d make rounds and I’d cover for him when he was doing his medical politics stuff; but, it was really kind of a symbiotic relationship with Jim.  Jim was ...you know, you couldn’t help but like Jim.\n\n \n\nYeah, he’s just a nice guy.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: He was just in a constable position, a constable host, and this type of thing, but you know, he really was just kind of lost at that time.  He had just got divorced and you know his kid was giving him problems; we would go to meetings and he’d always hang out with me and Cheryl, Bruce Schratz and his wife, Harold Hedges...that was kind of....and Shot, Shot Rodgers; that was kind of the pack we traveled with to the national meetings.  Jim was unmarried and when we were getting ready to go to the national meeting in New Orleans....when we got to the airport, there was Cynthia Winetrott, a girl he had been dating.  She said, “Oh, are y’all going to New Orleans?” and I said, “Yeah, we’re going down to a meeting.”   She said, “Uh, would you think anything bad of me if I went down and stayed with Jim this weekend?” and I said, “No, go for it girl.”....(Laughing).....”She said, “I didn’t realize that you all were on the same flight” and I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter; what you do is your business”.....”You won’t think anything bad?” and I said, “Naw, we won’t think anything different about you.”  But, she was a really sweet lady and she was Jim’s weather; she kept him steered, kept him on course, and just kept him....\n\n   \n\n \n\nNow, she died as well; didn’t she?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: She died of breast cancer.\n\n \n\nThat’s what I thought.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, that was kind of a strange situation; it was just a situation where probably when they did her surgery, they got one mass but she had a secondary tumor in the breast that they missed and so, that......\n\n \n\nAt this point in time, the residency program at UAMS had started and the AHEC programs were beginning to start to rev up; they didn’t get out until ’74, ’75, or ’76....somewhere through there.  Did you ever think about doing one of those?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right....well, I did; in fact, the program that I was in was kind of both ways. We actually saw our outpatients with the family practice residency at the old school of nursing at St. Vincent’s.  We only had one full time faculty down there and it didn’t look like it was getting a lot of traction; so, I just decided that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do.\n\n     \n\n \n\nAnd at that point, you could grandfather in..\n\n.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I could grandfather in and take the board; yeah.\n\n \n\nGo ahead and practice and take the board; so, that is what you did? \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right, I took the boards and you had to have...I don’t know how many hours it was now as its been too long ago...a post-graduate and then, sit for the boards. I took the boards and made a 75.\n\n \n\nObviously, if you were running with that group of people....that group of people plus Amail Chudy....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah, I forgot Amail......I forgot Amail Chudy...\n\n \n\nI can’t believe you forgot Amail Chudy.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Forgive me for forgetting Amail....\n\n  \n\n \n\nIs that how you got involved in the academy?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes.\n\n \n\nBecause obviously at some point, real early in your career, you got involved...I’ve read all the minutes of all the meetings and your paw prints are all over everything....(Laughing)....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: (Laughing)....”I got in the academy; I had been in practice at Jacksonville for two weeks when Weber comes in.  I already knew Weber, but he comes in and says, “I need $250.00.” I said, “What for?” and he said, “Well, your academy dues.”  I said, “Ok, academy for what?” and he said, “The Academy for Family Physicians” or “General Practice”; it was general practice back then at that time.  He said, “You’re going to join” and I said, “Oh, who do I make the check out to?” He said, “The American Academy of Family Physicians” and I said, “Ok.” So, he took my check and about that time, Alta Jean Goode called me and said, “I need your information for your membership.” I said, “Ok, what do you need?” and she said, “Well, can I send it to you?” So, I said, “Yeah, you can send it to me” and she sent me my application after I paid my membership dues.   \n\n(Laughing)\n\nBut you know, he just walked in and said, “I need $250.00”...... (Laughing)....\n\n \n\nNow, did you have any significant contact...I know you had some contact.... but any significant contact in that same timeframe with George Warren?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, absolutely; George was a good motivator to me.  He was one of those guys who was soft spoken and he would come around and say, “Why don’t you think about doing this” or “Why don’t you make a motion for this.”\n\n(Laughing)....\n\nAnd I’d say, “Well George, why don’t you make it?” and he’d say, “It’s going to sound better coming from you.”\n\n(Laughing)\n\nAnd I’d say, “Ok, I’ll make it.” Tom Honeycutt was the other one that was really....influenced me during that period of time.\n\n \n\nYeah, I’m trying to think...Tom really had his big influence from the late ‘70s to late ‘80s or early ‘90s....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right....\n\n \n\nSo did you get along with Tom?\n\n \n\nI got along with Tom wonderfully; you know, Tom married a girl from Lonoke and so, they still had relatives down here.  When they’d come down to see his wife’s sister and mother, they’d come by and visit with us.\n\n \n\nSue; Sue was her name.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Sue Honeycutt, that’s exactly right.\n\n \n\nI interviewed Ann and Sue, the two daughters....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah....\n\n \n\nHere about four weeks ago....that was a hoot.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They are wonderful people.\n\n \n\nThey really were.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They are just the salt of the earth and just great folks; you know, it’s just kind of one of those situations.....Tom’s big thing was that you know that....”The ______was a seat of the med school” and I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “Well, do you remember a guy named Isaac Folsom?” and I said, “No.”   He said, “Well, he gave the $10,000 it took to start the first med school in Little Rock” and he was a family doctor here in Lonoke. When I was in med school, we still had the Isaac Folsom Clinic there; it was an outpatient clinic.\n\n  \n\n \n\nYeah....\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: And actually his house was about two blocks north from where we sit today and I mean, it was still occupied when we were here; it’s been torn down now and another house built there.\n\n  \n\n \n\nSo how long did you practice in Jacksonville?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I was actually in that clinic until 1983.  We built a clinic here and bought a clinic in Cabot that satellites.\n\n \n\nSatellites at that practice? \n\nDr. Les Anderson: At that clinic; Crestview Family Clinic was the name of it.  Dale Calhoun joined a year after I did and then after that, we had Richard Hayes, Jerry Chapman, and Stan Keller was an internist that practiced.......\n\n \n\nWhat about the piano player?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: What now?\n\n \n\nThere was a piano player from Jacksonville who was a physician. \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Oh yeah, that’s.......\n\n \n\n \n\nThat was in a different practice, I guess.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah; he was in a different group, but I’ll think of his name in just a minute....just a minute.....you’re right.....I’ll think of it.\n\n \n\nAfter college and medical school, did you have a lot of debt?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I had no debt; my family was well off enough that they....\n\n \n\nSo you didn’t have to take advantage of any of the rural health loans or any of that kind of stuff?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No.\n\n \n\nSo you didn’t have to and that was not a major concern at that point?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, not at all.\n\n \n\nTalking about the first few years of practicing with that group of guys in Jacksonville; did the practice of medicine turn out to be what you thought it would be?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Initially, it was just what I thought it was going to be.  I loved it and the guys who I was in practice with were just super; the things I didn’t know, they trained me to do.  We just...it was a really good cohesive group. When Dale Calhoun joined us, the four of us had our work ethic about the same, our practice was about the same; you know, we treated things the same way and so, you didn’t have one guy coming in signing a bunch of orders and then somebody else coming right  behind him contradicting everything.\n\n \n\nWere you doing OB?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: We were still doing OB, yeah; we were....in fact, that’s when most of the people coming back from Vietnam were bringing their Vietnamese women back with them and they were all pregnant; so, we were delivering a ton of babies.  I had one weekend from 5 o’clock Friday night until about 6 o’clock Sunday morning where I delivered 11 babies.\n\n \n\nNow all of this was at Rebsamen Hospital?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Rebsamen Hospital, yeah; we....in fact one of my nurses said one time, “Do you know how many babies you’ve delivered?” and I said, “I don’t know, so-and –so.”   She said, “Let’s go back through the records” and so, she went back through the hospital records and said, “I can get you back to 2,000 babies.”  I said, “That’s a whole lot.” \n\n \n\nThat’s a lot of babies....particularly in the late 20th century.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Exactly.\n\n \n\nIn the late 20th century, that is a phenomenal number.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: And a lot of the OB guys don’t do that many.\n\n \n\nThat’s right.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: But, we were for some reason....\n\n \n\nBut you had this community of young people...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes.\n\n \n\nYoung military....yeah, that makes sense.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: And they didn’t have an OB guy at the base; the OB guys at the base had left and so, we....they just kind of fell in our lap.  \n\n \n\nYeah.....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: The other clinic up there didn’t particularly want to do a lot of OB because they were more intellectual and did internal medicine-type stuff.\n\n \n\nI want to spend a little time here talking about your involvement in the Arkansas Academy.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Ok.\n\n \n\nTalk about that just a little bit; obviously, Jim said you were going to be a member.... (Laughing)....and Alta Jean said....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yeah, give me your check...(Laughing).....\n\n \n\nGive me your check”; that’s right.... (Laughing)...\n\nDid you or was it just something.....were you ever involved in politics before or were you involved.....was there a lure in medical politics at all?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Not particularly, I was elected to the school board during that frame and served for 22 years; so, I had a little bit of an idea what politics was like.  But, I was kind of in that situation where everybody was kind of pushing me along and I said, “You know, I need to learn some things before I get nominated for.......”  I’d been in the academy for two years when they made me Treasurer; I said, “I don’t know anything about keeping books.” They said, “That’s alright, Alta Jean will take care of all that.”  Well, I’d meet with Alta Jean for about an hour before we had our board meetings in Little Rock and she’d go over the books with me; then, you know, I’d give the financial report at the meetings and this type of things...so, that was a two year deal then.  I served on several committees; like the annual meeting committee to help get people to come speak, pole people to work here, and this type of thing.\n\n    \n\n \n\nI’ve had several people tell me, Harold Hedges for one and Bruce for another, tell me that a good summer meeting or a good yearly meeting was the best promotional tool, or best promotional activity, that the academy could do.\n\n \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Absolutely...trying to get some of these younger doctors, you know, that has just gone into practice to get into the academy...most of us just make phone calls and say, “You need to be in the Arkansas Academy or American Academy of Family Physicians” and we were out recruiting and doing well at that time.  We had a good strong membership and the meetings were well attended; I can remember annual meetings with 300 people there. Now, we are lucky to get 100 and it’s just a different culture.  l think about the academy at that time and everybody went out together; you know in the evenings if we were not involved in activities during the annual meetings and stuff, we’d all go out to eat.  We’d take the kids, load up, get a private room at one of the restaurants, and everybody would go eat and just have a good time.  We’d just tell stories, listen to Jim Weber tell jokes.... (Laughing).....and Tom Honeycutt tell jokes; but, you know, it was just a really, really, good time.\n\n    \n\n \n\nAt what point did that start to change?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Uh....about the 32,000; when my generation of Shot, George ________, and Honeycutt started stepping down and not being involved directly in the academy that much.....the newer guys going into practice had other agendas and their families typically didn’t want to come to Little Rock to meet for a meeting.  They quit having the board meetings outside of Little Rock at a nice place; you know, we’d go to Hot Springs, we’d go to Eureka Springs, we’d go to Springdale, and had one board meeting over at Smackover at George Walling’s house, and this type of thing.  You couldn’t get them to come, the younger physicians; they just couldn’t value the time with their family....\n\n \n\n \n\nYeah...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Which, you know I’m not knocking that; I’m just saying that was.....\n\n \n\nThat was a different change.\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It’s a different thing and I just thought of a different story that I got to throw in.\n\n \n\n Sure absolutely..\n\nDr. Les Anderson: We were in Atlanta at a National Meeting and went to a restaurant called, “The Abby.”  It was like an old monastery and all the waiters were dressed up in robes, hoods, and this type of thing.  They came and served us, we all ate and had a good time, and all of the sudden this monk comes through and he has this little....what looks like a coffee can.  He was shaking it and said, “Alms for the poor.....Alms for the poor”.....he goes completely around the table and everybody was shelling out...then, he pulls away from Webber....\n\n(Both Laughing)....\n\nBut, he was doing stuff like that all the time; Jim had a good time.  We had a good laugh.\n\n \n\nWhen you; at some point....I think it was ’94, or maybe ’93, that you were elected Arkansas Family Doctor of the Year....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: 94, it was ’95...\n\n \n\nThat you became National....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right...\n\n \n\nTalk about that process a little bit; how did that come to be or who nominated you?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, that is another interesting story; I had a fellow in practice with me named Gary Thorne.   Gary was probably the consummate family physician; well educated, polite, smart, and his dad was Max Throne who was actually the medical director at St Vincent’s while I was in training over there. So, he had been in practice with me for two years and unbeknownst to me, he submitted my name to the Arkansas Academy for Family Doctor of the Year and wrote probably the nicest letter; I mean, I just looked at it and said, “He’s not talking about me; he’s talking about somebody else.”  So, I was elected by the Arkansas Academy and of course, the year I was the National Family Doctor of the year was the year that Jim Weber was president of the American Academy and when Jim introduced me, he said, “I want to introduce you to my family doctor” and he had me stand up.  Of course, I was taking care of his kids, taking care of Cynthia, and you know, I’d see him occasionally; but, he never got any treatment.  But, he said it was kind of an ironic thing; me being the family doctor and his being the president of the academy and both of us being from Arkansas.\n\n     \n\n \n\nYeah...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Which, you know, I don’t think it will ever happen again. \n\n \n\nWere there...I know there were several political things going on that are still going on to some extent...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right...\n\n \n\nThe whole business of the impact of nurse practitioners on family practice, especially in rural situations; did that come ....or was that ever a problem when you were involved in the process?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It was just beginning... that movement....of course, this was when the nurse practitioners were trying to get established to get a broader scope of practice through the legislature and the Arkansas Medical Society, primarily, would have family doctors come up to testify in the committees when they were bringing up some of their opposed bills like to be practicing independently and have full prescriptive propriety; do basically what a family doctor would do.  We did that for like 4-5 years, you know, with each term of the general senate.  We’d have to go off and fight these bills of the nurse practitioners, the optometrists, the chiropractors, and all these kind of people who tried to push through and I was amazed at the support these people had of people who I thought were pretty smart.  They were, I guess, just bending to the contingencies and trying to help somebody, but it’s a double edged sword.\n\n      \n\n \n\nAs I’ve gone around the state, to lots of small towns in the state, I’ve gotten varying options about what nurse practitioners or physician assistants should do.\n\n \n\nRight.\n\n \n\n \n\nThe farther you get out from the center of the state....like Kirk Patten, a pediatrician over in Forrest City...Pete Carroll down in south Arkansas...or some of the guys in north-west Arkansas...they have a more liberal view of what these folks should be able to do.  Have you noticed any change in that in the last few years?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, when I was....well, the first real time I worked with nurse practitioners was when I went to work at St. Vincent’s; I had been with them five years and we had a guy named Chris Johnson who came in.  He was actually trained at a program over in Cleveland, Mississippi at Delta State University. Chris was...I told him, I said, “You made the wrong decision; you should have went to med school.” He was brilliant and just a quick pick up on everything. He wanted to learn to do lump and bump surgery and I told him, “Come on; if you want to do it, you’re going to do it right.  I’ll teach you.”  So, we’d do biopsies and at that time, we were doing a lot of OB/GYN and he wanted to learn OB/GYN biopsies, ______cauterizations, and this type of thing. I told him, “Anything you want to learn to do, I’ll teach you” and so, he was with me 2 ½ years and he was an absolute jewel. I mean, he was well trained as anybody in the medical field could be with being a nurse practitioner. He left for more money, went back to his home town in Lake Village, and has done extremely well there. He has a huge following, does well, and competent.  The next one I got was a female that St. Vincent’s hired and she had actually been working at Shots’ clinic.  She comes in and she doesn’t want to do any of these things; it was a situation where, “I don’t want to do that” or “I don’t want to do this”.  “Well, what you want to do?” and she said, “Well, I just want to see well-baby checks, physicals, and this type of thing.”  I said, “Ok, if this is what you choose to do, that is fine with me” and so, that is what she did. Then, she got kind of noble about, “Well, I’m not seeing enough patients” and I said, “Well, you need to expand your scope of practice a little bit and start doing some other jobs; I will teach you”.....”I don’t want to do that”....  “Ok.”  So, this quiets her for a while and then she decides to quit; the second nurse practitioner at St. Vincent’s.  Well, the first one wasn’t busy enough to begin with and the second certainly wasn’t busy; then St. Vincent’s started leaning on me saying, “Why don’t you share your patients with these other providers?” and I said, “I’ve tried to; I haven’t taken a new patient since Chris Johnson was here, the first nurse practitioner. I’m not taking any new patients to see.”....“Well how are these patients getting on your schedule?”  I said, “Well they coming in to see the nurse practitioners the first time and when they reschedule their appointment they reschedule with me” and that was upsetting the nurse practitioners; this is probably what got me fired from St. Vincent’s.  The fact that they didn’t think I was sharing the practice...... I said, “Well, I’m trying to maintain a practice and somebody can come in and take over when I retire”...that wasn’t the answer that they wanted either.... (Laughing)     \n\n       \n\n \n\nUh, what was his name......Robbins....Rufus Robbins in Camden; he was involved in the early, early years and in 1947, he was quoted as having said, “the family doctor, at that time the country doctor, was the quarterback of the football team.”  He could have added another line at the end of that and said, “Yes but in the 1980s, he was still the quarterback; but somebody else was calling the plays”.......(Laughing)...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: That is exactly right.\n\n  \n\n \n\nHe is still a quarterback, but somebody else is calling the plays.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: That is exactly right.\n\n \n\nSo, the clinic in Jacksonville was purchased by St. Vincent’s; is that what happened?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, the clinic was actively sustaining and it’s an ARcare Clinic now. I separated from the group in ’83 and bought the original clinic out here in Lonoke.  We’ll drive around after this and I’ll show you; but, I bought that from the group in Jacksonville and was in solo practice here from ‘83 till ’88 and then, Leroy ________ joined me.\n\n   \n\n \n\nDid you enjoy it?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: By myself?\n\n \n\nUh huh...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I was still doing hospital practice, I was still doing OB, I was....Jim Chang was.....\n\n \n\n  \n\nYou were working your butt off.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I was working my a-- off.\n\n(Laughing).....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Fortunately, I.... Jim Chang, an obstetrician, had come to the practice at Jacksonville at that time and he and I shared OB coverage.  If he needed to get out of town on the weekend, I would cover OB and if I wanted to get out of town, he’d cover mine.\n\n \n\nYeah...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: So that worked out pretty well, but all the other family doctors in Jacksonville quit doing OB.\n\n \n\nWas the hospital putting any pressure on about OB at that point; at Rebsamen, I mean?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They were trying to build their OB service up.\n\n \n\nOk...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They were trying to actually recruit an obstetrician and _______; they had a couple that stayed a couple of years and left, but just never a consistent group of doctors doing OB anymore. Once all the family doctors quit doing it, it was me and Jim Chang there for a year.  I said to Jim, “You had a guy come”....two guys came in with him, I think a male and female, but they joined him in practice and I said, “You can have all my OB practice; I’ll just defer them to you.  I’m getting out of this.”\n\n       \n\n \n\nThis was in ’88?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It was ’88; yeah and then, Leroy didn’t really want to do OB anyway.  He did quite a bit of the hospital practice; we’d still admit our own patients and take care of them. We’d do our own surgeries; we did our own appendix, gallbladders, biopsies, and hysterectomies.\n\n \n\nDRGs and HMOs, all the various initial combinations, stated hitting in the early ‘90s; did that have a significant impact on your practice?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It did; of course, we were a little Hill-Burton Hospital out there and so our emergency room was one of these that “you couldn’t turn anybody anyway” and then the hospital was always in the red for some reason; it just struggled.  We had a very high Medicare/Medicaid population at that time and it just put a strain on everybody; you know, the reimbursement kept dropping and the hospital kept trying to survive by cutting this and cutting that.  Well, sometimes you cut the umbilical cord and you’re done; I think that is kind of what happened to them over the years.\n\n    \n\n \n\nDid you do any significant nursing home work either in Jacksonville or here?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Both; we had actually two nursing homes that we took care of in Jacksonville.  I had the two down here and I did some over at the Chambers Nursing home in Carlisle.  But, I did nursing home practice up until ’94; no 2005, I’m sorry...... but, at that time there were so many lawsuits  with the nursing homes blowing up that the two here went bare on their liability insurance.  Dr. Holt and I met in the hallway over at what was then the Lincoln Plaza and he said, “Did you hear about them dropping the liability insurance?”  I said, “Yeah” and he said, “Are you still going to come see patients?” and I said, “Probably not because there are quite a few and they can hire the next deep pocket” and he said, “Well, I’m stopping too.” So, we told the nursing home that they had 30 days to find a new physician to make rounds on their patients.\n\n \n\n \n\nSo 2005 to now, you are practicing......l think at one point you had been with ARcare and are now going back to creating your own clinic.  I want to know about the new clinic, but tell me about ARcare...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Let me give you the chronology.\n\n \n\nOk good; sure...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I sold my practice to Baptist in ’95; they bought the original clinic....\n\n \n\n \n\nThe one here that was built by the Jacksonville group..?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, they bought that clinic plus the land; there was almost another acre of land that went with that building and it had enough room to put another clinic on.  So, that’s when they built the first Baptist Clinic here.  Dr. Winter Wilcox was with me at that time and we moved into that new clinic and it gave us ground and flowed well. The work, we had good help and it zoomed; that clinic really peaked out as far as number-wise and dollar-wise for Baptist.  We got into some situation with some of the people with Practice Plus where they had bought a chemical stress test deal, which involved beds back there, and they said, “Put these in your office, but you have to do some many a year to keep it there.”  I said, “Uh, this doesn’t pass the smell test with me.  I’m putting money in your pocket besides doing this chemical stress test 20 miles from the closest hospital; that doesn’t sound real safe to me.” Rob Lambert was coming out and seeing his patients involved at that time and I ran it by Rob who said, “Nah, we’ve already had a couple of problems with people with Baptist doing these chemical stress tests in their office and we’re having to see them in the emergency room with them having issues.”  So, I said, “well ok, I’m not going to do it”... but, they kept hammering and beating us up over that and that’s really why I left Baptist to go with St. Vincent. In the meantime, I had heard that St. Vincent’s was looking to build a satellite somewhere in this area and they approached me.  I said, “Well, I’m not particularly happy with Baptist, but I’m not unhappy enough to leave unless it’s a better deal”....they built the clinic out...I don’t know whether that clinic is or not, but I’ll take you by and show it to you.....anyway, they built that clinic out there and that was when they moved me out in it by myself.  I was there as the only provider for a year and then, they brought in Ken Theel, who was just out of the residency program.  He couldn’t keep up with the pay and so, he didn’t want to practice very hard; every other week, he’d take two days off and this type of thing.  So, he wasn’t working very well here and they transferred him to Little Rock; that’s when they sent Chris Johnson down here to practice with me. But, I had been in three different clinics and now going to the fourth one in Lonoke.\n\n            \n\n \n\nTell me about the deal that you talked about with the City Fathers and what you’re going to be doing down here; that is very interesting.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: This is.....well, let me take you back to the beginning of this...Stan Keller, who is the medical director at Baptist Health Little Rock right now, came down and said, “We’re talking about doing a family practice residency program with UAMS to be housed at the North Little Rock campus and we want to teach family doctors to do what you were doing when I was in practice with you.” I said, “Well, what do you mean?” and he said, “Well, teach them how to do... to give them some skills....teach them how to do the _______ surgeries; you know, the stuff that makes money in a family practice.  We’re trying to build this residency program around that model with the idea of trying to get family doctors to come back to rural Arkansas to practice medicine. If you can show them that you can practice in a town of 4,000 and have a good quality of life, have good school systems, and things that appeal to them....maybe some of them will go to West Memphis, Marion, Osceola, and all these places that are desperate for family doctors.”  I said, “Ok, but I’ve got another year and a half on my contract here with St. Vincent.” Then in May of ’19, I got a healthy plea from Julie Garner; they said, “We want to talk to you” and I said, “Ok, what do you want to talk about?”  ”We went to the school board and approached the school district about the school health clinic; we want to put one on campus” and I said, “ok.”  “Well, there is a problem” and I said, “What’s the problem?”  “The school superintendent said that we are not going to do it unless you approve it.”              \n\n(Laughing)....\n\nI said, “What do you mean if I approve it?” and he said, “Well, he says that if you say that it’s a go, it’s a go and if you say it’s a no go, it’s a no go.”  I said, “Well, this is going to put me between a rock and a hard place with St. Vincent’s because I’m still in a contact with them.  If I’m trying to work with the competition to build the school’s health clinic, that’s going to not sit very well with David Foster and the group at Arkansas Health Network. Let me check on some things; give me a couple of weeks and I’ll get you an answer.” \n\nDr. Les Anderson:  Well, rock wall.....I talked to my medical director and I said, “Here’s what I want to do, I want to volunteer and go over there and work in that clinic at least one day a week” and he said of course, “Well, you’re going to be sending some of our patients over to your clinic” and I said, “There is a possibility of that, but I’m not going to do it unless you tell me it’s ok”....that rock wall, I never got a real answer.  Two weeks went by and Elton calls me and said, “Well, what’s going to happen?” and I said, “I’m not going to say no to a situation like this because I feel like it’s good for the community, good for \n\nthe school, and it’s something that we need to do; the school health clinic.” Ok; well, I......this happened in May and in our July office meeting, I tell Mary Andrews that this is about to go ahead; I told them that it is totally ok as far as I’m concerned to do the student health clinic.  Well, that was like throwing a rock in the punch bowl; so, she goes back to David Foster and he follows me and kind of jumps me.  He tells me that I’m not loyal to St. Vincent and I’m not this and I’m not that and I said, “No, David; I’m loyal to my town and my community and I see this as an opportunity for Lonoke to have something that it really needs.  You know, we have kids in school who have never had a physical, we have a terrible problem with obesity, teenage pregnancies...you know, we have a lot of issues that our kids have that we need to be addressing.” He said, “Why can’t you do that here?”....”Well, they don’t come out here because they don’t have insurance. Most of these kids have no means to pay.” He didn’t want to hear it at that time and I said, “Ok.”  Well then I was rocked around and the first week of September, I get a phone call from Mary Andrews who said, “We want to come down and meet with you.”  I said, “What about” and she said, “Well, we need to talk to you.”  They come down and bring me a letter of termination without cause, this was the 6th of September 2019, and I said, “Ok, if that’s what y’all want to do; that’s fine.”  She said, “We want you to work for three months and your last day here will be December 6th.”  I said, “Ok.”  “But you can’t tell anybody in the community that this has happened” and I said, “What?”   She said, “No, we won’t let you tell anybody that we fired you” and I said, “Ok.”  Well, I had a dog show that I was going to that weekend and so, I drove out to Elk City, Oklahoma; Cheryl had already gone out there with the motor home and took the dogs and so, I was just driving out to come back with her.  So when I got out, there I told her, “I got fired.”  She said, “You what?” and I said, “I got fired; St. Vincent’s terminated me”... “Why”...”It didn’t say; it was without cause.”  The next week, I go to talk with Dt. Tackett who was the schools superintendent and I said, “Let me pitch something to you; let’s try a combination of a school health clinic and a community health clinic” and he said, “Well, what are you talking about?” and I said, “I’m talking about a facility that would have the volume of patients, that could see patients with the residents and teach and take care of the medical needs of this community.”  He said, “Well, what do you mean by all this?” and I said, “Well, building a facility that has part school based and part community based; part of it, the community can come in and get the health care that they have been getting where they are now and the school side will be taking care of the school kids from Carlisle, England, and Hazen probably. You know having a school based facility where they can come and get their physicals, testing for all their disabilities, and this type of thing.”  He said, “Well, let me run it by the school board.”....the school board met the next week and they passed it.  He said, “We’re going to increase the mileage that we asked for.”  They increased the mileage by 1 mil from the school election to they were going to do a 1.9 for the school clinic and he said, “If they could get 2.9, we could do both.”  They were also building in a conjunction with a business center, a Vo-Tech school, that was being underwritten by the Arkansas State University and so, we’ll have that at that campus...and this clinic all together in the same place out there. But anyway, the mileage passed and so, we got together with the architects and drew up some plans and in the meantime, I’m just....you know, I’ve been rocking along and just not saying anything; so, when the 6th of December comes along that will be my last day...well by then, it ended in jackals.  He didn’t mention the school board, but I had....the only person I had told was Tackett. I told ________Floyd and my office manager knew that I had been fired.  So, they fired me on Friday and then Saturday, Jerry Hill with ARcare came to see me and drew me up a contact and said, “Can you start next week?” and I said, “Well, I guess I can.” \n\n                         \n\n \n\nNow ARcare was going to do the community health part?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, ARcare had offered that; but, Baptist got it.  ARcare had gone over and talked to Tackett about the school’s clinic, but they were going to use the facility that I’m in now and not have anything actually on the school campus.; anyway, there was some issues there that didn’t sit well with Tackett, the superintendent.  So, I went to work at ARcare the week after that; I had to go to training for a week to learn the computer system and I actually started seeing patients a week after I left St. Vincent’s.  I’ve been there a year and a half now and my last day will be August 13th when we start seeing patients there at the new clinic.  \n\n \n\nAnd you will basically be the medical director of the new facility?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right.\n\n \n\nThat’s interesting....How old are you now\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I am 76.\n\n  \n\n76; how long are you going to keep doing this?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Good question; I guess as long as I have the mental capacities and the ability to be able to walk up and down the halls to see patients.\n\n \n\nAre you excited about this new thing? You sounded excited on the telephone.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I am excited about it; I think it is good for the community and I think it will be great for the training program for the family practice residents.  You know, not many rural sites will have the volume that this clinic will have.\n\n \n\nRight...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I’m seeing 40-45 patients a day now and I’m assuming that probably 60-70% of those will follow me over there; this is going to be.....that is kind of one of the things that St. Vincent got bent out of shape about; you know, everybody left their practice and followed me over to ARcare.  So, I may have been accused of everything from fraud to everything else; but....\n\n  \n\n \n\nWell, there’s nothing there.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, I mean.....in fact if anything, they broke the law; they didn’t notifying my patients where they were and they didn’t tell people I was still in town.  They felt like when they asked they were like...”We don’t know where he is”.......well in a small town, they are going to find out...\n\n \n\nSure...and they know when they lose you, they know where your house is.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: They know where my house is .........and that week that I wasn’t at St. Vincent’s, I was practicing medicine out of my house; I was refilling prescriptions and David Foster, the medical director at St. Vincent’s, called me and said, ”Why are you still practicing?” “Because, I’m still having to see patients; I’m still doing dressing changes that I started when I was with St. Vincent’s and y’all won’t let me come back out there and take care of these wounds.”  I had a couple of acute ____ and I had a bad surgical thing trying to keep clean and so, I was having them come to the house and changing dressings and watching the wounds.  I said, “I had to do that because y’all wouldn’t let me come back down for follow up care and they didn’t want to see a nurse practitioner.\n\n    \n\n \n\nSeveral things; I got beyond this and so, I want to come back to this.....how many children do you have, who are they, what are their names, what do they do, and where do they live?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Ok, I have three daughters; the oldest is 50, an RN, and works for the Arkansas Foundation for Healthcare. She does the informatics stuff...a computer whiz and I mean, she can do anything....  Her original task was to go around and help these rural practices set up their EMRs and to help them get the funding, to write grants to get the funding, to purchase the EMRs.  That has kind of wound down now and so, that’s how she got involved heavy with the Covid testing; she and her team would go to these mass Covid testing places and so, that has kind of spun down.... right now, she’s in a situation where she is actually working on a grant for transportation for rural clinics to buy vans so these rural clinics, like the one we have here, to take the residents out to do home visits.  In the residency program, they have to do so many home visits and I still make house calls; I don’t make a lot, but I still do. So, this is a grant that they’re trying to get down at Baptist to sign over to purchase a van with basic medical stuff to provide where you can go to the home, the resident and their person...whoever goes out to the home with them to make the home visit and do basic.....you know, check the blood sugars and stuff like that with the stuff that you carry in the van. I think once that gets going, she will probably ____________.\n\n  \n\n \n\nAnd you have two other daughters........\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I have two other daughters; the first ones name is Miranda and the second one’s name is Latisha.\n\n \n\nWhen were they born?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Latisha was born in ’73 and Miranda was born in ’69.  Latisha, we call her sissy; she got the nickname sissy because Miranda couldn’t say Latisha....it’s my baby sissy....she was trying to say baby sister. Anyway, she is a guidance counselor at the middle school and she has two sons.  Her husband is a farmer and they farm just west of town here. She is one who never did like to babysit when she was a kid; she didn’t like kids period....but she is the one who went into education; so....” (Laughing).... \n\n \n\nWhat about your third child...?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: The youngest child is Kristin and she is a nurse; she works for Patriot Centers of America in west Little Rock with Dr. Watson.  So, I have two nurses and a guidance counselor as daughters and I have five grandchildren.  Miranda and Clark has two girls, sissy and Steele has two boys, and then, Kristin has one child and a dog.\n\n \n\n \n\nHas your health held up?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Pretty much; arthritis is probably the biggest thing and I keep my cholesterol in check.  Apparently, dad lived to be 91 and mother lived to be 86; mother had a rheumatoid aortic valve that had always been a problem, but nobody wanted to fix.  It finally got to the point where we either have to fix it or she was going to die of congestive heart failure.  Dad was still flying his airplane when he was in his 80s; he had a twin engine airplane and would head out to Perryville to go hunting or fishing.\n\n   \n\n \n\nNow, you mentioned airplanes at one point; are you a pilot?\n\n\n\nDr. Les Anderson: I am a pilot; Cheryl and I are both pilots.  We don’t have an airplane right now; the cost of up keep on an airplane and the price of aviation fuel kind of put us out of the airplane business. But, we started out with a little 172 that actually belonged to my dad.  I learned to fly in that when I was a senior in high school; sorry, a senior in college....I got my pilots license when I was a senior in college.  Cheryl got hers probably in ’74, ’75, or somewhere along in there; so, we both flew. We went in a partnership and bought a nice airplane in ’75, I guess it was; I bought a Piper Comanche.  I went in partnership with an attorney here in town and we flew that thing; we’d pile all the kids in and fly to Destin and Padre Island.  We’d fly to the east coast, to Myrtle Beach, or wherever we wanted to go.  We flew to Colorado.....we few that until the kids got so big that we couldn’t fit them all in the backseat.\n\n \n\n \n\nWhat else do you do for fun?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: What else do I do for fun; well, I show dogs.\n\n \n\nOk; yeah you mentioned that.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Cheryl and I started showing dogs in 1995.  It is kind of a strange situation there; my son-in-law, my middle daughter’s husband, had a German shepherd and he bred the German shepherd to a female here in town and got his pick of the litter as a stud fee.  So for my birthday in ’95, he gives me a German shepherd puppy.  You know, I’ve never had a German shepherd; we always had miniature schnauzers up to that point.  We had schnauzers; I guess the kids wanted one and so, we always had one in the house.  I always had dogs growing up; hunting dogs, beagles, labs, and this type of thing. Cheryl was a dog lover and so, we always had miniature schnauzers.  But he gave us this German shepherd puppy and the dog was so darn smart that it just amazed me of what this dog was capable of doing. So, we had friends who said, “Why don’t you train him in obedience?” and I said, “Ok.”  So, we found a guy over in Glen Rose for obedience training class and we took B.C.....his dad’s named was Bear, so we called him B.C. for bear’s cub......but anyway, we took him over there and we were doing obedience training with him and you know, he did great. Art called me one morning and said, “B.C. died” and I said, “What do you mean he died; he’s 18 months-olds?” and he said, “When I went out to the kennel this morning, he was dead.” I said, “I’m going to take him back to the state lab and an echo biopsy to find out what happened.”  The dog had ruptured through aorta.\n\n          \n\n \n\nWow....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: He had a congenital heart defect that nobody had picked up on. Anyway, I grew fond of the dog and the kids loved the dog; he was just part of the family and so, we got to looking.  I said, “I don’t want to go back to the puppy years” ...but, we found a couple up in Conway who were advertising German Shepherd puppies and so, we drove up there to look at the puppies.  They had two male puppies; but, they were just puppies and were chewing on everything and jumping on everything.  I said, “I just don’t want to go back through training a puppy again” and she said, “Well, we have a finished champion, a championship dog, and he is 4 years old.  We would sell him to the right home.”  I said, “Well, what do you mean the right home?”   She said, “We’ll have to come to your home and see your facility” and I said, “My facility would be my backyard and the kennel would be my house.”  So, they brought the dog down and of course, the grandkids and the kids all had to come see the dog; his name was Denver. So, they came down and of course, Denver was just happy as a clown; he’s just a big ole wily dog.  Anyway, he said, “I’ll sell you the dog for such-and-such” and I said, “Ok” and paid for the dog. “Well, we’ve got him entered at the Arkansas Kennel Club Show next week; do you want us to take him and show him for you?” and I said, “Ok, we’ll just take him there and you can show him”...well, the dog won, best breed, and you know, he was just a natural showman and so, he taught us how to show.  So, Denver was our trainer and we learned to show dogs; after that, we had a series of really nice dogs that we’ve finished over the years....we’ve finished over 30 AKC champions with our Shepherds.\n\n  \n\n \n\nSo you’ve had a lot of dogs.....\n\nDr. Les Anderson: We’ve had a ton of dogs; we’ve kenneled as many as 35 here at one time.  I can kind of put that in perspective; we are also a foster for the animal shelter.  So, we take typically the large dogs or the difficult to handle dogs from the shelter; the ones who are at risk to be euthanized.  We take those and you know, we have found homes for over 150.\n\n \n\nGood for you; that is really neat.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right now, we have only one foster out here; she is a beagle-mix of some kind and she is afraid of her own shadow.  I’ve had her for four years and she may or may not be rehomeable, but she has a home if she needs it.  We normally have a motor-home that we travel in, but we had a wreck in it coming home from a show in Austin the first week of May   We blew a right front tire, went off the road, and tore the underpinnings out from under it; so, it’s... the repairs are...\n\n \n\nNo one was hurt?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: No, we were fortunate to be on the outside lane; it was the right front tire and so when we hit, we went off in the median, the grass on the roadway of the interstate, and I was fed up by then.  But anyway, I finally got it back up on the road, drove a little ways, and there just happened to be an exit there; so, I just aimed for that exit as I had no braking control and it was just going.  So, we slide to the bottom of the ramp and stopped; so, it’s in a repair shop in Fort Worth and there’s no telling when they are going to be done with it...but, it’s normally parked out here.\n\n  \n\n \n\nSo you are a few years from retiring...\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, I signed a three year contract with Baptist; so, I’m assuming that I’m going to live that long.\n\n \n\nWould you do it again; would you do what you’ve done in the practice of medicine again?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Yes, I’ve had a great life and I’ve enjoyed it.  I love what I do and I think my patients still appreciate what I do for them.  I think the biggest thing I’ve seen since I first went into practice is the expectation of the patients has changed a lot; they are more demanding.  This opiate thing has just been a pain in everybody’s rear in trying to control that; you know, you have to balance between how much pain control you give them and how much you don’t give them.  If you give too much, you get brought up in front of the medical board and if you don’t give enough, the patient complains too much; so, it’s been a tight rope and that is probably the biggest negative effect, as far as I see, in patient care.\n\n \n\nWhat was your reaction and your experience during Covid?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, I basically...we stayed open; we didn’t close anything.  The Sherwood Urgent Care who is across the driveway from us shut down for like two weeks, but we stayed open.  We were seeing and doing a lot of swabs in the parking lot; we had our two nurses going out and doing the rapid PCR swabs.  We were seeing patients.....the patient would only come back and we’d go back with them in the rooms, but, we actually got through it.  We probably; we had one employee come down with Covid that probably wasn’t anything that she picked up at the office.\n\n \n\nDoes telemedicine play a big role in your practice?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: It did during Covid; we would probably....I would mark off about an hour through the middle of the day to do telemedicine and that kind of got to be fun until the patients started abusing it. You know, I’d get calls from the same patient about the same problem two to three days in a row and so, I’d say, “Well, you need to make an office call and come by the office so that I can see; I can’t tell what’s going on by what you’re describing.”  But overall, that was a pretty good experience; it worked.....as far as the new place, we’ll probably do that too....we’ll see.  \n\n \n\nOne of my partners; he is my physician; Kirk Watson told me...I was in there for something else the other day, and he said, “Sam” ..... Because he was notorious for getting anything that comes around..... He said, “You know, I’ve been wearing a mask for a year and I haven’t had the first repository infection.” \n\n  \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Right; I mean, I agree.\n\n \n\nIt’s just really interesting.\n\n \n\nI have two other questions that I would like to ask you today that are not in the questionnaire.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Alright, you bet.\n\n \n\n \n\nIn 50 years from now, you are going to be a picture on the wall.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Hopefully.....(Laughing)......\n\n \n\nWe are all going to be pictures on a wall, somebody’s wall.  What do you want your great, great, great grandchildren to know about you?  \n\nDr. Les Anderson: Well, I would want them to know that I was a caring physician and I tried to make a difference.\n\n \n\nThe last question is:  what do you want for them?\n\nDr. Les Anderson: For them, I want them to respect what their ancestor has giving them: their grandparents, great grandparents, me and Cheryl.  To understand that there is a culture and a need for everybody to understand where they came from and where they are going. Don’t accept anything for granted; life is fragile and it’s...you may be here tomorrow or not....so live today as if it was your last day and love today as if it was your last day.\n\n \n\nThank you sir, that’s it.\n\nDr. Les Anderson: Alright, very good.\n\n \n\nI’ve asked all the questions that I know to ask.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97372/file/194235#t=0.0,6247.77487"}]}]}]}