See also Vignette

DR. WALLACE WOOLES
Founding Dean, ECU School of Medicine
Chairman, Pharmacy Department, ECU School of Medicine

March 28, 2000 and
April 5, 2000

Interviewer: Beth Nelson

Beth Nelson: Please begin by telling me a little bit about your background. How you came to be associated with the school of medicine and your involvement here.

Wally Wooles: I came here and was recruited by Ed Monroe and came here from the Medical College of Virginia. I had eight years at MCV and came down here as the first dean of the school to start the school.

Beth Nelson: I seem to remember from the book that you were recruited here and I guess you were encouraged to believe that there was a Bill in the General Assembly to create a medical school and essentially it was just a Bill to plan a medical school, is that right?

Wally Wooles: Right. That was kind of interesting because until I came here I never saw the legislation and actually when I came the only legislation that was on the book was the authorization to plan a two-year school of medicine. When we got started doing all of this, it kind of bothered me that there was none when I was told there would be a Bill to get the school started. Then we had two choices, either we pack up and go home and go about our career in another direction or else we tried to see that the school got here so we opted to do the latter. We planned out a curriculum and took it just about
everywhere that it had to go through the State. In the meantime you have to appreciate that in the first two years that I was here we didn't have a University of North Carolina System. East Carolina was an independent university. Leo Jenkins was President, and answered to nobody but the Board of Trustees and the Governor. We were free to go to the Legislature to try selling our ideas of the school here and we did it. Then in 1972, Governor Scott created the University of North Carolina System. Dr. Monroe and I were called into Dr. Jenkins' office and told that under this new reorganization he now worked for Bill Friday and that he could no longer go about doing the things he did but he couldn't tell us what to do so we were free to do whatever we chose. We decided, and I don't quite know how we decided to do this, we decided to stay in the Legislature and fight to get the medical school through.

Beth Nelson: Did you see that as a risky proposition or did you at that time not realize how much you were going out on a limb?

Wally Wooles: I think all the way along I didn't realize how big a battle it would be because I was new to the State and that probably was a strength because I didn't know how difficult it was going to be. We went ahead. Maybe in our ignorance, and worked the halls of the Legislature just diligently and with the help of a lot of good legislative people from Greenville and other places. The thing that always sticks in my mind is that when we were first doing this our supporters used to say "lets have a statewide referendum and see if the people want a school." We thought we had a popular issue. At that time you have to appreciate that if you went to see a doctor it might take you weeks to get an appointment, there just were not that many of them anywhere. When I first came to Pitt County in 1970 they had staff meetings at the hospital and we could put them all in one room. There were only about fifty physicians in town, if that. We thought we had a popular issue. You can't see a doctor and we need more doctors. It was interesting as the legislative fight wore on, that became the rallying cry of the University of North Carolina System. They said to put it out to a referendum of the people and we knew we had it won then. We knew we had it made and this has turned out that it is exactly how it was.

The Bills that were funded and the Bills that were passed said that there would be a two-year school here and Bill Friday, who led the fight because the Board of Governors directed that there wouldn't be a school here, recognized that he was beat, that there was no way that he could stop it, it was going to pass. He decided that if you are going to get your butt whipped you might as well get ahead of the game and recommend a four-year school.

Beth Nelson: Let's go back a minute. The thing that kind of blows my mind in this whole process that you lived through and led is your background. You had never been the dean of a medical school, you had never created a medical school. You came to Greenville, the back woods. You were creating a medical school that you didn't have approval for in Raleigh. That has to be one of the most daunting tasks anybody could take on. Talk a little bit about that. Surely there are nights you woke up and wondered what you were doing here. You had given up a very safe, comfortable position at MCV and you came here and you took a chance on essentially a dream. At that point the hospital had a long way to go. Talk a little about that.

Wally Wooles: It never really bothered me because I think I was comfortable enough in my abilities that if it absolutely failed I could pick up the rest of my career and go on, maybe not at MCV but in some other medical school. The ones I really felt sorry for, I had four children at the time, young children, and I really felt sorry for my wife and family because had to read day by day in the Raleigh papers, or any paper around the State, just how bad I was and how I shouldn't be doing any of this. It bothered the children, it really did. Sometimes the only time they saw their daddy was on television because I would get home late at night and I would have been on television on the 6:00 p.m. news and they would see me and they would be in bed when I got home and the next day I would be gone before they got up. They though they had an absentee daddy. It was kind of tough on them.

I always had enough confidence in my own ability that if I had to I could pick up my career and go on. After awhile it just became something that you didn't want to let go of because when you deal with the Legislature they were some of the most marvelous people I have ever met. Even those who were opposed to the school, who would never vote for it and told me they would never vote for it, couldn't vote for it as they would be beaten in the next election, whatever the reasons were, they were really nice. We could sit down and talk about it.

I was not a pariah in their eyes. I was just somebody trying to do what I thought was right and the more I lived down here, the more I saw that we didn't have anything down here. I could see a physician and my family could see a physician. That was not a problem for us but when the hospital started to talk about building a new one and passing a bond issue, Jack Richardson asked me if I would speak on behalf of this. We spoke everywhere. We were at every crossroads and we at every little rural town, everywhere, talking about the need for the hospital and the school.

After awhile it became almost an obsession to make sure that the people of eastern North Carolina got what they deserved. It just bothered me as a newcomer to this State. We would go up or be invited to the Western part of the State and they had a marvelous system of roads even at that time and we never had a damn thing down here. Ed Monroe and I used to drive to Raleigh every morning through Saratoga, all the little towns through Zebulon and you go through this and there would be no doctor anywhere.

It just became a crusade and an obsession and that's kind of what spurred us on. I never woke up at night because I just knew I could always get a job somewhere. That didn't bother me. It really never entered my mind that we could ever fail. I just had this same feeling, constant belief that we were going to win, no matter how bad it got and it did get bad. Gosh, it was terrible. You would go out in the morning and you could pick up the newspaper out there and see your names in the headlines and feel that you were one of the two biggest crooks in the State trying to get the State to spend money.

I can remember, I never forget it, its one thing that stuck in my mind constantly, that when the Board of Governors finally came around to agreeing to be a school and recommended it and told the General Assembly you are going to fund it all or you are not going to fund anything and this is what it's going to take. They did it and I think this surprised the heck out of the UNC System. That year there were no raises given in the State. There was no State buildings or State appropriations for different things.

I remember going to the summer theater. Edgar Lacine used to be the head of that and I knew Edgar very well at the time. This was the first performance and my son and I were there. Edgar got up and said he was sorry but this Summer season had to be put on in the same dilapidated theater before they renovated and got McGinnis or whatever the name of that hall was. He apologized for that but said they were supposed to get a large appropriation to do it but all the money went to the medical school. You could hear the people boo. This kind of bothered me because here were people who wanted a summer theater and they didn't want to give up and I don't blame them. Edgar had tried for years to get that appropriation. He had to be terribly disappointed and we come by and get the medical school and nobody else gets a damn thing. That had to be very disappointing. At the same time we felt pretty good that we got what we wanted and what we thought the people needed but a lot of people were not too happy about it. It all depended on whose ox was gored. Those were just a few of the things that stuck out in my mind.

Beth Nelson: At the time there had been quite a few criticisms that in addition to the fact that you were starting a fledgling medical school you were also going to have to team up with what would have been at that time considered substandard hospitals, for a medical education program. Talk a little bit about your concerns there and the way things were dealt with in terms of that issue.

Wally Wooles: I think if we had had authorization at that time to develop a four-year school, we couldn't have done it. The hospital just could not have supported it. It was a 205-bed Hill Burton hospital that really was jammed to the gills with patients. With the few staff that we had and to try to put more students and other learners in that situation just wouldn't have worked and that was quite apparent. However, we were charged at the time with developing a two-year school and as a two-year school, the students at that time would not have needed clinical rotations or needed a hospital. They would certainly have needed the hospital and physicians to teach histories, physical diagnosis, etc., but that's all. They would not have had to make the rotations. Besides, we recognized that even if we did get a school that if we got the school here that the hospital, even when it was being built, those 350 beds would not be enough to take care of all of the students. We had gone around and talked to other hospitals around to see how they could be used in medical education. Some of them were a lot better than what Pitt had at that time. Rocky Mount was a lot better and Wilson was a lot better.

Beth Nelson: Better and bigger or better in terms of quality?

Wally Wooles: Better and bigger and also better in terms of quality. They had more physicians in the areas that we didn't. At that time Kinston had nothing. In fact, I gave the opening address at the Kinston hospital when they started it and up until that time they had nothing. Between them all we would have had enough and it was our initial intent to have our students taught at these various places because we were emphasizing primary care and we thought what better place to learn primary care than the hospitals doing nothing but that. All of the tertiary care was referred out of here. There were very few referrals coming to town. The town physicians had all they could do to take care of the people in the town. We had no real specialties. We had surgeons but no real subspecialties, not like we have them today. Before, eastern North Carolina was dirt poor and I don't think it has changed much since.

Beth Nelson: You talked about having brought in all of the original people who came to work for the school of medicine, all of the original faculty. What was their perception? When you brought people in here to interview and you took them to see the hospital, which would have been the Fifth Street hospital at that point, and told them that this was going to be an arm and arm team member with your proposed medical school, what was their perception at that time?

Wally Wooles: At that time, when we were just starting the hospital was not arm and arm with us. I think the hospital at that time was just kind of laying back and seeing if they make it we will cooperate if we have to. They finally had to do this because in the appropriation it carried money for that hospital that we opted not to use and not to have two competing hospitals because Dr. Jenkins used to argue constantly. He would go around saying that the hospital is going to be where the Allied Health building is, at the corner of Greenville Boulevard and Charles Street. I said you cannot put a hospital in that place, it's the worst possible place you could put a hospital. It is the worst traffic congested area in the city. I said that you couldn't possibly do that. He used to point out that the owned land behind that kidney bean shaped area around the parking complex that is there where they have the athletic complex now, the Marvin Blount complex.

The hospital, I think, recognized that it had to cooperate because there would have been a competing hospital here if it had not. We just felt that two hospitals in a small city--you have to remember that Greenville was only 26,000 or 27,000 people at that time--to have two competing hospitals we would be competing for personnel, facilities, you know, it would be a constant battle. The hospital cannot even find enough nurses now, can you imagine if we had two hospitals. I think the hospital was kind of laying back and saying if they get going we will be happy to cooperate providing we can maintain our independent status. To the hospital's credit, we used to meet routinely with Jack Richardson and a number of the private physicians, John Wooten, Eric Fearrington, Skip Rand.

Beth Nelson: What about Don Tucker?

Wally Wooles: Don Tucker wasn't involved in a lot of these meetings that we had. Don was developing his own group at the time and others that were more vocal than Don we would meet with to try to work out how we could start affiliation agreements, what they would carry, would it would mean. As we got going, first we got the one year program and then the General Assembly added the second year, and that's when Mr. Friday threw in his chips and said we were going to go all the way or not going to go and we went all the way. They recognized that it was coming.

Beth Nelson: Was it a shock to you?

Wally Wooles: No. He was beaten and we knew he was beaten. We had the votes. We could count them and we would count noses every day. Dr. Monroe, Horton Rountree and I would meet every Saturday morning and count noses and when the Bill was passed putting $25 million into the school, we knew in advance that we had all the votes and at that time it was what they called a Joint Appropriation Committee. The House and the Senate went together. If you got anything through them you won. The rest was just a
formality. He could count votes just like we could. He had people in the Legislature counting votes and he had a team in there, some high-priced people in there. His vice chancellors, vice presidents, whatever they were called, would work those hallways constantly. We just had a better argument to sell. I'll never forget when I was invited to appear at an Appropriations Committee hearing and the Dean from UNC was invited to appear at that time, Chris Fordham.

Beth Nelson: He brought his army of specialists and they gave an incredible presentation.

Wally Wooles: I had nothing and said that all I could ask them was how many of them could see a doctor anytime you wanted to and none of them raised their hand. I said that was what we were trying to do. You can put more money into Chapel Hill and God knows they did, but told them it wasn't going to get you another doctor down here. They recognized that and really, I was very well received. That made us the underdog. He doesn't even have enough money for a slide. Dr. Fordham had eight or ten people who would get up and give pieces of a presentation and I was sitting there all by myself but it was fun.

Beth Nelson: I think it was interesting about the last page of the report being missing. What is your perspective on what happened there?

Wally Wooles: Well, I think it is quite clear. We did have a copy of the last page of the report. We knew what the report said because they gave us a copy of this when they left here. We had shared this with Governor Scott and he knew what the last page said and I think what happened is that the establishment, at that time the academic medical establishment, did not want to seem too supportive, and I don't blame them because. Chapel Hill had that problem because they were a two-year school for years and recognized that it is not a good problem to have. I think what happened is that they prevailed on the AAMC and the AMA Liaison Committee to take away the last page which was favorable which said that we believe in our opinion they can succeed. They took that out and that was called the "purloined page" for years. Every newspaper would write editorials about it.

Beth Nelson: Do you think the LCME unilaterally removed the last page?

Wally Wooles: Sure.

Beth Nelson: Why would they do that because there already a page that had been given to you that had the final report in it?

Wally Wooles: Well, because they could always say that what was given to us was a preliminary report and they were preparing the final report. I flew up to get the report and I expected it to be exactly what I had and I was dumbfounded when everything was exactly the same except the last page was missing from every copy that I had.

Beth Nelson: When you asked them about it, what was their response?

Wally Wooles: Their response was that was the action that the Committee has taken and therefore we cannot do anything about it. I kind of knew that was going to happen because Duke had a representative on that Committee and Chapel Hill had a representative on that Committee. They were very powerful people at the time. I think the Duke representative was Bill Anlyan, who was a very prestigious famous vice chancellor at Duke. Those people carried a lot of swing, a lot of swing.

Beth Nelson: I thought it was interesting about the Chris Fordham story about him going to MCV and you were shocked to find out that six months after you had told him the entire story of what you planned to do that he came back as Chancellor of UNC.

Wally Wooles: That made it particularly hard because after that we had an accreditation visit and I had already told Dr. Fordham what my plans were that we were going to go to get the second year and then go to get a four-year school. Then the LCME comes down and in an accreditation visit asked us to share our plans with them. I could see Dr. Fordham sitting right there and I knew they knew what our plans were. I said that I was sorry that the only thing that we had was authorization to develop a two-year school and that is what we were going to do. They kept harping that certainly we had all the plans and I told them that all the plans that I was willing to share were those for a two-year school and that was what they were here to evaluate and that nothing else beyond that. Then that didn't satisfy anybody and they created an additional committee beyond that which held hearings around the State headed by some very illustrious people at that time. It was funny and it was different. The problem seriously that everybody recognized was that there was no question we needed more doctors, the question was where should we get them? They had to appreciate that when I came here the University of North Carolina only had seventy-two students in a class which is the size of our school now. In four years they went to one hundred-forty students in a class and they were not well equipped to take care of them. They didn't have the number of beds to support that many students, plus all the residents and other things that they had to support.

Beth Nelson: Did they get financial support for doing that from the Legislature?

Wally Wooles: What they would do would be to say if we were going to put a school down here it is going to cost and they would show how many millions of dollars it would cost but if you put another twenty or forty at UNC it is only going to cost this much and that's double the size that they can initially take and they were right. Every time we would go up to ask for something they would get another $16 or $18 million, and in that time that was a lot of money, to add a few additional students. You have to remember one other thing that Wake Forest University/Bowman Gray and Duke all, then and now, got paid a stipend from the General Assembly based on the number of North Carolina students that they would take. They increased the numbers they would take to stop another medical school.

We used to go around eastern North Carolina, Pat Dye was the football coach and he with Leo Jenkins and I would go around in these fund raising things. Pat Dye would always be the first speaker because they always wanted to hear the football coach and he would get up and say how his spindly legged poor kids from eastern North Carolina can't compete with Chapel Hill, Wake Forest and Duke, and then I would get up right after him and tell him that I was sure his team has a hard time competing against Wake Forest, Duke and Chapel Hill but at least you have the luxury of playing them one at a time. We have to play them all three at a time.

Beth Nelson: Tell me a little bit about some of the major obstacles that the hospital had to overcome over the years, the hospital particularly as opposed to the school of medicine.

Wally Wooles: You mean the hospital in relation to how it functioned with the school of medicine or the hospital as it functioned just in terms of being a hospital?

Beth Nelson: Just in terms of being a hospital but more generically.

Wally Wooles: I think that when the decision was made to create a medical school the hospital and its planners and its advisors recognized that it couldn't stay as just a community hospital. It had to do one of two things, it had to grow to become what it is today which is a tertiary hospital or the medical school had to do that on its own, either one or the other. I think the hospital recognized that the best option for them and for us was to combine forces. That's what happened and once an affiliation agreement was reached, drawing up that the heads of our clinical services would be the heads of the corresponding service in the hospital, which that gave us control over the most important thing we needed which was teaching and making sure that students would have patients to see and the residents would have patients to learn from. Once we got over that, then it was very easy for succeeding groups to add to the hospital and we have added a significant amount to the hospital. State money has built the front of the hospital, state money has built where the medicine and surgery people are. There has been significant state dollars into that hospital for construction purposes from which the hospital retains the title. We do not. That's fine because that has helped to meet our needs and helped meet the hospital needs. That was hard put to sell. It was going to be dependent on our success and if we didn't succeed the hospital wasn't going to succeed. We used to have doctors scream at us all the time that we were going to ruin their income, ruin their practice. In retrospect, I can not see that it has happened to a one of them. They have benefited greatly.

Beth Nelson: We had talked about a lot of the obstacles the hospital had to overcome in the early days. Talk about some things more recently. Things I think about are the move from becoming strictly a community hospital for Pitt County and Greenville, maybe one or two contiguous counties, to be more of a medical center for eastern North Carolina, moving into the big leagues essentially in terms of some of our clinical services-things like the move towards offering EastCare as an option here; offering open heart surgery. I was here in the early years of that and remember that being one of the "crowning glories" of the medical center at that point. Can you think of some of those things that made achievements like that even sweeter because they came with significant obstacles?

Wally Wooles: Well, in looking back I think the biggest accomplishment was that the hospital made a pretty smooth transition to its getting away from a community hospital into being a tertiary care hospital. I think that had to occur by necessity and the hospital recognized that if they were going to be affiliated with the medical school they could not just serve one community that they would be serving a much wider constituency. In the development of all specialty care in the hospital, which most of it is outstanding, intensive care units, neonatal units, and the Heart Center. All of these are because the medical school brought in those appropriate departments to bring in the people to start them, operate them and keep them running right at the top level of the cutting edge of the profession. I think they recognized very early on that it had to change drastically in its thinking and its actions and to their credit they have done it very, very well.

Beth Nelson: One thing I am after is sort of a change of mindset. Probably when you came here people in their grandest dreams would never have envisioned that we would become the tertiary center that we have evolved into. Those are the kinds of things-do you remember some obstacles early on when the people were still dragging their feet?

Wally Wooles: You know, people dragged their feet until it was clear what was happening. Once that was determined and Bills were passed and everything got going, then the hospital and the medical school came together and they came together out of necessity because one of the things that was in the first Legislation, the Legislation putting money into all of this, was money for a 200-bed hospital. So, that either we were going to have two competing hospitals, competing for nurses and all kinds of help, which would be counterproductive or we were going to have one hospital. I think cooler heads prevailed and it was decided we were going to have one hospital. It would relieve the property at that time of the County. Anything that the medical school added to the hospital--and it has added significant parts to the hospital--would be retained as the property of the County. Anything we did to the hospital added bed towers, office space, whatever it was that was added, the County benefited. They got title to the property, which I think is an outstanding achievement. For the State to give up money and property and control of the property to the County, I think that really most everybody has benefited from this. The hospital has benefited because they got a lot of additional space and facilities that they did not plan for. The public has benefited because they get services that the hospital could not have provided unless the medical school was here. I doubt seriously if the hospital could have recruited a Department of Surgery as we have now or a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit as we have now. I think that the public has benefited markedly from having these extra services. The medical school has benefited in that we get the teaching outlet. We have access to patients, our clinicians treat 67% to 70% of all the patients in the hospital so that we get benefit for teaching purposes, I'm sure there are some rough spots in between but by and large, just about every major constituency has benefited from this. I think it was recognized very early on that that was going to occur. They cannot grow unless we grow and we can't grow unless they grow so whether some people like it or not this is a marriage where everybody has a shotgun at each other's head. One party cannot afford to drop out. Looking back over the years and how it has developed, there are some things I would have liked to see the medical school do differently, but by and large most everything has worked well.

Beth Nelson: Talk a little bit about the reasons for the hospital's success.

Wally Wooles: Number one is that I am biased and I have to think that it is because the medical school came here and brought in all of these permanent physicians that are treating patients, not only treating patients but also know the most modern, most up-to-date, the most scientific of medicines. Secondly, I think the hospital benefited because it had good leadership that could see that its future was tied very closely with that of the medical school. This has forced them to work together. I don't think the cooperation has been all that everybody would like it to be, but by and large it has been pretty good. I kind of think that because of the type of leadership that the hospital had, not only in the lay leadership, people without MDs, but a lot of the physicians in the community participating in all the discussions have helped to shape it the way it is today.

I think that is a tribute to both the Administration of the hospital bringing all possible players into this as well as the ability and willingness of local physicians to be involved and of the medical school to be involved with everybody. I think that when you add all of these things up it's the Administration and the foresight that they had, the ability to bring in all players in the game and the abilities of all of these medical school, private physicians, and the hospital, to recognize that we have to adapt to constant change. All you have to do is look around this complex and change has been going on since the day it was built. Everybody recognizes this and I think that brings us to where we are today. It is as good a hospital as any other in the state is, probably better than most.

Beth Nelson: Let's talk a little about key individuals who contributed to the success of the medical center. I will let you look at the names that other peopleI have mentioned. The reason that I am doing this is I want to be sure we don't overlook anybody.

Wally Wooles: I don't know what Dave McRae's relationship was with Liston Ramsey here, but all I can tell you is when all of the battles were going on to get the medical school, he was a legislator from the Western part of the state. I am sure we had his vote but he was not a major player as far as I could tell. There were many unsung heroes. Of course, Governor Hunt, who happened to be Lieutenant Governor at the time, he was a big supporter of the school. Probably the giant of them all was Kenneth Royal, State Senator from Durham who championed the medical school even when it was not very popular at Durham and Chapel Hill, who died just recently. Another unsung hero I can think of used to be on the Board over here was Billy Mills. At that time he was a State Senator from Onslow County. He got thrown off the Board, I guess, because he just couldn't attend enough meetings.
There were a lot of other people, one that comes to mind pretty quickly is, of course, Robert Morgan. He was Attorney General and God love him he used to let Ed Monroe and I use his offices as a kind of a base and headquarters for our political activities in Raleigh. A legislator named Gerald Arnold who is now a member of the Court of Appeals was a marvelous and constant supporter of the school. I think that one person who never got the credit he really deserved was Horton Rountree. Horton was in there day after day, after day, after day, when this was not the most popular thing in the General Assembly and to his everlasting credit he never wavered and he always rose to the defense of the school and never really was given the credit that he deserved.

Certainly Ed Monroe deserves an awful lot of credit. Ed hired me and I guess just about the entire time Legislature was in session for three consecutive years Ed and I were in Raleigh. He certainly deserves a lot of the credit. I think also that a lot of the unsung heroes were the fourteen or fifteen faculty that we recruited that taught the classes in the early days, that they stayed here and we managed to keep them on the faculty because if they had ever quit and left the school would have died and that would have been the end of the medical school.

Beth Nelson: They were obviously swimming upstream to create the beginnings of a medical school here when there was nothing.

Wally Wooles: There were tremendous pressures on these people. You cannot imagine what it would be like not knowing you have a job the next month or the next year, never knowing the next morning when you go out to the mailbox and get your paper what was going to be in it. They took an awful chance in giving an awful lot of themselves.

Beth Nelson: Why do you think they did that?

Wally Wooles: I think they did it for a couple of reasons. Of course you would have to ask each of them but I think by and large they felt they were in on something that was so new that nobody else ever had this opportunity to do. You come to a job and then part of the job is to get the medical school. You are hired by the medical school and part of your job is to see to it that it continues and grows and stays here. I think they recognized they were in something unusual and I think they believed in what we were doing. Even though you couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel at any time until the very end, I think all of them knew that we were going to make it.

Beth Nelson: I wonder how they could see that. I realize looking back on it, it seemed like a forgone conclusion but at that time it must have looked very different.

Wally Wooles: I think they just believed in each other and we knew no matter what anybody said about the school, we knew what we were doing and what we were doing was right and that we were doing it right. It didn't matter what others thought.

Beth Nelson: I love the story in Wayne's book about when the first test scores that came out and they were so surprisingly high and actually were higher than Chapel Hill's. It was a two edged sword in that it was great to be in that situation but it also caused some consternation between this school and Chapel Hill.

Wally Wooles: You have to appreciate how that came about. I was invited to a meeting of the North Carolina/Virginia Seaboard Medical Society at Nags Head and we had just had a requirement thrust on us that our students take the same exams as the UNC students take. That didn't bother us as we knew what we taught the students and we knew what they could do. We had gotten the scores back and Chapel Hill had gotten the scores back about a week or ten days prior to that meeting. About that time we were taking a beating in the Press over our students were not doing as well, couldn't be expected to do as well.

I just got sick and tired of that and at the Medical Society meeting, because I knew there were a lot of reporters there, they were everywhere that we went at that time, just announced that there may be a lot of talk that our students did a lot better than the students at Chapel Hill academically. Of course that created a sensation around the state and there were a lot of people that were not too happy about that. The argument that Chapel Hill gave us was that we only had very few students and its known that students from small classes do better than students in large classes. The funny part of it is we had twenty students here that we picked that were not picked by any other medical school, and they were not picked by Chapel Hill. So these were the kids that nobody else wanted and they did better. Chapel Hill is an excellent medical school but there are so many good students that can't get into medical schools that are just as good as those that are in there and that's what happened. We had these kids, twenty of them in that first class, who had to go to class every day reading the press telling them that their instructors were no good, that the school was no good, and they still did well. That did create a stir but the only reason that I released it was that I was sick and tired of hearing people say we cannot do it. The funny part of it is and I won't mention any names, but there are an awful lot of physicians who voiced vehement opposition to this school. We were tarred by the brush of the university which at that time many people didn't think had a good academic reputation and they didn't figure we could do it. When we did it, a lot of these people ended up on our faculty or adjunct faculty and I have never understood that until this day, never. All of a sudden when you get here and things are pretty good people find out that maybe we were right and maybe we had better get along with them.

Beth Nelson: There are a number of folks whose names have come up who were early supporters out in the region who in their own quiet way went to bat for us.

Wally Wooles: One of the people was Dave Whichard. Dave was Editor of the paper at the time, couldn't have been more supportive in everything that he did. When he got to be a member of the Board of Governors he still continued his support.

A lot of doctors in this town really put their necks on the line because they accepted physicians in the school when it was one year or two years and took positions as clinical faculty in the school of medicine. One of the names you mentioned was Jack Wilkerson. Jack served on the first Admissions Committee and gave an awful lot of his time to help pick students and would defend the need and why we needed the school and the development of the school statewide when it wasn't very popular among physicians. Earl Trevathan did the same thing. He couldn't have been a bigger supporter. He accepted faculty status early on. Frank Longino was one of the first to volunteer his services. Frank later became Vice Chairman of the Department of Surgery. Frank was my neighbor and we lived two doors apart and right from the start he was a big supporter of this school. Don Tucker was a big supporter of the school.

Beth Nelson: I had heard at one time Don Tucker was not a supporter.

Wally Wooles: I think that Don Tucker always was. He always had reservations and always worried about how it was going to affect the practice he was developing but when it came time to put his name on the line, Don Tucker accepted a clinical appointment very early on. John Wooten did the same thing. God love Andrew Best. He was a big help to the school.

There was also a physician I want to tell you about. I was here two days and when I went to the office that they assigned to us over in the Biology Building, it had a chair and on that chair was a roll of toilet tissue. That's all it had. We didn't have anything else at that time. No desk, no telephone, no nothing. I hadn't been in that office two days then a little man came in, white hair and kind of stooped shouldered and introduced himself as Baxter Noble. He came and he told me who he was. He was the first cardiologist in eastern North Carolina. He said that he had just had a massive coronary and had to retire from his practice and would do anything he could to help us out. The man ended up teaching with us for about twenty some odd years until he died and when he died he was clinical professor of Pharmacology. He used to go around and tell the doctors he was from Kinston. We didn't have an awful lot of support there. They were mainly Chapel Hill and Duke graduates and their allegiance was to these schools and they referred patients that way and they were not happy to see a school come in. Dr. Noble used to champion this place. If you are going to write anything about anybody, make sure his names gets in it because he was in it from day three right to the end and was a great big help because he would arrange for other clinicians to come up and visit us. It is a surprise because once they came up to visit and found out we really knew what we were doing, we turned a lot of minds as result of that. So, make sure you put his name in. He died around 1987.

Beth Nelson: He is the one, as I recall, who was a great instructor and the students were quite taken with him, were they not?

Wally Wooles: Actually, Baxter Noble was probably the world's worst lecturer. It looked like he was ill prepared. His mind would flip from one thing to the other. The students very quickly learned that they just put their pencil down and listened to him and he gave them a marvelous handout that had everything in it he wanted them to know and then he would talk about different things. It all went by so fast that the students just didn't realize what was going on. He was so good with them and they loved him. He was the only man who got an ovation after every one of his lectures. He always used to tell us he didn't know why. He said he was just a little old country doctor.

Beth Nelson: Was he able to turn around the perception in Kinston, do you think?

Wally Wooles: Not really, there were some minds he couldn't change. They were closed and they remain closed to this day but by and large he did a pretty job and I think Chris Bremer ended up on our faculty in Family Medicine and he was from Kinston and was down there with Baxter when all of this was going on.

I need to mention one other person that you need to put down. A man named Monk Harrington, State Senator from Bertie County. He was a good fellow too. He was just a little old country boy. He used to say he was not very bright but I'll do anything I can and I told him he was about as dumb as a fox is dumb. I mean to tell you, he had a lot of smarts and was a big supporter of this school. He was always leading the legislative fights in the Senate. He and a man named John Henley, a pharmacist from New Hope were both State Senators and they would both always use every occasion they could to speak in the Senate and when the time came for the votes to pass this school up or down without a doubt they were there helping lead the fight because they were in it for maybe six or seven years. It wasn't that they just got involved for a short time they were there when it wasn't very popular

Gosh, I used to go to Florida or anywhere on vacation and I could still read about the ECU School of Medicine fight in the papers there. It would drive you crazy, as you couldn't get away from it. It was a big thing for this state. You just don't build medical schools because they are expensive and we had three excellent medical schools. I think Duke, Wake Forest and Chapel Hill were in the top echelons of medical schools and they are now. There was just nothing in eastern North Carolina, in fact, when I came in.

The Dean of the UNC Medical School was a fellow named Ike Taylor. Well, Ike Taylor's claim to fame, of course, is that he is the daddy of James Taylor. One day Ike and I were flying to Chicago to an AAMC meeting and there were quite a few reporters on the plane because Ike and I were not seen publicly too often and we thought they are going to pester us about the school and other things and all they wanted to talk about was James Taylor. We figured we learned quite quickly where we fit in this. Last I heard he was still living. Ike should be getting up in age now. That's the trouble with this business a lot of the people who really helped and took a lot of political beatings are dead now and they never really did get the credit that they deserved.

We had what we called an old timers meeting and I invited the legislators that were particularly helpful to us. There were so many we couldn't invite them all but we invited many of them. We had Robert Morgan, Monk Harrington, Horton Rountree, Kenneth Royall, Billy Mills, Bill Roberson, all that we could find who were still alive and in the area to come. We had a real good time and in fact there is a tape of it downstairs in the audiovisual area that you can get and look at. It only takes about thirty-five minutes. We did this about two or three years ago. We had been thinking about it and finally I did it because Horton Rountree was very ill. He had developed esophageal cancer and so we wanted to recognize Horton while he was still in good health and they gave Horton a plaque that just said to Horton Rountree - Thank You - The Faculty. The poor guy was just in tears.

Beth Nelson: I have heard people say that he pretty much sacrificed his political career in order to get this school going. They said that he was so relentless in the General Assembly.

Wally Wooles: Horton was the kind of guy that became identified with it and couldn't shake it and instead of being troubled by it he carried it as a real proud symbol. He would get up as Mr. ECU. For a long time that is how he was considered. Ed Warren wasn't in the General Assembly at this time. Horton carried this tremendously but we had some help. He had some help - we had Phil Godwin who was the Speaker of the House from Gates County. Jimmy Greene, the man that got to be Lieutenant Governor and then got arrested and sent to jail, he was also Speaker of the House. He supported this school. He called on a lot of legislators into his office and told them he wanted them to vote for the ECU Appropriations Bill and when the Speaker said something, they listened.

Beth Nelson: Going back to the Ike Taylor thing, I remember, whether it was in Wayne's book or if it was in the transcript of Wayne's interview with you, you talked about how Ike Taylor came down here to make a presentation to the local folks in his rather hippy garb and looking sort of like a typical Chapel Hill liberal, and if anybody down here had any reservations about whether they wanted control from Chapel Hill, him coming down here certainly erased any of that.

Wally Wooles: That's unfair to Ike that I said that but it's true. Ike came down wearing one of these toga like things and the little granny glasses. He looked a lot like Ben Franklin. It wasn't a toga but it had two straps and then it hung down to about mid-thigh. It was a weird looking thing and he came down to speak to a medical society meeting and I met Ike and the first thing that came into my mind was Oh Lord now we can't lose, we are going to win. Ike was a nice guy. He was a sharp man. His wife was a very talented lady and of course their son is also. Ike was a great guy but Ike, of course, was Chapel Hill and he was representing what they wanted and they didn't want another medical school. I don't know why they didn't want this, I think part of the reason came to be that they knew the bulk of their patients, a lot of their referrals, came from eastern North Carolina. I think they recognized when that happened that they were going to hurt. The only thing they didn't plan for was that the state developed at the same time and there ended up with there being more than enough patients, but Ike was a funny guy. There were some real characters at that time.

I will say this, I have never met more honest, sincere men than I have that were in the General Assembly at the time this medical school issue was being thought of. I say men because there were no women at that time in the General Assembly. By golly, every one of these guys was honest and above board and scandal never touched a one of them. They were a real credit to the state whether they supported the school or not.

John Henley, don't forget to write this name down. He was the Pharmacist from New Hope. He was in the Senate, a tall fellow. John Henley was representing Fayetteville and those areas and we were not popular in that area at all. All I can tell you is that I went down there one night to speak to the medical society and they unanimously voted that there should not be a school of medicine here and the greatest comment that keeps sticking in my mind is that they said nothing good can come out of Greenville and that just absolutely dumbfounded me. They were adamant, they did not want a medical school here.

Beth Nelson: What about John Henley, if the community was opposed to it and he supported it, is that what you're telling me?

Wally Wooles: Yes. John was representing his convictions in what he thought was best for the state.

Beth Nelson: Did he lose his seat after that?

Wallace Wooles: No, John Henley vacated his seat as far as I know.

Beth Nelson: What do you think made him such a supporter in face of such opposition?

Wally Wooles: I don't know. He never had any ties here as far as I know. He is still living. If you will get that tape you will see him in there. You will see all the doctors in town that we invited that we felt were our biggest supporters. They probably had about sixty or seventy people with their spouses. It was one of these things that there was no good reason to do it. Everybody was comfortable with what they had done.

Beth Nelson: That would have been a neat thing to have been in the paper.

Wally Wooles: Dave Whichard and his wife were there. We were not looking for publicity. This was just a bunch of old friends getting together that had fought the battles together and that they were awfully proud of what is here. The fellow you ought to talk to is Robert Morgan. Robert was the State Senator who introduced the legislation to get the medical school going. His wife Katy was a member of the Board of Trustees. I think she was Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University. You should call him. He isn't now in practice but has two daughters. He is in Wilmington. I saw him not too long ago and he was telling me that he was the representative, was picked by Ex-President Carter, to accompany him to the Panama Canal for the turning over the Canal to Panama because Jimmy Carter thinks that is why Robert got defeated in his bid for re-election. Of course, Robert Morgan was defeated by an ECU Faculty man, John East. But, he is a fine fellow to talk to and he knows all the old politicians and has a mind like a steel trap.

Beth Nelson: Lets talk very quickly about some challenges for the future. Does anything jump out at you?

Wally Wooles: Absolutely. Number one, I think the biggest challenge we are going to face is how to do better medicine with fewer resources. Finance is going to be a problem. How do we survive in managed car? How do we expand? How do we make sure that over the years there is a constant flow of patients to the subspecialties here? This is the only profession in the world that turns out its own competition. We have got to learn how to function in a time when monies for medical care are drying up. The country is not willing to support it like it used to be. We have to learn how to do better, do it with less, but at the same time the hospital and the medical school, and particularly the medical school, has to remember that we are an academic institution instead of taking care of patients we are obligated to teach and to do research and if we don't do those two last things well, particularly research, then medicine is never going to grow and we are obligated to do our part of it. If we don't do it, if this school doesn't do good research, both basic and clinical, and if the hospital does not allow research to be done within its facilities then both of us, the medical school and the hospital have to hang our heads in shame. The only way you can continue to provide cutting edge care is based on the best research available and that is the biggest challenge that we are going to face.

Beth Nelson: What about alternative medicine?

Wally Wooles: I think alternative medicine has a real place. I think that the problem is that we just don't understand enough of the other cultures that use alternative medicines to understand what they can do. All of us have been in view with the scientific base of medicine and there is a place for religious beliefs. There is a place for cultural beliefs. We have to start it. Number one, we need to recognize this cultural diversity that we have and number two, if we are smart, we will embrace it and incorporate it into scientific medicine and take the best of what scientific medicine has to offer and what cultural medicine has to offer and then we would be in better shape to take care of patients.

The only thing I would like to say that is after talking about it, I would like to do it again. It was fun. It was exciting, thrilling and you get to meet people. I had only been in this state three months and I had met the Governor, Mr. Friday and met them all. I came down as an Associate Professor of Pharmacology from MCV and I couldn't figure out what I was doing in that kind of group. They were all marvelous people; in fact, I had a secretary, a great secretary and loved her to death. She came in one day and she said that she was quitting and I asked her why and she said that she just couldn't take it. I asked her what was the matter and she said well the other day Governor Scott was sitting in my waiting room waiting for me. Governor Hunt came in and it just flustered her and made her nervous and she couldn't function with those kinds of people. But that's the kind of people we function with day by day by day. They held exhalted positions but they were
just like the rest of us, they put their pants on one leg at a time. They have the same problems we have, they were no different, and once you learn that it became so much easier to deal with them, so much easier. I met some of the greatest politicians I have ever know in my life, some good, some bad, but I think 99% of them were really good, honest, straight-forward. One thing I'll say for them, if they gave you their word you could take it to the bank. I never had a one of them go back on their word in anything that they told me. Some things may have hurt them politically but they never once went back on their word. I don't know if that would be true today or not. I doubt it. I remember one of the last conversations I had with Horton Rountree. He said when he was up there they didn't have the backbiting and the factionalism that there is up there today. He said he didn't like the Republicans and didn't like what they stood for but I loved them and we had a good time together and they could agree to disagree and be friends. He said that now you cannot do that. It is an era that has gone by and we are all the sadder for it.