Chapter 02 : The President’s Office Under R. Lee Clark

Chapter 02 : The President’s Office Under R. Lee Clark

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Description

In this chapter, Ms. Hale provides a snapshot of how the President’s Office worked under R. Lee Clark. She notes that he was “very hands on.” As an example of Dr. Clark’s political effectiveness, she tells a story about how staff researched the backgrounds of significant patients and briefed Dr. Clark about them prior to his trips to Austin, so he could mention specific individuals to legislators. She notes that the development office was created under Dr. Clark and explains her own role of keeping up with all faculty records. She also talks about her own growing commitment to MD Anderson’s mission. She talks about staff office politics.

Identifier

HaleJ_01_20180419_C02

Publication Date

4-19-2018

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Overview; Overview; Portraits; MD Anderson and Government; Fundraising, Philanthropy, Donations, Volunteers; MD Anderson History; MD Anderson Snapshot; MD Anderson Culture; Working Environment

Transcript

JoAnne Hale:

I basically worked you know, I took all his—when I first started, I did all his dictation, did his travel and all of that, kept up with the mail. It was sort of interesting, Dr. Clark was a very interesting person. He was more of a hands-on person, you know versus LeMaistre and Mendelsohn, where they had… what is the word? You know, gave out the possibility of making decisions. He made most all the decisions.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So R. Lee Clark, he…?

JoAnne Hale:

He was pretty much, he pretty much—but then remember, we were less than two-thousand people.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Absolutely, a whole different institution.

JoAnne Hale:

So yeah, it was a little bit different than that.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So tell me how the office was organized. I know absolutely, I mean this is really an insider’s view to the nerve center of an institution, so give a portrait of that.

JoAnne Hale:

He had several—all of the presidents had several people that worked for him, that had their own specific [roles]. Marion was his assistant. I don’t know what her title was at that time, but she pretty much, she could sign his name just like him, you couldn’t really tell the difference, and she was pretty much just the overseer, but she didn’t really do the day-to-day things for the office, or over the assistants, the secretaries. We were all secretaries. Beth Ryder, Beth White at the time --no, Beth Ryder was her name then, and then she married one of our doctors. She was the one that—I don’t think she interviewed me. No, it was Marion that interviewed me. Beth was the one that sort of took over supervising all of us, and there were—we had one lady that did all of his travel and another one that did his patients. Dr. Clark, like I said, he was very hands on, and when he would go to Austin… He had a ranch in Rosanky, Smithville, and when he would go up there, he would drop by Austin and he would drop by all the legislators’ offices to say hello, kind of keep his name in front of them. What we would do is before he would go, we would look up all the patients that a particular legislator was interested in. We’d give him the background, where their treatment was, so that when he would go up there, he would say oh, so and so was in, you know. So when it came time for getting funding, it was very easy for us to get funding. They would just say, “Lee, what do you need?” That was a practice that when I went to Dr. LeMaistre’s office, I told them about it and we kind of kept that up.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Oh, wow.

JoAnne Hale:

Some of the girls will say well, they know he’s too busy for that, and I said that’s why it’s important, because they know he’s busy and for him to know a constituent of theirs makes a difference.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

And that’s really an amazing story too, about how the work that assistants do is so key to that professional persona of the leader.

JoAnne Hale:

Right.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

You know so that—and you guys were responsible for getting funding essentially, by doing that.

JoAnne Hale:

Right, right. Right, by helping on that. Then, I’m not sure what all the other ladies’ duties were. They had much more than just travel and stuff like that. My original was to of course, I kept track of all the correspondence, did the filing, and at that point, we kept up with all the personnel. We had all the faculty, all of their, the faculty’s, not the underlings, but we kept all the faculty records, and I know one of the ladies did a lot of that. Also, under Dr. Clark is when the Development Office was kind of developed. We only had one person and one girl, but before that, at the end of the year, all the donations that came in, we wrote the thank you letters, we wrote the acknowledgement letters for them to use for their purposes, tax purposes and so forth. So that was, you know, that was part of our duties that we did at that time.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What were your impressions of the institution at the time?

JoAnne Hale:

I wasn’t as connected to it when I first came and being new to Houston, I didn’t have any idea where it was, but through the years, working for him, and of course we were the first ones that did the War Against Cancer, I remember over a Thanksgiving, we spent the whole weekend. They had a big meeting here, science researchers and doctors and everything, and that’s when the National Cancer Advisory Board was founded, and NCI, and then Dr. Clark was on the President’s Cancer Panel, which was three, and he was very instrumental in getting it where they reported directly to the president of the United States, and not going through the National Cancer Advisory Board. So, I started seeing how the research, how it started growing, and all the progress that they were making through that. Dr. Clark also reviewed all of the papers that came through, the publications, and that’s how he got a lot of his knowledge when he gave talks. That was part of what we did on that one. But he was more into—he and kind of the clinicians, were the thing, the researchers. I don’t even know how big our research area was at that time, but by the time my tenure ended with him, of course I was very connected to MD Anderson, but initially it was a job.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah, sure, sure.

JoAnne Hale:

You know? And he was very personable with all of us and Marion, she was—you really wanted to make things great for her, you wanted everything to be perfect. She was just that type of person, that she wanted, she expected a lot. And of course back then, we didn’t have automation, so you would carbon copy letters and you didn’t make a mistake. You redid it, you know, because she wanted it to be perfect when she went in. She didn’t have much as to whether we had any personal interactions with Dr. Clark, but of course I took all of his dictation, you know he did all of his letters dictating, so I got more of a personal attachment to him, but he would invite my husband and I and this other girl, her husband was in school too, we’d go up to his ranch on the weekends and fish and stuff like that. So the office, there was a little politics there.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

You mean amongst the staff of the office?

JoAnne Hale:

[00:016:44] Well, one girl, like I said, her husband was in dental school, and at one point she, all of a sudden just didn’t have anything to do with me any more. She had been told not to, and I think it was because this lady, Beth, had a college degree. I didn’t have a college degree but I could do the work, and I think there was a little bit of jealousy there. We later worked through it. But after Susan left, she told me, she said I’m sorry I couldn’t be the friend, because they told her, you know it was her job. That type of politics there in that office, but as far as the girls getting along, we all got along.

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Chapter 02 : The President’s Office Under R. Lee Clark

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