See also Vignette

KENNETH K. DEWS
Past Board of Trustees Chairman
Past County Commissioner's Chairman

January 20, 2000

Interviewer: Beth Nelson

Beth Nelson: Please give me some background relating to the old and new hospitals.

Kenneth Dews: In the old hospital on Fifth Street, the Cafeteria was not as big as my living room. It was very small and the employees paid fifty cents for a meal. Originally the meals were free. After a Board meeting, Mr. Ward would invite the trustees to go into the cafeteria and he would give them ice cream.

Beth Nelson: What else do you remember about the old building?

Kenneth Dews: I remember it was different in those days to make the payroll. The Chairman signed all of the checks over a certain amount and I have signed checks that Jack Richardson held for a few days until we could get enough money to make sure they were good. In the old hospital Jack said he would not put them in the bank for a day or so because we didn't have that much money in the bank to write checks.

Beth Nelson: Why do you think that was? Was it mainly because of low reimbursement or low patient load?

Kenneth Dews: People had no insurance and the rate for the rooms was so small and the nurses were not being paid but around $7,500 or $8,000 and there just wasn't that much money in circulation and people were not earning that much. With the coming of Medicare and Medicaid that all changed and then the Blue Cross system was pumped up and then everybody started participating in that. When your mother and father came along, they did not have any health insurance. They had life insurance but did not believe in health insurance. This was paid on the spot. The doctors were not charging that much at that time and the patients thought they were charging too much. A hospital visit of $700 or $800 was a big deal and then we always had Mr. Futrell who was the County Social Services Officer and he had a hand in paying some of the bills for the poor people and was also getting them qualified. That was just the beginning of social security in North Carolina.

Beth Nelson: Medicare would have come into being in about 1966, is that right?

Kenneth Dews: Yes, but when you look at reimbursement now for Medicare and Medicaid if you took that out, the hospital would collapse. There is not enough insurance privately held without the aid of Medicare. In other words, I have supplemental insurance and Mamie has it also. Our Medicare is first payer and if that was not in place the Country would be devastated. Just look at the budget of Pitt County Memorial Hospital and see what percentage that is of the hospital's budget and you will see it is a large part. In the case of Medicaid, the State pays so much and the County has to match so much and the total negotiations the hospital and the county commissioners work out a percentage of what the County has to pay.

Beth Nelson: So, it is a very daunting thought to consider taking on $9 million of debt at a time when making the weekly bills for the hospital is a challenge. Your are not a risk taker or a person who would stick his neck out for something unless it was well thought out and put together and if there was a compelling need for it. When I think about it in that kind of a standpoint, it took a lot of nerve to publicly support something.

Kenneth Dews: I'll give you one example. The air conditioning goes out in the Operating Room and Ira Hardy says he wants it fixed and now. That was when we were in the old hospital. Anyway, I asked the air conditioning man what it was going to cost and he said $20,000. I told him I couldn't get the Executive Committee together. So I called him and told him to go ahead and fix it and that I would stand for it and I would have paid it off if I had to but on Monday the Executive Committee said fine and we got up the money and we paid for it. The air conditioning unit going into the Operating Room had to have certain specifications for cleaning up the air. I stood on top of the roof and watched them put it in. I did not tell Mamie about it but I could have ended up paying for it.

Beth Nelson: $20,000 would have been a huge amount of money back then, which would have been in the early 1970s.

Kenneth Dews: It would have been in the latter part of the 1960s or early 1970s.

Beth Nelson: Were you the Board Chairman at that time?

Kenneth Dews: I must have been or I would not have been doing that. I'll also tell you how that came about. If you look back on the records, I really served as Chairman two times one of which was caused by Walter Stroud of Ayden. He was elected Chairman in March. Shortly thereafter his term expired. I was Vice Chairman and served out the rest of Walter's term as Chairman. Then later on I was elected Chairman. So, I just took it upon myself and I would not have done that if I were not Board Chairman.

I remember a man jumping out of the building upstairs from the front door and taking his life.

Beth Nelson: What were the circumstances there? Was he an employee or patient?

Kenneth Dews: All I remember is that he was a patient who worked for Carolina Dairies. They had him tied down and his family wanted the staff to take off his straps and they did and he jumped out the window.

Beth Nelson: I guess at that time there was not insurance to pay the families.

Kenneth Dews: I guess if we had insurance, there was very little. When we moved into the new hospital that we have now, it was not but a short time when a Dr. Ward had a patient that his children were wanting to put him into a nursing home. The patient later jumped out of the window.

Beth Nelson: Was that the Doctor Ward from Ayden?

Kenneth Dews: Yes, it was. He originally came from Robersonville. His brother was the Dr. Ward at ECU who just died. It was in the paper last week. He gave us difficulty with the ER all the time. Nothing was ever right for him. His daddy practiced in Robersonville, Joe Ward. When he was over in Ayden he was always over in the ER saying he couldn't get anything done. He later went to work at DuPont and so did Jack Koontz also.

Beth Nelson: Going back to things that were tough, I know you were on the Board back when we had the problem with Blue Cross due to a computer problem. We had a shortfall then and we were going to have to withhold paychecks right after Christmas. Do you remember that? It would have been about 1986 or 1987. I was here at that time.

Kenneth Dews: It was important to know that we had moved to the new hospital with not much furniture.

Beth Nelson: Weren't there quite a few issues with the lack of furniture?

Kenneth Dews: We were repairing what we had but there was room after room that did not have furniture except for maybe a chair and there was nothing thrown away. We used everything we could to get started.

Beth Nelson: When did you find out that it really wouldn't have been legal to sign that note?

Kenneth Dews: Later.

Beth Nelson: Probably twenty years later. What about the 1986/1987 situation? Remember when Blue Cross was delayed several months in paying us? Bernice Turnage, as I recall, would have been the Chairman of the Finance Committee at that time. Blue Cross notified us that due to some computer problems, apparently it was on our end, that they were going to be unable to pay us for any of our patient accounts over several months and with Blue Cross being probably 35-40% of our business at the time it was a huge cash flow problem and we probably did not have any resources at the bank at that time. We were not sure a week or two after Christmas that we were going to make the payroll.

Kenneth Dews: I really don't remember that. I started on the Board of County Commissioners at that time.

Beth Nelson: Were you not the commissioner liaison to the Board at that time?

Kenneth Dews: Well, I cannot keep up with that. I kept up with some of the plans. Wilton Duke and myself always went to the meetings. I remember it and I don't think it got to be a big thing because they never said anything about it. I do remember how scary it was to Jack and Dave and the financial people.

Kenneth Dews: The system changes in this case reimbursement, as there were always new rules. It eventually overwhelms the person. Jack Holsten apparently has the knowledge and expertise and I have not seen him shaken up in any of it.

Beth Nelson: It seems like some people are able to stay abreast of all changes.

Kenneth Dews: With some people the job gets to be so big they are scared of it and don't want to take on the responsibility. That happens quite often in big business. A lot of times people in the same administrative meetings do not have any idea of what the other person is doing. Ralph Hall goes in and sits down and goes over things with Dave and Jack and somebody else will come in and Ralph is then sitting back there with me telling me he doesn't know what is even going on. Another one will come in and ask if this and that have been done. You know he stays on that trail all the time. He is assigned those things but keeping up with all of them it takes time. Dave has grown with the job and upped his education a little. Jack Richardson could tolerate a lot more than people realized.

Beth Nelson: Let's go back to the Affiliation Agreement. Can you think of anything that occurred at that time? You know, people who really stuck their neck out to make that happen, anything funny or interesting things or surprising things?

Kenneth Dews: The Board of Trustees, Board of County Commissioners and others met many times, individually and in groups, with members of the General Assembly. We also met with a group from Mecklenburg County trying to get things lined up. What we were learning early on was that until we had a bona fide instrument structured between the school of medicine, the hospital and the county, what each entity was going to answer to and the jurisdiction they held legally over each other-- until that instrument was completed we didn't have anything to take forward.

Beth Nelson: Who were some of the key private practitioners who had a role in it? Was it Dr. Ferguson?

Kenneth Dews: No, he had nothing to do with it. Don Tucker was one of those and he said they didn't want them, medical school, as they will come in and take us over. He was on the Board of Trustees at the time. He felt the school of medicine would break us. He also said the private practitioners wanted rooms set aside for them and said they would have it or they wouldn't have a school. We went over that issue ten dozens of times. It really got ugly between the private practitioners and the school of Medicine. Jack Richardson and his staff and county commissioners met around fifty times regarding this. It finally got decided that no, the private practitioners will not have rooms set aside. It was going to be first come, first served basis and that was the way it was going to be.

Beth Nelson: They ended up buying Eric Fearrington's practice as I recall.

Kenneth Dews: Yes, they did.

Beth Nelson: Who is the doctor who had a practice here and went to China and had a big impact on immunization, so much that he pretty much was credited with wiping out TB or something? I mentioned this to Wayne Williams and he had been in China at the same time and remembers the role that this doctor played. He was from Greenville and this was twenty or thirty years ago. Malene Irons is in my book club and she was the one who brought it up. She also couldn't remember his name. Wayne Williams made the statement that the reason that man was so successful in eradicating polio, TB, or whatever it was that he said you could do anything you want to in an autocratic country.

Kenneth Dews: There are just so many factors that are too numerous to talk about that are really a part of the history of the development of the hospital and medical center but to me, the one thing that stands out has happened to place us where we are today in the year 2000 in the development of the medical school is the planning and the individuals involved. The Board of Trustees, Board of County Commissioners and the School of Medicine in its early beginning to bring about the construction of a new hospital and the culmination of all of that work to the opening of the new hospital in March of 1977.

To me, that is the one thing that stands out in my mind that we knew from that point on that we were going to have a first class medical center and hopefully within a short time we would have a four year medical school and yes, all that would come about. There were many people involved locally including legislative groups and members of the Board of Trustees of the hospital, the staff of the hospital and the staff of what was the beginning of the new medical school. I mentioned a few names of people who I worked with such as Wally Wooles. Wally and several others who were involved in the original discussions that later led to the selection of Bill Laupus as Dean of the medical school. At that point, the school of medicine under his leadership really began to take shape in developing to what we have today. That is a milestone with all the complicated issues having to do with the Affiliation Agreement which took weeks and months of work, which was later approved by the Board of Governors of UNC. That ultimately led to an instrument, which gave all of us guidelines that we had to follow in order to develop a relationship between the school of medicine and the hospital.

Keep in mind that when the hospital opened in March of 1977 we had around $500,000 that I remember to open with and that was soon gone. It was some time before we really began to get a patient load sufficient enough to pay our bills and begin to accumulate some savings so we would have a cushion for rainy days which we were sure were going to come. Had it not been for people on the Board of County Commissioners at that time that were interested in the development of the medical school that were interested enough to authorize a bond referendum for $9 million. They were interested enough on a daily basis to stay in touch with Jack Richardson and the Board of Trustees to speed up the process and to ultimately find solutions to the problems that they faced, not only from the opposition somewhat in Pitt County but also from the state level in recognizing Greenville as the place that the medical school would be developed. All of this came about in long legislative sessions because Dr. Jenkins and others played a significant role in bringing to the people of Pitt County, the Board of Trustees and Board of County Commissioners information sufficient enough to get their support and to not give up in those days when we were told it was not going to happen.

As far as individuals who played leading parts in that effort, they are so numerous but their names are in the records of the Board of Trustees minutes and Committee meetings that are still available to date. There are just so many people who played a part that I couldn't begin to name them.

Beth Nelson: Was that at the time it was often said that Horton Rountree, I guess he was in the General Assembly at that time, gave up his own political career in trying to make sure that the medical school was brought here? Do you remember some of that?

Kenneth Dews: That is true. He lost a lot of political support that he had throughout his district because of his great desire to see the medical come to eastern North Carolina and to Pitt County and Greenville. Vernon White had a role in pursuing the same goal.

Beth Nelson: Would they have been in the General Assembly at the same time? Horton would have been in the House and Vernon in the Senate. Is that right?

Kenneth Dews: True.

Beth Nelson: I guess back then we only had one Senator and a couple of representatives. It seems like we did not have as many then as we do now. Ed Warren would have been a county commissioner at that time, do you remember?

Kenneth Dews: Yes, he was a county commissioner and he played a large part in that same effort. The Board of County Commissioners were involved to generate a cooperation that we had between several units, the State and the County, the Board of Trustees and the School of Medicine to bring all those parties together under the Affiliation Agreement. That was the first big hurdle that had to be jumped before anything else could happen.

Beth Nelson: Did the General Assembly support you?

Kenneth Dews: That's right. We had to have an agreement between the parties before the General Assembly would say they would accept it and vote for it; otherwise, you did not have anything to give to them to talk about. Bill Speight played a leading part as the county attorney with these negotiations. I did, on several occasions, along with Jack Richardson, Bill Speight, Wilton Duke and Wally Wooles, go to Chapel Hill and meet with Dr. Friday and his staff and talk about these things and get his approval of some of the things that we were trying to do.

Beth Nelson: Tell me, what about Woodrow Wooten. How is he related to John Wooten and others?

Kenneth Dews: No, he was not related. He was a businessman from Falkland and spent a number of years on the Board of County Commissioners.

Beth Nelson: Is he still alive?

Kenneth Dews: No. His wife, Gladys is. They lived right across from where Charles Mayo lives in Falkland.

Beth Nelson: Wasn't he also on the hospital's Board of Trustees?

Kenneth Dews: Yes, he was and he was also Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners prior to all of this so he had a real good understanding of the Board of Trustees at the hospital and also from a perspective from the Board of County Commissioners as far as allocation of funds for the budget and what it would take to help the hospital get off the ground. Of course, if you look at the records of the vote taken on the hospital's referendum for the $9 million, it was not a grand slam victory. It was very close. There was a lot of opposition to it because the people frowned upon that type of debt then.

Beth Nelson: I had heard Jack Richardson say at that time when he went to a lot of the public hearings and meetings at churches and one thing and another that quite often he would be shouted down, that people swore that it was the worse thing that could happen in this county. They felt it was a "white elephant" that would sit empty and just draw tax dollars and that they particularly wanted to run him out of town for just proposing such an idea. Do you remember going to any of those meetings and what happened?

Kenneth Dews: Yes I do and it was embarrassing at times because those people who were totally opposed to it were the most devoted and they didn't miss any meetings because they always had the courage to get up and express themselves in opposition to it, time and time and time again

Beth Nelson: It seems like I was told that you were threatened a couple of times. Is this so?

Kenneth Dews: I was. In my years of public life being on the Board of County Commissioners I have that type of calls in the middle of the night threatening me that if I voted for this or voted for that. When I was on the Board of Trustees there were a number of trustees who were threatened and we talked about it among ourselves but the accusations and threats of bodily harm we just let pass and did not say much about it but it happened. If you could go back and pick up recordings, if there were any, on some of those public years dealing with the bond issue you would find there were some remarks made regarding the trustees and also the county commissioners. I must tell you about the key man responsible for the passage worked tirelessly. He was a man who worked for Wachovia and was a vice president. The man was Joe Pou. You should pick up on that because without his help we would never have gotten it passed. He was a leader. Reid Hooper was in banking at Wachovia but was not involved to that degree.

Kenneth Dews: We had a team of four or five commissioners and Board members and we would go to our church or someplace and meet with them and have other teams that were in another part of the county doing this regarding the referendum and it was not a pleasant task to go out night after night and hear the comments in opposition.

Beth Nelson: What were some of the comments that you heard? Give me some examples.

Kenneth Dews: The tax on the local level was the major factor. Would we ever pay off $9 million; Greenville is too small and we already have the East Carolina Teachers College here and we don't need a medical school; we don't have the people to support it; we don't have the patients to support it. Jack Richardson, Wally Wooles, Dr. Jenkins and members of the Board were looking at patients beyond the boundaries of Pitt County. They wanted to develop a school of medicine that would serve all of eastern North Carolina, which, in fact, is what it does today.

Beth Nelson: Going back to the opposition and that kind of thing, sometimes people quietly pull you aside and question you in a tactful, respectful sort of way, even though you were committed to what you were doing. Were there times that you wondered if you were really sure we were doing the right thing? Were there times that you wondered if you might have bitten off more than we could chew?

Kenneth Dews: No, once I got a glimpse into what the school of medicine could do for eastern North Carolina, not just Greenville, but all of eastern North Carolina, I never changed my mind or objected any more than I would when I was convinced after two years of study that privatization was the thing to do in the medical school and in the hospital. Once I was convinced of that no one was going to convince me to vote any other way. I never wavered and I never thought of backing off or saying it was too much. It was by the narrowest in both cases, the referendum and the privatization. It was a 5-4 vote in the case of privatization after many months of discussions. So it also was with the referendum. It took a lot of planning and time between Board of Trustees members and the Board of County Commissioners to convince the public to vote for it and it passed but by not much. We had among our group's members here and in the Board at the hospital on both issues, especially in the privatization that said they felt we ought to back off. In fact, you are finding out that there was one meeting that Dave and his staff remembers very well that the Board of County Commissioners met with the Board of Trustees of the hospital and the county commissioners said at this point you need to back off as they would not want to hear any more about it. That came about shortly after Phil Carlton made his speech at the Hilton endorsing the idea of privatization. That's where he was leading in a group and saying that was going to happen as it was being done all over the State and all over the Country. At that point the county commissioners said to the Trustees that that was it. They did not want to hear any more about it and so they backed off for a year or two and then they requested that the commissioners look at it again. Then, the commissioners, after studying all the material provided to them from various sources all over the Country. Many sources provided information. As more and more material began to flow in and you studied it you could see that it was the only thing to do at this point. If it were not done at this point, it probably never would be done. The hospital services with the coming of HMOs and all these multitudes of changes in the system great changes were occurring and if you did not participate at that point or didn't change into privatization it was much more difficult because we were dealing not with just privatization but also with the school of medicine.

There were many groups on both sides that said they were tired of it. You can talk to Lawrence Davenport and David Brody. There were times that they even had second thoughts. The hospital is trying to heal those wounds and do everything in their contract they have now to look after the community and say we are going to be a partner and we are going to do these things and they are trying to bring about a healing process. This is here and will not go away for a long time.

September 13, 2000

Interviewer: Beth Nelson
(Second Interview)

Beth Nelson: Please talk a bit about Mr. Ward in the 1950s.

Kenneth Dews: Yes, you know, at that time when Mr. Ward was the Administrator of the hospital, the County Commissioners picked individuals both men and women to serve on the Board of Trustees and they were chosen from the area where they resided and so we had a really fine group of men and women who dedicated their time and other resources to come in there and meet with Mr. Ward in trying to solve the problems from day to day that would arise from the growth of the hospital. You know, we noticed right away that we were going to be a growing hospital and during those early years between 1951 and 1960 we experienced a lot of growth and later a new wing was added. In those days the money that we had budgeted for the operation of the hospital, those funds were hard to come by and we had to be very careful in the way we allocated funds to various departments and individuals for the operation of the hospital.

I must say a little bit about the cooperation between Mr. Ward and the physicians on a day to day basis. He had more contact with them because there was a smaller number than the Administrator of the hospital would have today. He dealt with those problems in a professional way, he kept the Board informed, and especially the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman and the Executive Committee, on every problem that would arise that he thought needed their attention. Mr. Ward when he would come to a Board meeting he would bring enough paper in his arms to last several hours if you wanted it to last that long. I don't think he had much left in his files when he left his office and came to the Board meeting. He was a student and he was learning hospital administration and he had the best interest of the people of the community and, of course, the patients. He was a fine gentleman, a fine Administrator, and did a wonderful job with the resources that he had at his disposal at that time.

Beth Nelson: Talk a bit about how the recruitment of specialty physicians impacted the growth of the hospital.

Kenneth Dews: The period between 1951 and 1960 there was a growing number of new physicians that were being recruited by physicians that were already a member of the community and the Board of Trustees continued to show that we were going to be not only a small regional hospital but we were going towards what we hoped would be a major medical center. Keep in mind that I mention this as we did not know exactly about a medical school at that time but we did intend to be a large regional hospital and every meeting that we had discussions were held in terms of our growth and what we could afford and what we could not afford. Then we had other physicians, especially in the area of neurosurgery and pathology, which came into being in the old hospital when Charles Gilbert and Lee West came on board in pathology and Dr. Ira Hardy in neurosurgery. That was an indication that we could be more than a general hospital and they had opportunities that they could have signed in other places that were available to them even in eastern North Carolina. They chose to stay in Greenville and this was the beginning of the building of a major medical center when they came on board.

Mr. Ward spent days and nights with the members of the Board seeking out the best medical personnel and especially the physicians because without the physicians you don't have a hospital. No one can admit a patient unless they have a medical degree and that's what you needed and you needed good physicians. We did the very best we could to get these people on board and see that we had this growth occurring. The growth really took off after the sixties and towards the seventies. There came a period in there in which Mr. Jack Richardson came on board as Assistant Administrator and Mr. Ward was getting ready to retire so we took on a role in the Eastern part of North Carolina to see to it that we would be a major medical center. Then, with the coming of the school of medicine and all the controversy surrounding that in the General Assembly and UNC Chapel Hill about having another medical school led to a long and extended debate about whether that would be best for North Carolina to establish another medical school.

I met many, many times with Dr. Friday and members of the General Assembly and went from Greenville back and forth to Chapel Hill and the General Assembly in Raleigh to try to bring this about. Under the leadership of Dr. Leo Jenkins we took the fight to Raleigh and he was very insistent and he was a good planner and speaker and he knew what he wanted and what was best, he thought, for eastern North Carolina and, of course, that has proven to be true with all the things that he did for the university and Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

Mr. Ward's role cannot be understated in terms of his professional training. He was a good Administrator for that time and that period in the history and the life of Pitt County Memorial Hospital. Then Jack Richardson's expertise after Mr. Ward retired clearly was displayed in his efforts with the Board but he knew what he wanted the Board to do, the direction he wanted them to take and he worked day and night to see that all of these planning efforts came about to give us an opportunity to view many different opportunities that we had but he wanted the very best for Greenville and Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

Beth Nelson: Go into the fight for the medical school, all those trips back and forth, particularly I want you to talk about, I guess, the mood of the community, the focus of the community and how eastern North Carolina rallied together to motivate its Legislators to approve it in spite of all kinds of naysayers to the contrary and talk about people like Horton Roundtree, Wally Wooles and to some extent even Ed Monroe who had their careers, I guess, sidetracked by the fact that they committed everything they had.

Kenneth Dews: You see, there is a hundred people that played a part in this that you cannot remember all the names, you can't focus on them because there are others who did just as much but people like Horton, Vernon White and I am so afraid about leaving out anybody and that is the reason I generalized.

Beth Nelson: Then maybe you can talk about them as a group.

Kenneth Dews: There are one or two like Jack and Mr. Ward and some of the docs, Ira Hardy as I mentioned, they were an important part at that particular time to bring about the growth. We didn't have anybody coming to see a neurosurgeon so those people are real important. When you mention people like Joe Pou, you know who that is?

Beth Nelson: Oh yes I do, you are the first person who told me about him. He was a big part of our success. Now, lets go into the fight about the school of medicine and the people, certainly without naming names.

Kenneth Dews: I will name a few. During the years of 1960 and 1970 and the latter part of the seventies, we really started planning for a new building. We had outgrown our facility, which was a wonderful facility for the times, but we needed that much space. It was certainly a great improvement over the Johnston Street hospital, but now we were watching Pitt County and indeed eastern North Carolina grow and it was necessary to start doing some planning for a new hospital at some point in time but the planning had to occur much earlier. We enlisted the aid of some personnel from the Medical College of Virginia, a consultant and I forget his name at this time, but he came down to eastern North Carolina and he took a look at everything we had and space available and everything and he told us we needed to go on and buy 100 acres of land and we need to do that as soon as we can and start the planning. He said if we ever get 100 acres of land unlike they were in Richmond at the Medical College of Virginia you have a lot of land available and we ought to go on and buy a sufficient amount to do it. He did not specify where but he said we needed to start doing this as soon as we can. First of all the Board members looked at each other and looked at our budget and said where in the world were we going to find that much money to buy a piece of land because our budget at that time was very tight. We started the process; the Commissioners named the committee to start looking. Some of them were County Commissioners and some of them were members of the Board. I was on that committee as a member of the Board of Trustees along with three or four other people. We did look at ten or twelve sites in and around Greenville but we kept coming back to the fact that the doctors had made their investment in their facilities in and near the hospital and we could not ignore that and go to another part of the County or City to build a new facility which would mean that indeed many of them would have to move closer to the new hospital. After looking at many sites we decided that the Moye land, which we presently occupy, would be in the best interest of the patients and the medical community.

Beth Nelson: I want you to go back to the 100 acres and I want you to talk about it. Right now we say 100 acres is a whole heck of a lot of land now but it was a heck of a lot of land then because the hospital then was sitting on how much land?

Kenneth Dews: I think it was about 20 or 25 acres, something like that. The Moyes also contributed that land for the original hospital.

Beth Nelson: I was thinking, what was going through your mind as a Board member when you are told by a knowledgeable consultant that you needed to begin thinking of 100 acres of land, that would be like if somebody now told us that we needed 1,000 acres. What was going through your mind at that time?

Kenneth Dews: At the time the consultant gave us his best opinion about the property we needed to acquire and he mentioned that 100 acres, that was such a huge piece of land area that we could not possibly see how we would need that much with property that we were located on at that time which was sufficient for our needs and then he said to those that asked the question if we were surrounded by buildings in downtown Richmond where the Medical College of Virginia is that we would know why he was recommending this. He told us we had a lot of land available and we should be able to raise enough money to buy the land. Once we get the land we would begin to solve other problems such as new construction for a new facility. So, he gave us quite a bit to think about and then we, of course, talked so much about how we were going to do it. The County Commissioners appointed the committee and then we began to look at it and the Moye tract was selected and keep in mind that the old hospital on Fifth Street was located on land given to the County of Pitt by the Moye family. The future land that we agreed on was 100 acres where it is presently located at and is now known as Moye Boulevard.

If you could go back and pick up the pictures and certainly they are available you would look at that land and it is nothing like it was the first time we saw it. The area where the present hospital is and the medical school was a deep ravine that had trees all alongside and that had to be solved as to how we were going to drain that and cover it up and eventually after we moved over there and the building was constructed with the coming of the medical school we agreed that the medical school should be on that same property so the County of Pitt sold, deeded to, the State of North Carolina the property that the medical school is on today. I think the sum was $200,000 but I am not quite sure about that. It was a huge undertaking task for the Board of Trustees and they, men and women, who served on that Board at that time gave so much of their time in the planning efforts and other resources that they gave was one of the main things that lead to the development of the new medical center and the school of medicine.

Now let me talk a little bit about the planning process. We actually knew the General Assembly had approved the school of medicine coming to Greenville. There were many, many trips made by people from our hospital and, of course, Jack Richardson was there, Bill Speight, Ed Monroe and any number of people I can name because every time they would go up there would be different people and different delegations going to see different groups about the medical school. The medical school was planned for and the State of North Carolina had appropriated the money through the General Assembly and the Brody Building was started then. Later on money was requested through the Board of Trustees to pursue the State of North Carolina to build or appropriate the money for a new bed tower which in later times they did approve it and it was built and is part of the medical school complex now in the front part of the main building. So there were huge problems to overcome and the meetings that we had been accustomed to having once a month came into many, many committees and many different people from the Board of Trustees and the school of medicine with the health plan that you see today.

When you undertake the job as a member of the Board of Trustees of a hospital you are undertaking something that is not quite the ordinary committee that you would sit on in other areas because of its complex planning that is required from the standpoint of the physicians, the patients to the construction and renovation of new buildings. It took many people to bring this about over a period of many years leading up to 1977 when the present building was dedicated.

Beth Nelson: I want to go back to another story you told the other day that I want to pick up on. You were talking about when you were on the Board and C. D. Ward would take you down after the meeting and scoop everybody a cone of ice cream and if it were an exceptionally good meeting he would offer you cookies. Talk about that as I thought it was cute.

Kenneth Dews: Going back to our meetings at Pitt County Memorial Hospital on Fifth Street, our meetings lasted from one to two hours most of the time and we all left the meetings happy and felt like we had done a good night's work but there were rare occasions when things went real well and everybody was willing to shake hands and agree that we had a good night and Mr. Ward in all of his wisdom would think that even based on a tight budget we were entitled a little something more than he had been giving us so he would take us down to the hospital cafeteria and dip each one of us a little ice cream to show his appreciation for what we had done. If it was a very good job and there was not a lot of disagreement he would give you a cookie along with the ice cream to thank you for what you had done. He was a spirited man and we enjoyed working with him over the years. When he retired and Mr. Richardson took the helm we missed him but Jack Richardson was the right man for the right time and we could not have picked a better person to come on board to follow Mr. Ward.

Beth Nelson: Lets talk about the fact that we have been fortunate to have had the right leaders at the right time who assembled their own team which was able to deal with the challenges.

Kenneth Dews: I might mention that during the transition between the old hospital and the opening of the new hospital in May of 1977 there was a huge task and effort by Mr. Richardson to assemble the very best staff he could to help in this huge endeavor to establish a major medical center. He did that very carefully and selectively. He interviewed many people, he had many people who came in and made recommendations to him about who they thought would be some of the best people that he needed but he did get that select group together to open the new hospital and be on board and see the tremendous problems that they had ahead of them in getting everybody into the building and getting the physicians settled into their schedules and especially the operating room schedules. That was a huge task for that group of people. Jack relied very heavily on them and they reported to him constantly on where they were on the different tasks assigned to them. Keep in mind that our Board members were fully informed by Mr. Richardson exactly where they were and who the new people were, what their assigned jobs were, what departments they had and so it was an effort that you could see that was unfolding with the best of professional people that you could possibly get based on their resources and the budget of Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

Right in that period of time when Mr. Richardson had gone through all of the changes and the school of medicine was fully developed and up and running, Jack began to look at his retirement. I don't think anybody ever mentioned to him about retiring but he had planned for his own retirement and he had on board a group of people who were essential to the development of the Pitt County Memorial Hospital medical center and the school of medicine. You can't think of anyone other than Dave McRae who came in at such well-timed period of the growth of the hospital and the operation of the new facility and Dave was fully qualified, he had been on board some time in the Rehab Unit and he knew the operation of the hospital in and out and when Jack retired and Dave McRae came in to take the helm, he had even more challenging tasks before him than most can imagine. He handled it well with the Board of Trustees who changed from time to time and learning to adapt from one Board member to another and to see the difference in opinions and professional training of the people that you have on the Board of Trustees sometimes causes the Administrator headaches about how to proceed as we had in the past and get the opinions and the approval of the new Board members as they came in. Training of the hospital Board of Trustees is absolutely essential if you are to have a first class medical center because they are an integral part of everything that goes on in the life of that hospital and if any member of the Board of Trustees of Pitt County Memorial Hospital would ever tell you that were not informed or they didn't know, then they missed a meeting somewhere because the staff has always been way ahead of the Board of Trustees in assembling the information needed for general operations of the hospital. So, we have much to be thankful for in that regard.

Beth Nelson: Lets talk about the Affiliation Agreement because I know you were involved with the negotiations. That was at a time when there were certain physicians who were not in favor of affiliating, there were others who saw it as a positive. The school of medicine was at that point was a dream and it might turn out to be the greatest thing in the world which we found it to be but at the same time it could have turned out to be a flop. Looking back on it, talk about the Affiliation Agreement and the challenges of putting that together.

Kenneth Dews: Two of the most important committees during this transition were the Joint Policy Committee and the Affiliation Committee. Now they had more work than any other group in the hospital and any other subcommittee. It was the most challenging task that I have ever encountered and this took everything each member had in terms of contributions to bring about the agreement we achieved between the State of North Carolina and the County Commissioners and Pitt County Memorial Hospital. We tried to hold our meetings on the Affiliation Agreement and have people from every walk of life come in and share their views and opinions about what they thought was best. We had members of the local medical society come in from time to time and share their views with us and what they thought would be best for the hospital. We had patients; we had professionals in Pitt County Memorial Hospital to come in as well as people from the State of North Carolina who could help us with these tasks of trying to bring about the best agreement we could. Now time has proven that the Agreement was a model and has been used as a model in other areas of the Country as a guide for them in putting together an Affiliation Agreement with other parties so that attests to its worthiness and it has been approved over the years by the various parties that it was all in the best interest of the hospital and the medical school and the County Commissioners.

Beth Nelson: Lets talk just a second and frame this from the standpoint of the time period that it would have been signed.

Kenneth Dews: I signed it but you would have to go look at it and see what date that was.

Beth Nelson: It has been renegotiated as virtually the same document with very minor changes twice, I believe. Will you talk a little bit about that? Negotiations were going on back in the seventies and it stood up essentially without major changes even until today.

Kenneth Dews: The agreement that we have today has undergone a few changes and some of those were brought about by the changing of the medical care itself but basically the agreement has undergone very few changes since it was first agreed upon when three partners agreed to have this affiliation between themselves in order to bring about the school of medicine in Greenville. It was one that has stood the test of time and every person, whatever their contribution, has had a chance to read it over and over and over and I have been there through all the changes. The changes were minor and necessary in order to accommodate changes that have occurred in the delivery of health care services since the first agreement was approved.

Beth Nelson: You and I talked back in January about the opposition to the bond issue and your involvement and you just mentioned a minute ago about Mr. Joe Pou who was significant in the approval of the bond issue and it only passed by twelve votes.

Kenneth Dews: Lets talk a few minutes about the $9 million bond issue. That was really the turning point in everything depended on the passage of this $9 million bond issue, which went to the people of Pitt County to decide and approve sufficient bonds to build a new hospital. Dr. Joe Pou with Wachovia headed up that effort to get out the vote and to get the votes necessary to approve the hospital. He was 100% in favor of it and I don't know of any individual who worked any harder to help the hospital than this volunteer did when he stepped forward and said he would take the responsibility and indeed he did and we have a great deal to be indebted to him for making this contribution to the life of Pitt County.

Now, the bond issue was not easy to pass. I spoke at several civic clubs and there was a lot of opposition to it. People did not want any more indebtedness on the part of the County. They did not want their taxes raised anymore so $9 million was a huge amount of money at that time and it is today. In passing that bond issue we thought we would have a larger turnout than we did and we did not have the turnout that we had anticipated and so the bonds were approved by the County but it was a small majority, a small margin that gave them the approval to go ahead and issue the bonds and construct the new facility.

Beth Nelson: That is about all that I can think of. Is there anything that you can think of that you would like to mention that we haven't covered? Does anything jump at you?

Kenneth Dews: Well, as I talked to Jack on email, he never mentions anything about his contributions but I can't help but think about the contributions beyond Jack Richardson's tenure and what Dave McRae has done and indeed here just recently at Hilton Head he was given an award. It was the Lifetime Service Award. That attests to his leadership in being recognized by people not only in North Carolina but all over the Country as to his leadership in guiding the hospital with the help of his staff and the members of the Board of Trustees. It says something special about this man and his leadership and Dave has always worked from a standpoint of a mission. He is mission oriented and I think his parents were missionaries and when he sets out on a mission as he had with me on a number of occasions. He is a wonderful, knowledgeable person to work with and I just praise him to no end for the leadership he has given to the hospital and the community in eastern North Carolina.