Chapter 08: Clark, LeMaistre, Mendelsohn: Leadership Styles
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Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Lichtiger compares the leadership styles and talents of the first three presidents of the institution. He describes R. Lee Clark’s creativity and big-vision thinking in very detailed terms. He notes Dr. LeMaistre’s [Oral History Interview] ability to operate in political scenes at the state and national levels and Dr. Mendelsohn’s [Oral History Interview] talent for fundraising and building. Dr. Lichtiger also describes how the structure of MD Anderson changed to a more corporate structure after R. Lee Clark retired, making it more difficult to speak directly and at length with the institution’s top administrator to get projects underway. He gives some historical background about the blocks that were thrown in the way of MD Anderson’s growth and confirms that the Blood Bank was part of R. Lee Clark’s vision for MD Anderson.
Identifier
LichtigerB_02_20120612_C08
Publication Date
6-12-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD , Oral History Interview, June 12, 2012
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Key MD Anderson Figures Portraits MD Anderson History Beyond the Institution Building/Transforming the Institution
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD :
This is Tacey Ann Rosolowski, and today I am interviewing for a second interview Dr. Benjamin Lichtiger in transfusion services or transfusion medicine. Today is June 12, 2012, and the time is five minutes of 10:00. Thank you again, and good morning Dr. Lichtiger.
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD :
Good morning.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD :
I wanted to start with some general questions that we didn’t cover completely yesterday. One of the things, of course, that’s really striking about your career is that you worked with the first three presidents of MD Anderson, and I was wondering if you could do a little bit of a compare and contrast just in terms of their leadership styles, their vision, and what they contributed to the institution.
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD :
Well, okay. Each of them had noticeably different styles, no question about it. But I would say that foremost Dr. Clark was the most visionary, hands on, and he constantly had ideas and things to create to do things for the Medical Center as well as for Anderson, and he was pushing. For example, I remember when Anderson was starting to buy property south of here, that he was proposing to have a monorail system transporting faculty back and forth and patients and something to really move—and move us away, and have also remote parking lots so people could come—and wouldn’t clog up the Medical Center. Of course, the ideas were never picked up for a lot of reasons but he was the type—this president, Dr. Clark, one could ask for an appointment, go up and talk to him and present an idea and discuss it with him, and he would have a very good understanding of what one had in mind because he himself was a—at one point he was a very active practicing physician, so he understood very clearly, and he had a tremendous capability to understand the strategic point. The other presidents, Dr. LeMaistre [Oral History Interview] and Dr. Mendelsohn [Oral History Interview], in their own realm of achievements and visionary perspective they were more—they surrounded themselves with different—started to create a corporate structure. In order to get to them, you had to go to one layer, another layer and explain it. It was more like a corporate structure, like a corporation. Before you go to the CEO—and the CEO didn’t have much time. Dr. Clark, on the other hand, I used to come here with my wife at six o’clock in the morning. I used to see him doing rounds. He used to show up, and he used to talk to the cleaners, the people who did the floors. The guy—because he created. He designed this building. It really was his baby, you understand? And when he heard that somebody was good—he went to NIH and brought Freireich and gave him freedom to develop drugs, to develop therapies. He went and brought people from the Mayo Clinic. He brought the first head of Radiotherapy, Gilbert Fletcher. He brought them and gave them carte blanche practically, and he developed the cobalt radiotherapy. But of course, he was handling a much smaller institution. Now this is such a giant that it’s impossible to really—it would be impossible to do that, the more you have to develop the president, vice president, whatever. It’s a much more difficult institution to manage, no question about it. But in terms of—but Dr. LeMaistre was more concentrated in dealing with—I think he was very adept at dealing with the state, with the national level getting the institution—because at that point the institution was no longer a teenager. It was an adult and successful at that. He was dealing at the national scene, at the state level. Dr. Clark did that too. He was so successful that Dr. Clark used to go to the Budget Legislative Board of the legislature. They used to tell him, “Lee, is there anything else you need?” Imagine the influence he had, and so these things helped the institution. Dr. Mendelsohn was more also—although he was not practicing. I’m not aware if he ever got a license in Texas because he was fine. He was concentrated on being a CEO of this institution, so he concentrated on creating avenues for funding. He created avenues for—he did a tremendous building enhancement program. I mean, the guy really left an imprint that’s unbelievable. I will say they all had their own perspective on how to make the institution, but I think Dr. Clark has, I would say, the glory and the recognition that he created his baby. He put in the work. He grew it to teenage, and then he had to step aside, and he still casts a very strong shadow. Those that didn’t know him would not be able to appreciate. I knew him, and I worked closely with him, and I worked closely with LeMaistre and with Mendelsohn, in spite of their layers. I penetrated those layers and was able to deal with them, but I had to be very specific, this and this, this happened, this happened, and usually it was, “Yes,” “No,” or “I’ll take care of it.” My meetings with them were not longer than fifteen minutes. With Clark I used to go up and present a plan and a budget and discuss strategy, how we’re going to do this and this, and he used to throw ideas at me, and what do you think? And that’s what really hooked me into this institution was I was being made to feel that I was part of a team, and at that time I was part of the team.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD :
Yeah, I can just see the way you’re describing it is that Dr. Clark really invited collaboration as a peer.
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD :
Yes, and he would go down and go in and choose somebody else if you’re not collaborating or not doing a certain thing. You had to be concerned that the president was going to come or give you—finally—suddenly you get a phone call at seven o’clock in the morning. “What’s going on there?” The leadership and the creativity and the vision of that guy was unbelievable and even when he stepped down and [Redacted]—he used to call me to mentor him about certain programs to ask me how they were doing and give me advice. He was a very, very—even though he was retired but he was—[Redacted] He used to call me up because he was very much involved in—he wanted to make sure that our blood program, our laboratory—because there were threats. There were private laboratories. There were private things that wanted to come and consume us. He was very protective of all of MD Anderson.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD :
He had—how was the blood bank part of his vision for—?
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD :
Because it came—it’s all based on his philosophy, “Don’t make small plans.” It came to him through Dr. Richard Eastwood, who was Executive Vice President of the Texas Medical Center at the time and talking with Cooley and DeBakey and also—I don’t remember—the CEO of Hermann. At that time it was not Memorial Hermann. And talking with them, they came up with the idea of the blood banking, and then when he got into that he realized the conflict of interest of the blood bankers and the pathologists and the issues, and he saw the danger, the pressure that MD Anderson was going under to disconnect itself from the blood bank and transfer it over to the outside agency.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD :
Can you spell out for me what the conflict of interest was?
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD :
Well, they didn’t want to be part. They didn’t want MD Anderson to have any big operation. You see, Anderson was growing. You have to understand the story that when Anderson was created by the state and they started to build this building, the physicians in Houston filed a lawsuit to stop it.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD :
I didn’t know that.
Benjamin Lichtiger, MD :
Yes, and they got the legislature to pass a law that the only way the patient could come here is when they were referred by a physician, and luckily Dr. LeMaistre, with his knowledge of the legislature and many political plays, he got them to delete that. But up to that point—so the medical society at that time, the leadership and other people were putting blocks in the way of MD Anderson. They wanted—and they could not accept—they didn’t want to accept for reasons that—I surmised there must have been some reason. They wanted MD Anderson to close like St. Luke’s did and other people and move everything to Gulf Coast, and we didn’t do it. He became—and blood banking is one of those specialties that either you get involved and it starts pulling at your passion or not. It’s amazing, but he got sucked into that. Even when he was retired he used to come, and I used to explain it here to him. Even he had—when there was an association of cancer institutes, he also put in issues about blood banking, but it did not affect us, but he was very clear about how blood banking played a role in cancer therapy.
Recommended Citation
Lichtiger, Benjamin MD, PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 08: Clark, LeMaistre, Mendelsohn: Leadership Styles" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1463.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1463
Conditions Governing Access
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