KELLY BARNHILL
Past Chairman, Board of Trustess
Pitt County Memorial Hospital
Past Pitt County Commissioner

October 19, 2000

Interviewer: Beth Nelson

Beth Nelson: Please give me a little bit of background about yourself and your personal history.

Kelly Barnhill: I was born here in Greenville a few years ago, November 13, 1939. Both of my parents are Pitt County people of several generations. In fact, I think my dad was on the Board of Trustees of the hospital in 1950 when we moved to the Fifth Street location.

Beth Nelson: That is interesting. What was your father's name?

Kelly Barnhill: John Kelly Barnhill. Mr. Floyd Hendricks was his business partner and he was on the Board of County Commissioners during that period of time and I believe if I am not mistaken that he was on the Board of Trustees in 1950. The reason I remember that is because I helped my dad. We transplanted a tremendous tree that went in the circle right in front of the building and I was out there with him, of course, I was small at the time. I remember putting that tree out there because it was a huge tree and we didn't have the equpiment that they have now to make that an easy job. This was a job that took several strong backs to lift that tree and put it in place.

Of course, I went to school here in the City of Greenville and I spent a year at East Carolina and transferred into N. C. State and got my degree in Civil Engineering. I left Greenville and went to work for a company called Honeywell and was down in South Carolina for about four years, just long enough to meet Mary Ann and bring her back to Greenville, North Carolina. I then came back in the family business in 1967.

Beth Nelson: Did you start this business or did your father start the business?

Kelly Barnhill: My father started the business. Then, of course, I have been here ever since. I have to say that now my son has pretty well taken over the day to day operations of the business.

Beth Nelson: You must have done something well along the way.

Kelly Barnhill: Well, I don't know whether it's me or who but somebody did something right because I think we have an outstanding young man as he is certainly doing a good job running the company. Things are working mighty well.

During the course of the years I have been active in the community. Two of the highlights of my life was the six years I spent on the Board of County Commissioners and the reason I didn't continue there was because at the time I was very active in my business and it just took too much time. This was from 1980 until 1986. Then a couple of years after I went off the Board of County Commissioners I was appointed to serve on the hospital board and served as a Trustee for nine years and it was a tremendous experience for me; I just really enjoyed watching the hospital grow and do so well and mean so much to eastern North Carolina. It has been a shining star for eastern North Carolina in providing such good health care.

Beth Nelson: Were you Chairman of the Board for two years?

Kelly Barnhill: Yes, I guess it was my last three-year term and I was Chairman for two years and then I served on the board as a regular member the first year of Lawrence's two-year term as Chairman. Past Chairman was my designation. As Chairman, the hospital was really in good shape financially and in every aspect of care. I like to say that as I turned the gavel over to Lawrence for him to take over as Chairman, I was happy to leave it to him in such good shape.

Beth Nelson: Tell me about how you came to be associated with the hospital, the decision to serve on the Board of Trustees. Is that something that you pushed for, that you had an interest in, or did someone asked you to do it?

Kelly Barnhill: No, it was real funny, I had been off the Board of County Commissioners for a couple of years and Charles Gaskins, Commissioner Gaskins, came up to me one day and asked me if I had enough rest and was ready to serve the County in some capacity. I told him yes that I would like to do that and he asked me if I would like to serve on the hospital board. He actually came to me and initiated that and it was something I wanted to do but I had never actively pursued it. I hadn't thought too much about it. It was something I was happy about a million times since then.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk a few minutes about what the hospital has meant to Greenville, Pitt County and the region. The kind of thing I am looking for is maybe people that you know, neighbors, friends, whose life this hospital has made a difference in. Can you think of any examples?

Kelly Barnhill: Well, I think in general the services they provide over at Pitt County Memorial now are services that we used to have to travel a minimum of a hundred miles to get. It is not as much of a burden on the patients themselves but on the family as it is a tremendous burden on them to be dislocated during such a time of such an emotional upheaval. They are doing the heart surgeries and I don't guess any of us doesn't have a good friend that hasn't had some kind of heart surgery, some kind of service that has been provided when in the past we would have to go to Duke or Alabama or somewhere else. I can think of a dozen people I know that have been affected by the cancer treatment. The Leo Jenkins Cancer Center out there is treating people and just a few years ago they had to go several hundred miles to get the treatments. Right now I have a good friend in the hospital with a real severe case of what has been diagnosed as pneumonia but had we not had the facilities here he have had to go somewhere else, Norfolk, Duke or somewhere like that to get the treatment that is going to be necessary for him to survive.

Beth Nelson: I know you have probably had a lot of business contacts throughout the east in the kind of work you do. I guess you traveled this area and probably ran into people who had a small community hospital in their home town which certainly would meet their needs routinely but you have probably heard some instances of when they came to our hospital where they would twenty years ago would have to go out of town. Do you find that to be the case?

Kelly Barnhill: Not only are they coming to get the excellent treatment we provide, once they come here and they have had the experience they just brag about it tremendously. I don't know that I have ever had anybody not to comment and say that Pitt Memorial was probably one of the best experiences they have had under those conditions, whether they were the patients themselves or a relative of a patient. They comment on the treatment and the care that they are given at Pitt Memorial.

Beth Nelson: I want to ask you if you recall some things, maybe things that happened that you were involved in, maybe things that you know of that occurred with other people, the kinds of things I am looking for are just more human types of things that have happened in association with the hospital. Buck Sitterson just kept me in stitches and I could have listened to him all day.with the stories of funny things that happened to him in his years as an administrator. One of his greatest stories when he talked about when he had to present the capital requests to the board for approval one day. He had two pieces of capital they wanted to buy which kind of blows my mind now when you think about how much capital we typically run before the board on a monthly basis. He had two pieces of capital that he was trying to get approved and one was a lawn mower for the grounds and the other was a piece of xray equipment. He felt like he really had to bone up on the xray equipment because he knew there would be a lot of questions about it and it was a whole lot more money than was involved in the lawn mower. As soon as he made his presentation everybody approved the xray equipment and they asked so many questions about the lawn mower he couldn't answer everything, as he didn't know something about the warranty. This was back when most people had an agriculture background and the business aspects and the clinical aspects of running a hospital they left to somebody else but the lawn mower, they wanted a say in it.

Another example that Jim Hallock shared when I asked him what sets us apart and why did he decide to come here of all the places he could have gone in his career and he told about the fact that when he came here to interview he just walked through the halls and talked to people and he thought the people he talked to, every single one of them could articulate the mission of this place, and these were people in the lower pay grades. They could articulate the mission of the place and he was coming from a big hospital in Florida and he wasn't sure he could articulate the mission of where he was. He just found that so inspiring. It is those kinds of things that I am looking for. What are things that have made this place special and things that have made it different? I am trying to capture some of those kinds of things.

Kelly Barnhill: Speaking of Jim Hallock, one of the most humorous stories that I have heard that he tells, and I am sure you have probably heard him say it, he had a son that was at Wake Forest and he came down for that first interview and went back was talking to his son and told him that he had been to East Carolina to interview for the Dean of the Medical School job and his son kind of laughed and told him that he didn't know about that because when he was in Greenville for a big Halloween party that East Carolina is known more for being a party school. Fortunately Jim saw what East Carolina is really about, particularly the medical school and fortunately for him his son's first impression of East Carolina was not as he said. Another thing that I enjoy is that after a meeting or something like that is just walking up and down the halls with Dave McRae. He knows just about everybody over there by name and just the way he speaks to people and they call him by name and it just shows the amount of respect that he has for the people who work there and they for him. That kind of leadership is what makes that place so special and the people there really do care.

Beth Nelson: Have you ever been a patient?

Kelly Barnhill: No, fortunately.

Beth Nelson: That is amazing.

Kelly Barnhill: It is. We have had some children over there and my son-in-law has been over there for treatment in the Emergency Department.

Beth Nelson: How many children to you have? I know Kelly but I don't know the girls.

Kelly Barnhill: Three, Betsy, she lives in Tampa and Katherine lives here in Greenville in Tucker Estates and they are my only kids.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk about some of the major obstacles the hospital has had to overcome over the years. We can certainly talk about financial obstacles, we can talk about political obstacles and the privatization issue, and the time the school of medicine was underway. Had you returned to Greenville at that time?

Kelly Barnhill: Yes, I came back to Greenville in 1967 and I guess they were right in the middle of the medical school. I was not involved in it but, of course, like everybody I had a very keen interest in it and what it would mean to Greenville, East Carolina and eastern North Carolina. As it turned out, we underestimated the impact that it made. That whole process has been a tremendous struggle, to first get the school going from a one year to a two year and then to a four year and continuing to grow and offering more has been a tremendous battle political, financial and everything but they are doing a good job and I think most everybody in the state looks at East Carolina and is proud of what they see.

Beth Nelson: Do you remember the bond issue then. That was in 1970 and you would have been back here three years at that point. Were you involved at all in trying to get the bond issue passed?

Kelly Barnhill: Not directly but I was very interested to make sure that it did pass.

Beth Nelson: Talk a little bit about the mood. You would have been active in the business community at that point. The bond issue only passed by something like twelve votes and it was certainly a very controversial issue. What do you remember of the mood of Pitt County and Greenville at that point? A lot of people talked about taxes and one thing and another but as you talked to your friends at church and civic clubs and business, was it the topic of the day? Was it one of those things that was divisive, you know like the privatization issue turned out to be so device that friendships had been hurt.

Kelly Barnhill: I don't think the bond issue was that controversial, I think Pitt County and eastern North Carolina is still conservative but not anything like what it was back then. You basically had an agricultural economy and anything that wasn't directly related to agriculture most folks were against. We had a hospital that was functioning and people didn't necessarily think far enough ahead to see the benefits of what an upgraded facility would mean to the area. I think you can go back and poll the group that voted against it and ninety-eight percent would probably say they made a mistake when they voted against it. We had more progressive thinkers than conservative thinkers and it did pass and there was not enough money to build the facility and they had to have an additional $3 million revenue bond.

Beth Nelson: I think the county had to commit some additional revenue to make it possible and one the great stories to me was told by Ralph Hall and Charles Gaskins about when they were getting ready to move in we didn't have hardly any furniture like we needed for that kind of facility and they were taking patients out of beds over at the Fifth Street Hospital, painting the beds, bringing the bed over and then bringing the patient over. I guess they left the patient on a gurney while the paint dried on the beds and they wanted to be able to furnish at least the first floor and they came up $18,000 short. Eighteen rooms were still unfurnished and it cost $1,000 to furnish a room. I believe that Robert Monk, or one of the Monks as I recall, wrote a check for $18,000 to furnish those rooms.

Kelly Barnhill: That story needs to be told! I have never heard that. That is one of the wonderful things to tell.

Beth Nelson: That's the thing and in addition to the book there is going to be so much more information than we could begin to put into a book. There is just so much that people reflect on and can share. Those kinds of things get lost, people die or people forget.

Kelly Barnhill: It might not make any difference to him but some might not want it told but it is important for the people in this region to know that people like that did what they did.

Beth Nelson: That was a lot of money back then. Another thing that Charles Gaskins told also that I thought was cute. He told about how when times were getting tight they had to piece together Ralph's salary. I think the architects paid some, the hospital paid some and the county paid some. So, they pieced together the money to pay him and I don't know how much we paid him back then and it couldn't have been a whole lot of money but the money was running out to pay him and the building wasn't finished and they still needed him and Ralph told Mr. Gaskins that when money gets tight he leaves town. I think that Ralph was kind of letting him know that he needed more money and Mr. Gaskins said it couldn't come to that.

Kelly Barnhill: Seriously, it could not have been the money because Ralph Hall stayed and he has done a tremendous job. He has meant a whole lot to that facility. Is Ralph getting ready to retire?

Beth Nelson: I think so within the next few months but I am not exactly sure when.

Kelly Barnhill: When they look for somebody to fill his job they will have a hard time replacing him. He has meant a lot to them.

Beth Nelson: Yes, when you think about all of the expansion and it was like he couldn't get one designed before he was having to start designing another one, not even to mention talking about construction of it.

Kelly Barnhill: One of the first responsible jobs I had when I was on the Board of Trustees was to be the Chairman of the Building Committee. That's where I really got to see the work of Ralph Hall and what he has meant to this hospital. I remember one time when we were going to Michigan to the corporate headquarters of Hill-Rom to look at hospital beds and they sent the corporate jet to get us. They were picking us up at the airport at 7:30 a.m. and taking us to Michigan to tour three plants. We got to the airport only to find that the jet had gone to Greenville, South Carolina by mistake. But, they got here in about forty-five minutes and you know it was 350 miles and we were surprised at that. We went to Michigan that day and took care of business and were back home by 5:30 p.m. that day.

Beth Nelson: What about some of the obstacles the hospital had to overcome?

Kelly Barnhill: Always there were the financial needs and there were a lot of personnel issues with the shortage of nurses and I understand it's really tough right now and that it is as bad as it has ever been.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk about some key leaders in the hospital's development.

Kelly Barnhill: I think Charles Gaskins is one and I can't think of a single person who had more influence over the growth of the hospital than Charles Gaskins. He really used his leadership on the County Board to get approval for a lot of the hospital's projects over the years. Without Charles Gaskins the hospital would not have been able to move forward like it did. It's just a shame he couldn't support the privatization. I think privatization was probably the most significant move this hospital made in its history.

Beth Nelson: That says a lot coming from someone who has been on both sides-as a county commissioner and as a board member. Can you think of other leaders we can touch on?

Kelly Barnhill: Of course, Jack Richardson. I don't know of anybody who grew in his job as much as Jack did. As the hospital grew, he grew in stature.

Beth Nelson: Talk a bit about challenges for the future for the hospital.

Kelly Barnhill: Being able to control the cost of health care. To be able to keep it affordable and available. Medicare and Medicaid will be the key. As a businessman who provides health insurance for my employees, that is an important issue. Meeting the needs of eastern North Carolina, especially in a prevention sense and the need to reach these people when their problems are in the early stages.

Beth Nelson: Is there anything we didn't cover that you would like to add?

Kelly Barnhill: I'd like to say that the hospital has the finest management staff it could possibly have. Dave McRae has assembled as fine a team as you could imagine. There is very little turnover; they are very unselfish and extremely capable.