Our First Century: 1903-2003 Foundation "Salem's largest downtown fire in many a year burned to a shell the five-story Guardian building Monday morning, wrecking most of the approximately 30 businesses and professional establishments at a loss estimated at nearly $500,000," announced the Oregon Statesman's front-page headline the morning following the November 3, 1947 disaster. As opaque smoke parted to reveal the turn-of-the-century building's remains to the crowd, all eyes fixed on the southeast corner of State and Liberty Streets. It seemed doubtful the third floor medical practice of Power, Buren, Miller, Lancefield and King would see its half-century mark, let alone reincarnate within a year as The Doctors Clinic, growing to celebrate its 2003 centennial as one of the oldest medical practices in the western United States. The decade of the 1940s had seen the deaths of both founding partners and surviving partners' absence during World War Two service. But the strong Oregon roots of the 44 year-old partnership ran deep. The histories of the Doctors' Clinic and the City of Salem were intertwined long before August 6, 1903 when doctors Willis Bent Morse and Charles H. Robertson established their downtown medical partnership in the Eldridge Block. Cusick was a self-made man who, at age 15 with his pioneer family, crossed the Oregon Trail from Illinois in 1853. Two years later he struck out to finance his higher education and medical training through labor, teaching and even gold mining. Cusick's career of civic and professional service included terms on the early State Board of Medical Examiners, the 1880s Oregon Legislature, local school board, United States Pension Board, President of the Capital National Bank and attending physician to various state institutions. Willis Bent Morse was born in McMinnville, Oregon in 1866, the year before his future father-in-law received the first degree awarded by a medical school in the northwestern United States: In 1867 Cusick's name had topped the list of three graduates from Willamette University's new medical education program, ancestor to Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. Morse earned his medical degree from Willamette in 1891 and another from the Post-Graduate College of New York in 1893--the same year Salem established a paid fire department. Salem's high incidence of Malaria renewed the new doctor's interest in studying and treating Malaria and Typhoid fever, which he'd first encountered as a boy. Morse became an early expert in distinguishing between the two diseases. His medical skill and integrity earned his community's respect: in 1895, he was recruited to co-found Salem Hospital, the city's first nonprofit hospital, which in 1927 became Salem General Hospital. Morse married the only child of Dr. W.A. and Marcia Cusick in 1899, but Ethel Cusick Morse and her infant son died from an infection seven years later. The grieving widower never remarried, instead devoting his life to his patients, civic service and improving public health and sanitation. Morse continued to live with his beloved in-laws, later inheriting their 10,000 square foot house. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, the 1911 Colonial Revival-style home remains one of the most outstanding homes of Salem's gracious Fairmount Hill neighborhood. Like most physicians of his era, Dr. Morse was a general practitioner. An advocate for public health and improved sanitation, he was active in civic affairs, including a term as President of the State Board of Health. Patients, friends and colleagues described him as a "kindly gentleman" and a "charming Irishman." Much of his time was devoted to house calls for common illnesses as well as complaints that today require a trip to the emergency room--although patients with minor ailments might visit his office. Hospitals were for the gravely ill or surgical patients. Most babies were delivered at home. Aspirin was invented in 1897 and blood types were isolated in 1901, making routine transfusions and surgeries that had been highly dangerous. At the turn of the 20th century, the average charge for a consulting visit was $5, an "ordinary obstetrics case" was $25, the fee to visit a smallpox patient was $10 and amputations--in an era with neither antibiotics nor advanced surgery--ranged from $25 for a leg to $100 for a femur or shoulder joint. The average annual wage was under $500. At age 38, with a settled domestic life, successful practice and Salem's population passing 5,000, Dr. Morse needed a partner. Doctor Charles H. Robertson, a 34 year-old graduate of Willamette and Rush College with post-graduate surgical study at the Mayo Clinic and in New York, was gaining a reputation in Salem as a gifted surgeon. On August 6, 1903, the year the electrocardiograph was invented, Robertson relocated from the historic Holman Building to Morse's offices in the Eldridge Building. Their windows overlooked broad Commercial Street, traveled by booted men, wagons and women practiced at discreetly gathering skirts to dodge mud, dust, horse droppings and other things best avoided. Automobiles were rare, intimidating and luxuriously expensive. After seven years in the Eldridge Block, the partners briefly returned to the Holman Building, at the Northwest corner of Commercial and Ferry Streets, which from 1857 to 1876 served as Oregon's Capitol. In 1911 they finally found a home at 312 Guardian Building, although this arrangement was disrupted the following year by a basement boiler explosion and fire foreshadowing the 1940s disaster. This time the building was salvaged, expanded from three to five stories and the partners settled in to focus on their patients and their community. Eldridge Bldg, 1903 The building is now the 200 block of Commercial St NE The Building Years By 1920 the city's population had, partly through annexation, expanded to 17,679; Salem's prominent medical practice grew with its community. After 23 years as Morse and Robertson, a third partner joined in 1926. He left the following year, but the next two partners came to stay: Dr. F. Kenneth Power, who later specialized in internal medicine, arrived in 1927 followed in 1928 by Dr. Wolcott Buren, who became the clinic's specialist in diagnostic radiology. Although the X-ray had been discovered in 1895, it was now becoming widely available as a diagnostic tool. Other innovations coming into their own were electrocardiographs, lab tests and anesthesiologists-although anesthesia was still generally administered by nurses, among their lengthening list of duties. Most doctors were general practitioners who might develop expertise in specialized fields through on the job training and/or further education courses. True "specialists," the exception, were found in large cities or medical schools. The arrival of talented young doctors didn't slow the original partners, who put in long hours among their work sites: the office, hospitals and patients' homes. Mrs. Shirley Hadley, daughter of former Oregon Governor Douglas McKay, later became a patient of the Clinic's Dr. Joseph Thaler. She described a painful incident in 1929 when her six-year-old arm found its way into the washing machine wringer. The family's teen-aged helper couldn't cope. "Instead of unplugging the machine, she panicked and fetched the lady next door," recalled Mrs. Hadley. The grandmotherly neighbor pulled the plug, extracted the child's broken arm and, in the days before modern emergency rooms, the doctor was called to the house. "I wanted a cold rag for the pain but they said not to do anything until the doctor arrived. When Dr. Morse got there, the first thing he did was wrap my arm in a cold towel, which relieved the pain. That and his gentle manner won me over. He was a wonderfully kind man." The doctors began actively promoting the idea of a modern, state-of-the-art hospital for Salem, whose two nonprofit hospitals, Salem General and the Deaconess, were struggling with facilities and care. The Depression intervened. Though the 1930s, both hospitals were challenged just to keep their doors open, although the Deaconess did manage a building expansion. Through the difficult Depression years medical care was needed more than ever, but the partners forgave debts owed by loyal patients and sometimes "forgot" to bill for services. Patients also offered goods for services rendered. Doctor Charles H. Robertson's son, Charles G. Robertson, joined the clinic in 1931 following a stint in the Navy as a surgeon. The younger Dr. Robertson and his wife immediately commissioned Salem's prolific architect, Clarence L. Smith, to design their handsome Fairmount Hill house. Newly established pioneering female landscape architects, Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver created English gardens to complement the 1932 English Provincial-style home which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Despite the Depression, the doctors' services were in high demand as the two founders contemplated retirement. In 1937 a bright 32 year-old surgeon, Vern W. Miller, became the newest partner. His natural confidence and vision ensured he would be a leader for both the Clinic and the City of Salem through their post-war decades. Born in Scio and a graduate of the University of Oregon Medical School, Miller became a champion of improved public sanitation systems, which led to his remarkable career of public service. Trial By Fire When Dr. Charles G. Robertson was recalled to active Naval duty in 1939, he was the first partner drawn into the coming war but the only one who didn't return to the "Robertson & Morse Group." Instead he remained with the Navy as a surgeon and successful hospital administrator, retiring as Captain in 1960. His replacement in 1940 was Dr. Stuart Lancefield, a graduate of Columbia & Harvard Medical Schools, whose arrival also allowed Dr. Morse to make good on his handwritten retirement letter of January 1940: "...This is being done for two reasons. First, I want a larger amount of leisure for rest and travel. Second, I do not consider it fair to the others of the group for me to go on as for the past few years taking more than my share of time off, ducking part of the work, doing less than my share of the work and drawing my full share of the proceeds.” Three months later, the senior Dr. Robertson also announced his retirement, but mortality and world events conspired to prevent the founders from enjoying their "leisure." A military preparing for war needed medical professionals: In September, Dr. Vern Miller went on active duty and Dr. A. T. "Terry" King joined the partnership in January 1941, only to be called to the Army the following May. In July of 1941 Dr. Charles H. Robertson died, ending the 38-year relationship of Morse and Robertson, but not the medical partnership they constructed through deep professional and personal bonds. Upon their retirements, the practice nurtured by the two patriarchs looked to be in good hands, but the younger doctors were now members of the "greatest generation." Abandoning his brief retirement to keep the clinic going, Doctor Morse had little time to mourn the loss of his colleague and friend. Terry King received a medical discharge in October 1941, but Wolcott Buren was already in Pearl Harbor and 1942 found Ken Power serving in Australia with Vern Miller and the 41st Division. As the war deepened, Stuart Lancefield was determined to join the cause. Because Columbia hadn't offered an ROTC program, Lancefield wasn't a candidate to be called to active duty, as had his University of Oregon colleagues. Dr. Morse agreed to help even though it meant the loss of a badly needed colleague. "He pulled strings," recalled Lancefield's widow, Esther. Morse contacted his longtime friend in Washington D.C., Rear Admiral Ross McIntyre, who was both Navy Surgeon General and President Roosevelt's personal physician. Lancefield entered the Navy in April 1944. The elderly Dr. Morse was performing heroically on the home front, but it was impossible to maintain the pre-war pace. Nearly half of Salem's physicians left for the military. All participants knew there was no "exit strategy" for this war; they were committed for the duration. Terry King, expecting to return to active duty, listed other local doctors called to serve when he wrote from Salem to "Ken and Vern" in Australia July 27, 1942:“…It means shutting the clinic down to a little two-room place, letting Dr. Morse do what he wants to do, and, of course watch collections as best he can, and at least keep a name on the door until such time as we all get back into civil life again. As for myself, I hope that some day I will be able to join up with the gang again, and we can start all over again here in Salem...the finger has already been placed on Howard Kurtz, Chuck Campbell, Jim Sears, Fortmiller, Bob Coffey, Jack Ramage and Ralph Purvine, so it won't be long before nothing but the oldsters are left in town…” King added that his partners' families were "fine and dandy." Meanwhile, Dr. Morse worked. When not seeing office patients, he was in surgery, checking on hospital patients or, as throughout his career, making house calls day or night. Months following Dr. Lancefield's departure to the Navy, Dr. Morse fell in the hallway of General Hospital after completing a long surgical session. Transferred to a Portland hospital, he told a visitor he had an "interruption in his Sciatic nerve" and, optimistic as ever, thought a brace would help. On July 20, 1944 Dr. Morse was dead. He had practiced medicine in Salem longer than any physician before him: it was 53 years since he'd graduated from Willamette's medical program and 41 years since he and Charles H. Robertson formed their lifelong partnership. Salem General Hospital on Center Street, which dedicated the Willis Bent Morse Building in 1953, was the main beneficiary of Dr. Morse's $130,000 estate. At his funeral, crowds spilled outside. Local columnist Don Upjohn wrote, "If any man ever believed in the holiness and sanctity of medicine and surgery, it was Dr. Morse.” Three of the Clinic's doctors returned home in the fall and winter of 1945. Stuart Lancefield, the last in, wasn't discharged until June of 1946. Having won a new world, veterans of the war front and home front embraced new technology with a new assurance. Along with a sense of accomplishment, veterans brought knowledge and experience in wartime medical advances. Penicillin had gone from experiment to wonder drug; other antibiotics followed. Patients who would have been dead a few years earlier gained a second chance at decades of productivity. The government poured money into research and development and battlefield injuries inspired surgical innovations. Life expectancy and expectations grew. Salem's population expanded from 30,908 in 1940 to 43,140 in 1950 and old and new patients flocked to Power, Buren, Miller, Lancefield & King. The doctors rightly believed "the girls," their small staff of nurses and office workers, would keep the practice together during the war years, but elbow room at 312 Guardian Building became premium, as was professional office space all over town. A faulty elevator cable conduit in a basement storeroom beneath Quisenberry's Central Pharmacy ignited the Guardian Building fire on Monday, November 3, 1947. After it was reported around 7 a.m., the doctors rushed to the scene, but fire pumps couldn't reach beyond the third floor. Within 30 minutes the fire roared up the shaft to the top of the building, flames shooting through the roof, a beacon to spectators. With First Aid Captain C.M. Charlton, Dr. Wolcott Buren climbed a ladder to the smoke-filled third floor, managing to cover clinic records with wet tarps. Ten lines of hose were laid and several firemen injured battling the ferocious three-hour blaze; spectators and building tenants frantically hauled what they could from the inferno. The clinic's X-ray and other equipment crashed through the third floor to the basement. Some 30 offices and businesses were displaced including various professional offices, a pharmacy, bank, business school, beauty shop and even the City Attorney's office. Combined losses were estimated at more than $500,000. Salvaged furniture, equipment and files lined sidewalks for a block either direction down State and Liberty Streets Salem's hospitals immediately offered quarters to Power, Buren, Miller, Lancefield & King. The doctors hastily divided their practice between the basement of Salem General on Center Street and the north wing ground floor of the Deaconess Hospital on Winter Street, the latter of which was reorganizing as Salem (War) Memorial Hospital. In their January 31, 1948 application to establish a replacement fund, the partners wrote:"The fire destroyed practically all of our Equipment and Fixtures as well as the building in which our offices were located. We are now located in temporary quarters in hospitals in Salem and are trying to find a permanent location. Orders have been placed with suppliers for new equipment but no promise of delivery has been made to us." Some equipment had been delivered five weeks following the fire, but the price proved high in aggravation: examining tables, chair and cabinets became the subject of a legal dispute between the Portland equipment supplier and the company engaged by the supplier to paint the equipment. The painter placed a lien on the equipment and it was six months before the matter was settled.Shortly before the disaster, the partners transcribed and stored billing records off site, as was their periodic routine. Because it was all they and their staff could do to care for patients, work through fire insurance claims and scramble for equipment, no patient billings went out until the first of the year--much to the surprise of those who believed all records had gone up in smoke. Designing The Future Salem General, whose relationship with the practice went back to the hospital's founding, owned excess property adjoining its campus. Soon the partners had negotiated a lease and taken out a veterans' loan to finance the half-century old clinic's first purpose built building. The choice of architect was at hand: only a year earlier Robert H. Wilmsen, husband of Vern Miller's sister, Winifred, had won recognition for his debut solo commission, Eugene's Kennell-Ellis photography studio Wilmsen and his new partner, Charles W. Endicott, labeled their International style designed Salem project "The Doctors Clinic" as a working title and the name stuck. Consulting with his clients, particularly Dr. Vern Miller who took on the role of project manager, Wilmsen planned the Clinic to be everything the old buildings could not: sleek, modern and spacious. Over the next four decades the work of Wilmsen and his associates received 37 design awards and he was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Among Wilmsen's legacy are the Lane County Courthouse, SAIF building in Salem, University of Oregon Law Center and large designs such as the 1958 Capitol Mall Master Plan which continues to shape Salem's state government landscape. On May 1, 1948 the construction contract was signed. Although the contractor considered the project complete by winter, Wilmsen wrote in a November 21, 1949 letter to the insurance company that bonded the contractor:"This building was supposedly completed a year ago. The heating and ventilating system has never been accepted as completed..." The doctors and staff eagerly moved into their shiny new quarters at 2475 Center Street, but the heavy "bunker oil" heating system never performed satisfactorily. Vern Shangle, The Doctors' Clinic Administrator from 1956 to 1969, remembers arriving early many winter mornings to find the building icy cold. The route from Judson's plumbing and heating to the Center Street clinic became well known by repairmen. Adequately heated or not, The Doctors' Clinic now had room to grow. In 1949, two more physicians began their decades long association with the Clinic: W.H. Needham, a family practitioner, obstetrician and Olympic qualified swimmer, was immediately followed by J. Alan King, an internist and another University of Oregon graduate. The younger Dr. King came to the Doctors' Clinic through his older brother, Dr. A.T. King and had known Doctor Morse. "I never worked with him because he died before I joined the practice, but I met him socially. He was a true gentleman, always well dressed-a fine surgeon." Doctor Vern Miller's daughter Margaret Miller Drips and Dr. J. Alan King both described the post-war years and 1950s as transitional for the practice of medicine. J. A. King and veteran Vern Miller both made house calls, but Miller had five daughters. Upon reaching the appropriate age, each girl learned to drive while chauffeuring her father on his rounds. Because of Dr. Miller's high-energy schedule, it was also precious father-daughter time. According to Dr. J. Alan King, emergency rooms are a modern concept. "Back then you would get a call telling you your patient was in the hospital. You would meet them in the lobby." The pre-war "little black bag" containing stethoscope, quinine, morphine and assorted supplies functioned as the ER of its day, but couldn't carry to patients the laboratory, constantly evolving technology or new drugs. Advances in medicine made careful record keeping essential, as did the advent of health insurance, influenced in part by more powerful labor unions as well as veterans used to military health care coverage. Prior to World War Two, only about six percent of Americans had health insurance; close to fifty percent were insured in 1950. Keeping up with technology, the Clinic installed new X-ray equipment in 1953--but equipment troubles struck again. After 11 months of repairs and back and forth communication with the manufacturer's Portland representatives, it was clear the Clinics' "Pictronic 300" was a $14,355.70 lemon. The problem was at last resolved after Dr. Buren wrote to the manufacturer in June 1954:“Screws fall off, moving parts become loosened, double exposures occur, the table elevator refuses to operate, and shutters quit...if we had not retained the old GE machine...we would be in a very poor position to offer service..." When Judy Braziel came to work for The Doctors' Clinic in 1955, she went from serving in a coffee shop to training on the job as a lab technician. Upon her 2003 retirement following 48 years with the Clinic, she recalled a simpler time before insurance bureaucracy and high tech medicine made large support staff essential. "There were 25 office workers--maximum--when I started. Today we have close to 100 support staff. It was like a family. Now it's a much bigger family!” After a decade of slower growth, Salem's population in 1960 was 49,142. Family practitioner and obstetrician, Dr. Richard Bennett, began two decades with the Doctors' Clinic. Surgeon James O. Slama, and internist William E. Drips each began 30 years with the Doctors' Clinic in 1963 and 1964. Doctor Drips came from the traditional University of Oregon background, but both Dr. Bennett and Dr. Slama were educated in California. Family, school and other affiliations traditionally played major roles in influencing where a doctor practiced. As examples, Dr. J. A. King pointed to both himself and Dr. Drips, who married one of Dr. Vern Miller's five daughters, Margaret. Dr. King and others compared modern doctor recruitment to that for corporate executives, with announcements in national and even international professional journals and other outlets New doctors, staff and patients led to people literally bumping into each other in hallways, resulting in two clinic expansions during Vern Shangle's tenure. Unlike their original contractor, Dale Pence so impressed the partners that they selected his firm, now Pence-Kelly Construction, for each remodel and for their major new clinic in the 1990s Cramped though they were, tight space contributed to a family atmosphere among clinic staff, fostering informality that encouraged consultations amongst colleagues, according to Doctors Drips and Slama. "You'd walk down the hall and there was somebody to ask," said Slama. Colleagues developed close personal as well as professional relationships. "They were all friends of mine," said former Clinic Administrator Vern Shangle, who kept photographs of fishing trips with the doctors. Such getaways helped relieve stress in a high intensity profession, as did smoking "There were ash trays in the waiting rooms and offices," recalled Shangle. The American Cancer Society's major study linking smoking to shortened life span came out in 1957; the Surgeon General's warning about cancer as a major health risk was issued in 1964, but smoking remained common among health professionals through the 1970s. Dr Bennet & Terry King, Deschutes River, May 1962 Public health was definitely a concern for Vern Miller who, like Dr. Morse before him, advocated for improved public sanitation, particularly in South Salem. Conservative Salem wasn't investing in its sewer system and blunt, brilliant Miller was just the man to say so. "I was pretty bitter about the health conditions on the West Slope," he told Capital Journal reporter Dan Bernstein in 1972. "And I made some noise about it." Bernstein wrote: "And the City of Salem delivered sewer services only after grudgingly conceding that its citizens did, indeed, go to the bathroom."The article further quoted Miller:"I came into this business looking at things from a medical background and I guess I still do...Right after I got on the council...I wrote a letter to myself and signed it Samuel Pepys {17th century English diarist}...I was talking about what the people do with their feces. It was a pretty cold analysis." "This business" was the Salem City Council, to which Miller was first appointed in 1958, followed by terms from 1965 to 1972 as one of the City's most historically significant Mayors. Public health was just the beginning of Miller's imprint on modern Salem. The 1960s was an era of federal funding and matching grants which Miller led, pushed and demanded his provincially minded community leaders pursue. He persisted until voters approved a new City Hall and Library, followed by passage of six other financial measures. In the tradition of the great architect, Christopher Wren, Miller's monuments are all around us: The annexations of south and east Salem, airport expansions, urban renewal and downtown development are among them. His proudest bequest was the 800 acre Minto-Brown Island Park. Seeds planted in 1903 by Doctors Willis Bent Morse and Charles H. Robertson are still tended by their successors. Today's Doctors' Clinic patients include newcomers as well as former Morse and Robertson patients whose grandchildren are now cared for by Doctors Clinic medical professionals. At the beginning of its second century, the Doctors Clinic survives and thrives. Courtesy Darlene Strozut, Salem historian
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