Mary Semans Interview

Abstract

This interview was conducted before the initiation of the project to highlight Duke Medicine women. The tenor of the interview may therefore be somewhat different than others in this project. Mrs. Semans does discuss many aspects of Duke Medicine about which she has special knowledge.

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans speaks about:
her memories of what healthcare was like when she was a young woman • healthcare for her mother • former chair of Medicine, Dr. Frederick Hanes • Hanes family • her interest in but not necessarily involvement with the Duke Department of Psychiatry • Dr. H. Keith H. Brodie, former president of Duke University • Dr. Josiah Trent, first husband • collecting medical history items • preservation of rare books of this nature • Dr. Trent’s appreciate for Duke • Dr. Trent working with conscientious objectors, during WWII, at Duke • her work in the Department of Social Services • Reba Hobgood, head of the department • socialization within the hospital • Duke family’s involvement in Lincoln Hospital, Durham’s hospital for African-American patients of Durham • the integration of Lincoln Hospital and Watts Hospital, the hospital for white patients of Durham • the possibility that Dr. Wilburt Davison, former dean of Duke School of Medicine, would become president of Duke University • relationship between Duke Medical Center and Duke University • Dr. Davison’s involvement on the Duke Endowment • Dr. William Anlyan, former leader of Duke Medical Center • Dr. James Semans, second husband • Dr. Semans’s work with sexual dysfunction • Dr. Semans’s work with North Carolina School of the Arts • Dr. Semans’s work with the Cultural Services program at Duke Hospital • Dr. John Dees • Dr. Susan Dees.

Interview

Interviewee: Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans
Interviewer: Jessica Roseberry
Date: July 27, 2006
Place: Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Durham, NC

Jessica Roseberry: This is Jessica Roseberry. I’m here with Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. And she’s the granddaughter of Benjamin Duke. And has been involved in numerous ways in Duke University and the Medical Center, including as a Duke trustee, chair of the Duke Endowment, and wife of two Duke Medical Center physicians, and many other contributions and involvements. This is July 27, 2006, and we’re here in the offices of the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation in Durham, North Carolina. Mrs. Semans, I appreciate your taking the time to be interviewed today. I appreciate that.

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans: I’m glad to do it.

Roseberry: I thought I might start just by asking you about what health care was like as a young woman, what you remember of that.

Semans: Well, I remember a lot about health care, because my grandfather’s very, very closest, younger friend was Dr. Robert Wiley from South Carolina. And there are a number of things named for the Wiley Family in the Duke power legend. And one of the men was a physician. And he even traveled with the family a lot. So there was always some doctor kind of looming in the background and a lot of foreground because when we all moved, when the family moved to New York, his office opened right across the street. And so we always seemed to talk about physicians and what they could do, and they were highly respected in our family. And of course going back to Mr. Marshall Duncan, specialist to James B. [Buchanan]. Duke, he made these wonderful descriptions of what he thought health care meant to civilization in his indenture. And nobody could top that because it really was beautifully expressed. I remember all the doctors I’ve had. I mean, they were very kind about getting specialists for us. And because of a very wonderful, old-fashioned-type pediatrician who did marvelous things for the less fortunate in New York City. He ran his own clinic on the West Side. He wasn’t one of those fashionable doctors. But everyone knew he was a particularly fine person. And I’ll never forget: he had a waiting room with leather benches against the wall, plain as you can imagine even in those days, much plainer than the average office. And I had a lot of ear trouble. And so they recommended-an ENT [ear, nose, and throat] person recommended that I have a-oh, good gracious! I can’t think of it, but it was pretty serious. I’ll think of it in a minute. I’ll go back to it. But it involved a lot of work behind the ear and so forth. And it wasn’t always as safe and successful. So my parents were troubled by it, and they took me back to the pediatrician. He said, “By all means don’t do it. Take her to a warmer climate.” And that’s where they started going to Florida in the winter, to keep me out of-. So I went to school down there, you know, for several winters. But physicians were always looked up to, and it was very good that way.

Roseberry: I know that your mother went to-or received some medical care as well. And I wonder if you don’t mind-

Semans: Well, that was kind of complicated. That was far along in life. She and my father broke up; and it was a pretty bitter, terrible thing because it was a total shock to her. And of course we didn’t know if that had anything to do with her breakdown. But she became extremely depressed, walked the floor constantly. And so my grandmother, her mother, called Dr. [Frederic] Hanes whom she thought so much of. He was really the second-we also knew the first-but the second professor of medicine, chairman of medicine at Duke. And my grandmother knew him from all kinds of ways. He touched a lot of areas of life, and she thought so much of all the doctors at Duke. And she asked him if he would go up and see her. She lived in New York. And so he went up, and he said, “Mrs. Duke, I don’t know if I can really save her life because we’re not so far along in all these treatments for an emotional disease.” But he said, “I can get you the best person for this. And I’ll guarantee that things will be better.” And so he asked the person whom she was seeing to leave. And got her a rather famous, in those day-Foster Kennedy, who had trained at Queens Square in Dublin; he was British. And he had a marvelous reputation. He was a neurologist, and so was Dr. Hanes. He took Mother on as a patient, and it took him-in those days psychiatry was just barely, you know, over the horizon. So they did save her life, and she, I would say, in about four years, three or four years, she was able to resume a fairly normal life. She had returns, which they had expected she would have. But she was able to get treatment to help with that. So we were all very grateful to Dr. Hanes for it.

Roseberry: Can you tell me your impressions of him?

Semans: Oh, well, he was just an icon. I think it’s Ivan Brown who describes him. His coat was so starched it walked by itself practically. And he-and of course it was a great smoking thing. Everybody smoked everywhere, but no one smoked in his presence. That was not so much in the consciousness of the evils of smoking as it was courtesy to him, as he commanded courtesy. He was very handsome, all the Hanes brothers were. They were rather famous, all of them. They came from Winston-Salem. And I’ve always felt he didn’t get half enough real recognition at Duke. He left his fortune, such as it was, to Duke Medical School and to-in two ways. I think part of it was to the dean, and part of it went to the chairman of Internal Medicine. And he left his beautiful collection of Johnsoniana and some of the other great rare books to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He was always taking an orchid or something to somebody, some patient. He thought so much of flowers. And he’s the person, of course, who introduced the whole idea to my grandmother and then to my mother, especially to my mother, walked the whole areas where the gardens are, and persuaded them that gardens should be there instead of the lake, which was going to be too expensive anyway. And he just was, you know, always for flowers. The whole family was that way, too. See, one of his brothers was head of the Wachovia Bank and became head of the American Bankers Association. Another one was the Secretary of the Treasury. It could have been Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. I’m not sure. That was John. Another one was head of a dyeing and finishing company in Winston-Salem. Another one was a very prominent businessman, Jim Hanes, who-I’m not sure what, but he was head of a company, too. They were all extremely bright, successful-it was a fabulous family. And mostly raised, as I understand it, by Mother Hanes, as they called her, who expected a lot of them. And I think Mr. Hanes must have died early. I just don’t know that story. But Dr. Frederic Hanes and Mrs. Hanes, you know, for whom the Hanes House is named at Duke; she was a very prominent nurse at Johns Hopkins where he came from. They reared, and I don’t know how many years and so forth, their brother’s child. They had no children of their own. But when Gordon’s father, Jim, died, there was a-no, excuse me. Gordon’s father was Jim, but his mother died. And I think she may have died in childbirth. I’ll have to look all that up. But there was a lot of-I think Jim was bitter about it or something. Anyway, he let Dr. Fred Hanes and his wife kind of rear Gordon for a while. And they all, you know, felt deeply grateful for it. So it’s a real-I don’t know what you’d call it-a cadre of family and friends in Winston-Salem that goes on today. It’s an amazing family in all ways. And they have built, they have helped-two or three families have built Winston-Salem; there’s no question about it, and the Hanes had a lot to do with it.

Roseberry: So did the Duke family and the Hanes family interact?

Semans: Well, not much except for Dr. Fred in those days. They knew each other. But until my husband and Phil Hanes, who was Mr. Ralph Hanes’s son, got together, there was not much pickup in there. But they became very great friends because of the School of the Arts, and I continued to see them, too. So there wasn’t a whole lot of exchange because of generations and that sort of thing. And my mother lived in New York.

Roseberry: Okay. Well, I wonder if you could tell me about the Department of Psychiatry; I understand that you became involved in and interested in-.

Semans: You know, I read that. But there’s something a little bit wrong about that.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: I’ve always been interested in it, and I followed some of the people. But I was never-you know, I never knew any of the innards or anything like that, the inner pieces of it. I knew Dr. Leslie Hohman very well; we were very good friends. Both my first husband [Josiah Trent] and Jim [Semans] and I knew Dr. Hans Lowenbach very well because our children went to school together. And we used to go and visit him. And you know, the four of us, the Trents and the Lowenbachs, knew each other very well. But I don’t quite know how the gentleman who’s writing that book [Dr. Walter Campbell; Foundations for Excellence] got all this, because I was never really involved with the Department of Psychiatry. He must have put that together because of the Dr. Hanes thing. But I never questioned it because I knew that they-I thought there was much too much of that in there, because I really wasn’t involved. (laughter)

Roseberry: Okay. Well, this is a good place to clear that up.

Semans: Yes, it is. I’d like to have been. And I was always looking at it because I was so interested in that it mature-you know. I was so happy, for instance, when Dr. Brodie came, because I knew that he was going to do a great job. And there wasn’t much, I’d have to say I thought, I’m not sure that that’s right, but he brought psychopharmacology into the department, and that we needed badly. And I think this was his great-and then, of course, Dr. [Ewald] Busse, whom I never knew that well, but there again, our children knew each other very well. He, I think, I’m not sure-he was a great organizer and a very wonderful man. And he did a lot to reorganize psychiatry, I think, and do a lot for the department.

Roseberry: Um-hm.

Semans: But when Keith came, he brought a new dimension. And I think Dr. Busse probably brought him. I’m not sure. I don’t know any of that history there. But from then on, as of now, it’s a very good department. And it was quite-and I don’t want to say neglected, but it was a very slowly growing department in the early days. I’m not sure why.

Roseberry: Were you able to support it at all? You’d mentioned that you kind of watched it from-

Semans: Oh, yeah, because there would be no way for me to support it. I wouldn’t have any money in that sort of thing.

Roseberry: Okay, okay.

Semans: So that’s why there’s something absolutely wrong about that. And I thought maybe they might have let me see that whole thing again, but I didn’t. I’ve seen it once. But I know that they did a lot of paring down of that history. So I hope they corrected some of it. I don’t know where he got that idea.

Roseberry: Well, maybe I’ll ask you then about Dr. Brodie, you mentioned him. In later years, did you-?

Semans: We’ve always been very good friends, and he helped me in a marvelous way, sort of helped save one of our children once. I don’t want to go into it.

Roseberry: Sure.

Semans: But he went out of his way. He is a wonderful one-to-one person, I would have to say, and we’ve been very good friends. And Jim and myself and his wife and Keith, very, very good friends.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: And I know that there were some ups and downs, and there were some jealousies, and I think it came out in this book. But you know, it all turned out all right in the long run. And I was always very sorry about some of that. But I didn’t get involved at all. In fact for a while I didn’t even know it was going on.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: I think it’s better to stay out of that sort of thing. (laughter) But I’ll always be grateful to Dr. Brodie. And I feel about him the way Mrs. Kreps always did. Did you get anything about Mrs. Kreps in any of these things?

Roseberry: No, I don’t know her.

Semans: Well, he sort of saved them, too, from a lot of trouble.

Roseberry: Oh, okay.

Semans: And he brought Dr. Kreps, Mrs. Kreps’s son, they’re both Dr. Kreps, but Dr. Clifford Kreps-Clifton Kreps. They had a terrible situation in which Dr. Brodie stepped in and helped him back on his feet.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: And that’s the way I feel about him. He’s just a true friend. So that’s it.

Roseberry: I wanted to ask you then about Dr. Trent, if I could.

Semans: His-?

Roseberry: About Dr. Trent.

Semans: Well, you see he went to the University of Pennsylvania.

Roseberry: Uh-huh.

Semans: And he really loved it, and he was very close to the librarian there, and he became very interested in the history of medicine. And he was a great admirer of a man called-a lot of pathologists would know this-Dr. Krumbhaar. I think-we’ll have to spell Dr. Krumbhaar’s name. I think it’s K-r-u-m-b-h-a-r, but I’m not sure. And he was very powerful in the history of medicine, and he also had Dr. David Reisman, R-e-i-s-m-a-n. And they were sort of very strong in applying or incorporating the history of medicine in their courses. And so he picked that up. And then he was very close to the librarian in the medical school, and I have to think of her name, too. Frances. So he had a distinctive feeling about medical history. Then he applied to several internships after graduating. And we decided-I was going to drop out of my senior year, and we would get married. He applied to several places. And of course Hopkins didn’t take people who were married, although I understand a good many people were, and then they’d live out in Bethesda or something, and then say they weren’t married. (Roseberry chuckles) But anyway, if you played it straight, you’d have to apply to a few of the places who would. And Henry Ford Hospital took married interns, and he got the position, and we lived in Detroit for a year. And while we were there, we both started our collections. I didn’t get a job at first, and I never did because of what ensued. We were just going to be there a year. So I used to walk around certain parts of Detroit, and I ran into-while I was walking through the Fisher Building, which is still there, I guess-and there was a book dealer who had a little kiosk in a way in the middle of the great big walkway. It’s like a huge mall, the Fisher Building, straight through the building. It’s a little European-looking. And I just happened to run through a lot of things, and I saw this sort of somewhat damaged copy of Leaves of Grass. I was very inspired by my professor, Charles Anderson at Duke, and I loved Whitman. So I began to talk to this man, and I found out it was very reasonable, and I said, “I think I’m going to get this, but what I really am looking for is some medical texts, rare medical texts.” And he said, “Well, you certainly came to the right city, because there is a couple downtown, Henry and Ida Schuman, who are probably the best book dealer of medical history books in the country. And so why don’t you just go down there and look around?” Which I did. And they were right off Woodward, which is the main thoroughfare through downtown Detroit. And I went off, and I looked, and I went up to I guess it was Mrs. Schuman, and I asked her if she had anything of [Sir William] Osler’s Way of Life. And what else did I ask for? I can’t remember. But anyway, she said, “Oh, yes, we have.” And so I got it, and I said, “I’d like to bring my husband down sometime. He’s an intern at Ford.” And she said something about-no, I guess it was her husband said later, because we became best friends, the four of us-“I thought it was unusual for a person of her age, a girl, coming down and asking for (chuckles) Osler’s Way of Life.” And we all became very, very close friends. And Joe started his collecting of medical books then. And, you know, I don’t know if you’ve been to the Trent Library; that’s where it all began, in Detroit. And then, as I say, we became very good friends. He was an unusual person. He never finished college, but as several people said-Mr. Schuman-because he grew up in the Depression, lived under the subway, I mean the elevated trains in New York with a very poor family. And he just really had to get out and shovel, you know, very early. But he spent all his working hours reading. He’s one of the best-read persons I’ve ever known. And we would spend hours on Joe’s days off talking about politics and Jewish émigrés and the Jewish ways of life and just about everything-and especially medical history. So Joe Trent read a lot of medical history, he really did know it. And then he applied to Duke and got a position on [Deryl] Hart’s service toward the residency. And he kept up his collection. The thing is they-well, then he had this disastrous happening of getting a lymphoma, and he lived ten years with it. He was 4-F in the army because, you know, this was a shadow over his health, and they wouldn’t take him. And so Dr. Hart, in a very noble way, gave him most of the chest work to do. Because, you see, the departments were pretty well decimated in those days because so many of them went with the 65th General Hospital. And I remember he and Ivan Brown worked for quite a while on the blood bank. And then Ivan took it over and ran it until he went with the 65th and then when he came back. But anyway, he did a lot of the-Joe Trent did a lot of the chest work. And that’s why he was appointed head of chest. But he wouldn’t accept it. When he was getting-I’ve forgotten when it was-anyway, Dr. Hart offered him the head of Thoracic Surgery at Duke. And he said, “Well, Dr. Hart, I can’t take it unless I go away and study more about chest work, because we haven’t had very much tuberculosis here.” And in those days tuberculosis was one of the big condemning illnesses. It was really terrible. And there were a lot of things that we just didn’t have a chance to do much because we didn’t have that many patients with that. And he said, “I really need to do that.” He had done, I think, one of the first patent ductus operations here. But he said, “That’s all very well, but I need to go away.” So Dr. Hart gave him two opportunities: he could go to St. Louis with Everett Graham and with John Alexander at the University of Michigan. So that’s where we went. A lot of people said they couldn’t imagine how in the world with lymphoma hanging over his head, how he would have the courage to do it, but he did. We got through a year and a half of it, and then he had a return, and we had to come back. And of course, when all of the people at Michigan said that he was the best-trained of any of the people there because he had had so much operating experience. John Alexander was a remarkable man, really very amazing. He had come from the University of Pennsylvania himself and was considered the man especially in tuberculosis and that kind of thoracic surgery. And it was an interesting situation, because he was also quite a not soc-he’s kind of a powerful social figure, especially in Philadelphia where he came from. He married also a fairly influential social person. They lived in a perfectly wonderful modern house in Ann Arbor. Had no children. And these associates-they were called fellows, I guess-sort of stuck together. They came from everywhere just to get the same kind of fellowship experience that Joe needed, that he felt that he needed, you know. So we came back, and he was operated on. It was kind of an emergency because he had a return of it, and Dr. [Barnes] Woodhall operated; Dr. Hart operated on him the first time. And Dr. Woodhall operated on him. And you know, it was kind of bleak, but he went right back to work and set up the department. And he operated some, but he eventually dropped out. But in the meantime, he had amassed many of these manuscripts and so on from Henry Schuman. And he in the last-I don’t know, he almost operated-we were at a medical meeting when he had his last illness. Dr. Woodhall drove us back. And he was gone in a day. So he really operated on and was chair of that department or head of that department or division, I would say, right to the end. And he wanted his books to go to Duke. The story there is cute: I had them in the house. We always had them in the house, in the library. And we even had a safe for the best things, you know, for the manuscripts and so on. And one winter I found that we had bookworms developing, which frightens anybody with rare books or manuscripts to pieces. So I had the whole place fumigated, and for that we had to move out and so on. But it was worth it because it stopped, of course.

And so finally-I had talked to Dr. [Wilburt] Davison quite a bit. He was kind of like a big father to both of us. And because my husband had gone to Princeton, and anybody who went to Princeton was just right for Dave. And it’s really true. He just favored people from Princeton, he loved it so much. And he was just a marvelous person. He told me, for example, that he felt he should warn me that my cousin, Doris Duke, the one thing she would not accept was anyone in the family suggesting anything to her. He said, “I think I want to tell you that, because though you don’t see her very often, you might think about saying something to her about a need or something.” He said, “Don’t do it.” And I never did. And we always got along well. We never saw each other very much. But it was that kind of thing that he would do for us. So anyway, he assumed that I was going to give the books to Duke, and he told people that I was. And I had not really said that I would officially. But anyway, he decided that he’d pick out a place for them to go. He wanted them given during his tenure. And so we all went over, and it was a really very funny experience. He got Miss Farrar, whom I used to help a lot, you know, the librarian; and Benjamin Powell, who was the librarian down on campus, a very close personal friend; and I don’t remember who else, but himself and myself. And he decided that they should be in the Bell Building. Well, Dr. [Joseph] Beard’s group was working on avian glaucoma, I think, and the air conditioning had broken. And we went to the door, and the density and the odor and everything was so bad that Dr. Benjamin Powell said, “Dr. Davison, this will not work. We cannot have books in a situation like this.” " Okay," he said, “we’ll find another place.” So they were eventually put down in the old library. Now, I don’t know if you know where that is. But I don’t know really what’s there now. But it’s under the back stairs. You know as you go in from the campus, in where they have those gold letters up on the wall with the founders’ names, you go along, and the elevator’s on the right. You go along just a few feet, and there’s a pair of stairs there. Go down the stairs, then you go down a little kind of ramp, very short, and that’s where the library was. And it was a really busy place. I’ll bet it was used a whole lot more than the library is now. But anyway, so they walled off a piece of that library and put the Trent Room in there, and we had a very close friend-we gave the English paneling. It’s sort of like it is now. So then a lot of people came. I don’t know if you saw the recent-oh, it’s over there; I’ll show it to you. We had a big dedication with a lot of very prominent people here who were-like Dr. [John F.] Fulton who was a big neurologist at Yale. He was the speaker. And he was also a terrific medical historian and a great friend of Dr. [Harvey] Cushing’s. So it was exciting. As I remember-I don’t think so, though. I know we had the board of the History of Medicine and their annual meeting here once. But I don’t think it was that time. Anyway, you know, Dr. Davison was one of the best friends we ever had. He was just fabulous. And he reached out. You know, he had this plain office, absolutely the plainest office: a table, a chair, a couple of chairs on the side, nothing upholstered, everything just plain. And on the wall was every medical student’s picture. And he had a mirror, and somehow would know when they’d come in the outer office, and he’d look up and see them, and he would call every one of them by name. And he was just-he was the medical school. And there’s never been anybody like him, you know, just since. I mean, they couldn’t even copy it, because he’s just larger than life. And you know that picture of him with his pipe and the open shirt and so on, it’s just like him. He lumbered around the medical school like that. He’d just pop in anywhere. And there’s very little of that anymore, I mean, people just opening a door and saying, Hi, and how are you getting along? That sort of thing. He knew everybody. Fabulous person! Anyway, you know, that’s the broad outline of the whole thing. Joe Trent always respected Duke particularly because he came from a-Penn was laden with tradition, the oldest medical school, you know, and one of the first hospitals in America was there. It was run by groups of very outstanding physicians who went way back socially as well as medically and so on. And they were fabulous people. But for some reason or other, they all hung on to the older standards of medical education, and there were not these outreaches for I would say hands-on. And Duke became known very early for being a hands-on place. And many people wanted to come here. They still want to get here because of the curriculum, which is different. I mean, you get to do research earlier. You get to do patient care earlier. And that’s why Joe Trent wanted to come back here so badly.

Roseberry: So that’s what you mean by hands-on, more for the medical students to-?

Semans: Getting medical students to have more care of patients earlier and also doing-having more emphasis on research, too. And they’ve always been known for so-called hands-on medicine. So you know, other things may occur to me. But I mean, that’s the broad outline anyway. (chuckles)

Roseberry: Now, was Dr. Trent involved with any of the conscientious objectors?

Semans: Oh, he was; that’s right. Because he was here and was one of the senior medical people, he was asked to take those on.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: And it meant keeping up with them, seeing that they, well, were not mistreated. Because, you know, I’ll never forget one day, and this had nothing to do-you see, we had a German prisoners’ camp at Fort Bragg-I mean, at-what is it out here? Way up beyond Creedmoor; I’ll think of it in a minute. But I ran into a gentleman who was encamped there, a German, since. And they would come in, busloads of those people, would come in and help, because we were short of help. And I remember hearing one day that somebody-I don’t know which way it went. But I remember an episode between one of the nurses and a German prisoner of war man. And I don’t know. I think someone shut a door in his face and hurt him some way or other. It was not-it wasn’t disastrous or anything. But there was that kind of thing that could go on. And he wanted to make sure that the-he didn’t have any charge of those people. But he did have charge of the conscientious objectors. They were wonderful people. And one or two of them-well, one just retired from Duke about three years ago; and another one was in physical therapy at Carolina; one of them became one of the assistant directors of the hospital. Wonderful people. And then one of the most outstanding ones is Robert Blake who lives in the Forest at Duke and has done these marvelous watercolors of Durham. I don’t know if you saw them when they were-well, these were wonderful people. And of course they had to undergo a rigorous examination. You couldn’t just say, I’m a conscientious objector. You had to prove why you were. Now, it was very interesting. A person like Robert Blake, for example, I think he was a Mennonite, but I’m not certain. And you’d grow up with this ingrained in you that you will not fight anybody, sort of like Quakers, some Amish people are that way, too, and one of them was-at that time there was a band called Freddy Martin’s Band. Freddy Martin was ballroom dance-very popular dance band. And this fellow Stuart Groshan was one of his singers, a very popular singer, but he was a CO. And we always felt that he was straining terribly to remain this way because he was brought up as a Methodist, an anti-war Methodist. And I don’t know-I’d love to know what became of him because we had him over to the house, and we liked him a lot. He was a wonderful person. But he didn’t come from the tradition that the Amish and the Mennonites and people like that. And we thought it was very hard for him because he was from a mainstream sort of family. But anyway, Joe was in charge of the COs. They were marvelous people.

Roseberry: Was Dr. Lyman was involved in that, or am I mistaken in that?

Semans: Dr. Lyman in Psychiatry?

Roseberry: Yes.

Semans: He might have been, but I don’t know.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: I just really don’t know. He probably was, but I don’t know.

Roseberry: Okay. Thank you. Let’s see. Well, I wonder if you could tell me about your work in the Social Services Department.

Semans: Well, that was-I can’t tell you a whole lot.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: But there was a very, very beloved person called Reba Hobgood in Durham who-everybody in Durham loved that lady. And she-in fact I think one of her relatives is Jim-oh! Anyway, right now he’s head of Scholarship and Financial Aid at Duke. I’m not sure, but I think they were related. But anyway, Reba Hobgood just took care of everybody. And Duke Hospital looked so different then that you wouldn’t even, you know, wouldn’t even know what it was like. But she-you came in the front door and went to the right, and Social Services was there, and she ran it. Now, I don’t mean with an iron hand, but she had everybody, you know, kind of answering to her because she was-and she was so kind to the people who came in. And these were mostly people who had very great difficulty paying. And you had to interview them and find out why it was difficult to pay, not to pay-difficult to pay. And I worked for a very bright-everybody was scared of her. Perry-we’ll have to put that a blank because it’ll take me a long time. P-e-r-r-y. She later married a urologist in Charlotte. But she was head of Social Services, Medical Social Services. Reba Hobgood had no medical degree that I think of. But she was sort of the person whom you would pay for coming in. She would analyze how much the patient would have to pay or whether they could go free and that sort of thing. Perry was a very splendidly trained social worker, and I kind of worked for her. And with no training at all. But you know, they had people like that who would learn something from it. And I stayed there I think until our first child was on the way or coming, that sort of thing. But it was an eye-opener, first of all because the admissions was so different. I mean, now it’s so computerized you hardly know who’s there, you know. It’s just machine-ridden. But in those days there was a lot of personal care. You couldn’t do it now, I know that. But it was a very-I mean, you learned a lot about all across the United States but especially all across North Carolina about how people, what their backgrounds were and what they needed. Mrs. Hobgood would find out, you know, if they needed any extra medication and helped them out that way. And she’d give them lunch and give them a little tab saying go over to so-and-so and get lunch. She’d find out where the ones should stay who needed to have, you know, a place for the night. She was just a remarkable person. And Perry knew exactly what questions to ask as far as social services were concerned. So you got a very idea of how the economy of the state, especially of North Carolina, was from just working there. And then you’d get to know everybody in the hospital. It was a great opportunity. And of course I had a great opportunity, too, because until the children came, that was all during Dr. Trent’s thing, I would come over and sit at the labs at night and go on in and have cereal when all the kids, all the students and interns, would gather and have food at midnight and so on. So it was one way we got to see each other, because in those days one just did exactly what one was told! And if you didn’t get there on time in the morning, a nurse would report you to the doctors! There was a lot of, you know, a lot of-you didn’t have any opportunity to parry with the people about the rules. And it was usually every other night, all night. But sometimes you’d have to work longer. I cannot understand how they can work on this timing thing. And there are a lot of doctors who don’t understand it either. But there’s nothing you can say. But you go sometimes weekends without-. And I expected it, so it wasn’t anything strange to me. But now there’s a lot of, you know, much shorter days. But that’s the way time goes and life goes, I guess.

Roseberry: Well, it sounds like it was fairly strict. But you’ve also mentioned that there was a family feeling as well.

Semans: Oh, yes, oh, yes. And you know, the interns would sit down, and they wouldn’t mind my sitting there, and they’d discuss, you know, various troubles they were having. And especially I would go over on the nights when Joe had to be on and stay to about midnight or one o’clock and then come on back. (phone rings in background) And it was a great opportunity to know a lot about the hospital. That’s why I felt so close to them, you know.

Roseberry: Was there anyone in particular that you remember?

Semans: Oh, just about everybody. I mean, you know, they were all great. And see, those people who came from Hopkins were all young, relatively young for starting a medical school. And they worked together, and they all respected each other. And the people who came in from outside became part of it because they realized these people were all buddies, if you know what I mean. And it was like a family operating the whole thing. And every once in a while one of the residents would go through all his eight-year residency and come on the staff. So that’s another way that you got to know them. because they were there all that time. And you’d just become part of the whole thing, there’s no question. I don’t think you can do that anymore. Now, there may-I don’t know very much about house staff now, but they may have their way of doing it, but that’s the way it happened in those days. And, see, I don’t know if they have rooms for the interns now or not. But some of the residents lived above the operating room so they could be called at any time of night. So it was very much a family thing. You couldn’t expect it now, I’m sure. It’s one of those things.

Roseberry: Well, that Social Services Department, I understand that that was started with funds by Doris Duke, is that-?

Semans: That’s what I’m told, yes. I think that’s true.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: I think she started that first one.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: I don’t know if it was endowed or not. I really have never known about that. (sound of thunder) I guess we’re getting some-

Roseberry: I guess we’re getting some rain. Okay. And specifically what did you do in that Social Services Department?

Semans: Well, I think I said, but I was sort of under Perry.

Roseberry: And you kind of-?

Semans: And she-I mean, these people would come through, and then I had to take their histories as to-especially as to what they were able to pay and what their backgrounds were and who their physician, (phone rings in background) referring physician, was. I really took a history of that kind. Not medical, but you know.

Roseberry: And you mentioned a midnight meal.

Semans: Well, you know, the dining room or cafeteria stays open I think all night for the students. And so anytime during the night you can get dry cereal and milk, that sort of thing. So they’d go down and-if they were on all night, they’d go down and get some cereal.

Roseberry: Okay. Great. Thank you. I wanted to move if I could then to Lincoln Hospital. (thunder in the background) And maybe if I could ask you about your family’s involvement, just kind of trace that back. I know that several generations were involved.

Semans: (speaking at same time) Yes, I wish I had [Preston] Reynolds’s book here, because I always understood that Mr. Washington Duke after the war, Civil War, was thinking about doing a monument to the blacks in the Civil War, something like that. Maybe-I don’t know what, but some kind of a monument. And somebody else said, “Well, why don’t we build a hospital?” And of course it was all segregated then. And he said, “Well, I’ll give you the land.” Now, I’m not sure that that’s the way it is. We’ll have to look that up. But from then on, the family was interested in the hospital. And I’m sure there were donations. I don’t really know. I can’t be a big help about the history. But my mother was a member of the board of trustees, and then I was for quite a while. And I think after Mother that was it. But we were always, you know, very much involved in Lincoln. And the foundation, the Duke Endowment, I think gave them a good many grants. And then the nursing school was named the A.B. Duke Nursing School, and that was for my mother’s brother [Angier Biddle Duke]. And you know, Duke doctors, a good many of them, helped a lot with Lincoln Hospital. And they would go and have rounds. Dr. Bayard Carter, Dr. Lennox Baker, a good many of them. Dr. Max Schiebel, who’s still living. A good many people like that. Dr. Everett Bugg, I think. A good many of our doctors would look at patients, see patients, do rounds, that kind of thing. And our roles on the board, my mother and me, I think were mostly-I meanm I can’t really rememb

er, but a lot of it was involved with getting money for it. And backing up with reorganizing the clinics and that sort of thing. And my mother was just devoted to Lincoln Hospital. And we just hated for it to go, but it was just one of those things. And it was led by some great people. Some of the African-American leadership on the board was just tremendous. And that’s where we met a lot of our African-American friends. So it was just a marvelous thing. But Dr. Charlie [Charles] Watts, of course, was the first board-certified American Board of Surgery, the first one. And I don’t know if it was the state, but it certainly was the first one in Durham. He was the person who carried it forward and moved it into [Durham] Regional [Hospital]. And I think we all hated to see it go. But it wasn’t-it just wasn’t working financially. Also, of course, it just shouldn’t have been past a certain time. It had to be beforehand. But when the law changed, there was no reason to have a segregated hospital like that. So everybody had to think newly about the whole business. And that’s why they took it down. And then we have that marvelous community health center, and that’s a blessing. So I don’t know how that’s going. I heard someone say that they were short of funds. But I don’t know.

Roseberry: I wanted to ask then about that integration of Lincoln and Watts, just kind of your perspective on how that-.

Semans: Well, that particular area I get very mixed up with because there were a lot of changes. I would have to say that I know I changed my vote at one time, which a lot of people-I almost lost friends over it. And I can’t remember exactly what the situation was. There was a lot of jealousy. There was a lot of feeling on the part of Watts Hospital people. I can’t really tell you how that-. I was always sorry, and I think that John Wheeler, the great black leader-a wonderful person, wonderful friend-and Dr. Hart I think also and myself, we all felt that that regional hospital should be in the middle of Durham. But there was a lot of politics. And there was some land out there that somebody wanted. And I think there was, you know-and the county commissioners wanted it out there. And so I think it would have been wonderful because then we would have had a lot more walking-in people in downtown; they’d go downtown, eat lunch or whatever, then go for their exams and so forth, instead of having to drive all the way out there. I still think it was a bad idea. So I got kind of disaffected. And then-I don’t remember what was that year? I can’t remember the year. But anyway, I was only involved in it insofar as that committee that made the decisions about it, operated it. So I didn’t follow up particularly. And I was on the hospital bond issue. I helped get the bonds passed. And there was a lot of exchange between the Lincoln people and the Watts people. And people protecting the turf; there was a lot of turf business there. But in the long run I think Charlie Watts had as much to do with fixing it as anybody. He was a very savvy guy. I wish I had more. I tell you, the thing to do is if you can ever get a look at, oh, Preston Reynolds-have you seen her-?

Roseberry: The book on Watts Hospital.

Semans: Yes. Well, she’s written a whole one on Lincoln.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: And she’s trying to get it published.

Roseberry: Oh, okay.

Semans: And she hasn’t got it published yet. But if you could get her, I think you might see if she has anything about my having done something. Because I wasn’t able to give her very much either. I was involved up to a point, but not beyond that point. And I had a lot of children then, (chuckles) and I just didn’t have the time.

Roseberry: Right. (phone rings) Well, I also wanted to ask if there were other health care issues with African Americans that you were involved with or able to influence or support or-?

Semans: I’d have to think about that. I don’t believe so. But of course, a lot of that comes with the Duke Endowment thing because I’ve always been on the health part of that. So I don’t think there were any particular issues on that.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: I think.

Roseberry: Thank you. Well, then I also thought that I would ask about Dr. Davison, and I understand that there was a possibility that he might become the president of Duke-is that-?

Semans: Well, there was some talk of it.

Roseberry: Uh-huh.

Semans: And I think there again-let’s see, where is that written up? Because there again-

Roseberry: I read that I believe in Robert Durden’s book [Lasting Legacy to the Carolinas].

Semans: Yes, some of that’s in there. Yes. A lot of it occurred because he had been very close to Dr. Paul Gross, and you probably know about Dr. Gross. And unfortunately or, you know, to a certain extent fortunately, but he was very close to the Duke Endowment. And a friend of his was employed by the Duke Endowment. And Dr. Davison was on the Endowment, very close to Paul Gross. And I think that the university felt that while he would be a fabulous president, that (sound of thunder in background) he had gotten himself too close to the Gross faction, which was a very bitter thing at Duke and not pleasant at all and very damaging to Dr. [A. Hollis] Edens, who was shoved out. But at the same time that he was shoved out, the trustees said: Well, you go up one way, and you have to come back the other way, and you’d better let both of them go. So Dr. Gross was relieved of his vice chairmanship-vice presidency. But of course he was kept on because he had tenure. And you can’t lose you tenure unless something-unless they can prove something. And they didn’t want to-I don’t think they wanted to beat him out. He was a very distinguished chemist and had lots of friends and power and so on. But I really think that they felt that Dr. Davison was too close to that faction. And I think that’s why they asked Dr. Hart to do it. And it was, you know, overall-I’d have loved to have seen Dr. Davison president. And I think he would’ve been great, and I don’t think he would’ve been influenced by Dr. Gross. But Dr. Hart was so good that I knew that- I mean, I felt just as close-not as close to Dr. Hart, maybe, because he was boss and was always the professor. I never called him Deryl, ever! And, you know, he was the professor. And he just was a great president. And he was interim, you know, and then he became full president because he had been so good. And he tied up all the wounds, and I think integration came under his watch. And I think he thought it was late, just as I did. And you know, I just think he was great. But I think Dr. Davison would have been equally good. But I could understand because he had been so close to Dr. Gross. And Dr. Gross really had cut the ground out from under Dr. Edens, and that was pretty awful. So that’s all I really know because I don’t know any of the back room stuff. But I know that’s in the large picture that’s what happened.

Roseberry: Was there-how would you characterize the relationship between the university and the medical center? And maybe at this time or maybe in other times as well, how would-?

Semans: Well, I think that the university’s always been in awe of the medical center. And for a long, long time, the medical center was better known than anything, any part of Duke. But Duke came up to it all right, and I think that probably the only real issue has ever been funding, money.

Roseberry: (softly) Right.

Semans: And of course, the relationship between the president of the university and the chancellor of the medical school, and that’s always been an issue. And in some cases I don’t think-in the early days, of course, with Dr. [William Preston] Few, he appointed Dr. Davison, brought him personally down here. So I think it was just excellent there, and they all helped the medical center rise, and it rose so fast. But I think-who came? Oh, Dr. Edens came after Dr. Few. And I’m not sure. I think that Dr. Edens was a much more conservative person than we’ve known since. And he was-I don’t know how close he was to the medical school, I don’t think very. And it’s gone up and down. And in some cases the medical school does kind of (phone rings in background) outshine certainly in-probably in publicity and money and that sort of thing. But I don’t think it’s been too bad. I think in late years the president has wanted to have more of the chancellor reporting directly to him or her. And you have to be very careful of that because the president doesn’t necessarily understand medical care. I mean, it’s a totally different world. And sometimes the funding would get very complicated between them. So it’s important that they get along. All I know is right now Dr. [Richard] Brodhead and Dr. [Victor] Dzau are getting along very well. So that’s probably what it should be. And even if it seems to, I think, even if it the medical school seems to get more money maybe than the other, you have to be able to allow for the fact that anything in medicine is expensive and probably always will be. But I mean, that’s great simplification of the whole matter. But I think they’ve always been in awe of the medical school. And a lot of people think that they’d like to run it. I’m sure of that. And I hope that never happens. I don’t know. Past that, I can’t say.

Roseberry: Okay. Well, we talked a little bit about Dr. Davison on the endowment, and I wonder if you could-.

Semans: Well, he was just a great help, you know. He could tell us what the university needed and what medical care was needed in the country. He was just an ideal person to have. And luckily we’ve got Dr. [William] Anlyan now. And before that we didn’t have any medical people. And it made a difference, because we support, what is it? Two hundred and fifty hospitals, something like that, and medical care at Duke somewhat, and we give to the other medical schools, too, as they come up in projects. And we just needed people to, medical people, to guide us. Now, we have wonderful people on the staff who aren’t necessarily doctors. I don’t think we’ve ever-well, Dr. Watson Rankin was. And that is true. He was on the original board, I think. So Dr. Davison was not the first. But I’d have to look that up. I’m not certain. He guided us, Dr. Rankin did. But Dr. Davison was great about telling us what the importance of the grant requests were and so forth. Just terrific to have someone with that kind of expertise and knowledge on the board.

Roseberry: What sorts of things was he concerned with?

Semans: Well, I don’t think there was any one thing. Just medical care in general. You know, we don’t specialize. Now, now and then, lately, we have been doing more-for instance, we got behind nursing about four or five years ago and gave a big push to nursing. And we-let’s see. Emergency rooms, computerization, development, and so on. But I think in those days there wasn’t any particular specialty or-it was just health care in general. And when these requests come up, he would discuss them as they came, was just an invaluable help.

Roseberry: I understand that he was concerned with general practitioners as well? With kind of the tension between general practitioners and specialization.

Semans: Well, see, I don’t think I knew that he was. But I’m sure he was, because of course Duke was very strong in specialization and still is. And in fact, that’s the reason they’re trying to reorganize-right this minute they’re trying to reorganize general practice and family physicians. So it’s age-old, and I expect he was, you know. I don’t know anything particularly about his involvement in that.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: But I’ll ask Dr. Anlyan when I see him.

Roseberry: Okay.

Semans: Have you interviewed him yet?

Roseberry: We talked a while ago, yes.

Semans: Yeah, well, I need to ask him about that.

Roseberry: I probably need to do a follow-up.

Semans: I’ll ask him.

Roseberry: Okay. Thank you. Did you have a working relationship with Dr. Estes at all?

Semans: Well, I’ve worked with him some. But I imagine-now, he would know about Dr. Davison and general practice.

Roseberry: Sure. Okay.

Semans: Because he’s the one that-Dr. Anlyan and I have been talking about this whole business of they’ve shut down the family practice program temporarily, because I think they want to reorganize it. So I’ll pick up some stuff from them.

Roseberry: Okay. Well, you mentioned Dr. Anlyan. I wonder if you could speak about him as well. Maybe (Semans speaking at same time; unintelligible)

Semans: Oh, yes, well, we work together all the time on the Duke Endowment. And we’re kind of like sister and brother, really. (Roseberry laughs) We exchange all kinds of ideas and that sort of thing. He was-as someone said the other day, you’d see him everywhere. You don’t see anybody-I mean, after he gave up the mantle, you never saw heads of hospital much around. But he was a good walk-around person. And he’d suddenly come into someplace just like Dr. Davison did and see how things were operating. He always had great big plans for everything. And always been interested in universal health care. Still working on it. He started the City of Medicine, of course, with Watts Hill and some of those other people. And always pushing medical care, always pushing the medical school. And he was always involved nationally. He also was interested, though, very, very much interested in clinical care. And he never wanted to get too far into just a research institution. He wouldn’t let this become a research institution. He had to watch it all the time. Because there are those who just want all the money to go to research. And because I guess I’ve been here so long, people will come and tell me about that kind of thing. And we lose people, some of the best people, because they don’t get enough for their particular departments. And so Dr. Anlyan was also interested in the departments having enough money to hold their clinical people. So he cares a lot about the place. In fact, a lot of people said, you know, Duke was his family, and I think he felt that way.

Roseberry: Well, I got ahead of my own questions. I wanted to ask you about Dr. Semans. I know that you and I and he sat down together. But I wanted to ask you in this instance a little bit about his work as well, too.

Semans: Well, he came up to not only do, you know, urologic practice; but he brought another dimension. And I’d have to get Dr. [Saul] Boyarsky to describe it to you. He brought another dimension to urology, which is functional urology. A great deal of male problems. And this extended into family medicine and to the health of families and all that kind of thing. And he became known as that. But really he was a little ahead of his time because there were a lot of things that you couldn’t talk about around Duke. In those days, you know, sex wasn’t every other person’s word. But unfortunately in urology and somewhat in GYN, sex is a large part of it. And he ran into many, many sex problems as a urologist in private practice. And he did a lot of research in it, and that’s what he was brought up sort of to do. And he was able to get pretty far with it. He went to-he did one or two big trips and gave his paper that became very well known, this particular paper, in about five languages. And he would speak in that language. He studied it phonetically. And then he’d have someone help him with the questions and answers. And you ought to ask (laughing) Dr. [Eric] Meyers about it in the School of Religion. When he heard about it, he couldn’t believe it. He said-you know, he studied phonetic Hebrew with somebody who is really well known in the Hebrew world at the University of Wisconsin. He said, “When I heard this, I couldn’t believe it.” He said, “He’s the only person I’ve ever known.” And he spoke in Jerusalem at the-anyway, the big institute there and gave it in Hebrew. And he gave it in Greek, Demotic Greek, you know, everyday Greek, and Finnish, German, French; I think that’s right. And he spent a long time doing it. And had a great video made of it, which we have, and we should give that to you, though, because there are several copies of it. But he said, “I know it’s a sort of taboo subject,” but he said, “Somebody has to break it down.” And he said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with embarrassing Duke.” So he made it quite clear to the department that whatever he did, he was going to be very careful about it. So the department was always great about it. Dr. [James] Glenn gave him some extra space so that he could interview patients privately. And a national magazine called him up one night (chuckles) at home. And luckily I answered the phone, and I said-and actually we were having a kind of meeting with some friends in the living room. And I said, “Could I ask you what you’re going to talk to him about, and I’ll get him to call you back?” And they told me it was about the functional urology and so on. So they said, “We’d like a follow-up on it.” And so I went and told Jim, and I’ll never forget what he said. He said, “I don’t want Duke to be all over the page. I don’t want to hurt them in any way. Just go back and tell them that it didn’t work.” And he never heard from them again. But it did work, and he had a lot of successes. But he just really enjoyed that department. It had some wonderful chairmen. And it’s the kind of department where there are very little jealousies, which is a little bit unusual. But Dr. [Edwin] Alyea sort of set the tone when he came down from Hopkins. He always had a kind of spirited group that got along well. He brought in-most of them were trained either at Carolina or at Duke, the urologists in town. And they would always come to the sessions about-oh, they had, I think they were called Journal Club. And the Journal Club people would ask all those people from town, urology people from town and Chapel Hill, to come. There was a great feeling of warmth in the department. And so then that was his particular interest urologically. And he was asked to speak all over the place about those things. And then he was asked by Governor [Terry] Sanford to be chairman of the [North Carolina] School of the Arts. And that was just like a thunderclap. He said he didn’t know where that came from. So anyway, he went over to this meeting. He was asked to be on the committee, and that was okay. He said, “Oh, sure. I’ll do that.” And then John Ehle met him coming out of the General Assembly room, and he said, “Terry’s going to ask you to be chairman of the board.” He said, “Chairman of the board? What, you’re telling me now? I don’t know that I can be.” And he said, “Let it go for now.” So then we got together after a couple of nights over in Chapel Hill, and he explained. He said, “Terry wants somebody who loves music but is not a musician and not an artist. He wants somebody who can approach the general public.” So then he asked-who was president then? I think it was Keith Brodie maybe. Anyway, the president thought that was good, and he asked Dr. Hart, and they all encouraged it because it was more, you know, interchange between the state and Duke, which has never been very cheery. (Roseberry laughs) And so he took that on. And he said, he asked me, he said, “When I can’t do it, I’ll be days in the operating room and that sort of thing.” And I said, “Well, I’ll go.” So that’s how we got involved with that. And he was chairman, grandfathered, for about fifteen years. Because in those days, there were very few rules and regs about universities and colleges and that sort of thing. They hadn’t settled down to the Board of Governors. And he was involved in that re-description of the whole thing. And so finally when it came, the Board of Governors, all of the system came in under one, the School of the Arts, all of the black colleges, predominantly black colleges, and everything but the [North Carolina] School of Science and Math, which has just come in this year. And it was a very, I must say, a very daunting experience because the great founder, Vittorio Giannini, who was the president of the thing, died after a year in office. So they had to search, and Jim had to kind of run the place for a while because of having to wait. And then we got Robert Ward who now lives at The Forest. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner. We’ve had great success all the way through. But we’ve had two sort of weak chancellors. We just got a great new one. But it really-it became sort of our family. (speaking to Doug Zinn) Oh! You’re leaving!

Zinn: Cultural Master Plan.

Semans: What?

Zinn: Durham Cultural Master Plan.

Semans: Oh, good night! (to Roseberry) Did you meet Doug?

Roseberry: Yes.

Zinn: We did. We chatted before.

Semans: Well, tell Barker, we’re all mad- (pause in recording) Right in the middle of it he said-oh. No. Dr. Giannini was still living. And he said, “We need to take our students to Europe. We need to show them how good our students are, and our students need to pick up some new culture. We’re pretty isolated here in Winston-Salem.” So we organized a kind of method through the, believe it or not, the foreign minister of Italy, whom he knew through his publisher. See, Giannini was an extraordinary composer. And everything was ready, and then he died. And it was just a terrible shock. He’d been there hardly a year as president. (phone rings; is answered in background) So Jim had to organize the whole group. And he had to, you know, get the whole thing to going. And then he said, “What are we going to do about the summer program?” And he talked it over with Governor Moore. Governor Moore succeeded Terry Sanford. And Governor Moore, he was a very conservative man, but if you got him thinking about the artistic part of it, and he had a very terrific wife who was very back of anything like this, he said, “Why don’t you keep going with this idea of going to Europe, plan it? And if you don’t have to have state funds, I’ll do all I can to see that you get over there.” And he said, “And then you can announce it on the governor’s lawn, and we’ll have a tribute to Dr. Giannini.” Which we did. It was just marvelous. And some people from Italy came, the chief counsel general and several people like that. And it was a great success. And we started. And we went over to Italy, Germany, and France with thirty-nine-something like that. And some students say it changed their lives, a good many of them say it. And it really was a success. And of course the students we took, they were so good, for instance, that in Siena, Italy, they said, These aren’t students. So you’ve got to register with the Labor Department. And we had to prove that they were students. They were that good. So have you ever heard of the Ciompi Quartet at Duke?

Roseberry: Yes.

Semans: Well, Giorgio Ciompi started it, and he was the first major violinist we had at Duke. And he was well known in Siena, Italy. And so we got permission that if we could ask Duke to let Champi go for the summer, that we could go to Siena as we planned. And so Giorgio said he’d love to do it. So for I think it was two years, maybe three, he took us, and that’s how we became very close friends, too. So he was one of Jim’s very closest friends. Died prematurely. It was terrible. But anyway. And then Jim started a lot of things. He started the Cultural Services at Duke Hospital. He got the idea that patients shouldn’t have to be in cold rooms, and especially the long-term ones shouldn’t have to just sit and watch television all day. So he brought the whole Cultural Services. And it was the first Cultural Services program in any hospital. They’ve produced a manual of how you do it. And then he started the Emerging Artists program in the Durham Arts Council. And it’s now-that’s been copied by I think it’s 96 out of our 100 counties. And what that is-I don’t know if you know about that. But it is a process by which a jury selects of all the applications from all the arts of these people who want assistance with their art are judged, and they receive a small grant at the end of each year. And it’s really turned out some rather remarkable people. And they’ve gone on to great heights, some of them. And it’s in music and literature and everything. And let me just say that, for instance, it’s like going to some special project in a camp in your particular art. Or giving money for new equipment. Or going to opening a studio and the rent and that sort of thing. Anyway, it’s been going now I’ve forgotten how many years, maybe fifteen, twenty years. So he did all kinds of stuff like that. And then also he was very interested in rehabilitation. That came from his service at McGuire General Hospital during the war. He took care of the-well, the handicapped people who came back from the front lines. They shipped them in by boat and then by train down to Norfolk. And that’s where he worked. He was in several other places, but mostly in that disabled area. And he became very interested in that whole thing, and he got me interested, and we both worked on architectural barriers and that sort of thing. And we were on a Washington committee for research in disability. And he was a particular-well, a specialist for paraplegics because urology is closely tied in with that. So he started the first spinal cord injury conference at Duke with great backing from Dr. [Barnes] Woodhall. And they would review all the spinal cord injuries I think about once a month. Then the Wakeman Award, I guess it was held about once every year for maybe fifteen years. He and a man in Washington, who just died this year, served on the National Paraplegia Foundation. And they found out about this lady who was interested in paraplegics because she had lost her husband who became a paraplegic. And so they brought her to Duke, and she gave enough money to give a big prize every other year for spinal cord injury research. And that lasted quite a while. But she died. She did give us a million dollars for the award. But I think they’ve turned it into support for young neurological researchers. But I have to find out about that. That’s on my list to work with, find out what happened to the money. But he had a lot of interests.

Roseberry: Sounds like. Well, I understand that the two of you met through Dr. [John] Dees.

Semans: Dr. Dees, yes. That’s right. In fact, I saw a letter yesterday, we were going through the files, John said, “I have a special girl I want you to meet.” I found that. (Roseberry laughs) And I remember his saying that I wrote back and told him that I was too busy going from hospital to hospital. Because he practiced for six years in Atlanta in his own practice and loved it. And John worked all this out, and all of a sudden one day I got this call from John saying, “I have a friend of mine wants to come and (laughing) see your medical history books.” And they were still in the house. And it was while we were married that we worked that out for Duke to take them. But that was really funny. We were married the next fall. He’d never been married. And had a wonderful family. We were all real close. I think there were-three of the brothers had died. I think there were seven brothers and one sister. So I got to know her. And one, two-I guess it was just two of the brothers. He was the youngest in the family. Wonderful people from Uniontown, Pennsylvania. And I never knew my in-laws, my father- and mother-in-law, either. But they were great people and very-I’m very close to. In fact, his nephew, my great nephew, is moving in just up the street from us. (laughs) He is a Duke graduate who wasn’t planning to go to Duke but applied and got in and decided to come. He graduated from the Fuqua [School of Business] and now works in Washington for the Pew Foundation. And he commutes to Washington. Don’t ask me-that could kill you! But he said, “Well, if I move back to Baltimore, it would take me two hours to get into work, and that’s where I’d have to live because my whole family’s in Baltimore.” Well, I don’t know that any of that’s necessary. (laughter) But it’s a great family, and I’ve enjoyed them all very much. So I can think of a lot more things, but those are the outlines.

Roseberry: Great. Well, what were the Dees like? What were Dr. and Susan-?

Semans: Oh, they were marvelous. You see, he was the one that asked Jim to come up and talk. He was a urologist, too. And they trained together at Hopkins, you see. That’s how that all happened. And Susan was the first full professor, woman professor, at Duke. And when you get off the elevator to go up to Dr. [Edward] Halperin’s office, she’s on the right wall. And she was really a beloved person. So both of them were just fabulous doctors. She, too, trained at Hopkins. And they were always good to me after Joe died. In other words, they’d find out how I was. He was my mother-in-law’s, Mrs. Trent’s doctor, and so we knew each other well from all kinds of angles. And they were just wonderful people. Both of them have gone. But I stay a little bit close to the daughter-one daughter here and one in Colorado and another one in I guess New Mexico. And then the son, I don’t know very well, but he lives, I think, in Texas. Great people. And we always-. They belonged, John Dees and Jim and then people from Harvard and Virginia and so on, belonged to something called the urologic forum, which was a delightful-it was a very serious group that got together socially, and the wives came. There were only about fifteen members ever, maybe twelve. And they’d go to places like Bermuda and Antigua and places like that, nice places. But they were very serious about the discussions. They would discuss journal articles which were controversial and that sort of thing. And they meant a lot to each other. And then one by one they started to die off or move and so on. They were great people. And it kept the urologic-it’s amazing, Virginia and Rochester, New York, and Hopkins, Harvard. And they would all keep that department, that specialty, together, and it was kind of wonderful. And I don’t know. They always kept on top of everything because they were small. So they got to know what the other was thinking. And they were very prominent wherever they were from, New York Hospital and-so that was one of the bright spots also in the urological thing. It was great, it really was.

Roseberry: Well, I think we’re getting close to four o’clock. Should we-?

Semans: Yes. I think so.

Roseberry: Well, thank you very much.

Semans: Oh, you’re welcome!

Roseberry: It’s been delightful.

Semans: I’m glad we did it! That’s great!

Roseberry: Thank you.

(end of interview)