University of Central Oklahoma Oral History Project Archives and Special Collections 100 North University Drive Edmond, OK 73034

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1 University of Central Oklahoma Oral History Project Archives and Special Collections 100 North University Drive Edmond, OK Interviewee: Dr. Paul Elkin and John Kessler Interviewer: Annette Ryan and Jennifer McCullough Date: September 24, 1994 Location of Interview: Evans Hall, Room 103, University of Central Oklahoma Transcribed by: Edited by: AR: PE: JK: Lindsey Johnston Annette Ryan Paul Elkin John Kessler Side 1 AR: Tell us anything at all about your class activities, about your friends, just like you were talking a while ago. What did you do for fun? What was the most fun you ever had? PE: I played tennis every time I had the spare time. But I had to make a living and study both at the same time. I worked as an assistant in the chemistry lab, as a soda jerker downtown and studied in between times. John and I always had wonderful opportunities because at the time we were in school here at Central State Teachers College and every summer hundreds of girls would come in here to be teachers to get into the summer school. So we had about a ten to one ratio. So we lived it up. AR: Well, what about the town of Edmond? Did you go downtown? What did you do there? PE: Yes. The hang out place was D & M or Devereaux s Drug Store. AR: Did you meet there after college games? PE: Yeah, it was a college campus hangout.

2 JK: Oh yeah, and weekends. [Hand corrections made by Dr. Paul Elkin] AR: And weekends. Was this a place you would meet like you would at the student union? PE: Yeah, except that I had to work in there instead of play in there. JK: He was the soda fountain jerker. AR: Oh, that s where you were, okay. PE: Milk shakes were fifteen cents. Malteds were twenty cents and cigarettes fifteen cents a pack. And twenty cents for a malted milk and fifteen cents for a package of cigarettes. AR: When you played tennis did you travel? PE: Yeah, We went to the schools in this state. We didn t go to the schools out of state. Paul Bryant was on our team. I never did beat him. [I made my college athletic letter in tennis.] JK: [3:04-3:06 inaudible] PE: [3:07-3:10 inaudible] AR: So, you had a successful team? PE: Yeah, we had a good team. We played, Shawnee, Durant and Tahlequah. JK: Ada. PE: Ada, yeah. AR: How long did you continue to play tennis? PE: I quit the year I graduated. AR: Did you play anymore after that? PE: No. The reason for it was I would spend every evening after tennis, seriously, with a headache in this hot Oklahoma sun. And I would have quit long before graduation if it hadn't been for that old school boy attitude, "You don't quit." Because those headaches kept me from studying. So I decided when I got out of College I was going to quit and I did. 2

3 AR: Tell us about your life after you left college? JK: Then you went into medicine. AR: Tell us about that. PE: Well after Central, I applied for the School of Medicine in Oklahoma and taught school here for three years at Edmond High. AR: You taught three years in Edmond? PE: Yeah. Then I went to the School of Medicine. Saved my money. Put my savings in the Oklahoma City Building and Loan and in the Depression year it went broke. AR: Oh, no. PE: So I had to drop out of medical school before I could get more money to get back in. So I got job teaching school under old John G. Mitchell, who used to be president of this college. He was superintendent of schools at Seminole, a wealthy school district. And in the depths of the Depression they had more money than they knew how to spend over there. If you wanted to play a saxophone in the band, well here is your saxophone. You were supposed to turn it in but something would always happen to it. I had the first air conditioned science room in the state. They were looking for ways to spend their money. AR: How come they had so much money? PE: Oil. Oil. The Seminole town was in the heart of one of the state's biggest high gravity crude oil fields. JK: Some of those wells are still active. AR: How long did it take you to get to medical school? PE: Well, I just had to drop out for one year. So it took me four years. But the University of Oklahoma has a deal whereby graduates cannot get their M.D. until they completed one year of an internship, so consequently I didn't get it till [19]35. AR: [7:10-7:20 inaudible] PE: I completed my internship and got my doctorate degree in medicine. [Later years I got my boards and fellowship in the specialty of radiology] I took an internship in Washington D.C. where I met my wife, Grace. She has just had her 80th birthday, Grace. 3

4 AR: [7:56-7:59 inaudible] PE: No, she was an R.N. She was from Union, South Carolina. When I first met her I couldn't tell whether she was saying a "girl" of bird "gull". AR: She really had a southern accent? PE: Oh, yeah it was strong. [8:26-8:36 inaudible] AR: So, you had an internship at D.C.? JK: Wasn't that Gallanger Municipal Hospital? PE: Yes. Now it s the District of Columbia [General Hospital. The teaching hospital for George Washington and Georgetown Medical Schools.] AR: The Municipal Hospital s first name? PE: Gallanger. AR: Gallenger. PE: We were there during Roosevelt. The second inauguration. They drafted the doctors and surgeons from different states to man the first aid stations. [9:12-9:22 inaudible] PE: In the first aid stations in Washington. Then at residency at Washington, [and worked as a radiologist in South Carolina] at the X-Ray Radium Institute. AR: And that s where you lived? PE: We lived there for three years and then I was a Radiologist for Grady Hospital. [10:10-10:20 inaudible]. I was on the Emory University Faculty. [10:24-10:32 inaudible] Then I wanted to get into private practice and was informed of an opening in West Virginia. The radiologist had just died of a heart attack and they wanted a replacement. And I've been there ever since. JK: We were talking yesterday and Paul said the Oklahoma University School of Medicine far out rivaled the big east institutions for example, in the field of cadavers. You know what a cadaver is? Tell them that story. 4

5 PE: I found out when I was an intern that I got a good medical education because I could work rings around those guys. Now, they knew more than I did but they hadn't done anything. If they were called on to do a spinal tap, they were paralyzed. They had never done one. Here we had the program that made us do these things. [11:55-12:04 inaudible]. So I found out later that JK: You had many, many cadavers, some of these schools PE: Oh yeah you were talking about cadavers. All the big eastern school had at least four students having to share one cadaver and we had one cadaver for every two students. [Central was kind enough to give me a distinguished student award.] AR: How many homecomings have you been back to? PE: This is my second Homecoming. AR: When was the other? PE: I was trying to figure that this morning and I can t think of it for the life of me. It had to have been somewhere around, in the [19]40s, after the war. AR: What do you think of the campus now? PE: Oh, I am amazed. It's incredulous. It just cannot be true. It is remarkable. It has grown so much. AR: It's only just begun. Come back in three more years and you will really see a difference. PE: [13:36-13:57inaudible]. We used to tell a guy from one of the towns that he was southern so he couldn t get his degree. AR: How is your wife? (?) PE: Yeah, she s been very fortunate in good health. Fortunate to be my wife for our children. [It has been a pleasure and wonderful life, and a happy one with my wonderful wife Grace. (Our 57th wedding anniversary.) Central College helped to make it so.] [14:22-14:55 inaudible] PE: One of the buildings that we enjoyed the most was [14:59-15:27 inaudible]. Ms. Ruby Canton was the first librarian. She would say "Lord thank-you for this wonderful Library in Evans Hall!" 5

6 [15:37-15:53 inaudible] JK: The tables were full of students studying elbow to elbow. Everyone was quite serious and studied hard when they were in Evans Hall Library. AR: Where was your family from? PE: At one time my family had a harmful and they came here before it was a state and they brought with them a handmade new woven blue and white bedspread. I think the modern day name is a coverlet. Anyway they were three feet wide and they had because they didn t have. [Full size made of 3 foot wide sections. It was in the museum here for many years.] My sister was Mrs. Guy Rankin (Mae). [16:47-17:32 inaudible] They came from Winchester, Kentucky and my sister was at that time she was six years old. I was born later. I was born a year later in 1906 and she was born in Anyway it became a state in 1907 well I was born in We came here, my father was a carpenter and a hardware store clerk. AR: Was he an 89er? PE: He did not run for the land. He got here [18:34-18:40 inaudible] [18]89, yeah. He got here at Or maybe it was later or maybe not. Mae was born in 1900, April 22. [19:07-19:15 inaudible] She was born in [19:17-19:33 inaudible] AR: Where in Edmond, what part of Edmond? PE: 101 West Hurd Street. [19:46-20:02 inaudible] PE: Happy childhood and fortune. [20:07-21:26 inaudible] PE: So we were very fortunate. JK: We both came to Edmond. PE: We could go to college otherwise JK: You had to walk two blocks further that that. PE: Yeah, I had to walk JK: I got

7 PE: We walked home for lunch every day. JK: That s right, oh yeah. PE: Six blocks. JK: Do you know where the Santa Fe Railroad tracks are? AR: Yes. JK: we re south of the other side of the track on the north side. [21:55-22:09 inaudible] JK: I was president of the freshman class body. PE: That s like that old boy that said, How long did it take you to graduate from college? He said, Five years. [22:22-23:18 inaudible] JK: He said I want to tell you before your commencement address, This class, you people, will rise to heights unheard of. AR: Well how did he know that? JK: I don t know and I was that he did. AR: [23:44-23:47 inaudible] JK: [23:48-23:51 inaudible] PE: Old John G. was a slave master. JK: Oh he was. Well Paul, let s get out of here. We ve kept these people long enough. AR: That s what we re here for we want you to come and talk to us. JK: Thank you for being so sweet. PE: Old John G. called me into the office one day I had a job helping [24:12-24:22 inaudible] was gambling in the halls that night after astronomy. [24:29-25:28]. 7

8 AR: That s great. Well we appreciate you talking to us. I d like to sit and listen to a lot more too. JK: Thank you very much. PE: Thanks you all. Stay out of mischief. [END] 8