BRATTON: Let me back up a little bit. You've mentioned, well you graduated from Rutgers, but you also graduated from
JENKINS: Columbia
BRATTON: Columbia
JENKINS: and NYU
BRATTON: and NYU and you went to Duke.
JENKINS: and I went to Duke. It happened very interestingly. When I was teaching in Somerville [New Jersey], Doris Duke lived in Somerville where I was teaching. Some kind of deal came along where we could go to summer school at Duke at a reasonable price and so forth. I didn't know much about Duke at the time. It was formerly little Trinity. I went down there and took statistics and some other course, I just don't recall now. Oh yes, techniques of research and statistics. I enjoyed being there. It was a very fine situation.
But they were struggling then exactly the way East Carolina University was about 25 years ago, exactly. There were people who said in effect, it didn't mean much to me then, but as I look back it is so meaningful, as I look back. They said, "number one, this little Methodist dump will never amount to anything, little Trinity." They had a two year medical school or the beginning of one. And they said, "They don't even begin to train doctors like they should." So Duke retaliated. They brought in a man who was going to give them a respectful athletic program, Wallace Wade. I got to know him very well there. They brought in McDougall, the social psychologist, who was world famous at that time, they brought him in. Then they brought in Dr. Ryan for the extra sensory perception business. And they were the things that gave them academic headlines and athletic headlines.
And I watched them develop and they moved along and were doing, doing rather well, I thought. But they had the gang nagging them. They nagged them worse than they ever nagged us. Really, it was almost a pattern of previous times. That was why a lot of Duke people
BRATTON: were very sympathetic
JENKINS: were very much with us, my friend, a lot of them. And gosh, the man who graduated, the first medical graduate of that institution was a fellow named Dr. Lenox Baker. He was head of orthopedics up at Duke. He was one of the biggest champions of this Med. School.
And their retired dean, wish I could remember his name now.. Anyway, their retired dean of medicine
BRATTON: was supportive put the word out that we were doing the right thing and that we should continue this. Dean, I'll think of it in a minute. That's easy to find. But he didn't want to go public, because he was the head of a foundation that had a rule that the man in it must be out of politics and this was considered politics, you see. So he would hurt the foundation, and therefore, he had to stay out of it completely. [phone rings] But they were sympathetic. They knew what was going on. They knew the struggle we were having. Anyway, that gave an inspiration.
Now another thing that gave an inspiration, a young fellow that went to high school with me and I knew him very well. Then he went to Yale subsequently, medical school and so on, and he became the head of the Department of Medicine at Chapel Hill. He came down one Saturday morning. I hadn't seen him in 25 years. He came down one Saturday morning and I happened to be in the office. And he said, "I just stopped by and wanted to make a comment." He said, " What you're doing is right. Don't give up this fight for the Med. School. We need it. You're doing the right right thing. You're on the right track." I said, "Lou, if I could quote you, we'd be ahead. We'd be way ahead." Louis Welt, his name was, Louis Welt, W-E-L-T. He said, "No, I'm not going to get involved in this struggle. I've got my own headaches and I'm not going to be involved. But I'm telling you, and I'm going to deny I told you if you make it public, because it's personal, confidential, just you and me." Then I gave him a yearbook for his children. I said, "They might like to see the football heroes and all that stuff." So I gave him a yearbook. But that made me feel that I'm not screwy. You know, here he's an internationally famous man, known all over the medical profession throughout the world. He was well-known and very popular.
Then I got another reading that some of this so called antagonism was not really complete and it was not on the part of most people. I was invited to speak to the AAUP at Chapel Hill. People said, "Oh, they are going to tear you apart." I went up there and it was the nicest situation that I have seen in a long time. They had this reception.
More and more people began to come to the forefront. You know, people understood this thing. In the first place, when Dr. Ferguson came to my house one Sunday afternoon and I wasn't there, he gave Lillian a big lecture about [it]. He said, "The motto of this school is 'To Serve.' You're sitting in the middle of the worst medical situation in all America."
I never dreamed of that, because I had for a pediatrician, Malene Irons. I had a doctor Fred Irons and I never had any trouble. If a kid had a headache, they would come to the house, no trouble. So I didn't see what was going on. I was too blind. He said, "It's terrible," so on, on the Q.T. "You ought to do something about it." That's what he told Lillian. Then I finally got him on the phone and he told me the same damn thing.
So I got hold of Bobby Morgan and I told him. He said, "Well, why don't we look into it?" I said, "Well, let's look into it on the Q.T." So, I don't know if you know Bob Williams?
BRATTON: Oh yes.
JENKINS: Well, I thought I would get a real sharp Ph.D., and I consider Bob sharp. I said, "Bob, study this thing on the Q.T. This guy says that we're this. He says that we lead the nation in infant mortality." This is Eastern North Carolina now. "We lead the nation in suicide. We have the worst doctor-patient ratio in the nation of any region. And we have the worst bed-citizen ration of anybody in the nation. He said, therefore, you'd have to say the worst region in the nation for modern medical delivery is Eastern North Carolina." I said, "Geez, I can't believe that." So I said, "Go out on the Q.T., just you know, find out." So he went out and it took him several months and he came back and he said, "Everything that guy said is true." He says, "It is not only true, it can be documented." I said, "Well if that is the case, I'm going to get a hold of Morgan."
I got hold of Bobby and I said, "What do you want me to do?" He said, "Well, let's put it to the Board." So I took it to the Board and they instructed me, pursue the establishment of the Medical School. That's it, pursue it! I said, "Well, you know the roof is going to fall in. Chapel Hill is going to scream and they have access to the editorial writers and they'll just call this one, that one, this one. There will be cartoons, editorials, the ugliness. It will be a mean, mean situation." I said, "Frankly, I don't care." You know, I'd been through the Marines and all that stuff. I didn't care for a little roughness like that. He said, "Well, if you want to do it, go ahead."
So we tried it and sure enough. The very first time I let it be known, good gosh, came the cartoons, editorials. And then they hired so-called experts who were hired to give the right answer. You could almost smell that. We said, "Well, in spite of what you do or anything else, we are going to go on and pursue the Med. School."
One interesting thing was very cute. They brought down the retired dean of Cornell School of Medicine and they had a meeting with the Board of Governors. That's right before we got the Med. School. And I went up there with [Ed] Monroe and [William] Laupus, guys who understand what they're saying. I'm not a medical trained person. So, believe it or not, they wouldn't let those two come in the meeting. They barred them, made them stay in the hall. I, alone, was allowed to come in there.
Then this guy got busy with his nomenclature. And he said in effect that Cornell is internationally famous and they could not get a chief in pathology. They could not get a chief in physiology. They could not get a chief in radiology, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do you expect to get it down there in Greenville? And he raved on and raved on.
But he forgot to mention one thing, Cornell Med. School is located in Harlem. Well, what man is going to go to a crime infested area and work when he can come here? When you consider the federal tax situation, when he can carry home about the same money here. Go out and play golf as I did this morning, no wait, just go out and play. Go fishing, saltwater or fresh water. Go to the beach. Go skiing and live among nice people such as the people out in Lyndale and Brookgreen where the doctors are living, as you know. Who wouldn't rather have that than to commute to Connecticut or to commute over to New Jersey. And be afraid to go to your car in the parking lot if it gets a little bit dusk? Who wants to live that type of life when they can live this type of life? So, I knew that we would have no trouble to compare with them. There would be ten guys here compared with one up there. And that was the case. We've had no trouble getting very famous people to come here, because lifestyle today is very important to professional people. We knocked down that argument. Every little petty road block that was thrown in our way, with the help of the legislature, with the help of our friends, we knocked it down.
