[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 111 (Friday, July 22, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4841-S4843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO DR. PAUL SMITH

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Dr. Paul Smith, a 
physician whose story has been chosen to be recorded as part of the 
London, KY, ``Living Treasures'' project.
  Dr. Smith's career path began when he graduated pre-med from 
Cumberland College in 1949 at age 19. After attending the University of 
Kentucky, where he hitchhiked to class every day, Dr. Smith was 
accepted into the University of Louisville medical school. Unable to 
obtain a rural scholarship through traditional channels, Dr. Smith 
received a scholarship from the Tri-County Women's Club in Knox, 
Whitley, and Laurel counties. The only condition was that he return to 
one of the counties and practice medicine there for 4 years.
  Before being called up for service in the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Smith 
worked for a doctor in Cumberland, where he met his wife. After a year 
of dating, Dr. Smith and his wife of 53 years, Ann, were married and 
moved together to the Lake Charles Air Force base in Louisiana. Their 
daughter Jan was born on base as Smith trained and served as a doctor.
  After completing his service with the Air Force, Dr. Smith moved to 
London and opened up his own practice. He routinely made dozens of 
house calls to London residents--both in the city and out in the 
country. Dr. Smith also offered OB services and often worked in the 
emergency room of nearby Marymount Hospital when other doctors were too 
busy.
  After 38 years of dedicated service to the London community, Dr. 
Smith retired in 1998. Even in his retirement,

[[Page S4842]]

Dr. Smith volunteers at the free medical clinic run at the Community 
Christian Church.
  The State of Kentucky is lucky to have individuals like Dr. Paul 
Smith, who dedicate their lives to better those of others. As he has 
shown us all, Dr. Smith is truly a great Kentuckian.
  Mr. President, the Laurel County-area newspaper the Sentinel Echo 
recently published a detailed interview with Dr. Smith and his wife in 
which they discuss Dr. Smith's accomplishments and contributions. I ask 
unanimous consent that the full article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Sentinel-Echo, May 25, 2011]

                   London's Living Treasures: Part 2

       Following is the second installment of the Living Treasures 
     Project. It is the story of Dr. Paul Smith, who served Laurel 
     County as a family physician for 38 years. Dr. Smith shared 
     fascinating details about his life as a medical student and 
     doctor, which meant hitchhiking to class, making house calls 
     and working with the nuns at Marymount Hospital. During his 
     interview, Dr. Smith was joined by his wife of 53 years, Ann.
       ``I used to go to the library when I was in high school and 
     read all the books I could about family physicians, some of 
     them from Kentucky and otherwise, just the real stories of 
     rural physicians. I took pre-med at Williamsburg's Cumberland 
     College, graduated with a diploma after two years, in 1949. I 
     was 19.


                            Working student

       After I finished Williamsburg, I needed funds to go on to 
     the University of Kentucky. I ended up getting an emergency 
     certificate to teach at Henderson Settlement in Frakes, Ky., 
     for one year and saved up enough. I had an aunt who worked 
     there, and I had room and board pretty much for free except 
     I'm sure my parents gave them a lot of vegetables. I saved 
     all my money and went to University of Kentucky in 1950.
       Those years were very lean and, unfortunately with no car 
     or transportation, I hitchhiked every day back and forth to 
     the university. I went to work at the narcotic hospital out 
     at Leestown Pike in Lexington usually at 4 p.m. After 
     classes, I'd have to scurry over to Leestown Pike and put my 
     thumb out and just barely make it to work, usually.
       Before I finished my degree, the Korean War started. I had 
     applied for medical school, but I hadn't heard anything. I 
     had already been called up for the draft, passed my physical 
     for the Army. They would defer you a semester at a time but 
     by then they were getting hard up to give deferrals to 
     everybody, so there was a good possibility I was going to 
     have to go to the service.
       When I was home for Christmas vacation, I got my letter of 
     acceptance to the medical school at the University of 
     Louisville, the only one I could afford even though the 
     tuition was just $800 a year. It felt great because that's 
     what I wanted. When I got accepted, my father went to the 
     bank in Pineville to try to borrow money and the banker said, 
     ``No, not on a medical student, too many of them flunk out.''
       I got deferred and finished the year and went on to 
     Louisville.
       When I went back to medical school my sophomore year, I got 
     a job as an extern at Baptist. We'd do histories and 
     physicals of patients and, every third night, I was on call 
     for the lab.
       When I finished medical school, there was still a doctor's 
     draft. You had to do two years in the service unless you were 
     over 35 or unless you were in the service before. That was 
     looming over me when I finished medical school, but I still 
     had my internship to complete, which I did at Good Samaritan 
     Hospital in Lexington in 1957.
       When I finished, I joined the Air Force. I knew I'd be 
     called in six to 12 months, so I had to look for a job. 
     Finally, one of the surgeons told me that he knew this 
     surgeon in Lynch and Cumberland that could use a doctor. I 
     signed on with him and that's the best thing I did in my life 
     because that's where I met my wife.


                           Marriage material

       How'd we meet? Her mother had to have her gallbladder out 
     and she can tell it better than I can.
       ANN: I went back home to teach school, but they put me in 
     first grade. I did everything to try to do a crash course on 
     elementary. I was cutting paper dolls for my students, 
     preparing for the next day. Paul walked in and when he walked 
     out, I said, ``Mother, I think I'm going to marry that guy.'' 
     She said, ``Just hush.'' He's the only person I ever pursued.
       DR. SMITH: I was real impressed with her, but I was a 
     little leery. I rented a room in Cumberland. I'd usually go 
     to the drive-in at night and eat. Well, she and another girl 
     started showing up there about every night. I got suspicious, 
     but my impression was good all along.
       I was in Cumberland almost a year to the day. I was called 
     into the service on the 5th of July. In the meantime, though, 
     we dated and got married June 14, 1958, Flag Day. It was a 
     nice wedding. Like most people, I thought we were going to 
     have a little wedding and when I went in, the church was 
     full.
       ANN: It was a small church. And my mother had decorated it 
     with a lot of mountain flowers.
       DR. SMITH: We went together to the service and we went to 
     basic training. I had to go four weeks in Montgomery, Ala. 
     That was an awakening too because neither one of us liked the 
     racism. I didn't like that at all.
       In training, doctors had to go out and shoot one time. I 
     can't say I hit a thing. I'd shot a BB gun before and a .22, 
     but they put a .45 in my hand for the first time. I aimed 
     perfectly at the target and when I pulled it, it went up like 
     that. I shot my however-many rounds I had to shoot. I only 
     went to the rifle range once but we marched and flew in 
     airplanes a lot.
       In October '58, I was assigned to Lakes Charles, La. It was 
     a small base, the hospital was constructed during the war so 
     it was not very fancy, but it was a nice base. That's where 
     we had our first daughter, Jan.
       Now, I've got to go back and fill in before I went to 
     medical school, because that's important. I'd applied for a 
     rural scholarship and I was sure with my grades I would get 
     one. But it seemed they'd given all of them out. At that 
     time, I was going to have to hold up medical school for a 
     year to earn what I needed, but one of the students ahead of 
     me knew the Tri-County Women's Club from Knox, Whitley and 
     Laurel had raised money for a rural scholarship and, to their 
     knowledge, it had never been filled. I interviewed and they 
     were in favor of me getting it. With the scholarship, I 
     agreed I would go back to practice in Knox, Whitley or Laurel 
     for four years.
       That was one reason I didn't even consider staying in the 
     service because I had that obligation, and I felt it was a 
     deep obligation.


                          Laurel County-bound

       I found out Dr. Robert Pennington in London might need a 
     doctor. I came over here and it was a Wednesday afternoon and 
     Dr. Pennington was off on Wednesday afternoon and he showed 
     me all around town.
       I didn't have an office, but it turns out that Dr. 
     Pennington and his brother had an office built up over the 
     old fire department on Broad Street. It had a space for a lab 
     and space for three examining rooms and a waiting room, 
     already plumbed and wired. So that looked good and the rent 
     looked good, $65 a month.
       Then the next day, Dr. Pennington located me a house I 
     could rent. It was up on Falls Road. We unloaded on July 5, 
     1983 and I got busy getting my office together because, see, 
     I had no equipment. Marymount Hospital was nice to me, they 
     loaned me one or two of the bedside tables. My brother was 
     doing a residency in surgery in Lexington and they wanted to 
     get rid of an old surgical table. Owner of The Sentinel, 
     Martin Dyche, through him, I got a Cole metal desk, a filing 
     cabinet and a chair.
       Next to my office, there was the taxi park and they had 
     five or six taxis there. They were busy all the time. They 
     had a ringer out there on the telephone pole so you could 
     hear it ring all the time.
       London was a rural town, everything closed on Wednesday at 
     noon except me. I decided, since most of the doctors took off 
     on Wednesday afternoon that I was going to work and I'd take 
     off on Thursday afternoon.
       We had three drug stores, the original Begley's, Robert 
     Dyche had Dyche Drug Store and then there was City Drug 
     Store, it was down near where the theatre is now, where the 
     old Hob Nob used to be. Of course London Bucket was here, 
     which handled plumbing, Hoskin's Five and Ten, and then the 
     department stores, you had Hackney's, Daniel's, and several 
     others. Where Weaver's is now was their pool hall and women 
     were not allowed in the pool hall. If Ann or somebody wanted 
     their hotdog, they had a window up there and they'd sell you 
     the hotdog out the window. It was a bustling little Main 
     Street, but don't expect anything after 5 o'clock.
       I opened my practice about July 15, and I averaged four to 
     five patients a day the first year and I couldn't have paid 
     my rent with that because an office visit was $3 and a house 
     call was $5 in the city and $10 outside in the county. But I 
     made a lot of house calls, some I got paid for, some I 
     didn't.
       ANN: We ate well. In those first years I learned to can 
     beans, freeze corn, I learned to do so much. They brought not 
     just a bushel of beans, but two or three. It was 
     overwhelming, by then I had three little kids to take care 
     of--Jan, Elizabeth and Paul Ray--but I felt like it was a sin 
     not to use that food. But anyway, we did know it would be 
     slow for the first couple of years, so we planned ahead.
       DR. SMITH: We didn't want to go in debt and we didn't. I 
     probably made most of my money in the E.R. The other doctors 
     were all so busy they didn't care about leaving their office 
     full of patients and running to the emergency room. So I got 
     called all the time to the E.R. and that's how I picked up a 
     lot of patients, because they had to be healthy to climb two 
     floors of steps up to my office.
       In 1961, in March or April, Dr. D.D. Turner decided he was 
     going to quit general practice and go into the health 
     department in western Kentucky. He came to see me about 
     taking over his practice. I was happy because then I'd be on 
     a ground floor, they wouldn't have to climb those steps. Then 
     things started picking up.
       Our days were 24-7. Five of us physicians did OBs. When I 
     came here, three of the doctors were still delivering at 
     home. I told them up front I wasn't going to do home 
     deliveries. I told them I was charging $50 for

[[Page S4843]]

     delivery, $10 for a circumcision. I tell you, you didn't make 
     any money back then if you were in medicine. Not here. Many 
     of a time I would leave at 7 in the morning and make rounds 
     and I'd come home for dinner, maybe, but I'd go out again and 
     make house calls. I would make 10 or 12 house calls a day.
       A year after I started, we moved from the house on Falls 
     Street.
       ANN: But then Dr. Pennington, he was always finding stuff 
     for us. He knew this house on Ninth Street was going on the 
     market. He said don't tell a soul.
       DR. SMITH: So we moved here. Dr. Pennington decided for us. 
     For one thing, look how close it is to the hospital. I could 
     go over there and be in the delivery room in three or four 
     minutes.
       Marymount was run by the Sisters. It was great to work with 
     them, I never could remember all their names, I was bad about 
     that, I'd call them all ``Sister.'' We had eight or 10 of 
     them up here. They were great to work with, they were very 
     good nurses.


                          Changes in medicine

       When I first came here, polio was dying down because the 
     first vaccine had come out. But measles was the big thing. We 
     didn't have any measles vaccinations, and it wouldn't be 
     unusual to go out to a house and see a kid with 104, 105 
     temperature with measles and two or three other siblings with 
     measles. The only thing you could do is advise them how to 
     bathe them, how to cool them off.
       Mumps, had a lot of mumps. And, of course, pneumonias and a 
     lot of hepatitis. One year, just in my practice, I had two or 
     three kids from the high schools where they still had outdoor 
     toilets. They would come in with jaundice and they had 
     hepatitis, and of course we didn't have any vaccines.
       A lot of changes have occurred. Technology is one of the 
     biggest changes and it's good and bad. It's good because we 
     can now do a better job with some things. In the 1960s, we 
     didn't have any Echocardiograms. CT or MRI hadn't been heard 
     of. The part that I don't like that's changed is doctors no 
     longer sit and do history and physicals and talk to people. 
     When I was externing during medical school, each history and 
     physical, you'd spend 30 to 40 minutes. None of this five-
     minute stuff.
       I quit OB in '85 because we were getting some OB doctors in 
     and also malpractice had gotten so bad. When we got more 
     lawyers, that's when things changed, that's it, that's what 
     changed it. I want to say around early '70s.
       Medicine changed so. The insurance companies would fight 
     you constantly in your office and you had to fight constantly 
     to get people in the hospital. You'd be arguing with some 
     nurse up in Chicago or somewhere. That's when my blood 
     pressure started going up, honestly.
       I closed my office in 1998, but I've worked some since 
     then, I'd work some now if I didn't have back trouble. I 
     loved being a doctor, listen, I still do. I help with the 
     free clinic now at the Community Christian Church. I liked 
     that you could see people from the time they were born until 
     they died. And you followed them all the way through. I loved 
     all of it, really, just taking care of the families, getting 
     to know the people.''

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