William Harvey Hunter, M.D., oral history interview, October 25, 1991

              
This is an interview with Dr. William Harvey Hunter who was President of the South Carolina Medical Association. This interview is being conducted by Dr. Charles Bryan on October 25, 1991 in Clemson, South Carolina. Dr. Bryan: Bill, tell me where you were born and who were your parents. Tell me a little bit about your family of origin. Dr. Hunter: Well, that's something I '.ve always been kind of interested in, you know. I was born in Anderson. Actually, my mother and father were both from Greenville county but my father was in business in Anderson so I was born there. I was one of 72 babies born in Anderson Memorial Hospital in 1923, September 13, 1923. My father was Samuel Eugene Hunter and my mother was Ruth Mccarroll Hunter. My father was from one of the dark corners of South Carolina. He was raised by his grandfather, my great grandfather, Tom Davis. They were very interesting people. My 
father  was  a  cousin  to  Samuel  Clemens.  That  was  one  of  his  
claims  to  fame  and  my  mother  was  from  there  in  northern  
Greenville  county,  the  McCarrolls  and  Bolins  and  she  was  
descended from William Randall up there in Turkey Island in Virginia. She had a lot of huguenot cousins, cousins like Thomas Jefferson and people like that. She would always remind me of that. Dr. Bryan: Where did you grow up? Dr. Hunter: Well, actually I grew up in Anderson up through puberty really and then I moved to Greenville High School. Growing up was very interesting and somewhat traumatic to me. Probably I was somewhat dyslexic and then somewhat ambidextrous 

and my early school years were a trial for me and I'm sure we didn't have social promotion back in those days so I think the only reason I was ever promoted from one grade to another in the early years there was none of the school teachers wanted to face my mother for another year. Fortunately, although being dyslexic, you can use both sides of your brain along and when you get around to puberty can kind of put it all together and you can do pretty well. Dr. Bryan: It's well known that you went to Clemson where you played on the football team. Tell me a little bit about your undergraduate education and your experience at Clemson and also a little bit about how you decided to become a doctor. Dr. Hunter: Well, I went to Clemson on an athletic grant aid and while there I participated on the football, boxing and track teams and also I was of the rich society which was one of the things that used to be much in those days. Clemson has always meant a great deal to me. In fact, my huguenot great uncle was a contractor that built the original buildings at Clemson. Clemson is sort of a family tradition. Dr. Bryan: Then you decided to become a doctor. Dr. Hunter: Well, I went to Clemson and the first two years I was studying electrical engineering and then the war came along, World War II, and I went into aviation. I went into naval aviation as a naval aviation cadet and later as I got my wings 
I became a marine officer and pilot and flew off carriers. I was fortunate to have been there at the end of the war to be in the BMS 214 Old Black Sheep Squadron and prior to that I flew torpedo 
bombers some off carriers. I got interested in medicine,changing from e{:ctrical engineering during the war. 
What happe~s just as I was getting ready to get my wings initially I was washed out due to some trouble with an eardrum and anyway it seems that the doctor made an error and so in about five months I ended back up getting ready to get my wings again and they thought I needed refreshment and in getting my refreshment they didn't know what to do with me . They never had a naval aviation cadet come back after being washed out so they decided to send me to flight surgeon school and I went over to flight surgeon school which takes you quickly through all the different airplanes. These were all young doctors just getting out of med school so I was a month in class with them and I didn't think I had to go to the classes on aviation medicine so I missJthe first one and the commander of the school got so damn mad about me missing he said he was going to wash me out again if I didn't attend the aviation medicine classes and where I was spending half the time in aviation medicine and half the time flying these various planes so I had to take the test. In fact my grade on the test was pretty good. I just listened to what they were saying and wrote down my answers and I passed along with the flight surgeons so 
thought maybe  I  could  study  medicine  after  all.  It  wasá  a  kind  
catch 22  affair.  You  know.  
Dr.  Bryan:  That  was  an  really interesting  story.  What  does  the  
phrase  "washed out"  mean  again?  

Dr. Hunter: When you are washed out of aviation that was the lowest point that any aviation cadet can ever have. You were 

either failing in your flying or failing on your health physicals and that meant you were thrown out of aviation. You could no longer pursue your wings. I guess that at that time the only person that had been washed out of naval aviation and then got back in was myself. It was just that they did it but the interesting thing I'm sure was that it probably my mother that did it. My mother always had a lot of influence on me and I told her how disappointed I was at being washed out and how unjust it was because it turned out that I didn't have a hole in my áeardrum, just a scar. So she got in touch with these two prominent senators we had in South Carolina at the time and asked them what theVtrying to do to her little boy. So I think that's what got me back into aviation more so than the fact that the doctors had made a mistake on the eardrum. Dr. Bryan: You had some experience in your landing airplanes on 
the aircraft carriers. What was that like? Dr. Hunter: That was very interesting you know. I've flown several different types of planes on the aircraft carriers during World War II and immediately after. We trained for this on an old lake steamer up on Lake Michigan and mostly of what I flew I had about two crashes on carriers; one with a torpedo bomber and one with a F William Corsett, old bent wing bird. It was very 
interesting flying and to do that I think you had to be kind of young and eager. We considered ourselves in those days as so young in that part of the war we called ourselves teenage killers. Dr. Bryan: After your experience in World War II you went back 

to Clemson. Dr. Hunter: I went back to Clemson and changed my major to premedicine. Dr. Bryan: Did you continue to play football? Dr. Hunter: Yes, I continued to play football and participate in athletics. I never was very good you know. I made the first team most of the time but I never was a . great athlete;.but I was~ a great athlete but I was an enthusiastic athlete. Dr. Bryan: You had some great teams back then didn't you? Dr. Hunter: Yes, we did. We had some very good teams and some very outstanding athletes; people who I was associated with. It's interesting when I look back on those teams; so many of the people on the teams that I played with were real scholars, good students. And I look at what they have accomplished in life since then and one of them is executive director of Express; chief executive officers of some of the largest mills in the country, IBM executives . These were all football players that I played with. One fellow is the biggest used car dealer in the south; he was another guard. A sheriff. The biggest guy on the team turned out to be a sheriff in the county. Dr. Bryan: You played both ways as a guard is that right? Dr. Hunter: That's right. We played both ways back then and I remember playing in the Shrine Bowl in high school football in Charlotte and that was the tiredest I've ever been on an athletic field. We were playing North Carolina and South Carolina in the Shrine Bowl and instead of 20 minute quarters we had 15 minute quarters back in college but the coach for some reason had left me in there all except the last 2 minutes of the game and I played it both ways. They I was really the tiredest I've ever been in my athletic career. Dr. Bryan: Tell me something about your experience at the Medical College of South Carolina. Your went to medical college right after finishing Clemson I believe and tell me something about the professors who had an influence on you. Dr. Hunter: Well, my medical college days were just great days you know. I went to school, I was married to Jane at the time as I still am married to Jane and she was a Delta Airline stewardess. She was Jane Gardner from over in Darlington County. Her family had hotels down in Myrtle Beach and lived up in Darlington during the winters months and I had met her at Myrtle Beach where I was a lifeguard down there between my freshman and sophomore year in college before I went into service anyway. Before I went to med school, Jane and I were married and had two children. We had our hands full. Jane was teaching school and I was spending a lot of time over at med school after getting over that first real tough year. Med school was really some of my most enjoyable years that I've ever done. I was fortunate to get the student pathology scholarship in our class, they give one to a class, I worked in pathology as a part time for a couple of years there, the last two years. That was such good training and good enthusiasm working with people like Dr.~-~ who was just a superior man, a superior teacher and Dr. Bob Walton there in pharmacology was a mark influence on me through med school . Also my senior year in med school they always had an 
intern to ride the ambulance there in Charleston at Roper Hospital as part of the medical college and they didn't have enough interns that year so they hired two senior students and was one of them. I made $100 a month and I would be on ambulance call every other 24 hours. That deserves a book, some of the things that happened on ambulance call in Charleston. I could go on and on about that . Med school to me was one of . the best 
times,  most  enjoyable  times  that  I've  ever  had,  except maybe  for  
now.  
Dr.  Bryan:  Were  you  a  prosector  in  pathology?  Did  you  do  
autopsies?  
Dr.  Hunter:  I  did autopsies  and  I  remember  Dr.  Pratt Thomas  who  

was head of pathology and later president of the medical college, came up here to Clemson one night to make a little talk to the alumni and we always called him PT. We all had a couple of drinks and we were walking out of the lecture room that night and suddenly PT turned on me and was really a bit upset and he said Bill Hunter, what in the hell are you doing up here doing this. You are supposei to be a pathologist. But I did help do the autopsies and when I interned at Greenville General Hospital the medical examiner learned of my experience and so for a year there I did all the autopsies for the Greenville County medical examiner. I did a lot of that. I reworked and relabeled the entire gross lab there in the department of pathology. I suppose my training and directions on different specimens in all the gross specimens in Charleston are still right there. I remember the first heart that was ever operated on for4~~I think 
it was an Iowa woman, it was done in Charleston and her heart is 

there in that lab as is the heart of the doctor who operated on her who had ;f'.tlt"f;;;. ~~. 
Dr. Bryan: That was a tragic story, as I recall, about him going up to Hopkins to be instructed in how to do the operation. Dr. Hunter: Right. His chief resident was Manly~~ who was a Clemson man and one of the cadet. colonels while I was a lowly cadet in Clemson and Manly was being trained by this man at that time hopefully to get Manly to be a good manager but his mentor died before he got to the point of ? Dr. Bryan: How did you choose the particular field of medicine, 
in  your  case,  family  practice?  Tell  me  something  about  your  
internship  and  how  you  decided  to  come  back  to  Clemson  to  do  
family practice.  

Dr. Hunter: Well, I always wanted to come back to live in Clemson. I lived all my life in Sumter, Anderson and Greenville and this little town is right in the middle of these. So I've been about 25 miles or so from where ~my life right here in Clemson. It's right where I wanted it to be. My family, my friends were here and I just wanted to be in this area. Dr. Bryan: So it was natural for you to come back to Clemson to do family practice. Dr. Hunter: Yes it was. When I went to med school I decided to become a specialist so as I started my rotation in my junior year, I think I started off in orthopaedics and I decided that was what I was going to be, an orthopaedist. My next rotation was obstetrics and then I changed my mind. I knew I was going to 
be an obstetrician. The next was internal medicine and I dropped all that and I was going to be an internist. I knew this was what I wanted to do. At the end of each rotation I went through I knew that was what I wanted to do. I just liked it all so much that I said the only thing to do was family practice. I got involved in just doing general medicine here in Clemson and I've never regretted it. I really like doing what I'm doing; the variety and the interesting people. Man IJ1hate to be doing nothing but kissing babies and nothing but fixing broken bones. I'll always do this. If I had to go over it again right now I'd do it the same way; maybe internal medicine would be roughly the sam~kind of specialty of family medicine I think ? on three occasions and one time I made it into the 95 percentile and this is what I like doing. I was very interested in family practice as a specialty. I have served on that national board áof directors and I served as their Washington consultant. It was during these years as a Washington consultant that I had to do some walking in the halls of Congress and get the funding approval of family practice grants throughout the nation and this is when we got all the federal money for family practice programs throughout the country. Fortunately, I was asked to serve about this time at the National Institute for Health on their National Advisory Council on Health Specialty Education. So I spent four years in there and this is deciding when, where, and what schools to grant various things to. Much well over a million dollars. I think if I did indeed had a contribution of any sort this might well be one of my contributions. This is the time that we 

increased the purpose of our Council, 16 of us, to increase the number of physicians and we did so by 50% and it was our purpose to increase the number of females in medicine and minorities in medicine and we more than doubled, over 100% on this. We increased and worked on this in various ways, various grants and all that work up in Washington was most rewarding to me, it was one of the most rewarding things I've done. Dr. Bryan: So you were one of these people who liked everything and decided to be a generalistf and then you helped promote general medicine, family practice, and you feel that was one of your major contributions. Describe some of the difficulties and 
joys in getting started in practice that are very memorable. They say you wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled "Daddy". Tell me, in the mist of this do you feel like you contributed to making it easier for the others 
coming along after you  to  get started in practice?  
Dr.  Hunter:  Oh  well,  I  hope  so.  MUSC  asked  me  to  write  an  
editorial  for  them  for  their  cover  for  this  January's  issue  of  
the  Alumni  News  and  I  wrote  in  this  thing.  You  know,  medicine  
and  practicing  medicine  and  the  field  of  medicine  is  most  
rewarding.  There's nothing else that compares  with it.  It's the  
most  wonderful  thing  a  person,  man  or  woman,  can  become  involved  
in. Working with people and being able to help in one way or another and I always try to remind myself that we don't ever really save life we just prolong life a bit and we keep a person from pain if we can. You get to see so many different people with different things. It's always interesting. It's always 
interesting. There's always the possibility of a physician, you know you can do anything anywhere. You' re probably the only person, you, Charlie Bryan, could go into ~ and Africa or deepest Africa or you could go to Norway or you could take a boat to Tokyo and your skill is needed; you could go anywhere in the world. Nobody else could say that. No businessman, no lawyer or attorney, no politician, no o~e else in the world can say that they can be used anywhere in this world nearly at any time as you, Charlie Bryan, and me, Hunter. You have the knowledge and the ability to do this. No other profession can say this and there's something that you just love medicine. It's 
just part of you. Dr. Bryan: You already told us about who you married. Tell us something about Jane and also about your family. Dr. Hunter: My wife Jane is a very interesting person. When first saw her I was sitting on a lifeguard chair and I had heard about her. She came walking down the beach in this black bathing suit. This was the first time I ever saw her. She had this burnt blonde hair hanging down to a crease and it took my breath. I tell you she took my breath and she immediately told me she was going out on the pier in my guard area and dive off the end of the pier and I said no you can't do that. That's against the law and I'll have you arrested. So we got into a real confrontation right off the bat. Well, we stood around and talked and then lunchtime came and I took my sign down and went in the hotel a~d I was in the hotel there having a milkshake or something and somebody came running in and said some 
woman has just dived off the end of the pier. I didn't know how 
good a swimmer she was . I didn 1 t know she was an outstanding swimmer. She's outstanding in everything she does. She was on President Reagan's Educational Panel. Did outstanding work on that. Perhaps it made some changes or testimony to the Senate, made some changes that may influence, I say they're still moving, she first initiated this stuff on his Edµcational Panel. And on swimming, I thought later that day this is such a cute girl I hate to have her arrested but she kept swimming out at the end of the pier so I say let's go swimming tomorrow together. I thought what I'm going to do with this woman is I'm going to swim out 
and I was a 1 ifeguard you see, a big strong 
Clemson football player and she was 5' 1" and she weighed 103 pounds. But that 103 pounds was really put together real nice and so we go out swimming and I said I was going to take her out so damn far and I'm going to pull her in and I'm going to be a hero. So I get her out there and I look back at the coast line and it way down to the right and I was getting tired and she was swimming around me in a circle talking the whole time and I'm treading water trying to catch my breath. I finally said I notice you're not having any trouble but I have to go back in. So I said well maybe I should take you back in. She looked at me puzzled and kept swimming around me and I was treading water so we go back in; I like to have not made it. She jumped out of the waves and ran up on the shore laughing and talking and I just sat there in the waves for a while because my legs wouldn't hold me 
up I was so tired. But she came over and said are you alrightn 

and I said of course I 'm alright. I was just playing in the 
breakers a bit. So that's the kind of woman she is and we have five children; Sam, Harvey, Gwen who is married to Dr. James 
Hanahan  over  in  Seneca.  She  is  on  staff  there  with  my  old  
physician,  My  son  Harvey  is in technical  
management  married  to  and has his  own  William Harvey  
Hunter,  III  and  Duke  Treavor  named  after  some  

of the huguenots we were related to and my son Matt is married to Pamela and my son Dr. John Mark Hunter who is a professor down in Louisiana and he is married to Melissa and they have a little girl named Julia and another on the way. So we have a lot of Hunters like James Hunter, III, Carson , William Hunter Hanahan and he's really something. Dr. Bryan: So how many grandchildren do you have? Dr. Hunter: Seven or eight. We've got one on the way too. Dr. Bryan: It's getting hard to keep track. Dr. Hunter: Hard to keep track. Dr. Bryan: Bill, how did you happen to get involved in organized medicine? Tell me a little bit about you early experiences in organized medicine. You were a successful practitioner here in Clemson. How did you get involved in the politics of medicine? Dr. Hunter: Well, some of the doctors in Anderson County approached me and asked me if I would represent Anderson County as a delegate at the State medical meeting convention. And real1 y I had not thought much about it at that t irne. I was rather young and they said we want to send someone young down there so I went down and became involved in that and I must say 
that the people that I have been involved with in the medical association and political affairs have really been outstanding people; you know, like Halstead Stone and Waitus Tanner. These were purely men physicians and I met some really good people. One of the best things I've been involved in is getting on the Editorial Board and working with you, Charlie Bryan, it's been a real reward to me. Also this lejiB to other things on the national level and it lefd to m~ being Chairman of Education for the physicians of South Carolina under the old 
medical program which was my first statewide activity and then on I became on the Executive Committee of the State Board of Health which was very rewarding and instructive. And meeting all of those people down through the years like Dr. John Hawk and now young John Hawk, outstanding good people contributing a lot to society as well as their profession. Dr. Bryan: How did you find the time to do this, to be involved in so many organizations when you had a busy solo practice in Clemson? Dr. Hunter: Well, we always had good doctors and we would cover. I don't know if I'm a little hyperactive or perhaps 
or what but I've never been involved in not being with reality but I've always had a lot of energy for one reason or another. Dr. Bryan: You had a high energy level. Dr. Hunter: Yes I had a high energy level and I still feel like it's a great waste of time when my wife comes in and goes to bed at 9:00 every night. That gives me three hours to do something you know and I 'rn going to read or write or something or that sort. One of my pleasures now is writing, not only for pleasure but I'm on their payroll now, at Anderson Independent Mail and write a subject column once a week. This is of interest to me and I'm still writing for various magazines all over the country, usually on assignment. Dr. Bryan: I've read many of your articles which are always entertaining. Before you became elected president of the State medical association, the SCMA, what were some of the m.ajor issues facing medicine and how did you feel about them. Tell me something about your early experience and what the issues were that made involvement worthwhile. Dr. Hunter: Well, medicine is an individual thing. It's the 

individual physician and this is one reason why I love it so, to show individual responsibility to succeed or fail. It's up to you to do this and when you get a third party into it really muddies what was a clear mountain stream at one time. So my concern has always been to try to keep government, insurance, state government, ~~ndbusinesses from getting in between the physician and his patient because as long as it is a one on one relationship you're not going to have the trouble of economics. You're not going to have the trouble of getting care as long as it is a one on one thing. This is what I've tried to accomplish like, for instance, the regional medical program, that was the first federal law passed under Lyndon Johnson, a poor excuse for a president, that had the federal government involved with doctors at the state level in most states in the United