Campus Conversations: The History of the Quillen College of Medicine

In this special series of campus conversations, we begin exploring the history of East Tennessee State University. In this conversation, President Noland sits down with Fred Sauceman to discuss the history of ETSU's Quillen College of Medicine, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Described as a true "David and Goliath story," the fight to create a medical school at ETSU resulted in one of the most significant and contentious political battles in state history. The conversation explores the early efforts in the 1960s to establish Quillen, the steadfast community support of people throughout the region, and key figures like Dr. Charles Allen and Congressman James H. Quillen, who helped make the dream a reality. The discussion also highlights the Quillen College of Medicine's impact on the region by providing improved access to healthcare.

More Episodes of Campus Conversations

Watch on YouTube | Listen to the Podcast 

Transcript 

• Campus Conversations Video Transcript 

  President Noland: I’m Brian Noland. It's my pleasure to welcome you to a special series in “Campus Conversations.” Throughout the year 2024, we're going to spend some time learning about the history of the institution, and it's both fitting and appropriate that we gather together today in the Reece Museum, the home of our archives, and at one point the home of the Office of the President, to meet with Fred Sauceman to learn about the history of the Quillen College of Medicine. This is an important year in Quillen’s history because we'll celebrate the 50th anniversary of the passage of legislation that created the college. You've just recently worked through an in-depth research exposé on Quillen and its history, talking with founders, talking with instrumental figures along that journey. Thanks for joining us, and I really look forward to learning more and for the campus to learn more about how the Quillen College of Medicine went from dream to reality. So let's get started. It's the early 1960s. Dossett’s president of the university. What were some of the things that he and his team were working through that helped set the foundation for everything we enjoy now? 

   

  Fred Sauceman: One of the major things that President Dossett was working on was progress toward university status. When he took office in 1949, of course, we were East Tennessee State College, but he had aspirations to grow a graduate program and eventually become a university, which happened in 1963. Talk about a college of medicine really preceded that by a number of years. And of course, we aren't privy to the conversations that occurred 70 years ago, but it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn somehow that Dossett and John Lamb talked about the possibility of a college of medicine here, maybe even in the 1950s. John Lamb, of course, has his name on a building here. John Lamb was a native of this part of the state. John Lamb graduated from East Tennessee State in 1937, went to work for the Department of Health in the state of Tennessee with a man named R.H. Hutcheson, who also has a name on a building on this campus. We know that Hutcheson and Lamb met with a group of citizens from here in 1960 to talk about this idea. The first written reference that I can find that relates to the potential creation of a med school here at ETSU dates to the end of November 1961, and it's a communique that President Dossett wrote to the Department of Education. At that point, the Board of Regents had not been created. It wasn't created until ’72. So Dossett creates this report for the Education Department and also for the Board of Trustees at the University of Tennessee. And it's essentially a program inventory document, present and future, including aspirations for new programs. Within that document, President Dossett said that he would foresee -- he said this in very general terms -- that he would foresee a second state-supported medical school somewhere in Tennessee besides Memphis. He didn't say anything about Johnson City. He didn't say anything about East Tennessee. He worded it that broadly. 

   

  President Noland: So we're setting the stage on the institution in the early 1960s. We've evolved from (a) teachers’ college. We've begun to grow health professions. Those health professions are up under the purview of Dr. Lamb. We've got a college of nursing that's coming into its own, getting ready to offer a master's degree, which predicates the shift. So it makes sense that we're starting to look at a med school, given the constellation of health programs here. But now let's jump ahead a little bit through the sixties. There are some things that happened on the national scene, the passage of the Teague- Cranston Act, a new president who comes to the university named D.P. Culp. But what are some of the milestone elements that occurred in that time period from the late sixties into the early seventies? 

   

  Fred: Well, first, you mentioned the College of Health. I don't think we would have gotten a medical school here as quickly as we did were it not for the programs that existed within John Lamb's college like health professions, health sciences, dental hygiene, nursing, all those programs that have grown so much today. D.P. Culp came here with a very specific goal in mind. He knew that he wanted to make this concept of a college of medicine work. So what he does in 1967 is to get into the car with Martha, his wife, and at least one of his children and come to Johnson City incognito. One of the great themes of this story to me is the grassroots support that existed early on for this medical school. So Culp drives to Johnson City in ’67, takes a little tour of the campus, goes to the bookstore, buys a few things. He needs some gasoline in the car, so he pulls into a service station, when they actually provided service, and the attendant sees the Alabama tag as he's pumping gas. And they start talking and the attendant says, “You know, we're getting a medical school here.” And Culp nods and the attendant says, “The University of Tennessee doesn't want this. We're going to be in for a hell of a fight, but we're going to get it.” At the gas station. At the gas station. So the story of the creation of the College of Medicine is one of the great political conflicts in the history of the state of Tennessee. I mean, still to this day, people in Nashville discuss that as one of the defining moments in Tennessee politics. You had actions by a governor, actions by legislative leaders overriding a gubernatorial veto. The “little institution that could” stood up to the “Big Orange behemoth.” It's a true underdog story. So walk us through that story and talk to us about how what happened then still continues to impact the landscape of Tennessee politics in Tennessee higher education to this day. Yeah, this is a David and Goliath story. You have Johnson City taking on bigger cities. Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis. You have people who have very little experience in politics, not career politicians, taking on the powerful politicos across the state. Many local physicians.  There was opposition there. You have a president of a university who defies his boss, the governor of Tennessee; who defies powerful governing boards, the Board of Regents, the Higher Education Commission. Both of those organizations fought the coming of the medical school. I mean, this is a story of sacrifice. It's a story of courage. It's a story of tenacity. And two of the heroes here that in my book Stand Out are Dr. Charles Allen and Representative P.L. Robinson. Charles Allen started his medical practice in 1963 in the middle of the initial conversations about a medical school. And if you knew Charles Allen, Charles Allen was not a confrontational person. He was a mild-mannered person. You can easily understand why he made a good doctor. He was calm. He was quiet. He was understanding, but he was thorough. He's the guy who did the research. He's the guy who developed the numbers that everybody used to make this case for the medical school. While he was working 80 hours a week to get his fledgling medical practice started, he's doing this. And he's got a young family at the time as well. A young family.

   

  President Noland: His son now is on our Board of Trustees.

   

  Fred: Right. And after all this was over, his little daughter, who's six years old, said after the fight was won, she said, “Daddy, can we take a vacation now?” But yeah, the sacrifices he made were enormous. P.L. Robinson was a dairy farmer, not a career politician. He and Ruth, who took his seat in the house when he died early in 1981, ran a 500-acre dairy farm near Jonesborough. He they managed to keep that farm going while he and Charles Allen were traveling the state, oftentimes all the way to Memphis to make this case. So it's incredible what they put into this. And the news media in this area got behind the movement quite early. One of the people I've talked to in creating this book is a man named Tom Hodge. Tom Hodge was the editor of the Johnson City Press, later became editorial director. He said after the war -- and he called this a war; I think he's pretty accurate in that statement -- he said, “I went through our clip file.” In other words, a collection of all the stories that had been written about this medical school battle. He said it was the largest clip file he had seen in their archives, about eight inches thick, devoted to nothing else but the med school. 

   

  President Noland: So take us back to 50 years ago. You have the push coming from Allen and others to get this to move. You've got the work from Culp, opposition from UT, opposition from the Board of Regents, opposition from the governor's office. You know, we're in the middle of the legislative session here in Tennessee. There's a lot that swirls. Give us a sense of that swirl and then tell us the story of the defining override that set the stage for a then-legislator to have a platform to later become governor. 

   

  Fred: Well, I think you need to look at the political landscape in the sixties and seventies. Tennessee today is described as a red state. That wasn't true in the sixties and seventies. Of course, East Tennessee has always been traditionally Republican, as you well know. In the sixties and seventies, Middle Tennessee was traditionally Democratic, as was West Tennessee. So against that landscape ... this starts to change, though, in the sixties. A couple of things happened. In ’66, Howard H. Baker from Huntsville is elected to the Senate. Four years later, Bill Brock from Chattanooga is elected to the Senate. Both Republicans. Well, the big game-changer, also in 1970, was the election of Winfield Dunn as governor. So he runs for governor and defeats, in 1970, a man named John J. Hooker. Dunn wins this election. Upper East Tennesseans loved it. They thought, “Finally, we're going to get some attention.” Dunn's transportation commissioner -- you know, the old saying was people thought Tennessee ended in Knoxville -- Dunn's transportation commissioner, the guy in charge of road building, was from Limestone. So Upper East Tennesseans got the idea that, “Hey, we're going to get some funds up here, some attention up here.” And shortly after his election in 1970, well, yeah, he was elected in ’70, shortly after that, in early ’71, he starts telling people, including Culp and Congressman James H. Quillen, that he supported a medical school. But something happened between early ’71 and August ’71. In August ’71, Dunn comes up here to speak at the Appalachian Fair in Gray. And somehow the Johnson City Press Chronicle, as it was called, then gets word that Dunn's going to say, at the fairgrounds, that he opposes this med school. So Tom Hodge sends a guy named Henry Samples from their staff to the fairgrounds, and Henry's taking notes. And that's exactly what Dunn said. He said he did not support a medical school at ETSU. Well, fast-forward a little bit. In 1972, the Teague-Cranston Act gets signed by Nixon. Which allowed institutions with an affiliation with Veterans Administration hospitals to -- Yeah. Teague-Cranston, sponsored by Representative Olin Teague out of Texas and Senator Alan Cranston out of California, allowed medical schools affiliated with VA facilities to apply for millions of dollars in federal funds. This was studied to death, more than any project I've ever heard about. Consultant after consultant after consultant paid for by different groups. Dunn commissions yet another study in ’71. The following is in the video but not in this SRT file: The group is chaired by a guy named Willard from the University of Kentucky. The Willard Report – most of these other studies have had said, Yes, we need a med school. There -- nationwide there are 140 physicians per 100,000 people. In Upper East Tennessee, there are 70; move out a few counties, there are 40. That was clear in most of these studies. But the Willard Report -- and Willard had participated in an earlier group that supported the med school -- but the Willard report took issue with the med school. The Willard Report that came out in January of ’72 said, “We favor a new med school in Tennessee when there is money for it, and when there's money for it, that school should be in Knoxville. If it's not going to be in Knoxville, then it should be in Chattanooga.” We're way down the list in the Tri-Cities. That created a firestorm. And if I can add a little colorful story here, two of the best political rejoinders I've ever heard in the history of Tennessee occurred as a result of the Willard Report. The Johnson City Press Chronicle -- Carl Jones -- told Bob Beckner in the advertising department to draw a cartoon. And he did. It was a very rudimentary cow. The cow's head was in West Tennessee. The cow’s hindquarters were in East Tennessee. The headline was “Well Dunn” -- D – U – N – N. And pardon the colorful language, but this was in the paper -- The caption read, “Med school pulls hind tit.” The paper got in a lot of trouble for using that word, but the point was made. Carl Jones mails Winfield Dunn a hundred copies of that newspaper. The other rejoinder as a part of that was from Jimmy Quillen. Jimmy Quillen's news release on the heels of that Willard Report called it “tommyrot.” I think it's probably the only time the word “tommyrot” was ever used in an official news release from the US House of Representatives. The best synonym I could think of is the word “bull,” with four additional letters added on to it. So that fired up Allen and Culp and Robinson even more. You walked us through some of the reaction, both from the paper as well as from elected officials. 

   

  President Noland: So we've got a little bit of odor that's spread around and we've got elements and moving back and forth. So now we're mid legislative session. Bills have been introduced, bills are going back and forth. We have a piece of legislation filed to create a college of medicine here that's supported and not supported. And there's a tension that emerges. Give us a sense of how that bill moved through the chambers and then tell us the historic story of what happened to that bill and how that bill created legends in Tennessee politics. 

   

  Fred: Well, the Senate really wasn't a problem. The bill got through the Senate pretty easily. The House was the problem. They ran the bill in February of 1974, and it failed. Ned Ray McWherter passed by Bob Good's office, one of our representatives, and Bob was just about in tears. And one of the Shelby County legislators had vacated the building before the vote. Ned McWherter said, “Don't, don't worry, guys. This guy's never going to be reelected.” And he wasn't. Okay, so we get we get voted down in February. McWherter said, “Don't worry, Bob and company, we're going to run this bill again. It's going to pass.” And he was right. It did pass. Passed on a Thursday. This was the 28th of February, 1974. Dunn had until 11:59:59 the following Wednesday, which was the 6th of March, to act on it. Because if not, it automatically ... It would have become law without his signature. So the bill passes the House on the 28th. On the fifth, Dunn vetoes it. On the sixth, the Senate overrides the veto. Well, I think now, as we look back at the outcome of the work of these individuals, they’ve changed the face of the institution and changed the face of the region. But for those who may not be familiar with the story, to put that story in a modern-day context, to think of two houses of a general assembly across all of the divide coming together for a common cause, to think that those two houses would override a gubernatorial veto, which is a rare occasion in and of itself. But the thing that is always so striking for me is from that moment forward, everything in Tennessee politics shifted to the northeast. Any governor that was running for office began that campaign here, because they saw that this region could act together as a bloc. And this institution was the element upon which all gravity focused in the region. 

   

  President Noland: So as you look at this, if there's one way to summarize for the viewers across campus the importance of what happened, give us, because you have more stories than anyone I've ever met about the history of this institution, what's your favorite story that summarizes the impact that Quillen has had on the region over the past 50 years?

   

  Fred: Well, it's a very simple one. 2,400 M.D.s crossing that stage and reversing those numbers that Charles Allen quoted so much. When you infuse 2,400 M.D.s, many of whom stayed in this area, into a community, you've obviously changed it -- in people's waiting times for simple appointments were shortened tremendously. They were able to receive care here that they had to travel miles and miles and miles before to get. We were the only -- we were the largest area east of the Mississippi River not served by a state-supported medical school. We in Johnson City were closer to state- supported medical schools in nine different states than we were to Memphis. 

   

  President Noland: Thank you so much for sharing this background with us, and I hope that you can come back on a future edition to talk some more about the evolution of the college. But this is a milestone spring, the 50th anniversary of the passage of the legislation that created Quillen. All of us have had family members or ourselves cared for by physicians and alumni from that college. It changed the face of health care, It changed the face of this institution. And that change began 50 years ago. Fred, thanks for sharing the background. 

   

  Fred: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. 

   

  President Noland: This wraps up this edition of “Campus Conversations.” I look forward to seeing you at the next edition and be with us throughout the year as we come from the Reece Museum, learning more about the history of East Tennessee State University. Thanks for all that you do for our institution.  

###  

East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.