Chapter 03: Key Activities Under R. Lee Clark
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Description
Ms. Hale talks about some key accomplishments under R. Lee Clark: selling land to raise funds to build the Lutheran Pavilion; breaking ground on the Bastrop research location; increased activities once Nixon declared the War on Cancer. Ms. Hale notes that her work for Dr. Clark shifted focus over the years: she spent more time working with international organizations as Dr. Clark was increasingly invited overseas to speak. She tells a story to demonstrate how Dr. Clark “would make a statement and have to make it true.” She shares other comments about his character and lists some of the individuals with whom he worked closely.
Identifier
HaleJ_01_20180419_C03
Publication Date
4-19-2018
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; Overview; Portraits; Fundraising, Philanthropy, Donations, Volunteers; MD Anderson History; MD Anderson Snapshot; MD Anderson Culture; Building/Transforming the Institution; Growth and/or Change
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Tell me about—I mean this is sort of from a slightly different perspective. I’m sure that when there’s turbulence in the institution, I mean the shockwaves sort of go through the president’s office and that’s where all of this is being handled. What were some of the moment, do you think, of biggest challenge for Dr. Clark, that you recognized because you were working in his office?
JoAnne Hale:
The biggest challenges.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Or high points, you know, kind of the big landmark moments in his presidency, from your perspective.
JoAnne Hale:
Well one of the things with him was when we were given 51,000 acres of land in Florida, by the Johnson Foundation, and we sold it, and that’s what we built the Lutheran Hospital [Pavilion] with. So that was a big project that he really did very well in commandeering that. And then also, the War on Cancer, he was pretty involved in the national scene. His philosophy was not so much that the government should give us a lot of money for cancer research, versus giving money to students, that they could recognize the early signs of cancer, physicians, he said, in the local community. But he said if it’s in the schools, where they can see, where they can recognize, because that was it, you had to catch it early.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Right, right.
JoAnne Hale:
From what I remember is well, we started Bastrop, we started the Science Park under Dr. Clark, and then the War on Cancer and then he also worked with a group from overseas and put together a directory of cancer institutions all over the world, and their expertise, (inaudible) I thin worked on that. What the purpose was, [ ] you could benefit with what they’ve done, the reports, the things that they’ve done, that could help us in furthering research in cancer.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
When I was doing research about him, he had had that international experience, the American Hospital in Paris.
JoAnne Hale:
Right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It was interesting, that he brought that international awareness to the institution very early. And I notice that on your CV, you noted that in your later years working for him, you focused more and more on international and national connections.
JoAnne Hale:
Right, right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about that shift in perspective.
JoAnne Hale:
Well, whenever we did—because we had two different… The day-to-day things were under a different assistant area, and mine was strictly on—I still did his travel, but it was strictly on his international, with speaking engagements, the Congress, the 10th International Congress that we had here, we were very much involved in that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What’s the 10th, what is that event?
JoAnne Hale:
We had a congress where they came from all over the world, and researchers and clinicians they came here and they had conferences, speeches and things like that, research, giving information on the research that are being done all over the world. What our role was, is doing the outside—you know, the housing and then entertainment type stuff, gave them tours. And then we had several things at his penthouse, which was on top of the Anderson-Mayfair, which is now Rotary [House].
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
About what year was that?
JoAnne Hale:
That was in ’70.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Yes, only two years into your appointment here, that’s a big deal.
JoAnne Hale:
And it was—they had a congress every four years, and that was the one that we did. Dr. Murray Copeland and his office pretty much worked with that, because Dr. Copeland was also pretty much international, and his office did the bulk of the nitty-gritties of putting that congress together, but we were involved in it. And then we also had the dedication of the new hospital, that was in seventy… That must have been in ’72 or ’76.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The hospital called the Pink Palace?
JoAnne Hale:
No, not the Pink Palace, the Lutheran.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The Lutheran Pavilion.
JoAnne Hale:
I think maybe it might have been ’76. I remember, we had this one gentleman from Brussels that would come over every so often, and he would work here and we would work with him. Now, I can’t remember exactly what we did, but I just remember because my son was real sick at the time that we were having this dedication, and we had all these representatives from the foreign countries that I had to take care of, and I was—you know, I told him at one point, I said don’t yell at me, because I feel like a [failure as a] mother, because I’ve left it to a neighbor to watch my child. He just had strep. But in any event, I know that was a big… An interesting thing about Dr. Clark is sometimes he would make a statement and then he’d have to make it true. I think, at the dedication, he omitted [thanking] a family, and so his way of handling it was well, we were going to name this other area for this family, and so he made it happen. That’s the way he handled whenever…
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting.
JoAnne Hale:
They do, you know, it’s typical, people forget to acknowledge, but it was a significant donor. We thought that was funny. He said, “That was my intention all along.” Well, it wasn’t, he just forgot.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s funny, that’s funny.
JoAnne Hale:
He was very personal, a very Southern gentleman, and he handled all of us the same way. He couldn’t remember names, very bad at names. He’d forget our names half the time, but he always called me Ms. Hale, never used—it was not the first-name basis on all of us. He was just a Southern… And that’s kind of the way he was, was easygoing. I don’t know that much about his interaction with the family as much as I did with LeMaistre, because I was in a different role, but I know that if you sold him on a project he was behind you totally, you know he wasn’t deterred very much.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Did you have a sense of who his key people were at the institution, I mean were there certain people he relied on for support, advice?
JoAnne Hale:
Well, like I said, he controlled things, but I think he really relied on Mr. [Joseph] Boyd and Mr. [Elmer] Gilley, the businesspeople. However, luckily, both of them really… I don’t want to say hid money, but they were very frugal with it. I remember him saying, when Dr. LeMaistre came, look, you have control of these funds and you need to know where they are. He knew the money was there and that’s why, when managed care came in and we had all of this, the statement, how much we had in… I don’t know how they reserved. So, from my perspective that I remember, in order for us not to give all that money to the state, we started collaborating with other institutions, like Scott and White, and we’d send our faculty there, and we’d pay their funding for it and they would go there and consult with them. But I know that we weren’t hurt as bad as other institutions because we had that reserve.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s interesting.
JoAnne Hale:
Other than that, of course, Dr. Hickey, his director, they were very close and met quite often. Surgeons, he was close to the surgeons, and Dr. Robert Morton [sic], he was right in our office. He had his own office but it was connected to ours. So we had Dr. Hickey and Dr. Morton that were his administrative, and then Mr. Boyd and Mr. Gilley, those would be the ones that he relied on the most.
Recommended Citation
Hale, JoAnne H. and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 03: Key Activities Under R. Lee Clark" (2018). Interview Chapters. 970.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/970
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