Medically Speaking #7

Welcome to today's episode of Medically Speaking. I am super happy to have some very special guests with us today. Again, I'm Matt Logan. I'm the President and CEO of Self Regional Healthcare, and we will start with our special guests and let them introduce themselves. I'm going to start over here with Reverend Butler and let you introduce yourself. All right. I'm Michael Butler from Greenwood. Born and raised here. Retired from the Greenwood Police Department. Now I serve on the board here at Self Regional. My name is Brent Parris. I'm the Vice President of Human Resources, Chief Human Resources Officer for Self Regional Health Care. I've been in this role serving at Self Regional Health Care for about a year and a half and excited to be here today. I'm Bill Patrick. I'm an attorney in private practice in Greenwood, moved to Greenwood in 1969 when I finished law school. And for the last big number of years, I've been representing the board of South Memorial Hospital, Greenwood County Hospital Board. I'm Crystal Chapman Brown, a.k.a. Crystal Brown. I am the Senior Internal Auditor here at Self Regional Health Care, and I recently took on the role of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lead. I'm Matt Self, retired from Greenwood Mills. My grandfather built the hospital. My father ran the hospital through the foundation, I guess, through 69, before it went to the county. I had another grandfather and uncle who both worked at the hospital here and also in Brewer, and I've got cousins that also work here. I'm Dr. Richard Carter. I'm an ear, nose, and throat doctor. I came here in 1964 and retired in 2004. But Greenwood's been a wonderful place to live and to practice, and the people are just super. And I just wanted to mention that. I'm Jack Parham, retired OB-GYN. Came to Greenwood in 1965, but my first exposure here was 63. And it's been a blessing to my life. So happy to say I've spent my whole life career here. Retired now at age 90. Hi, I'm Vanita Goodwin-Witt, and I'm a native of Greenwood County, but I spent a number of years away from Greenwood and have returned in 2007. My most recent employer was Newberry College. I was a department chair for social and behavioral sciences. My role here is as a member of the Board of Trustees, and I am delighted to be a part of this conversation. My name is Marion Smith, and I'm the coordinator and curator of exhibits at the Greenwood Museum. I've been there for seven years. I returned to Greenwood nine years ago after being away for 27. I taught at Lander University for three years before that. Very glad to be here. Great. Thank you all for those great introductions. So today we have a really neat topic we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be discussing the history of self-regional health care, how do we get to where we are today, where did we start? We started in basically two different hospitals that have merged together, and one started real early. Greenwood Hospital started in 1911, interestingly, and that hospital over the years really, I guess, laid the foundation for health care in the community. was started by, interestingly, a number of women that got together and really cared about health care. In the early 1900s, like 1908, a group of women got together and really started talking about, gosh, we really want to be able to provide more than, you know, just basic care to the community. And they got together, raised money, and in 1911, the first Greenwood Hospital started. Interestingly, kind of parallel to this, in 1924, the Brewer Hospital started. And, you know, at that time, there was segregation. There was like a hospital for the black population, a hospital for the white population. I was hoping, Marion, maybe you could share a little bit of your knowledge about the origins of Brewer Hospital and a little bit more about kind of the beginnings of that. Sure. In 2019, Betty Dorn retired after 50 years of service at Self Hospital, and she was one of the employees that made the transition from the Brewer Hospital to Self, and at that time it was Self Memorial and became Self Regional. And she was the impetus for an exhibit we did at the museum. We were approached and said, would you do an exhibit about the Brewer Hospital? And at the time we said, sure, we want to do that very much. The original building is still there and it is on the campus with the Brewer High School. And it was the Brewer School at one time. The hospital was opened in May of 1924 at a cost of $30,000. It was funded by the American Missionary Association, and it was the same American Missionary Association that had started the Brewer School in 1872. So they do have a lot in common. They are both named for Josiah Brewer, who was a missionary at one time. The hospital was, you can't separate really the hospital from the Brewer School because they do occupy the same space. And when I first started trying to put together materials, there's very little about the Brewer Hospital. As with many small institutions, there was nobody that was freed up that had the time to write that history, to keep a record of it. And most of the information that we have comes from the Index Journal, which is a great reference for us. The hospital, again, it went through some transitions. As I said, it was founded in 1924, and then it was deeded to the Brewer Hospital Board of Directors in 1938, and the hospital again changed hands. The hospital was deeded to the County of Greenwood in 1958, and that was at the same time that self-memorial became under the guardianship of the county, and they had the opportunity to do both hospitals at that point. The hospital building is still there, as I said, the original building plus the additions, and today it's being used by GLEAMS, which is a social services agency, and I don't want to occupy all the time, but there are just, it's a very interesting history to it. The hospital was enlarged in 1960. There are about several pictures that are available, not many, but again, it's basically the same footprint that it had back in that period. A couple more things, let's see. In 1961, the first practical nursing school was established at Brewer, and it was part of the Brewer school at the time, and some of those graduates are still living. They are still retired, and they were part of our exhibit when we did it. The nurses lived on campus. That was a nurse's residence that was built. It is still there, and it has been used for a daycare, and I think I was told at one point a nursing home, but the building is still on the campus. In 1969, the hospital stopped admitting patients because that's when it was to merge with self-memorial at the time, and Brewer was going to become an annex of the hospital, and there was a sign up. Well, they had to take it down because there was a lot of contention about that sign being up, And the hospital really never operated again as a hospital. I think that during its entire existence, it never had a black administrator or African American choice. But Dr. Tompkins was a major person at the Brewer Hospital. He was in practice here in Greenwood for over 50 years, and he was the chief medical person at the hospital during that time. So if there are other questions you might have, too, I think that gives you the basic outline about the hospital. Yeah, thanks. No, that's great. So I was reading some about this as well. It looked like, and you may know more than I do about this, but it looked like in 1966 when the Medicare laws passed, there was some discussion at that time where the Brewer Hospital administration went to the county and started to make a request. like we would like to build a new 200 bed hospital and self memorial hospital at the time said, well, maybe rather than doing that, we could kind of change the way we do things at self memorial some. And, and, and again, that was in the, uh, 1966. And then, um, self memorial worked with the County changed the structure, organizational structure, some within the County. And, uh, the, the end result was the, the County said, well, why don't, and, and self memorial and Brewer said, well, let's all come together in one hospital rather than doing two hospitals and building this new 200-bed hospital, a new Brewer. Let's take that money and add on to South Memorial Hospital and create one hospital that serves all and kind of to do away with segregation in a way in the community. It's just, again, an interesting history I was reading. I don't know if you have any other insights on that. Right. Well, the first Medicare patient in Greenwood was at the Brewer Hospital, and I think part of that was because Brewer saw both black and white patients, and there was an impediment there for self-memorial at the time, and it wasn't in compliance with federal government laws, and so that had to change. The hospital had been enlarged. a 42-bed extension was done. I have a date on that. I can't remember that date quite now, but there was that extension, and that is still there. That's where the surgical suites were, and there were some patient rooms, and they immediately began to renovate the older building. But yes, Medicare, the first recipient was at the Brewer Hospital. Had that always been the case, that they served both black and white populations? At Brewer, yes, that was. Okay. Yes. When the Brewer merged with Self Regional, was that when, I guess, Self Memorial at the time, was that when it became integrated? Was it segregated prior to that? What, Brewer? No, Self Memorial. I think so. Now, remember, we're talking around 1969, 1970, and we still lived in a very deeply segregated South. At the same year, 1970, is when the Brewer High School was closed and it became Brewer Middle School. And again, desegregation was mandated. And that was not just in Greenwood, but I'm a product of that. graduated from high school in May of 1970, and desegregation finally came to Mobile County in full force in the fall of 1970. So yes, we still lived in that segregated world, but that's when desegregation really started for many places. So yes, but some of the staff worked at both hospitals. I think Dr. Parham did some work at Brewer, and Dr. Kubler started the radiology technician certificate at SEF. It was brought here for SEF, but he also had a school at Brewer. This was in the 1960s. Right. Well, Brewer had a two-year program, and it had the first three graduates in Greenwood, they came from the Brewer program, and it was later the one at the radiology program itself, but Brewer had the first three graduates from their two-year program. It was extended to a longer program so that they would be certified by the state. Right, and at that time, I think Brewer was one of two hospitals in the United States, African-American hospitals that had a radiology certificate for the program. And there are articles, again, in the index journal, just leafing through them, newspapers.com, a very good source. Brewer got much of its equipment from Self Hospital. And when they got new equipment, some was sent there. But they didn't have room for a lot of the equipment when they got it because there was just no space. The footprint had not changed on the building and they were just overcrowded many years. So following up on Brent's question about was Brewer accepting white patients as well as black patients, Vanita pointed out earlier just when she and I were talking that the Greenwood Hospital was destroyed by a tornado in 1944. And Mr. Self said the next day after that tornado that he was going to build a new hospital for Greenwood. But because the war was going on and other things that made shortages, the hospital wasn't completed and opened until 1951. And Vanita had asked, well, what were people doing about—and Dr. Parham wasn't here then, but he may know some of the obstetrics history. What were the white people doing about having babies? Did they go to the Brewer Hospital or did they go out of town? to have them in their homes. Well, so, yeah, that was a curiosity of mine. We have not been able to document any proof of what took place during that time, but we do know that Brewer did allow all. And we also know that the hospital location was conducive for all to come there rather than to drive to Greenville or Columbia or somewhere else. And so the question has always been where did Caucasians go during that down period? Were they served at Brewer or not? And the answer is believed to be yes. Matt, do you have any insights to that? I have not really sure. Dr. Parham or Dr. Carter, I'm not sure. Okay. There was a very interesting article in Index Journal from 1958, and it talked about how the Self Family Foundation gave Brewer $150,000 for improvements and the county had to match it, and that did get some improvements for the hospital. So, again, it was very fortunate to get those funds. well one thing about the the the black and white patients and where they were going and and the minutes of the greenwood county hospital board that is what succeeded the self-memorial board that was run by matt's grandfather and father show that in 1969 after the county took ownership of the hospital and leased it to the Greenwood County Hospital Board that the medical staff voted unanimously to accept black patients as well as white patients at Self Memorial Hospital and they were first admitted on April the 1st, 1969. So that's when Self was integrated. Yeah, I agree. So to our physician colleagues here at the table today, I'm just real curious about the practice of medicine when there were two hospitals, when there was South Memorial Hospital and Brewer Hospital. Dr. Carter, Parham, can you all tell us a little bit about how that was? well it was uh you know it kind of hectic uh working at both places uh and uh we usually found ways of getting around that though by getting one of our uh colleagues to if we had too many calls at once so you'd give them off to your colleagues and uh we've had some interesting experiences over there I know one night I was called in to see somebody with a gunshot wound in the belly now I'm an ear doctor I called my friend Dr. Stevenson and he came over and we took that guy to surgery and he had the bullet had gone through a big vein and so uh we we had to we had to close that vein of course he did all the big stuff and i just held the retractors but uh there are more stories but i won't tell them all that's fine dr parham do you have any just in general too just like how was it practicing at brewer hospital and self-memorial when you were first starting out here well other obstetricians would not go over there and so our office took care of anybody who came in and it was hard sometimes because you had a full practice in both places but I would never turn them down and had some wild experiences over there spending the night on stretchers and roach bugs crawling around and it was difficult. I'd be operating on a patient and a cancer patient and asked for a specific suture because that's the one I always use. He said, no, you can't have that, Dr. So-and-so, don't use that. And I said, give me my suture. You know, I had to fight to get my suture. But it all worked out well, and then I delivered a little, I think a three-and-a-half-pound baby one morning over there about five o'clock and a little girl she did okay and let her go to the nursery there went to the office worked all day went back by to check the baby let's go see baby so and so see how she's doing she's doing fine went back there and the baby was stiff as a board hadn't been touched in a while so the next one i delivered over there i put the baby in my car with me and took it to self hospital to the fifth floor to mock carpenter who was the head nurse up there and i said you take care of this baby and if you send it back to brewer i will not practice in this town so that was the first black baby delivered to brewer and i'm always grateful for that well that had to be 65 68 68 or 69 something like that just before integration and um but it was just a blessing when we started taking the deliveries to self they call you three o'clock in the morning to come over there hurry fast as you can to go over in your pajamas you got a baby with an arm and a leg hanging out and then you gotta have a lot of prayer and a lot of help but we always made it out well and uh it's so grateful for the experience there and you love those patients just like you loved everybody else but um never turned away uh called a brewer it's interesting your your comment um when you're really your stories because i mean i think about the boldness and the courage it took to to serve you know you know the population that was coming to brewer and so a question did you all get much pushback or or you know things from the general population about the fact that you were willing to serve at both brewer and self-regional or self-memorial. Oh, we treat them all the same. We treat everybody the same. Try to. Always have, always will. I've been talking to folks that don't look like me my whole life. I used to go out when I was a kid and talk to the guys on the chain gang. Now, the guy was there with his shotgun standing by. But yeah, I talked to those folks. I've been talking to all people that I come in contact with my whole life and uh I found if you treat people decently they're usually going to treat you the same way I think that's a real blessing to hear and I just want to ask the two of you being on the other side of that you've served when it was segregated and you've served in both hospitals what advice would you give to this generation or us moving forward in the health care field to serving our populations and how we are seeing people and treating them everyone the same, but how can we move forward? What lessons have you learned from those experiences and what advice would you give to us? I don't know that I've learned a whole lot. Well, there's a religious background to that. You treat everybody the same. They belong to God just like we do, and they deserve the same care that we get, and I was always proud of that. Most favorite patients were black, and I can't think of a thousand stories. But you were the only white obstetrician that went from self over to Brewer to take care of those babies at that time? Dr. Moore and I. Dr. Moore went too. So during your practice of going to both hospitals, did you see a difference in the resources that were available at each of the hospitals? At Brewer, did they have the equipment, the services that were needed for caring, or was there a difference in the resources that were provided at each facility? Well, a lot of that had to do with the doctor. And if you saw something you couldn't handle that, we could arrange to have it delivered and done somewhere else. but um they got good care some of the sickest people i've ever seen we had over there and we didn't have the same doctors that we had itself do you find it easier to practice i guess going to one location and having all the resources in one place instead of two separate oh that's easier yeah a lot easier yeah gotcha good um well matt let me just ask you for a second too um so you Your grandfather really was the impetus of starting Self Memorial Hospital, and I'll let you tell the story about the tornado and kind of the beginning of Self Memorial Hospital and I guess things from your perspective and what you may know about the coming together of the two in 1969. Well, the History Channel used to have those years, 1944, and they actually showed the tornado damage at the hospital, and I actually saw both my grandfathers. in that picture and um and of course one was a doctor and he asked my grandfather said what we're going to do and my grandfather said we're going to build a hospital and that was in 44 he created foundation in 42 so and like bill said they had to wait until resources were available to complete it so sure so um after self memorial started um you know i was doing some reading too about your grandfather, and he took a keen interest in really wanting to have really as high-quality care in Greenwood, South Carolina, as you'd get anywhere in the country, frankly, from reading about. He traveled around to major medical institutes, whether it be Vanderbilt or Hopkins, and brought ideas back here, met with architects here to design a hospital that couldn't be blown over by a tornado. It's hard to tear down, too. Yeah, for sure. And, of course, his father was a doctor, and his two brothers were doctors. And his father was killed ice skating in Asheville County in 1888, even though your atrium says 1886. But I think he was 11 years old. And so he built a hospital in honor of all three of them. Okay, gotcha. Do you have any recollection of when Brewer Hospital and Self Memorial Hospital kind of came together from the self-family perspective? Not really, because I was in school at Clemson at the time. But I remember my uncle, at least I know he used to make calls in both places and make the rounds and also on the weekends and at night he'd have to go to both places. Another interesting thing that, as I was doing some reading, is the Self Foundation, which is still the Self Family Foundation now, really was instrumental in, of course, the running of the original Self Memorial Hospital prior to 1969. But even beyond that, in 1956, the Self Family Foundation gave a $75,000 grant to Landry University to start the nursing program. And you think about, like, what would our hospital be? What would either one of the hospitals be if we didn't have a nursing program in Greenwood? Again, not just the hospital side, but that vision to know, like, we've got to be able to staff this and have continual staff. And Edward Arms was built to house the nurses that worked in the hospital. And at some point in time, we've got to talk about Dixie's kinfolk being involved with the original hospital. She'll get mad at me if I don't admit that. But I was a great-grandmother of Andrews, you know, who was very much involved in running the other hospital, Greenwood Hospital, for about 40 years, I think, when it got started. Matt, what about maybe the, I guess the doctors could speak to this, but when the, when Brewer Hospital was closed and everyone began to go to self, How was the bedding situation? You know, everybody was admitted to that hospital, but was everybody in the same area? Or I think you said something earlier, Matt, about a new wing was created or something about that time. So, you know, we're dealing with a time of segregation or right at the end of segregation. So how was that handled? As far as I know, everybody was treated the same, as far as I know. The minutes of the hospital board at that time made it clear that they were opening that new wing and they were waiting on that new wing because of just capacity in general. But made it clear that there wasn't going to be any segregation within the hospital, that whatever patient, black or white, would go into whatever room was available and surgery schedule would be on first come, first serve kind of basis without any regard to race. And so the minutes make it clear that there wasn't going to be any discrimination at all based on race as to when you were going to be seen or where you were going to be placed. Were there private rooms or semi-private rooms at the hospital at that time? Mm-hmm. Both. Mm-hmm. Both. Yeah. It was much easier to imagine because, like, when I came to Greenwood, I was doctor number 17 now we got 300 and some used to have journal club meetings in our homes so it was easier than you can you can it sounds hard but at the time with what we had it was not difficult was y'all y'all's experience that um when the new hospital arson say in 1969 when the two hospitals came together, was it your experience that they're within the hospital setting, that everyone was treated equally, or did y'all have a sense that, well, some people were treated less than others? I've always treated the people equally, and I thought the hospital did. How did the community respond to the integrating of the hospitals? Do you remember? I didn't understand. the community uh did the greenwood community accept the merger of the two hospitals or was there some animosity no no no i don't think they're paying attention to it okay you'd have a gunshot wound or something come in an emergency room from edgefield couldn't operate a brewer so we'd operate them here and then take them to a brewer and then doctor go and take care of the Brewer, some really sick patients. I personally think that the city as a whole was very relieved to know that we got one hospital and the doctors are in love with it, thanks to Mr. Self. Good. Can I respond to that question? Sure. So I was born at Brewer in 1955, And I can, not at my birth, but later, remember going to Brewer. In fact, I had my tonsils removed at Brewer. And Brewer was, for me, always a fun, F-O-N-D, place to go. To see people, to see not only persons who were in the medical field, you know, nurses and all, because they were role models, but also when we would go to see people who were in there for some sort of illness or surgery. And so it was a pleasant environment. And when we integrated during the late 1960s, that was also during the time that we integrated the schools. And so I don't have much recollection at that point because that's also around the time that we were moving into other areas. But initially coming back, just being as a part of the community, there was some hesitation. And the hesitation was more around what we now would call cultural literacy in terms of understanding people based on their cultural background and maybe some of the things that they were accustomed to doing, not that it was right or wrong. It was just different. That's all. And so I don't think that there was really any animosity, but there was a period of time when people were somewhat reluctant because you have to remember at that time people, especially older people, were not accustomed to even looking in the eyes of white people, especially white males. And they weren't accustomed to certain kinds of things. And I think it wasn't necessarily because of any ill feelings. It was because of the way it was. And so there had to be a period of time when people learned about each other's culture and learned that people did certain things and that didn't mean anything when they maybe didn't look you in the eye when you were speaking. It was just that that was something that they had been taught and it had been embedded in them for years. It didn't mean that they were lying or trying to hide anything. It was just how they were taught to behave. And so there had to be a period where there was a learning curve of the cultures just like in any other arena. Does that mean that people had ill regard for each other? No, that's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that there was a period within the community where people were somewhat skeptical because you also have to remember that it was during that time that there were some documented experiments that had taken place that involved using people of African-American descent. And so people were somewhat reluctant to engage with others. They were suspicious. So it wasn't because anybody necessarily had any ill regard in their hearts. It was just the way it was. And so there was a period where there was some reluctancy on the part of the communities to engage. It's interesting you say that, people being used. But that was one of the arguments that some blacks used to not get the COVID vaccine and remembering what happened at Tuskegee. Yeah, so that's still very much alive in 2020. Well, it's in their lifetime. Yeah, so people remember. They remember this and look at that for not getting the vaccinations. Yeah, that's a very legitimate point you're making. Do you think that the African-American population at the time was hesitant to even come to the new hospital? I would believe so. Not necessarily just because of wanting to remain separated, but to know how to interact in that environment because they were so used to being segregated. I'm just going to use this as an example. This did not happen in Greenwood County, but I remember going to the doctor's office with my grandparents, and there was clearly a white waiting room and a black waiting room. You could tell based on the condition of the waiting room. And my grandparents were so accustomed to going to the black waiting room, they forbid me to go into the nicer waiting room but it was this was well past the time of segregation so it took a minute to or it took some time to get the mindset changed of my grandparents to say it is okay to go into this other waiting room so I believe that could carry on the the reluctant being reluctant to to go into a new environment because of that's not what we're accustomed to or what behaviors do we exhibit? How do we carry ourselves out? It's uncomfortable, I guess you could say. The bottom line is the rules can change overnight. The rules can change with the stroke of a pen, but that doesn't change behavior. Behavior takes a while. It takes sometimes generations to change. Well, the rule, I mean, the thing I've always heard is that you can change repressive laws, but changing oppressive mindsets. Right. But I think it goes both ways. That was a sense of pride. I was born at Brewer Hospital as well in 54. But there was a sense of pride growing up in that community right down a couple of blocks away from the hospital. To have our own hospital in the community meant a lot to us. Um, in 69, I would have been 15 years old, but to have our hospital, and that's the way people felt in the community, to have our hospital taken away from us, there was some sense of that, you know, and to lose our hospital, that was our hospital. You know, that's natural. Maybe not looking at the facilities or the equipment or the quality of anything that is going to be better or it's going to be worse or how we're going to be treated. Those things may not have been in the forefront, because what's in the forefront, first of all, you've got to deal with we're losing, and even to say we're losing again what belongs to us. So I would think, and I don't know, but I would think there was some sense of hesitancy or suspicion or whatever the case may have been. But even, like you say, Dr. Smith, when we look at having, you can't separate Brewer Hospital from Brewer School. And I remember having the school, Brewer High School, and even one of the cheers at the school doing football games was when we were playing a rival. beat them up, beat them up. We don't care because we got a hospital right over there. So do not separate the two. But it was the pride that we had, you know, in that community and I guess in the African-American community or at that time the colored community was that those were things that we were proud of. We had a high school, we had a hospital, and that was certain things. And that hospital was a cornerstone of our community. And as Vanita said, to go to the hospital, and at that time, nurses wore those Chris White uniforms, they had those little hats. They were professionals, you know, and they were treated that way at the hospital and in the community. Dr. Tompkins lived right up the street from me. You know, he was man, he was almost like a god in the community because he was our doctor, somebody that we could aspire to to be like. You know, so those were the things that probably did cause some hesitancy to go. And to your point, Ms. Brown, when we talk about it wasn't just where you talking about it wasn't Greenwood, But that was the way of society in those days when we went to the health department or anywhere else, a doctor's office, there were separate waiting rooms. And there was a visible difference in the size and the number of chairs or whatever, you know. So that was just the way of society at that time. So it took some adjustments and it took some time. And it's still taking time, you know, because those things are, you know, still in the mindset of some of those who went through. And that's why a conversation like this, I think, is critical because so much of that history is not appreciated or not, first of all, not known by the generation of young people today, black and white in our community. that they just don't remember. They don't know the struggles that people had to go through. You know, if a doctor was hesitant to go to Brewer to deliver, I guess, his craft or her craft, what they could bring to the table, then just because now they got to come, do they not feel some sense of, well, they're here, But, you know, now I have to deliver treatment to everyone. So, you know, we don't know. We can't sit around this table even and say how they felt. But there has to be some sense of we're being forced. First of all, we're being forced to lose our hospital. We're being forced to have to deliver care to some folks that a year, two years, five years, ten years ago, man, I'm not going over there, you know. So we just don't know. But that's one of the real purposes for sitting here and why we're here, you know, because it was a sense of pride for our community. So, based on what I'm hearing here today, there has been collaboration between the two hospitals. There's been collaboration for a long period of time. There was a long-standing collaboration between the two. And we have two doctors here who can attest to that. And so when we then write history and with one of the hospitals discontinued, then the history of the hospital should be inclusive of all of the hospital because you can't separate Brewer from Seff because the history intertwines. And as Jim and I was talking, that period of 44 to 51, it's curious what happened during that time, and it's also curious why we don't have any history. It's hard to find somebody to speak to the history during that time. And so my wish is that when we write history, we write history factual based on what actually happened. And in order to do that, you have to have all of the voices at the table like we do, like we have here today. all of the voices at the table to really remember part of what took place during those empty years. One of the things that we at Self Regional, you know, kind of our bedrock, if you will, is we say we want to be the best place to give care and the best place to get care. And there's a lot, there's a lot wrapped into that. And I will say for me, being able to sit here and hear just the history and just, you know, actual history is I'm honored to be able to have to be part of this conversation and I would love the perspective from the group of you know given you know we're in 2023 and the population is just very diverse from a lot of different ways and you know how do we how do we achieve the goal of being the best place to give care the best place to get care in 2023 using the lessons learned from the Brewer and Self Memorial Hospital at the time, and just the history and the things we've learned over the past? How do we achieve that goal of being the best place to give care, the best place to get care in 2023 at Self Regional Hospital? Very challenging question. I know it's a loaded question. Well, I think Dr. Palm actually hit on it. He said, you do it from the heart and if you're doing it from the heart and you're allowing your heart to lead you then you're gonna want to do what is right for everybody mm-hmm but that's all a part of that diversity equity and inclusion and it cuts across all barriers. And I've told Matt before, he came to us with that vision. But a vision of the leader has to be played out by the people down the line throughout the chain. So I think it does go back to love you one another. You know, everybody has to care. Everyone has to love the other, you know, their fellow human being, no matter where they came from, what they look like, who they are. But I think, I would hope, I feel as though we are just visiting and looking around, experiencing myself and experiencing through others that I talk to that's in that hospital, we're headed in the right direction. It takes time, but we're headed in the right direction. And, you know, I think it is a good place to give and to get care. But it has to be bought into by everybody. I can tell somebody that works for me, this is what we're going to do. But how does it play out where the feet meet the ground or where people are at people's bedside or walking through the hallways or whatever? So, you know, we're headed in the right direction, I think. Matt, I would like to say that during my years of private practice, I never had segregated waiting rooms. I couldn't afford them to start with. But I had no desire to. Well, if you could, you wouldn't have paid for them. Right. Yeah. But anyhow, I just wanted to get that across. In the medical university or medical college in those days, we did have clinics, and they were mostly people of color in the clinics. But I didn't have anything to do with all of that, you know. You just see who comes in. That's right. But I just made it a practice not to engage in that kind of stuff. And people can take it and go with it. There you go. That's good. And you all were doing things that were not popular, you know, during that time. Dr. Parham and Dr. Carter, you made a decision to do something differently. You're going to go ahead and serve at the Brewer Hospital, even though your colleagues may choose not to. Can you tell me what led you to that point or what gave you the strength to go against what was popular at the time or what the others were doing? It didn't require any strength. We just did it. just did it but i i've told y'all earlier my whole life folks i've talked to people of any kind that i met and i can tell you i've had some jewels amongst my people of color i tell you the truth they did me more good some of them than i did them they'd come into my office i had this little lady from where she was she was a sweetest christian woman and i i just felt better after i was exposed to her but she must have liked me because she kept coming back and there have been others too i had this one gentleman that Walked in one day, and I know he wasn't a man of money, but he strolled into my office with it. He was a big, tall guy. He was a junk dealer. But I'm going to make me some money. And I didn't worry about whether he was going to pay me or not. I just took care of him. But people of character, Martin Luther King spoke of judging people by their character, And I use that as a judgment thing. And I don't hang out with bad folks of either race. And I don't want them messing around with me. Excellent. Just a comment. I have to take advantage of every moment. If you've not been in the museum recently, there is a permanent exhibit on self-memorial hospital and self-regional hospital. And it's on the second floor. It opened about a year and a half ago. So do come and visit and see the exhibit. I've seen it. It's awesome. It's really good. Just to follow up on what Michael said, you know, going forward, what are the core values of self-regional health care and what are we about here? And I use these just about every time I get in front of all of our team members. And, you know, our core values are quality, integrity, compassion, and respect. And you do that for every person every single time, I think we're going to be in a good place here itself. And certainly we will hold ourselves accountable to that, to do that. Let me pick back up on what Brent asked about best place to get care and best place to give care. Today, taking into consideration the discussion that we've had, I come from a little different perspective in that I've got a five-year-old African-American daughter. So I try to explain things to her about how things have developed and how things have been. But one of the things we think about is, does she have role models like Dr. Tompkins that you were talking about? How well respected he was? And I know it's hard to do to get talented African-American physicians or talented African-American professionals to come to a small community like Greenwood. But it would be very helpful to the younger African-Americans to see more people in those positions of respect that look like them. And so I just think that that's one of the things that I know you are concerned about and certainly Brent and Crystal are concerned about. But it's real important to try to be able to get some of them to come to have those role models for the young people. I agree. I agree, Bill. Yep, definitely. And we're doing some specific targeted recruiting in that area around some of the historically black medical schools or whatnot as well. But, yeah, without question, I fully agree with you. Well, listen, thank you all so much for your time today. This has been a great discussion, certainly a lot to think about and some good takeaways. Thank you all so much for sharing the history as you all recollect it from Brewer and the original South Memorial Hospital and the origins, and certainly appreciate everyone's perspective. And does anyone have any closing thoughts or anything they might like to share before we wrap it up? If not. I would like to share that this has really been a much-needed discussion, and I'm really pleased that we had it. And I would like to see it written. Very good. All right. Well, thank you. So this will conclude our episode of Medically Speaking today. Thank you all for watching, and we look forward to seeing you next time.