Coming to a medical school that didn't exist meant Wallace Wooles was going to have to sing for his supper.

For about three years that's what he did, combining typical dean's tasks like building a curriculum, hiring faculty and planning for the future, with nonstop lobbying for the school to materialize.
He spoke to small crowds in eastern towns, winning people to the idea that they deserved better medical care. Further west, he worked among the General Assembly, where the struggle for a medical school largely took place.

"We thought we had a popular issue," Wooles says. In the end, sincerity and the strength of his appeal won. He remembers the day he spoke to the legislature's powerful appropriations committee. Chris Fordham, UNC-Chapel Hill's dean, spoke first on the reasons ECU should not have a medical school, supporting his position with an elaborate display.

"Dr. Fordham had eight or 10 people who would get up and give pieces of a presentation and I was sitting there all by myself," Wooles says. Wooles had no slides, charts or graphs.

"I had nothing," he remembers. "I said, 'All I can ask is, 'How many of you can see a doctor anytime you want to? That is what we're trying to do.' I said, 'You can put more money into Chapel Hill and it isn't going to get any doctors down here.' They recognized that and really, I was very well received."

The underdog's role proved good for the hospital.

"When the decision was made to create a medical school, the hospital and its planners recognized that it couldn't stay a community hospital," he says. "It had to grow to become what it is today, a tertiary hospital. It had to change drastically in its thinking and actions, and they have done it very, very well."

The benefits were hard won. Every Saturday, he and Dr. Edwin Monroe, also a lobbyist, counted their supporters. "When the bill was passed putting $25 million into the school, we knew in advance that we had all the votes," he remembers.

Once the money flowed in, the hospital began expanding. Bed towers, office space and other resources such as advanced surgical equipment were changing the soul of Pitt Memorial.

"The medical school brought in permanent physicians who knew the most modern, up-to-date scientific medicines," he says. "The public has benefited markedly from these services. The medical school benefited because we have a teaching outlet."

Once the struggle ended, Wooles became chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, a position he retired from in 2000.

He imagines the medical school growing in the next few years to include a schools of dentistry and pharmacy. "I think it's a distinct possibility."

Wallace Wooles, Ph. D.