Chapter 02:A Bold Step and Coming to Work at MD Anderson

Chapter 02:A Bold Step and Coming to Work at MD Anderson

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In this chapter, Mrs. Hermes explains how she came to work at MD Anderson. She begins by telling the story of how, after not being accepted into medical school, she and a friend, Rosemary Sweeney, decided to take the bus to Galveston, Texas to look for jobs. The opportunity to work at MD Anderson came because a relative of Dr. R. Lee Clark’s assistant, Marion Wall, was a friend of Mrs. Hermes’ mother.

Mrs. Hermes shares memories of starting work when MD Anderson was located in the old Baker Estate on Baldwin Street. She notes that she worked in the converted army barracks and that she was supposed to work with Dr. Trunelle on a project involving chick embryos, but ended up working for Eleanor MacDonald, PhD [oral history interview and video interviews].

Mrs. Hermes talks about Dr. MacDonald’s recruitment to MD Anderson. She also explains that Marion Wall became R. Lee Clark’s assistant because she was his medical secretary during WWII when he served as an army surgeon. She talks about her memories of R. Lee Clark, Dr. White, who was in charge of surgery, and Jorge Awapara, PhD, who conducted discovered important amino acids.

Identifier

HermesKL_01_20180122_C02

Publication Date

1-22-2018

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

MD Anderson Past; Joining MD Anderson; MD Anderson History; MD Anderson Snapshot; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Personal Background; Professional Path; Portraits

Transcript

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

What year was that?

Kay Hermes, BS:

And you know, if you major in science... T.A. Rosolowski, PhD What year was that?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Nineteen fifty. I had a BS degree in biology and chemistry and of course, if you major in science, you really can’t do anything but go back to school some more. Since I was not accepted in medical school, I had to choose something else to do. So, my roommate and I looked at the map and we saw Galveston, Texas, and neither one of us had ever seen the ocean, so we, in July of 1950, my roommate, Rosemary Sweeney, and I, boarded the Greyhound bus for Galveston, Texas. It took three days and three nights to get there on the Greyhound bus and it cost seventy-seven dollars, I think. [laughs] So, we were you know when you’re twenty-one, you can do anything. We had a high old time getting ourselves to Texas and having fun just knowing the people on the bus and so on. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Now I mean that’s an awfully gutsy thing to do.

Kay Hermes, BS:

Well, we didn’t think—as I said, when you’re twenty-one, there’s a whole world out there and you can do anything, and you have all the confidence in the world.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

But didn’t your family, didn’t your mom and your brother say, what are you doing?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Yes. The rest of my mother’s family was very disturbed that my mother did not try to prevent me to doing this, but not my mother. She was very anxious that I would go out from a five-thousand person Midwest town and find a life somewhere else. She was very supportive. It was hard for her, because we were very close, and I know it was hard for her to put me on that bus, but she did, and she wanted to. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Kay Hermes, BS:

Yes it was. And she was still working, she worked in the same hospital there until she was seventy-one, I guess. And so anyway, we got on the Greyhound bus and got to Galveston, and of course in 1950, Galveston was somewhat different than it is today. I think we got off the bus and we didn’t know anything about Galveston, so we went to a downtown hotel, which at the time had not fallen into the disrepair that it eventually did. It was the old Jean Lafitte Hotel, which still exists, and I think has been remodeled in the last few years. So anyway, we stayed there because it was very inexpensive, and then we started looking for jobs. Well, there were no jobs, believe me. Well, we had a fortunate relationship. The woman who was Dr. Clark’s assistant, Marion Wall, her name was at the time, her aunt and my mother were very good friends, and so my mother called me and said Molly had said for me to go out to MD Anderson Hospital and meet Marion and tell her who I was and so on. Marion was from South Dakota. I can’t remember the name of the town, but she was from South Dakota. The reason Marion happened to be… This was the beginning of MD Anderson Hospital. It was in the old MD Anderson estate at 2310 Baldwin Street. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD You mean, you’re referring to the Baker Estate?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Yes. It was very beautiful, a lot of wonderful old oak trees and so on, and in addition to the administration building, which was the former home of one of the Andersons, we worked in reconverted Army barracks. So, I went to MD Anderson, to personnel, Rosemary and I both went, and we applied for whatever jobs. Well, I was supposed to go to work then, for a Dr. Trunnell, who was doing an experiment that involved chick embryos, and since I had studied embryology in college, I was to have that job. The day I was to go to work, his grant was canceled. A story of many people’s lives.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

Yes.

Kay Hermes, BS:

So that was the end of Dr. Trunnell. I think he was the president of the Mormon Church in Texas, and so he probably took his sabbatical then, after that, because they did, they nearly all committed to years of evangelical work. Well anyway, I don’t remember anything else about Dr. Trunnell. So, then Eleanor MacDonald was in charge of epidemiology, and she had come to MD Anderson because Dr. Clark, R. Lee Clark, was recruiting all the good people that he could get his hands on. He was recruiting top people to come there, and it was no small job, because he didn’t have much to offer. Anyway, Eleanor had graduated from Radcliffe and went to work, I think, in the Commonwealth of either Massachusetts—no, she went to work in Connecticut. She graduated with a degree in music from Radcliffe, but she went into the Department of Public Health, and she did a lot of interesting work there. That day in time, I’m trying to put a year to it now, that would have been, let’s see, that would have been, I think in the late 1930s. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Oh, that she was working in Connecticut?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Yeah. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Yeah. I don’t have the dates where she—I mean, some place I’ve got dates for her. She came to MD Anderson in ’48.

Kay Hermes, BS:

Yes. She was all set for a very big position in the Northeast, and Dr. Clark, of course, went there and he could convince almost anybody to do anything. So, he convinced her that this was a great new world, venture, which it was. He had an enormous vision for the cancer institute. Well, he didn’t call it that, he called it a cancer hospital initially. The way that Marion became his assistant, when he was in the Army, he was a surgeon, in World War II, and there were no recording devices or anything, so the medical secretaries followed the doctors around with their notebooks fastened to their arm and took down everything in shorthand, even while they were operating, and then typed it up. Marion followed Dr. Clark around. So, after the war, she actually went to work for a Dr. Lovelace, at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, and Dr. Clark went out there and stole her away from Dr. Lovelace, to be his assistant, in command of getting everything done. Dr. Clark and Marion Wall, and General [Roy C.] Heflebower was the vice president, and that was pretty much the administration. I can’t remember who was in charge of personnel.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

General Heflebower?

Kay Hermes, BS:

General Heflebower. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Oh, I’ve never even heard that name.

Kay Hermes, BS:

You’ve never heard of General Heflebower? T.A. Rosolowski, PhD No.

Kay Hermes, BS:

Well, he was the vice president and since we always referred to him, and he was always referred to as General Heflebower, I assume that he was a retired Army general. I think he also was a surgeon, but I could not verify that.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

So this is a pretty small shop at this time.

Kay Hermes, BS:

It was a pretty small shop. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Now, tell me, did you have personal interaction with R. Lee Clark?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Well, we all did. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD So, tell me about him.

Kay Hermes, BS:

Well actually, he was such a remarkable individual. I’m trying to think. I don’t think that I really—well, my connection was more with Marion and so I guess he knew me for that reason, because I remember years later, when I was working, doing something else at Anderson, I think I was taking some Japanese doctors to see the astrodome or something. He saw me on the street, and this had to have been after the move to the new hospital and everything, and he said, “Hello, Kay,” and I was very impressed that he remembered my name, that he remembered who I was. He knew I worked for Eleanor and so on, but I didn’t have a personal relationship with him at all, no, but we all knew him from afar and we all admired him as probably the greatest person any of us young people had ever encountered. He was a man of such enormous talent and vision, and he had certainly put together a good team. Dr. White was in charge of surgery and many things were accomplished in those reconverted Army barracks. I’m trying to think of how many patients. I remember when there were, I think there were fifty patients, fifty patients had been seen, and of course the clinics also, were reconverted Army barracks, and the patients were walking around with all their papers under their arms. I don’t know who was in charge of medicine, I just remember Dr. White was a surgeon, and one of the researchers was very important. His name was Jorge Awapara [PhD] and while he was working in those limited circumstances, he discovered two new amino acids, and that was early, early on.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

Wow.

Kay Hermes, BS:

I don’t know if he went back to—I don’t remember Dr. Awapara being in the MD Anderson Hospital in later years. I believe he was from Peru, and he probably went back there but anyway, he was a very fine scientist. So anyway, I went to work for Eleanor then. She had a grant.

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Chapter 02:A Bold Step and Coming to Work at MD Anderson

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