{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/zg6g15wd64/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Curtis Jones and Anita Jones"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2016-04-20 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Video File"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Rural Medicine","Arkansas","Family Medicine","Family Physician"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Curtis Jones, MD (personal name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/485/small/CurtisJonesM.D.DVD.mp4_1759340565.jpg?1759340567","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Curtis_Jones_M.D._DVD.mp4"]},"duration":6293.35373,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/485/small/CurtisJonesM.D.DVD.mp4_1759340565.jpg?1759340567","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/293/485/original/Curtis_Jones_M.D._DVD.mp4?1759340542","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6293.35373,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485/transcript/84906","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Curtis Jones Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485/transcript/84906/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Curtis Jones\n\nGood morning….this is 4/20/16.  My name is Sam Taggart and I am in the home of Dr. Curtis Jones and his wife, Anita.  Anita will be throwing some things into this interview, we hope, as we go along to fill in the blanks.   Dr. Jones, again this interview is your interview.  Just to begin: \n\nTell me a little bit about when were you were born?  \n\n“I was born on December 3, 1923 in Little Rock Arkansas at the old St. Vincent’s Hospital.”\n\nAnd your father was already in practice in Benton at that point?\n\n“No, daddy graduated in 1920 from Tulane.  Those early years are kind of fuzzy.  He tried to practice in Little Rock; but couldn’t make a go of it.  He went to Brinkley, or Wheatley, with his cousin and practiced until the Malaria severity and then came to Benton.  We moved to Benton in late 1924.”\n\nSpeaking of Wheatley and Brinkley, does the name Beauchamp ring a bell?  There was a Dr. Beauchamp in the late 19th Century and he eventually left there and went to Riverside.  He may have been there before your father was there. \n\n“Probably, dad’s cousin was Dr. Hall, I have forgotten his first name now; but I think there’s still Hall’s there, but I don’t know. Daddy was not all that keen on his family, family ties, or anything.  I know very little about his family.”\n\nSo, where was your family from?  How did your family get to Arkansas? \n\n“I have no earthly idea.  He had ken folks in Kentucky, in around Paducah, and I think they came from North Carolina; but I’m not that sure on that.  Like I said, dad was not keen on family ties at all.  Mother was entirely different.  She has a family tree and all that sort of stuff.  I have cousins; a first cousin whom I presume is still living, an internist, well I don’t know where he is and I’ve forgot his name; dad had two sisters.”\n\n“One was Pauline, I think wasn’t it? And, I don’t know the other one.” \n\n“Oh what’s his name, Ken Jones at the orthopedic clinic in Little Rock was my second cousin.  Bill, my brother, a fellow came in as a patient and it was Jones and he was related somehow directly; it was the same branch of the family and everything else.  He lives in Little Rock and he was just like dad was, he didn’t give a dam about family; but he did mention the fact that he and Bill were related, second or third cousins or something like that.”\n\nYou mentioned you mother and that she was interested in genealogy.\n\n\n\n“Her family, that’s all it was.  She pretty well kept up with that.  Her mother was German; well, her parents came from Germany, my grandmother’s parents.  Her great grandparents had family ties in Henderson, Kentucky and they moved there.  That was where my grandmother was raised.  She married Jerry Stillson, who his family was from North Carolina, and how they got to that area, I don’t know; other than farming.  They were all farmers and still are for that matter.  Granddaddy, my mother’s father, was not best on managing things and lost his farm in Kentucky and came to Little Rock.  He was supposed to be tied in with a flour mill in Little Rock and that fell through; but, that’s how mother wound up in Little Rock.  But, how they met; I don’t know.”    \n\nDo you know how your father ended up in Little Rock?  You said he tried to practice there initially.  \n\n“Well, dad was born and raised in Little Rock.  His father, I don’t know, he did a lot of different things.  He had a grocery store at one time off of Cantrell Avenue.  Their home, where dad was raised, he still owns that property, 413 Fourth Street.  He was also a traveling salesman and worked for Vlasic out at St. Louis.  He was a character; I wish I’d known him.  He was, if you’re familiar with Bonneville, he was an in-man and his buddy was on the opposite side; they were black faced and they cracked jokes back and forth and they worked the bones.  It was something that they did that way of catching up and they could work those things and make them pop and carry on.”\n\nI remember a story that I think you had told me or someone else told me, but somehow, your father played the violin, and he was in Bonneville.  He did some Bonneville playing the violin.\n\n“Oh yes, dad started playing the violin when he was eight years old and by the time he was twelve, he was playing for Bonneville.  Daddy was born in 1895 and he had his own orchestra that played for Bonneville and also played background music for movies.  He also acted in Bonneville when they needed a young man there; he was a character.  Dad was a superlative violinist; as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be sitting here today as a physician if he hadn’t worked his way through med school in Tulane playing the violin.”     \n\nHow did the connection with Tulane begin? Didn’t you and your brothers all go to Tulane to school?\n\n“Yeah, uh huh; Bob graduated from the University of Arkansas.  He was in V-12 during the war at Tulane in pre-med, but he certainly did not want to come back to Little Rock.  Bill graduated from Tulane; he was ten years behind me.  On the side, dad was real proud of this; they had a violinist back in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s named Romanoff, a concert violinist who also made a living by playing solo in various communities.  I don’t know how in the world they met up or anything; but Romanoff left his Stradivarius violin with dad for ten days and dad practically shut \n\n\ndown and practiced; that’s all he wanted to do was play that violin.  It was a beautiful instrument; my God it was beautiful.  That’s one of my regrets in life, not learning to play something or other.  Mother was tone deaf and she could care less about music; I took after her I guess.”        \n\nYou started out by saying that you were born at St. Vincent’s Hospital.  Do you know anything about who delivered you?\n\n“Oh yeah, ole Dr. Hinkle.  He, I don’t know what time, but he took Clyde Rodgers as a partner, but then Clyde with Dale McCathkle, their friend, and Charlie Wicker, all started the Women’s Clinic in Little Rock; which of course, I don’t think they are as famous now as they were say 20 years ago.  But, it’s still a good bunch of people.”    \n\nBut that was the same clinic as Dr. Hinkle?\n\n“Yeah; now Hinkle was solo at that time; I presume, I don’t know.”\n\nSo, were you alive when your father moved to Wheatley or Brinkley?\n\n“Yeah, I was a baby.”\n\nYou were a baby then.\n\n“That’s why we left.  Why he left was, well a couple of things; all the mud up there, and then trying to get around in the wintertime in the car, but more significantly was the malaria there, at that time, was rampant.  So, he wanted to get away from there and this opportunity to come to Benton arose; so he grabbed it.” \n\nWhat was the opportunity?  Just somebody related to the Mills?\n\n“No, it was just the fact that they didn’t have a credited physician here at that time.  They had Blakely and Buffington; Buffington was an interesting character.  He was a reading doctor and grandfather would tell me, I’d forgotten when 1910, ’15, or something like that, when the Buckle Society accepted anybody who practiced medicine at that time.  They had a bunch of doctors when dad came here, I’ve forgot how many; but there were two at Traskwood, two or three at Bryant, and six or eight in Benton.”\n\nDo you remember any of the names?  \n\n“Yeah, John Shepherd and I was the same age; we grew up together.  Of course they still have, I’m sure it’s still in the family; a small building down there by what used to be Carti, where that sign is.”\n\nNext door to the Shoe Shop; where the Shoe Shop used to be.  Bucky Ellis, the lawyer, has an office in the end of that building. \n\n\n“Yeah, that’s the old Parker building.”    \n\nTell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up in Benton.  I know you have two brothers.\n\n“That was a fabulous deal.  Of course, Benton at that time had 3400 people you know; we were foot loose and fancy free.  As long as we were home at 5:30 for supper, mother didn’t give a dam.  There weren’t anything to do to get into trouble at that time.  No, it was a really carefree existence.  I grew up on the Saline River.”\n\nWhen did your father, I assume it was your father, build the house there on Main Street?\n\n“Dad didn’t own a dam thing; as a matter of fact, he didn’t own anything that he wasn’t forced to buy until I started practice with him and we built a clinic.  But, we lived all over Benton renting and mother got tired of it.  She had a rich uncle, my grandmother’s brother who was very well off, and he bought the house there on Main Street from Tyndall Dickinson who had McGeorge.  He eventually owned McGeorge.  They made brick here in Benton for that matter.  But, he bought that house and paid $10,000 for it; dad paid that off.  Of course, that was pretty rough during the depression; that was interesting I thought.  The first house we lived in, after we moved out became a Cell Phone Exchange for Benton.  From there, we moved to a house where Ashby, Hogue, and Thorn’s office was and then, we moved to where Cliff Hayes, the dentist on that corner there.  From there, we moved over to where the First Methodist Church is now, that old big ole white house.  Then, we moved back to where the funeral home is and then back to where Union Bank is.  Mother put her foot down then and that’s when we moved into where we lived.”\n\nWhere did your father practice?  Did he practice out of the house or did he have a separate office?\n\n“He had a separate office.  The first one was a second story, I don’t know the name of what’s in that building now, but it’s the northwest corner of Market and South.”\n\nWasn’t that the Ashby building?  Was that owned by the Ashby’s?\n\n“It may be.”\n\nThere’s a walk up doctors office up there on the second floor, or there was, above that Dollar Store that is still there on that corner.\n\n“Well, I haven’t been up there in a long, long, time.”\n\nDo you remember when you were a child, much about your father and his practice in medicine?  Whether he was gone a lot or out a lot at night on house calls?\n\n\n“Yeah; back then, of course, you took everything you could; that was rough.  I don’t see how he did it.  He didn’t smoke or drink, so like Bill, four and a half to five hours of sleep was more than enough so he could function real well with minimal stuff like that.  Like he said, “The fee was 50 cents whether you were in the office or on a house call.” Back then, he said a lot of times they’d call two or three doctors and whoever got there first, got the money; so you made a mad dash to make house calls.”\n\nDid he go out of town; did he go out in the county a lot?\n\n“Oh yeah, yes indeed; that was real interesting.  When we first moved here, he’d take mother and myself on calls, babe in arms, and the moonshiners, you couldn’t even get out of town without going by two or three stills.  He luckily befriended one of the moonshiners up in Paron in that he stirred us into where they were loading up moonshine in tin cans in the back of a truck and they would have shot at him and killed him if he hadn’t said “He didn’t see a thing.”  He just denied ever being around there; so, they accepted him for that.  He had a real good business.  They knew that he wasn’t going to turn them in.”\n\nI know at a later time, Paul Hogue had a fairly thriving practice up in Paron.       \n\n“Yeah, well he was more brazen you know; everybody knew Paul of course up there.  Dad said one time one of the first house calls he was supposed to make, he kept driving around, around, and around, and he knew good and well that he’d drove by his place before; but anytime he stopped and asked somebody where to go to where sho-blo lived, they’d tell him a different route.  They were very secretive at that time; they’re still that way.  I used to go up there bird hunting with Bob Parker and his dad, Earnest, and you got out of there at dusk; that’s when they load up their trucks, you got away and quit bird hunting well before dusk because you didn’t want to mess with them.  They didn’t want to mess with you either for that matter.”\n\nSo, tell me a little bit about your schooling as a child; elementary school, senior high school, a little bit about was there anything about your schooling that stands out to you.  Did you get a good education?  Any teachers that was particularly important to you?     \n\n“Oh yeah; the Superintendant of Howard Paron’s School was a scout master.  I thought the world of him; he was great.  There were a lot of good teachers.  I thought I had an excellent education with the small population that we had.  When I started pre-med, I was, of course a year ahead of the schedule where you had to have Math, English and something else. My background had been upper class, two classes or three may be, but I was in a better class simply because of the background I had and I thought that that was something else. The teachers were all consciences; I don’t remember all of them, of course.  All of them had an influence, for that matter; I was very studious.”\n\nYou were a very studious student, too.\n\n\n“By necessity, I had a metacarpal broken in my right foot and had a big staph infection on my nose at that time.  We were playing baseball right across from where I lived, that property that we were talking about where that old house used to be or whatever that doctor was; but at any rate, that was a huge lot.  Half of that lot, the east half, was vacant; so we played football and baseball there all the time.  I had my foot on a pebble when the guy came home; he stepped on my foot and cracked that bone.  Of course that was a lucky thing; it kept me out of the War because they didn’t have antibiotics at that time.  I was dam lucky to live for that matter.  Well, that was in the 9th grade and from then on, I couldn’t get out and do anything for the rest of the year in 9th grade; so I just learned how to study. I enjoyed doing it, so I kept it up.”\n\nDid your mom and dad encourage you in studying?\n\n“No, it was there to do and that was an obligation I had.  I don’t remember them forcing me into it or anything like that; it was just that that was my responsibility.”\n\nWere there any other siblings beside you and your two brothers? \n\n“That’s all.”\n\nAnd where are you in the age group; oldest, youngest?\n\n“I’m the oldest.  Bob was born in 1926 and Bill was born in 1934.”\n\nSo, if you were born in 1923; you would have been fathered for World War II.  You would have been prime for that.\n\n“Yeah, that’s what I was saying.  I was doubly lucky in that by having to miss the War, I was substituted to draft later and I was drafted into the military in ’55.  They sent me to Germany and I did a stretcher tour over there.  Of course, our three children were adopted and two of them are German.  We adopted two kids, a boy and a girl.”\n\nWhile you were in Germany or after you came back? \n\n“No, while we were there.  We just lost Whit, in January; he would’ve been 66 next month, I mean in July.  We don’t know what caused it, but I have a pretty good idea; but at any rate, he was with us and then we adopted Kurt.  Whit was born in 1950 and Kurt was born in ’55 and Emilia was born in ’56.”\n\nDid you do well in school?\n\n“I did well at the high school; I was valedictorian at Benton.  Of course that was not that big a deal, because there were just 42 of us in my class.  I was probably the only one that studied other than some girls who studied.”\n\n\nSo, you graduated high school when?  What year?\n\n“I graduated in 1941. I was 17 years old and went to Tulane. Dad was a big football fan and I had to play football.  I played football in high school, and such sports, and it was agreed that I’d go to college.  That was an experience, probably one of the luckier things in my life was that experience.  17 years old playing football down there and hearing people “woo-hoo” that’s something.”  \n\nNow you’re going from a little bitty town in Arkansas to New Orleans; ok.  That had to be an awakening.\n\n“You’re telling me; I didn’t know what a nude woman was.  I was afraid of girls; I didn’t date or anything when I was in high school.”                              \n\nBut, you went to college at Tulane and then went to medical school.  So, at what point did you guys meet?\n\n“In Germany, we were in an accelerated program.  I was trying to piece that in my mind some time ago.  I started med school on December 04, 1944; the war was over, and there were 45 Japanese shredders, certainly in August there was 45; that was a semester of my sophomore year.  Bob was in B-12 at that time and of course, the war was over.  They turned them all lose, so we rode home together on a train.  I was just lucky as hell that I decided that I’d see about having a date and Bob fixed me up with a date.  Bob knew Anita real well.  How many girls; it was you, Libby, and Barbara wasn’t it?”\n\n“I can’t hear you, what.”\n\nHe said Bob fixed him up on a date with you.\n\n“Yeah, a blind date.”\n\nAnd you were from Benton?\n\n“No, I was from Traskwood; I was living in Benton at the time.”\n\nWhere you working?\n\n“Yes, I think it was Reynolds back then; no, it was Alcoa at the time.” \n\nHow long did you guy’s date?\n\n“A year and a half.”\n\n“We married in ’47, so two years.  Of course, I was in school most of that time.”\n\n\nLet’s back up just a little bit; tell me a little bit about going to college in Tulane.  You felt like you had a pretty decent education at the primary school and secondary school in Benton.\n\n“I think so.”\n\nDid you find Tulane hard?\n\n“I had no problem in pre-med.  Of course the further along, the more complicated it became; I wasn’t as intelligent as I thought.  I was in the middle of my class, which was good enough I guess.”\n\nWere there any men or women, teachers, during college or during medical school who had a big impact on you or had a lasting impact that you can look back and say, “Yeah, I’m glad I had them?”          \n\n“Yeah, the main one was O’Boyle Smith; he was the Head of the Anatomy Department and also he was Athletic Director for Tulane.  Without my playing football, I don’t know for sure, but I think he influenced my being able to stay in school.  Sophomore year during bacteriology, we had three teams of groups and there was 12 of us; we’d run through that real quick and then go down into the basement and play bridge.  We had one table who flunked out, one table repeat it, and one table who passed; I passed.  There were two people who were a hell of a lot smarter than I was, I thought, who had to repeat it.  I think O’Boyle Smith had a lot to do with it.  I think he helped get me into med school, because of that.”\n\nHow did you pay for college and medical school?\n\n“Daddy had to pay for medical school.  He paid for the first year of pre-med and then, I was on a full scholarship.  The last year of pre-med, I ran a Zoology lab, I don’t know, with an assistant professor or an associate professor, or whatever. I got paid $100.00 a month on that.”\n\nThat was a lot of money.\n\n“Yeah, it was back then; and, of course, the scholarship too was a lot of money for football.”\n\nI drifted passed this and this is a question to both of you.  You were born in ’23 and you lived through the depression; do you remember much about the depression and the impact that it had?  You would have been between 8 and 16 during the depression; tell me a little bit about your impressions of it and how it had an impact on you and your family.\n\n“Well, of course it affected me; but not near as much as it did most people.  Dad made $7,500.00 a month, which was a lot of money back then.  We didn’t want for anything.  What I remember as much as anything about it that made a big impression on me, was one Christmas; I was in the third or fourth grade I guess, but at any rate, dad had quite a bit of stuff for Bob and I at Christmas.   I was real excited about it and when I got back to school, one kid got a pencil, \n\n\nanother got a notepad, one got an orange; it made an impression on me.  Then I remember getting a haircut and this guy in Gip Wilson’s Barber Shop  bought a present for his children, a whistle type thing that you blow it out and the thing unrolled, a lizard’s head would pop up, and this tongue would pop out.  He fiddled around with it and that was for his four kids; that was their Christmas, that one thing.  He was real proud of that.  He was so proud of that and he broke it.  He said, “Well, they won’t care; at least it’s something.”  That to me was; I just couldn’t imagine that at all.”\n\nDo you remember much about the floods of ’27 or the flood of ‘37?\n\n“The ’27 flood, it may have been, of course that area between Memphis and Little Rock may have flooded more than I thought; so, I may be confusing the ’27, but my folks had real good friends in Memphis and we were up there one time when the ice broke, or whatever, and there was a flood and we had to get back on the train, a box car, and ride miles and miles of just nothing water, I remember.  I don’t remember ’37, or at least we didn’t get any, because you know Benton is up high.”\n\nBack onto medical school and college; what was your favorite subjects?  What were the things that made you say, “Oh, I really like this; this is why I’m here; I really enjoy this.” \n\n“Well, I enjoyed zoology or anything science.  I always did real well on that; other than organic chemistry.  I didn’t really like organic chemistry.  I did average on most everything.  That was strange too; my best grades were always when I played football.  During practice in the springtime after football season, my grades went down.  I may have spent too much time down in the courtyard.”       \n\n Was it a foregone conclusion when you went to college that you would go to medical school? \n\n“Yes, I was called doc, my nickname was little doc; I grew up with that.  That was to be my destiny.  I told dad that “Well, I don’t know anything better to do” and that pissed him off bad.”\n\nSo when you got into medical school; was there anything, particular in the last couple of years in medical school that really caught your interest?  Something that made you say, “Oh, that’s what I want to do.” \n\n“No, I knew that I was going back to practice with dad.  I just didn’t really have any subject that we had that I liked any better than anything else.  Well, I shouldn’t say that because something like ophthalmology, I didn’t care about, or ENT, or some things like that.  I was interested in surgery; but we didn’t have any surgery at Benton, other than at Blakely’s house or place.  When I got overseas, I backed into that.  Dad and I built an obstetrical hospital there at Benton and we ran that about three years before I was drafted.  My first year with that background, the army was needed an obstetrician or someone that did obstetrics, but not board qualified or anything like that.  They put in Munich, Germany, second field hospital, and I forgot the \n\n\nnumber obstetrics I was in, but I was a “D” or lower classification.  My Chief was Dick Eckroll.  Dick was an Associate Professor over OBGYN, I think in LA or someplace out there, and I had accredited two years of obstetrics and gynecology.  As a matter of fact, Val Rowan, the Hungarian, went on and took another year of OBGYN when he got back and that’s what he practiced.”     \n\nAfter you finished medical school, you came back and went into practice with your father.  About what year was that?\n\n“1949.”\n\nHow soon after that was it that you and your dad build the hospital; the little office hospital you had there on Market Street?\n\n“I started in July ’49 and I think in ’52 or ’53.”\n\nJust before Saline Memorial was built.\n\n“Yeah, I was one the founders, not founders I don’t know what you’d call it.  On the committee, I was the physician on the committee that started the initial work on that thing; I’m a survivor of that distinction.”  \n\n Let’s talk about that a little bit.  At that point, Ashby and Hogue had that office over there on South Street or did they not?   \n\n“I started in ’49 and Paul started in ’50.  HB and JB Wright didn’t come in until I went into the service.   I went into the service and by vacancy; they came in.  Paul was solo until I went into the service; then he and, I don’t know how that got started, whether Paul started working with John or teamed up with HB or what.  At any rate, there was an established practice when I got back after two years.  Paul, of course, was just starting out and I had a year on him and then, of course, with the pressures of my dad; dad had a real big practice.”\n\nDid he do a lot of OB at that time? \n\n“Yeah, I delivered, I don’t know 400, 500, or so home deliveries; there was some loo-loo’s.  We just got started real well on our obstetrical hospital; but, of course, that was not the only reason that Saline Memorial was started; but that kind of gave them a boost.  When dad and I opened our thing up; we were pretty successful with it.  When I got back the hospital was built and functioning by that time, in ‘57.”\n\nSo, the emphasis to build your office was the OB; is that correct?\n\n“No, no, no; home deliveries were hard and risky.  We just thought that it would be a good idea, as dad had a real successful practice, to have sterile technique and that sort of thing.”\n\n\nDid you do any other surgeries in your little hospital?\n\n“Minor surgeries, no.  Orthopedics; we set ankles and small bones, that sort of thing.”\n\nI know at one point, you and Robert both practiced out of that office.\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nWas there any time when all three of you practiced out of that office?\n\n“Yeah, when Bob first started after he graduated.  His wife, Mickey Harper, was from Texarkana and Mickey was unhappy up here; she wasn’t a queen bee of Benton.  So, Bob moved back down there in Nachidoshus, Texas, and then on further down towards Huston.  I had so much, my business was too much for me, so I asked Bob to come back and start practice with me.  That was a mistake; Bob and I were very close growing up, but I don’t know if it was me or him or the relationship with his wife.   I think he was extremely jealous of anything that went on and reflected on Bob also.  So, things just didn’t work out like they should have.”\n\nIs she still alive?\n\n“No, she drank herself to death with Coca-Cola’s. I saved her life one time; she was on that, I don’t think that she was on dope or anything; I think she just consumed too much coke and smoked cigarettes.  She was in bad shape; I had to pump her stomach out and everything else.  Wish I hadn’t now.”\n\nTwo subjects that I want to go back, that we already passed by, and I want to make sure to cover.  One is you said that “I have done 400 or 500 home deliveries and there was some real loo-loo’s in that group”.   Tell me a little bit about that.  Tell me what it was like doing home deliveries.  Tell me if you have some specific instances without revealing names of where you went “Oh my goodness, this is tough.”\n\n“Yeah, the second baby I delivered at home was breech; it primed me up.  The baby weighed 81/2lbs; out in the boondocks and not knowing what the hell to do.  That was something else.  One of the earlier ones, I think I delivered around 4 or 5 of her babies, she had a screw loose and one time I was over there to see her for one of her kids and she said, “Dr. Curtis, I want to show you my garden.”  I went out back to look at her garden; or what her garden was, it was little graves: a pet here, a pet there, and something.  But the prettiest, fanciest, tomb and grave there was mine; Dr. Curtis.  She called one time right at noon-time and said “I have a bad stomach ache doc, I want you to come over and take a look at it” well, she was having a baby.  She probably didn’t even know she was pregnant.  I literally used shoestrings; I had them boil shoestrings to tie the chord with.”\n\n\n\nYou talked about malaria being a big problem back in the ‘20s and ‘30s and obviously, it disappeared by the ‘50s.  Where there other things that had an impact like: polio, typhoid, diphtheria?\n\n“I never did see a case of diphtheria here.  Unless I missed typhoid, I don’t think we had any typhoid.  By that time, everyone was taking shots; typhoid shots.  I had polio patients unfortunately; victims.   That was interesting, I thought; when oral saline came out, I was President of Society at that time, I think a big deal; there were five of us.  But at any rate, I organized that dam thing and assigned everybody a certain spot to give out oral saline.  You were supposed to volunteer and give money for it and so on. We collected almost $5,000.00 from that thing and no one knew what to do with it.  It had been maybe a couple of months before a junior league club quit taking care of the Benton Library, which was always a favorite of mine; so, I suggested that we give the money to the people who could do something about the library and start it back up again, which they all agreed to on that.  We gave the money to B. Arthur Holiman and some other people who were like minded in the community for that sort of thing.  “You got to get that thing started again.”  I think Jerry ______ came back into it.  It used to be the old auditorium where it was.  Prior to that, it was in that vacant lot in between Market Street and the auditorium on South.  One thing to mention that I was always proud of was scouting. I learned a great deal scouting and loved it.  I am an Eagle Scout and have Five Palms, which is a real rarity.”\n\nI know very little about scouting; what do five palms mean?\n\n“Eagle Scouts, I don’t know how long it takes on that; but of course back then it was much simpler than it is today.  Most of these kids who make eagle today are 15, 17, or 18 years old.  I started with a close friend at 13; you can join at 12 and we were 14, I guess, when we became eagle.  Every six months of service as a boy scout plus five additional merit badges, you got a palm.  I had two and a half years and 20 palms.”\n\nLet’s go back as there was a subject that we started to talk about just a minute ago that I interrupted you; that was the establishment of Saline Memorial Hospital.  You said you were actively involved in the establishment of the hospital.  What do you remember about that?  Do you remember some the most important people who were out there?  Business people who were involved: judges?\n\n“Yeah, Henry Frank Biner, Francis Mary Bush married Fred Bush, I can’t think of his name now she was in on it; Henry Gingles, seems like Fred Walter was in on that.”\n\nHow about the funding for the hospital; Any Hill Burton money put into the hospital?\n\n “I think so, but by that time, I was in the service and all that.  I was invited from the medial aspect of it, suggestions and so on.  Some things that they had planned for it suggested like \n\n\nthe colored, “we’re going to have colored children in there; colored deliveries.”  Of course, back in that time, it was unheard of for interracial stuff; they were going to put colored women way back in the corner of the hospital.  The delivery room was almost 2/3’s the longest way.  I told them, “You’re going to have babies delivered on the gurney before they ever get to the delivery room; so lose that.”  We had four bed wards at my suggestion; it was a lot easier and cheaper.”\n\nI came to Benton in ’77 and had been here back in ’73 working in the emergency room; my assumption is that there has always been a substantial black community on the south side, up on the hill.  Who provided most of the care for those folks?                                             \n\n“Any doctor would go, if they paid them.  I guess dad and me mostly.  I never did go along with this segregation crap myself.  They bleed just like everybody else bleeds.  I delivered an awful lot of babies for them.”\n\nThe first office I practiced in, in Smackover; we had a white waiting room and a colored waiting room.  Did you have one of those?\n\n“No.”\n\nYou did not have one of those in your hospital.\n\n“We did have in the clinic black toilets and white toilets; but otherwise the waiting room was integrated.”       \n\nA couple of things in your early days in practice; tell us a little bit about the staffing of your office and your clinic of how many people you had and what they did.\n\n“We always had minimal.  We never did have professional people, professional nurses, which was unfortunate as we would’ve done a lot better.   Stenographic work was, we had I guess four at the most; well we had four nurses, one LPN on the obstetrical clinic, but they didn’t last all that long.  By the time I got back, Saline Memorial was built and their obstetrical business was such that it would be ridiculous for us to compete with them; they had bigger staff and that sort of thing.  So, we just closed that down.  The one time I had an RN, things ran so much smoother; but I don’t know, finance was the biggest thing.  Of course, most people think doctors get filthy rich; we didn’t have that kind of money.”\n\nDo you remember much about your charging schedule?  How much you charged when you first went into practice; how much you charged for an office visit; how much you charged for a house call; OB?\n\n“Office call was $2.00 and house calls were $3.00.  If we gave Penicillin shot is was $2.00 extra.  Penicillin, at that time, was in its infancy; that was something.  I was in med school, a junior in med school, when they said “No salt for heart patients or very little.” That’s when that started and EKGs were just getting started at that time.”\n\n\nDid you have an x-ray unit in your office initially?\n\n“We had x-ray, yeah.  We had, at that time, a pretty modern hospital unit; it was fixed up real well.  Too bad, of course I’m glad I went into the service because I learned so much different things, if I’d had time to develop the obstetrical aspect of it; we’d done a lot better.  There was something I was going to say about home deliveries……..some on them were pretty rough. I had some loo-loos; one overseas and then one here at Saline Memorial.  I had a girl that was early, she was about 6 weeks early.  On a Sunday afternoon, I went up to the hospital and she had a bulging membrane.  I said “Oh boy, this is going to be easy,” So, I ruptured her membrane and all I got was a foot and a cord.  She was effacing, but not that much.  She was breach up partially.  I waited, tried dilating and stretching where I could do something with the baby.  I tried to get the cord back in and get the other foot out, which eventually I did.  I got the baby out alive, fortunately.  She’s, I think, about a week later she went out to California and killed the baby out there.  Another one was just terrible, terrible; don’t you listen to this Anita.”\n\n“I can’t hear you.”        \n\n“Oh, ok.  A big ole fat German girl, married to an American Soldier, she came in and thought we’d try to induce labor on her and nothing happened.  She had taken a liking to me in the clinic; this, that, and the other, and would come in once a week.  She was always wanting me to deliver the baby; that sort of thing.  It was a dam stillborn and I didn’t want to mess with it; no one did. There were only two of us working at that time, Eckroll and myself.  So, Anita and I took off to Italy for two weeks and I thought, “Oh boy, she’ll have this baby on Dick’s time, not mine.”  But that dam woman waited until I got back; she went into labor, so to speak, as soon as I got back; but she wasn’t doing anything.  Hell, all the Pitocin and everything else didn’t do anything for her either.  Finally, she was effaced enough where I could get the head in the uterus.  Head presenting, I had to do an aversion; as I’d thought it’d be easier to get the baby out and something I could grab a hold of; I sort of did that.  The baby was so rotten; it started coming apart.  I had to think of something else to do.  Fortunately, she had dilated enough that I poked a hole in the abdomen with the pelvis and grabbed a hold of the pelvis and slowly eased that dam baby out. I was afraid that I was going to tear that whole dam thing apart and that would’ve been an awful mess, God, it stunk up a storm though.  I didn’t even have anybody in there with me.”\n\nDid you do C-sections?         \n\n“We did, but not that much.  We talked about that and Eckroll said “No, there was danger of infection too much and it just wasn’t worth the risk”.  He sort of didn’t anticipate this kind of difficulty.  We didn’t do that many sections over there.”\n\nWhat about once you got back into practice here; in the late ‘50s or early ’60? \n\n\n“We didn’t deliver that many.  It was frowned on.  Of course now days, if they feel that the heart rate drops or increases to a certain limit, they got a laparotomy going, which is fine I guess, it’s not that bad a deal.  I done enough of them that I know what to do.”\n\nOnce you got out of medical school and got established with your father; how long did it take for you to be comfortable with the name physician or doctor, comfortable with the fact of what you do, and how people looked at you?\n\n“Dam, I don’t really know.  All I know is that if I hadn’t gone to the service, it would’ve killed me; because I was very consciences and what people wanted, I went out and did it, which was an exhausting thing.  I was a smoker and you can’t smoke and stay awake all night long, like sometimes you had to do.  I don’t know, the prestigious of it was always there; because I was a doctor’s son.  So, that I don’t think I even thought that much about; except I was awfully proud of the fact that I was a physician.”\n\nWhat kind of medical records did you keep when you first started practicing medicine?\n\n“None, that’s why I had a run in with the hospital, Bill Thomas, he had meticulous lengthy histories and physicals, you know.  What good does that do if you have patients to see?  Ms. Benbrook, an early patient of mine, would die any minute; I had her distillated and all that.  But at any rate, she came into the emergency with congestive failure and I don’t think she asked for Bill, her daughter asked for Bill, and he did a complete physical on her when she was having extreme difficulty breathing.  He did a pelvic and a rectal on an 86 year-old woman; just to make her record complete and he could write it down in her chart.  She died within five minutes after he completed the rectal examination.  At any rate, I butted heads with people on that.  I was very sloppy on records.  We had the McCaskey system; dad had that little notepads, about the size of prescription pads that recorded the office call on that.  Somebody who was following me in my office with those patients would have to start all over again, because they couldn’t make sense out of that.”\n\nDid you make good money as a physician?\n\n“No, I made a good living.  I had an awful lot of expenses; dad was slowing down and I had the expense of maintaining the wages and the upkeep of that thing.  Bob was not contributing anything.  I had enough money to retire on.  We were doing pretty good and holding up pretty well until the crash eight years ago, or whenever it was; that took a wallop out of our income.   I figure that I got enough money to last another four years and then we’ll have to do something; die, strike oil, or something.”   \n\nHow did your family adapt to you being a doctor; to the life of being the family of a doctor in town?  Your children, your wife?\n\n\n\n“Anita would have to answer that.  From my point of view, one of the biggest mistakes of our life was I was married to medicine and medicine came first; the family came second.  That was a bad, sad, thing.  The only one of our three children, Emilia, was appreciative of what I did.  We had an office call on Sunday morning and she come down, she started when she was 10 years-old answering the phone for me; we didn’t have an office staff on Saturday or Sundays.”\n\nWould people come to your house when the office was closed?\n\n“Yes, yes, yes.  Oh that was something, the State Representative of Saline County…..”\n\nAre you going to tell that? \n\n “was a patient of mine….”\n\nCan you delete any of this?\n\n We can delete anything that needs to be deleted.\n\n“Oh I don’t care; I think it’s a great story myself.  A baby that I delivered was a child, maybe three or four, and had a sore throat; ill is all.  Anita and I just got in from going to Little Rock to meet some friends and we just got home when they showed up.  I prescribed some medicine for her child and they took off.  In the meantime, Anita had gotten in the tub; we lived on North Street where that green house is down across from Napa right across from the Presbyterian Church, the house there that we lived for several years, and a little bitty bathroom.  At any rate, Anita was in the tub; I was naked shaving and the next thing we knew, the front door flew open and I heard, “Where’s the doctor?  Where’s the doctor?”  She was hollering up a storm.  I won’t mention her name, but she was obviously upset.  The baby was convulsing, fever involved convulsing, because she had it wrapped up so dam tight.  Anita’s mother was there, she lived in a cottage behind the house, and she had babysat.  They little ones, Kurt and Emilia were there and they were scared stiff.” \n\n“So was my mother.”\n\n“I know…”Where’s the doctor?”  “There,” she pointed to the bathroom door and here she comes in with that baby.  Anita and I, both were grabbing towels; it was something.  We got her quieted down and the baby was ok as soon as we got that blanket off of him.” That was something.\n\nSo you retired in the late 1980s?  27 years ago, I believe you said.  \n\n“88 or ’89.”\n\nBetween the mid ‘50s and mid ‘80s, how did things change in the practice of medicine for you?  Did they change dramatically or just kind of incrementally?\n\n\n“Well, there was a rapid incremental thing.  Of course, with the Germany interference, you got a new perspective on how to deal with patients.  It took me several years to teach my patients that the checks that they got was not theirs, it was supposed to come to me, as far as having them sign that check over to us.  With that though, income really picked up simply because the government would pay for it.  The new drugs, the new approach to things were just entirely different to what I was used to.  Sort of like when I started practicing with dad, dad set the curve especially since he was fifth in his graduating class; he was pretty dam sharp, pretty smart.  But, the way he practiced medicine was sort of like a Bonneville, Ford to a Cadillac after I graduated and started practicing the stuff that I knew.  Each year you find yourself saying that the kids that graduated the year after you did, do a hell of a lot more than you did, and on down the line; that was just always impressive to me, not just necessarily the techniques, but the medications and well the techniques too; the way you practiced or handled certain drugs and illness, and so on.  It was all very impressive.  It’s hard to change your ways, or at least it was for me.  I practiced pretty much my last few years the way I started.  I bet, I think probably most people do that.”\n\nWere there one or two things, not just about medicine, but society in general; inventions or changes in society that had the biggest impact on you as a person or you as a physician? One or two things that really had a big impact whether it’s during you practice or not?\n\n“Well, I don’t think really anything, other than the service that snatched me out of my practice.  Of course, that was a good thing. Polio, oral saline; that was fantastic; it was fantastic to think that we could stop all that polio.  That was a tremendous thing in my life, medicine-wise.”\n\nWhat about Penicillin?\n\n“We had penicillin a little bit when we first started; of course, they were using Penicillin a few years before I started practicing.  You used 10,000 units every three hours IN, that sort of thing; so massive doses.  The Mycin’s were brand new.  When I first started practicing, Sulfa was basically what, that or Penicillin was what you prescribed.  Eromycin or Chloromycetin was available.  I did some research, well my resident internist for internal medicine at Charity Hospital were interns and did some research on Chloromycetin and Eromycin and I helped him with  that.  At that time, both of those, well Chloromycetin was a little more expensive than Eromycin; Eromycin was a dollar and Chloromycetin was a dollar and a quarter a capsule four times a day.”\n\nAnd this was in the ’50s?\n\n“Yeah, they couldn’t afford it.  They might take three or four doses and get to feeling better and then quit.  But most of the time, they couldn’t afford it to take it.  Of course, there were people who worked at Alcoa Reynolds, at that time, and they weren’t hurting all that bad, but the bulk of our practice was small wood manufacturing, and OWasso, things like that.  $40.00 a week \n\n\nwas pretty good income and $40.00 would have been what 10 doses, well no, they couldn’t afford it.  The prescription would be around $20.00 to $25.00 for that; they couldn’t afford it.  What that did, the pharmacist would give them the medicine; I gave my knowledge and expertise for free, knowing full well they slept better in a lot of cases.”\n\nDo you remember drug companies beginning to sample drugs in the office?\n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\nWhen was that do you remember?\n\n“That started from the get go.  Yeah, we gave away an awful lot of medicine that was an awful lot of money, moneywise, that’s what I’m saying about Erythromycin and Chloromycetin.  Terramycin, of course, came out a little bit later, but samples of that was something else.  That was something, the antibiotics would say that they had a combination of Penicillin and sulfa one year and then the next year, they come out with a combination of sulfa and penicillin and the next year come out with sulfa, penicillin, and something else just to make sales; they’d have something different every year to advertise.”\n\nWhen did you start thinking about retirement and why?\n\n“All that crap at the hospital was one thing and I was tired of medicines.”\n\nAre you talking about all that black stuff or the stuff with Bob?\n\n“No, no, all that other stuff.  They were on my ass about records and I wasn’t going to change my ways.  That was just a little thing, that’s not the whole thing by any means.  I’d really got tired of the same-ole, same-ole, everyday and mother had just died; so….”\n\nWhen did your father pass away? I forgot to ask.\n\n“Let’s see; ’81 or ’82, ’81 I guess, because he was 86 years-old when he died.  I didn’t have the responsibility with that much finance and responsibility with mother.  Maintaining that clinic was expensive as hell.  The electrical bill would sometimes be $1,000 a month.  That’s an awful lot of office calls for that.  An office call at that time, I was lucky to get $10.00 for it, $8-$10 was the charge.  House calls then, I forgot now what we charged, $15.00 or something like that.  If a nurse would go out, the government would pay them $50.00 for doing the same dam thing.  It was stuff like that; irritating.”\n\nDid you have other interests?  You said that medicine was what you really were wedded to, more-so than your family.\n\n\n\n“Well, this place here.  I bought this place here in 1950.  We got a quonset hut right over here at the Army Surplus that we used for years and years.  Then about thirty something years ago, we thought it would be nice to have a place to just move out of the quonset hut and into a house.  We talked to our friend, Gene Withrow, the architect, and Gene dreamed up this humongous mansion, almost like this thing down here across the road from us; so we cut back on it.  This was no to be a retirement home, we didn’t consider it our retirement home just a place to escape from everything.  That’s another thing, if I hadn’t gone into medicine, I really think I would’ve preferred to go into farming; but in our defense; in order to make a living farming, you had to have some land and we didn’t have any.  Dad with his background could care less, so we had no other source of money other than what we made and we pretty well spent what we made.  Medicine was real good to me and we got a real good income; but I did not invest wisely.  I didn’t know to invest or that sort of thing.  If I’d paid attention to my friends in Little Rock, I might have done better; but I didn’t. ”\n\nWould you have done it again?  Would you have done what you did for a living again?\n\n“No, not to go back through what I did the first few years of practice.  Now, the relationship with people, what I did for them, and what they did for me, I’d do that anytime.  When I first started practicing, we supposedly closed the office at noon on Sunday and supposed to have Sunday afternoon off.  I had a good practice, too dam good; I might not even get away from the office until 3 o’clock and then have house calls after that.  Reversibly working seven days a week, I did that for two years before we started cutting way back.  We didn’t start taking an afternoon off, I guess I don’t know when, four or five years after I started practicing or maybe after I was back from the service that we started doing that.  That was the only time dad would not wear a suit was when we took off on Wednesday afternoon.  He’d show up Wednesday morning and in the summertime he’d wear a sports shirt, which was unheard of; he always wore a suit, coat and tie on house calls, anytime, day or night.”        \n\nIs there anything that you, you obviously paid attention to your friends who practiced medicine in the state of Arkansas, is there anything unique about practicing in Benton?  Anything unusual about practicing: maybe the plants, the aluminum plants, or something that’s different here, a disease process or something that was more prominent here than would be in other places?  \n\n“I don’t know.  Well, one thing, the physicians proceeding me, dad one of them, accepted, of course depression caused a lot of this, people didn’t have any money and did not pay; was not expected to pay at times and that actually carried on several years into my practice until Medicare started.  You didn’t dune anyone, you just sent them a bill and they would come in and raise hell, cuss you out, or go somewhere else.  The difference between patients who worked for Wasso, McCoy Couch, and that TV thing compared to Reynolds Alcoa made a big impact on them.  Of course when you get those people; you try to cater to them as much as you can.  The \n\n\nthing about those people; if they had a sick child and he was on a 3 to 11 shift, mother wouldn’t make a decision to call a doctor until he got home at","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485#t=0.0,690.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485/transcript/84906/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and that got to be kind of old; that was different. ”\n\nHad your health held up pretty good?\n\n“Exceedingly well; of course I’ve got my mother’s genes, my grandmother’s genes.  I’m 92 and will be 93 in December, which is unheard of.  I think, I’m way ahead of the game really.  If I didn’t have macular degeneration and I don’t feel secure walking; but otherwise, I could get along without this walker if I didn’t have this visual trouble.  I haven’t started to get bored yet, but I will.  I mow with my tractor and still have a garden back in the back, but I do have help with that as I can’t safely bend over anymore.  I do have interest in that; like I said I’ve always liked land, trees, nature, that sort of thing.    \n\nYou said, if you had land, you might have been a farmer; a cattleman or a row crop person?\n\n“Of course, row crops were what granddaddy did.  I do that real well; chopping cotton and raising corn, and all that jazz.  I had cattle out here; that was interesting.  I had a lot of fun; I enjoyed that.  Shelby Duncan, you now, had all those registered herfords.  I had some of his stock for a number of years.  My neighbor over here has 40 acres next to me, Swayze, and had old scrub stuff and I had these beautiful herfords calves.  I could sell my calves for $300, beautiful animals.  Swayze would sell his for $350 or $375, scrawny looking things, and I’d say, ”What the…”, so I got rid of my herfords.  Bill and I teamed up together and we had little over 50 head together on 80 acres.  I enjoyed that every much.”\n\nDo you guys have grandchildren?\n\n“Oh yeah.”\n\n“5 and ½ great grandchildren.  Michelle’s delivering in November.”\n\nWhere do your grandchildren live?\n\n“Todd and Abby live in West Memphis.  Fulmer is in Booneville, that’s Whitney’s son.  Michelle lives here over in a Springhill edition; she has two children and one on the way.  We got a 19 year-old great granddaughter; of course, she’s going to go to school.  If we live three or four more years, we’re going to have a fifth generation here; which will be unusual.”\n\nYeah.\n\n“That’s never happened to our knowledge in our family.”         \n\nDid you encourage your children to go into medicine?\n\n“Absolutely not.  I talked them out of it.”\n\n\nDid any of them, or some of them, or at least one, or several of them inclined?  Were they inclined to go?\n\n“No, no.”\n\n“They said that they didn’t want to go; the boys did; because they saw how hard their daddy worked.”\n\n“Amelia, like I said, appreciated it.  Bill’s, my grandson, Ellic Jones wants to go into medicine and probably will.  Ellic has a full scholarship at Hendrix; I think he is a junior this year.  He says that he’s going to go into medicine, which will be nice in a way.  I got a lot of things that I’d like to give him.  I got a first edition PDR.”\n\nReally?\n\n“Yeah, I had a second edition, but Bill Peterson, his folks were dear friends of ours before they passed.  Bill went into medicine because of me and I gave him my second edition.  He’s in Plano, Texas at a family practice clinic.  What else….that’s the only thing about getting old, your dam mind…”\n\nI’m not laughing at you; it’s not an uncommon complaint among any of us. \n\nI’ve been sitting here asking you questions; are there any subjects that you would like to talk about, just to have it on record; about your life, it doesn’t even have to be about medicine, it can be about your life, your family, anything like that.\n\n“I don’t know of anything.  We’ve had a very interesting life together.  We’ve been married 69 years; so older than you, coming up in June; that’s I think, remarkable.  We’ve just been blessed.  It’s sort of like when I cracked a bone, playing work-up baseball in a vacant lot with a staph infection; and ask for an antibiotic; dad lanced the dam thing that’s all.  Dad just lanced it, of course, it was all through my blood stream by that time and he took that dam fracture and I was laid up; missed six weeks of school.  That kept me out of service because it was four antibiotics; I missed all that.  Then I got sent into Germany, luckily.  This is on the side; beer is one of my favorite drinks or used to be, of course, there’s too many of it now.  That’s the beer capital of the world; there were 8 breweries over there; gee-wiz, that was real nice.  Then I had a great time when we’d get off together and drive to ____________ where we’d drink a big stein of beer; 25 cents for a liter.  After we got out of the service, we were driving back down to San Antonio, which we like real well.  We were sitting in a so-called German bar there; they had German waiters, waitresses, and German beer, German music.  We were sitting there enjoying ourselves and here comes two couples, the Bert Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel.  Bert Colonel was an OBGYN doctor was Bert Colonel and medical service was lieutenant colonel.  They were singing, so we started singing too.  We got up and introduced ourselves and started talking and \n\n\nthey asked me where I was stationed and I said, I did OBGYN at Munich Second Field Hospital in Germany and he looked at his wife and said, “Look at here what we got, this young man was assigned two years to a second field hospital and I’ve pulling strings for five years trying to get there.”  He was so dam mad that he sat down and wouldn’t talk to me.  That was it, the end of the conversation.  Of course, I don’t blame him for that.  We’ve got to do a lot of traveling.  I think we didn’t get as much as most people, because most of the time, it was just the two of us on service.  I delivered well over a 1000 babies over there.”\n\nIt sounds like OB was a real major part of your practice, or at least for sure early on.\n\n“Yeah, it was initially.  I liked it.  You know, it was shed new life, help get them here; that sort of thing.”\n\nWell, I have a question for you.  Imagine we’re not here.  You’re sitting here talking to your great grandchildren and your great, great, grandchild.  Is there anything that you would like to say to them?  \n\n“I’ve never thought of anything like that Sam, I wouldn’t know.  My communication skills are not all that good.  If they asked me I would tell them, but I don’t think I would just spontaneously start talking; I never have.”\n\nWell, remember that this is some of the people that this is for, your great, great, grandchildren.\n\n“That’s fine; as far as me escalating a conversation and trying to tell them stuff about myself, I never talk about myself near as much as I have today.  I just thought that was implied.  If they ask me, that’s fine; I’d be glad to tell them.  That’s something that the good Lord’s filed us up on.  You know, we spend a lifetime learning things and knowing things; I know bull-larky about a lot of stuff that there’s nothing that you can do about it but get along, make a living and if you do that, it has to do with the enjoyment of life.  But if you do all that; as you get older, it’s sort of wasted.  It would be nice if you had all that information when you first started out in this world.  It ain’t gradually lost, if you didn’t gradually gain it; but it doesn’t work that way.”\n\nPart of why I’m doing this is because; I’m convinced that our lives are quickly becoming other people’s history and I want to see it written down.  I really do appreciate your sitting down and talking with me. \n\n “Well, I enjoyed it.”\n\nWell, I have too.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161643/file/293485#t=690.0,6293.35373"}]}]}]}