Legacies Project Oral History: Jerry Walden

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 11:59am

When: 2022

Transcript

[00:00:18] INTERVIEWER: This is the interview for the Legacies Project, which has students gathering oral history and putting them into the archives for future generations. Wages for the senior citizen interview. To the best of your ability, please ignore the camera. Role up your eyes. I was certainly wondering, mainly look at me and please do not look directly at the camera. Each video tape is about x minutes long. If you're in the middle of answering a question and we have to change tape, I will ask you to hold your thought while we change tape and we'll pick up from where we left off in the new tape and that's re-prior to every taping. Announcing to the room, crew members that it is time to turn off in sites on all cellphones, pages, and any thing else, beeping, shaming, or otherwise making noise. Please call for a break anytime that you want one. Please remember that you can decline to answer any questions or terminate the interview at anytime for any reason. Demographics and family history. Please say and spell your name.
[00:01:43] Jerry Walden: Jerry S. Walden, and J-E-R-R-Y W-A-L-D-E-N.
[00:01:51] INTERVIEWER: What is your birth date including the year?
[00:01:54] Jerry Walden: It was at July 18th, 1941.
[00:01:58] INTERVIEWER: How old are you?
[00:01:59] Jerry Walden: I'm 76.
[00:02:01] INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your ethnic background?
[00:02:05] Jerry Walden: Caucasian.
[00:02:07] INTERVIEWER: What is your religion?
[00:02:09] Jerry Walden: I'm a Episcopalian.
[00:02:18] INTERVIEWER: What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?
[00:02:23] Jerry Walden: Medical school.
[00:02:25] INTERVIEWER: Did you attend any additional school or for now you're training on your conclusion?
[00:02:31] Jerry Walden: Well, there's what's called postgraduate education, so there continue continuing courses in that. That's mainly what I've done since my graduation from medical school.
[00:02:48] INTERVIEWER: What is your marital status?
[00:02:50] Jerry Walden: I'm married.
[00:02:52] INTERVIEWER: Is you're spouse still living?
[00:02:54] Jerry Walden: Yes, her name is Julie.
[00:02:58] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
[00:02:59] Jerry Walden: I have three.
[00:03:04] INTERVIEWER: How many siblings do you have?
[00:03:06] Jerry Walden: One.
[00:03:09] INTERVIEWER: What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
[00:03:14] Jerry Walden: I was a family physician.
[00:03:17] INTERVIEWER: At what age did you retire?
[00:03:20] Jerry Walden: It's been 11 years. It was at almost 66.
[00:03:29] INTERVIEWER: Beginning interview. Now we can agree with the first part of our interview, bringing with some of the things you can recall from your family history. We're beginning this family interview, naming history. By this we mean any story about your last or family name, or family traditions hence lifting or middle names. Do you know any stories of your family name?
[00:04:01] Jerry Walden: Well, not really. If you look up the name, it's supposed to be a name, the English called the Welch who lived in the valley. But I don't know. I've been to whales but are not any Walden's there. Whatever happened with the name is a little bit of a mystery.
[00:04:24] INTERVIEWER: Are there any naming traditions in your family?
[00:04:30] Jerry Walden: No.
[00:04:33] INTERVIEWER: Family migration. Why did your ancestors leave to come to the United States?
[00:04:41] Jerry Walden: Well, my mother's side, they were German and there were three brothers and their mother brought them so that they could avoid military service in the 1840s. My father's side, I really don't know.
[00:05:02] INTERVIEWER: Do you know any stories about how your family first came to the United States and where did they settle?
[00:05:10] Jerry Walden: Yes. My mother's side, the three brothers came to Michigan. Two of them went to The Thumb area where I grew up, and one of them came to Saline and apparently had an early township meeting was held in that man's house. He was a layer, that's my mother's feminine. My father, his family pass through Canada, lived in Ingersoll at one time. I've not been able to find out so far whether they really live there and if there is a generation that stayed there, but then they came to The Thumb of Michigan as well.
[00:06:02] INTERVIEWER: How did they make a living either in the old country or in the United States?
[00:06:10] Jerry Walden: Well, my grandmother's father, I think had a tavern in Ireland, that's on my father's side. I think everybody else were farmers as the only thing I know. My mother's side farmed and my father's side did too, but there was this one person had a tavern, I guess it'd be called.
[00:06:49] INTERVIEWER: Describe any family migration, once they arrived in United States and how they came to live in this area.
[00:06:56] Jerry Walden: As I said, my father's family came through Canada. I'm not sure about my my mother's family, they did also or not. I don't really know that much more.
[00:07:15] INTERVIEWER: What possessions did they bring with them?
[00:07:22] Jerry Walden: I don't know.
[00:07:23] INTERVIEWER: Which family members came along or stayed behind?
[00:07:32] Jerry Walden: My mother's family, the three brothers, I guess it'd be her grand parent and his brothers. I think that mother came as well, and so it'd be a great grandmother. I've lost the question I guess.
[00:07:55] INTERVIEWER: Which family members took long in staying behind?
[00:07:59] Jerry Walden: I've not been able to really figure out. I've done some census searching on my father's side and my father was pretty old. He was born in 1900 and I was born in '41, and his father was 54, I think when he was born. The generations are way back to 1846 is my grandfather's birth, and I've not been able to really figure out very much about who was before that and where.
[00:08:41] INTERVIEWER: To your knowledge did they make any effort to preserve any traditions or customs from their country of origin?
[00:08:50] Jerry Walden: Probably the cooking, more German style cooking on my mother's side, because my father didn't cook, so she cooked. I don't know too much other than that.
[00:09:05] INTERVIEWER: Are there traditions in your family that have given up or change, and why?
[00:09:20] Jerry Walden: Well, when I was a kid, we used to go to the Hudson's Parade and my brother-in-law worked for Hudson. That's a more recent tradition, would take care of our kids and go to the parade. My brother-in-law was in it often. Other kinds of things, no, just celebrating family at holiday time, trying to get the family together. My mother's family always got together at least on holidays.
[00:09:58] INTERVIEWER: Did you personally immigrate?
[00:10:00] Jerry Walden: No.
[00:10:03] INTERVIEWER: Family history. What stories have you come down to about your parents and grandparents more distant ancestors?
[00:10:14] Jerry Walden: Well, the story is my father would tell us that he was the baby in this family. There were seven, and his mother didn't like to tell you to much what to do, but one of the jobs was to keep water in the house and there's a well outside where he had to pump it. He said, "Well, if she started it off to the well with the pale in her hand, you better be there and take it away from her and bring the water yourself or there'll be lots of trouble." [LAUGHTER] My grandfather on my mother's side was very soft-spoken. He had a quartet that I guess saying into the, well, before them got into their 80s. I never actually heard him saying, but he was known to be a pretty good singer. There a couple of stories, I guess I may think of something else.
[00:11:22] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:11:22] come back to it. Do you know any courtship stories? How did your parents or grandparents, or relatives come to meet ordinary?
[00:11:35] Jerry Walden: My parents both worked for Michigan Electric. My father, I once counted about 19 different jobs growing up. But he settled in working for what was to become the trade Edison, but at that time was Michigan Electric. My mother was a secretary at that place. She said it was during the depression that he wanted to take her to a steak dinner unless you couldn't pass up a stake in that time, that was a great thing. That started their courtship. Then for some reason, they didn't tell my grandmother, my mother's mother, that they were married for a while. I think they got married in early May and there was Mother's Day and I think they went home to grandmother's house for Mother's Day and they gradually got around to telling them that they had a lot to link onto Bowling Green to get married. They gradually broke the news. I guess that's my story of their courtship that I remember now.
[00:13:01] INTERVIEWER: We are going to move into earliest memories and childhood. Today's interview is about your childhood up until you began attending school. Even if these questions jog memories about other times in your life, please only respond with memories from the earliest part of your life. Residence, community. Where did you grow up and what was the strongest memory of that place?
[00:13:29] Jerry Walden: I grew up on a farm near Carolyn, which is the center of the Thumb. I spent two years on the farm while my dad was getting back into working for what was that? I think Detroit Edison. But he got laid off during the depression and so he and my mother went to live with their parents for a while until they could buy a farm and they bought a farm, and then he got called back to work at Detroit Edison. I had those first two years there. I think maybe I can remember being on a tricycle one time. But I'm not sure that I really can. When I was four, or around four we moved to LaPierre for a short period of time. Again, I think because of Detroit Edison work. I can remember the war ending then and I was playing outside, World War II, and the people were pretty excited about it. I didn't know what it was all about. Then around that time, I remember they had savings stamps that went for savings bonds. If you filled up a book, then that was 18.50 dollars I think, and 10 years that was to become 25 dollars. I remember licking stamps and putting them in my book. One time I guess I was doing it by myself while my mother and sister were gone and I threw some stamps away. I remember my mother coming back and saying, "No, you can't do that." Stuff like that. Those are the early memories.
[00:15:28] INTERVIEWER: How did your family come to live in these places?
[00:15:31] Jerry Walden: Come to live?
[00:15:33] INTERVIEWER: In the first two places originally.
[00:15:37] Jerry Walden: Well, I think both Ingersoll and Canada it's in Ontario. It's along the line between Toronto and Windsor. I think they probably were just migrating along the river. St. Lawrence I guess is part of that path. But I'm not sure why anybody came here. Our name is Walden. There's some Waldons, W-A-L-D-O-N, there's Waldon Road. There's some biblical notations and bibles that the two families were related in some way. I used to know one of the Waldons, so there's probably some cousins came over here. Again, I think they went to Canada for a while and then decided that being in Michigan was going to be better for them.
[00:16:43] INTERVIEWER: What was your house like that you grew up in?
[00:16:47] Jerry Walden: Well, the main homicide, I recall was a sighted an old fashion house with a small front porch, living room, dining room, kitchen, and a small kitchen area. Used wooden coal. I remember working to earn a nickel sometimes either by helping to put some coal into the basement doors and some wood. Just a nice average farm-type house. Then when I was a little older, we built a house. My grandfather, and my father and I did most of the work on it.
[00:17:40] INTERVIEWER: How many people lived in the house with you when you were growing up, and what was their relationship to you?
[00:17:51] Jerry Walden: My mother and father and sister. Grandparents would visit. My mother's parents lived nearby, but not with us.
[00:18:05] INTERVIEWER: What language was spoken around your home?
[00:18:08] Jerry Walden: Just English.
[00:18:10] INTERVIEWER: Were different languages spoken in different settings such as at home, and in the neighborhood in local stores?
[00:18:19] Jerry Walden: No, I'm sure that my parents or my mother probably had a little bit of German, but it was around World War II, and we were fighting Germany, so people didn't really use German. I don't think my grandparents really taught them very much German either. A little bit.
[00:18:44] INTERVIEWER: What was your family like when you were a child?
[00:18:50] Jerry Walden: We had a nice family. My sister is five years older, so there's always the younger kid thing for me, and so she and I didn't really do a lot of things together a little bit, but she had her own friends and didn't want me tagging along, so I found my friends.
[00:19:17] INTERVIEWER: What sort of work did your father ever do?
[00:19:21] Jerry Walden: Well, my father was, as I said, did a lot of jobs and worked with a little store, when he first got the job and then he worked in log mills as a Cook's helper, and then most of his life he he worked for Detroit for a power company. He and at least one brother, and I think probably about eight of his family worked for Detroit Edison, so lots of people and they'd built lines in Chicago and in Florida, and then a lot in Michigan, and he went from being a line man to becoming the general foreman for the Caro region.
[00:20:15] INTERVIEWER: What is your earliest memory?
[00:20:19] Jerry Walden: Well, probably that tricycle. I don't have many early memories, but we would take a vacation every summer, so I remember jumping off a dock and thinking that you didn't have to hold your breath, and coming up spouting water every time I would do it, fishing with my parents, doing a lot of outdoor things.
[00:20:51] INTERVIEWER: Special routines and activities. What was a typical day like for you in your pre-school years?
[00:21:03] Jerry Walden: I would get up and get dressed to have breakfast and playing most of the time, usually outside, usually find some friends to play ball games or football or softball, or just, we had a swing in the backyard, we had a garden, do things out in the yard with friends.
[00:21:31] INTERVIEWER: What did you do for fun?
[00:21:34] Jerry Walden: Well, that was a lot of fun, we didn't take very much to start some activity, playing tag, playing cops and robbers, playing some hide and go seek kind of stuff or playing ball. We played ball all the time, even the girls and if we had three or four people, that was enough so you could do that. I'm going to the movies a little bit on Saturdays especially, and riding a bike. Had a good time doing that.
[00:22:13] INTERVIEWER: Did you have a favorite toy, if so is needed favorite games, if so what game did you play? Favorite book, if so, what were they? And where did you get them?
[00:22:29] Jerry Walden: Well, my father brought me some toy tractors, and International Harvester and John Deere little toys. That was a big deal. Really liked that when I got those and I was probably five or six. Books. I love to read. Didn't have so many books that I owned, but would read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and lots of mystery books and lots of western cowboy books growing up. Was there another part of that question?
[00:23:17] INTERVIEWER: Did you have any favorite games?
[00:23:22] Jerry Walden: Yeah, we played, things like monopoly. That was probably one of the most favorite board games until we'd get bored with it and took too long, and so I was tired to play. We played a lot of cards, my family did, so we play rummy, and eventually, I learned bridge, but back in the day, yeah. I played war, with an uncle or aunt. Yeah, he just turned guards and see which one is higher, he would play it with that with me by the hour. Cards were very important in our family.
[00:24:04] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special days, events, or family traditions that you remember from this time for you?
[00:24:14] Jerry Walden: Everybody likes to get gifts so Christmas was great. My birthday was in the summertime, so it was anti-climatic years later and weren't that many friends around. I don't remember having birthday parties much, but I'd always have a cake, well my mother was a great cook and baker so she would always have a great meal and sometimes we'd be going on vacation, they're doing something around that. But I would always get together with my uncles, and my grandparents on most holidays. After we did something with our own family, we would eventually show up wherever the family was getting together. That was fun. Not many cousins my age, so but some scattered cousins around that I would see from time to time.
[00:25:16] INTERVIEWER: Thank that ends this session.
[00:25:19] Jerry Walden: Great.
[00:25:21] INTERVIEWER: You are most welcome.
[00:25:24] Jerry Walden: You are welcome. See you.
[00:25:36] INTERVIEWER: This is the interview for the Legacies Project, which has students gathering oral history and putting them into the archives for future generations. Wages for the senior citizen interview. To the best of your ability, please take care of the camera. Well, your eyes are certainly wondering, mainly look at me and please do not look directly at the camera. Each video tape is about exponents lot. If you're in the middle anterior question and we have to change tape, I will ask you to hold your thought while we change tape and we'll pick up from where we left off in the new tape. Read prior to every taping announcing to the room crew members that it is time to turn off all set inside that's also font pages in any thing else, even shaming or otherwise making noise. Please call for a break anytime that you want one. Please remember that you can decline to answer any questions or terminate the interview at anytime for any reason. Can we move on?
[00:26:57] Jerry Walden: [inaudible 00:26:57]
[00:26:57] INTERVIEWER: Demographics and family history. Please say and spell your name.
[00:27:02] Jerry Walden: Jerry S. Walden. J-E-R-Y W-A-L-D-E-N.
[00:27:10] INTERVIEWER: What is your birthday including the year?
[00:27:13] Jerry Walden: It was said, July 18th, 1941.
[00:27:17] INTERVIEWER: How old are you?
[00:27:18] Jerry Walden: I'm 76.
[00:27:20] INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your ethnic background?
[00:27:23] Jerry Walden: Caucasian.
[00:27:26] INTERVIEWER: What is your religion or occupation if any?
[00:27:32] Jerry Walden: I'm Episcopalian.
[00:27:37] INTERVIEWER: What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?
[00:27:41] Jerry Walden: Medical school.
[00:27:43] INTERVIEWER: Did you attend any additional school, or formal career training beyond your completion?
[00:27:50] Jerry Walden: Well, there's what's called postgraduate education, so there continuing courses in there. That's mainly what I've done since my graduation from medical school.
[00:28:06] INTERVIEWER: What is your marital status?
[00:28:08] Jerry Walden: I'm married.
[00:28:09] INTERVIEWER: Is your spouse still living?
[00:28:13] Jerry Walden: Yes. Her name is Julie.
[00:28:16] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
[00:28:18] Jerry Walden: I have three.
[00:28:22] INTERVIEWER: How many siblings do you have?
[00:28:23] Jerry Walden: One.
[00:28:28] INTERVIEWER: What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
[00:28:32] Jerry Walden: I was a family physician.
[00:28:36] INTERVIEWER: At what age did you retire?
[00:28:39] Jerry Walden: It's been 11 years. It was almost 66.
[00:28:47] INTERVIEWER: Beginning interview. Now we can bring the first part of our interview, bringing with some of the things you can recall from your family history. We're beginning this family interview, gaming history. By this we mean any story about your last or family name or family traditions is lifting or middle names. Do you know any stories of your family?
[00:29:19] Jerry Walden: Well, not really. If you look up the name, it's supposed to be a name the English called the Welch who lived in the valley. But I don t know, I've been to Wales. There's not any Walden's there that I feel them. Whatever happened with the name is a little bit of a mystery.
[00:29:45] INTERVIEWER: There any new traditions in your family.
[00:29:47] Jerry Walden: No.
[00:29:51] INTERVIEWER: Family migration. Why did your ancestors leave to come to the United States?
[00:30:00] Jerry Walden: Well, on my mother's side, they were German. There were three brothers and the mother brought them so that they could avoid military service in the 1840s. My father's side, I really don't know.
[00:30:20] INTERVIEWER: Do you know, any stories about how your family first came to the United States and where did they settle?
[00:30:28] Jerry Walden: Yes? On my mother's side, the three brothers came to Michigan. Two of them went to the Thumb area where I grew up. One of them came to Saline and apparently had an early township meeting was held in that man's house. He was a later. That's my mother's feminine. My father, his family pass through Canada, lived in Ingersoll at one time. I've not been able to find out so far whether they really live there and if there is a generation that stayed there. But then they came to the Thumb of Michigan as well.
[00:31:20] INTERVIEWER: How did they make a living either in the old country in the United States?
[00:31:29] Jerry Walden: Well, my grandmother's father, I think had a tavern in Ireland. That's on my father's side. I think everybody else were farmers, the only thing I know. My mother's side farmed and my father's side did too. But there was this one. personally had a bar or restaurant, tavern, I guess it'd be called.
[00:32:07] INTERVIEWER: Describe any family migration, mostly random United States and how they came to live in these area.
[00:32:15] Jerry Walden: Yes I said, my father's family came through Canada. I'm not sure about my my mother's family. They did also or not. I don't really know that much more.
[00:32:34] INTERVIEWER: What possessions did they bring with them?
[00:32:41] Jerry Walden: I don't know.
[00:32:43] INTERVIEWER: Which family members came along or stay behind?
[00:32:50] Jerry Walden: My mother's family, the three brothers, I guess it'd be her grand parent and his brothers. I think that mother came as well, so it'd be great grandmother. I've lost the question I guess.
[00:33:14] INTERVIEWER: Which family members came along and stayed behind?
[00:33:19] Jerry Walden: I've not been able to really figure out. I have done some census searching on my father's side and my father was pretty old. His born in 1900s and I was born in '41, and his father was 54, I think when he was born. The generations our way back to 1846 is my grandfather's birth and I'm not been able to really figure out very much about who was before that and where.
[00:33:59] INTERVIEWER: To your knowledge did they make any effort to preserve any traditions or questions from their country of origin?
[00:34:08] Jerry Walden: Probably the cooking, more German style cooking on my mother's side, there's my father didn't cook, so she cooked. I don't know too much other than that.
[00:34:27] INTERVIEWER: Are there traditions in your family that have given up or changed more?
[00:34:38] Jerry Walden: Well, when I was a kid, we used to go to the Hudson parade and my brother-in-law worked for Hudson. That's a more reason tradition we'd take our kids and go to the parade. My brother-in-law was in it often. Other things, no, just celebrating family at holiday time trying to get the family together. My mother's family always got together at least on holidays.
[00:35:12] INTERVIEWER: Did you personally ever agreed?
[00:35:18] Jerry Walden: No.
[00:35:21] INTERVIEWER: Family history. What stories have you come down to about your parents and grandparents more distant?
[00:35:32] Jerry Walden: Well, one of the stories my father would tell us that he was the baby, in his family they were seven. His mother didn't like to tell you too much what to do, but one of the jobs was to keep water in the house and there's a well outside where he had to pump it. He said, well, if she started it off to the well with a pale in her hand, you better bat her and there and take it away from her and bring the loud to yourself or there'll be lots of trouble. My grandfather on my mother's side was very soft-spoken. He had a quartet that I guess sang into the, well before then got it into their 80s, so I never actually heard him sing, but he was known to be a pretty good singer. Those are a couple of stories I know. I guess the ones I may think of something else.
[00:36:43] INTERVIEWER: Do you know any courtship stories? How did your parents or grandparents or relatives meet or married?
[00:36:53] Jerry Walden: My parents both worked for Michigan Electric. My father had, I once counted about 19 different jobs growing up, but he settled in working for what was to become the Trade Edison, but at that time was Michigan Electric, and my mother was a secretary at that place. She said it was during the depression then he wanted to take her to a steak dinner and that she couldn't pass up a stake in that time. That was a great thing. That started their courtship and then for some reason, they didn't tell my grandmother, my mother's mother, that they were married for a while. I think they got married in early May and then there is Mother's Day and I think they went home to grandmother's house for Mother's Day and they gradually got around to telling them they had eloped to go onto Bowling Green to get married. They gradually broke the news. I guess that's my story of their courtship that I remember now.
[00:38:19] INTERVIEWER: We're going to move into earliest memories in childhood. Today's interview is about your childhood up until you entered school. We will use questions to jog memories about other times in your life. Please only respond with memories from the earliest part in your life. Residence community. Where did you grow up and what was the strongest memory at that place?
[00:38:48] Jerry Walden: I grew up on a farm near Carolyn, which is the center of the farm. I spent two years on the farm while my dad was getting back into working for what was then I think Detroit Edison. But he got laid off during the Depression and so he and my mother went to live with their parents for a while until they could buy a farm and they bought a farm and then he got called back to work at Detroit Edison. I had those first two years there. I think maybe I can remember being on a tricyclic at one time. But I'm not sure that I really can. When I was around four, we moved to LaPierre for a short period of time. Again, I think because of Detroit Edison work. I can remember the war ending then, and I was playing outside, World War II ended. The people were pretty excited about it. I didn't know what it was all about. Then around that time, I remember they had savings stamps that went for savings bonds, and if you filled up a book, then that was $18.50. I think in 10 years could become $25. I remember licking stamps and put it in my book in one time, I guess I was doing it by myself, when my mother and sister were gone and I threw some stamps away. I remember Mother coming back and saying, no, you can't do that, stuff like that. Those are the early memories.
[00:40:46] INTERVIEWER: How did your family come to live in these places?
[00:40:50] Jerry Walden: Come to live?
[00:40:51] INTERVIEWER: In the first two places?
[00:40:55] Jerry Walden: Well, I think both Ingersoll and Canada, it's in Ontario. It's along the line between Toronto and Windsor, and I think they probably were just migrating along the river and St. Lawrence I guess is part of that path. But I'm not sure why anybody came here. Our name is Waldon, there's some Waldons W-A-L-D-O-N. There's a Waldon Road. There's some biblical notations and bibles that the two families were related in some way, and I used to know one of the Waldons. There's probably some cousins who came over here. Again, I think they went to Canada for a while and then decided that being in Michigan was going to be better for them.
[00:42:01] INTERVIEWER: What was your house when growing up?
[00:42:06] Jerry Walden: Well, the main homicide, I recall it would sighted kind of an old-fashioned house with a small front porch, living room, dining room, kitchen. It's a small kitchen area. Used wooden coal. I remember working to earn a nickle sometimes either helping to put some coal into the basement or some wood. Just a nice average firemen typos. Then we went, I was a little older we built a house. My grandfather and my father and I did most of the work on it.
[00:42:59] INTERVIEWER: How many people lived in a house with you and you're growing up in what relationship was there? What was their relationship to you?
[00:43:10] Jerry Walden: My mother and father and sister. Grandparents would visit my mother's parents lived nearby, but not not with us.
[00:43:24] INTERVIEWER: What language was spoken around your house?
[00:43:26] Jerry Walden: Just English.
[00:43:29] INTERVIEWER: Were different languages spoken in different settings such as at home in the neighborhood and local stores?
[00:43:39] Jerry Walden: No I'm sure that my parents or my mother probably had a little bit of German, but it was around World War II and we were fighting Germany. People didn't really use German I don't think my grandparents are really taught them very much German either. A little bit.
[00:44:03] INTERVIEWER: What was your family like when you were a child?
[00:44:08] Jerry Walden: We had a nice family. My sister is five years older, so there's always the younger kid thing for me. She and I didn't really do a lot of things together a little bit, but she had her own friends and and didn't want me tagging along, so I found my friends.
[00:44:35] INTERVIEWER: What work did your father do?
[00:44:40] Jerry Walden: Well, my father was as I said, a lot of jobs and worked worked through the little store when he first got the job and then he worked in log Mills as a Cook's helper. Then most of his life, he worked for Detroit as for a power company. At least one brother, and I think probably about eight of his family worked for Detroit Edison. Lots of people and they'd built lines and in Chicago and in Florida and then a lot of Michigan, and he went from being a line man to becoming the general foreman for the carol region.
[00:45:31] INTERVIEWER: What is your earliest memory.
[00:45:37] Jerry Walden: Well, probably that choice they go. I don't think I don't have many early memories, but we used to take a vacation every summer. I remember jumping off a dock and thinking that you didn't have to hold your breath coming up spouting water every time I would do it. Fishing with my parents, doing doing a lot of outdoor things.
[00:46:08] INTERVIEWER: Special routine and activities. What was like a day in your earliest years?
[00:46:08] Jerry Walden: I would get up and get dressed to have breakfast and play it. Most of the time, usually outside, usually find some friends to play ball games or football or softball or just. We had a swing in the backyard where the garden do things out in the yard with friends.
[00:46:50] INTERVIEWER: What did you do for fun?
[00:46:53] Jerry Walden: Well, that was a lot of fun. We didn't take very much to start some activity. Playing tag, playing cops and robbers, playing some hide and go seek stuff or playing ball. We played ball all the time, even the girls. If we had three or four people, that was enough, so you could do that. Going to the movies, I bet on Saturdays especially, and riding bike. Had a good time doing that.
[00:47:32] INTERVIEWER: Did you have a favorite toy? If so who made it? Favorite game if so what game did you play? For books if so what were they and where did you get them for entertainment?
[00:47:48] Jerry Walden: Well, my father brought me some toy tractors and International Harvester and John Deere kinds of little toys. That was a big deal. I really liked that when I got those and I was probably five or six. Books, I love to read. Didn't have so many books that I own but would read Tom Sawyer and uncle very thin and lots of mystery books and lots of western cowboy books growing up. Was there another part of that question?
[00:48:35] INTERVIEWER: Did you have any favorite games?
[00:48:38] Jerry Walden: Oh, yeah, we played, things like monopoly. That was probably one of the most favorite board games until, we'd get bored with it, took too long. I was hired to play it. We played a lot of cards. My family did, so we play rummy and eventually I learned bridge. But back in the day we played with war, with orthonormal where he just turned guards and see which one is hot here He would play with that, let me by the hour. Cards work were very important in their family.
[00:49:24] INTERVIEWER: Have any special days events or family traditions that you remember from that period?
[00:49:32] Jerry Walden: Oh, everybody likes to get gifts at Christmas. It was great. My birthday was in the summertime, so it was adequate medical and usually there weren't that many friends around. I don't remember having birthday parties much, but I do always have a cake when my mother it was a great cook and bake or so she what would you guys have a great meal and sometimes we'd be going on vacation, they're doing it's doing something around that. But I would always get together with my uncles and my grandparents on most holidays. Yeah. After we did something with our own family, we will eventually show up wherever the family was getting together. That was fun. Not many cousins my age, so but some scattered cousins around that I would see from time to time.
[00:50:39] Jerry Walden: To work them.
[00:50:44] INTERVIEWER: Through youth. Today we will discuss your time as a young person. From about the time that school attendance typically begins in the United States up to the beginning of your professional career in your class. School experience, did you go to preschool? Where and what did you remember about it?
[00:51:05] Jerry Walden: I don't know that there was pre-school back then. I didn't go. There was Sunday school or church or your Bible bible school, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Sometimes kids will do that in the summertime, usually for a week and I guess I did that occasionally.
[00:51:30] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to kindergarten? Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:51:36] Jerry Walden: Yes. Well, kindergarten wasn't my thing and I'm not sure why, but I had a real separation anxiety. I would cry when she would walk me to school, I guess. Then I really didn't want her to leave. So that was traumatic, let's say for a month or so, which I was the only kid. It's like but think of and so then I got into school and things were fine. In kindergarten was mostly fun.
[00:52:23] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to elementary school? Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:52:30] Jerry Walden: Well, I did all my schooling in Carroll, that was Carroll Elementary. I Don't remember a lot. I remember bringing goldfish and taking care of these goldfish in our classroom. Remember some of the kids, young girl with pigtails that sat in front of me. Pretty young girl that I liked a lot. I liked school. It was good. I really liked reading especially. So I had a good time. Walked to school. That was an interesting experience, but, everybody did at that time. I guess I'll stop.
[00:53:33] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to high school? What do you remember?
[00:53:38] Jerry Walden: Yes. High school was in Carroll until we built a new high school. I think that started in my ninth grade, what was considered high school there. We had built a house that was pretty close to the high school about a block. I really liked basketball. I had a knee problem, so I couldn't play football, but love to play basketball. I would be doing that after school a lot. Had some good teachers, have wonderful math teacher. Mr. Montgomery was just fantastic guy. Very poor guy whose teachers didn't get paid and hardly anything back in those days. He wore the same suit for years and years. But he knew his stuff and they just commanded such attention and respect from everybody. Good friends. So there's a number of us or I can stayed friendly during high school. Guys wasn't doing too well with the girls, so that wasn't a very big part of my high school. I wish that I was always wanting it to be. Good time.
[00:55:10] INTERVIEWER: If you did not attend any of the above of school levels Why not? What did you do?
[00:55:18] Jerry Walden: Well, like I said, pre-school wasn't there too much and nobody that I knew went to preschool or to any school before. Everybody else just went through the stages. Go from eighth grade to ninth grade, etc. Until you graduate.
[00:55:44] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to school or pre-training beyond high school? What do you remember about that?
[00:55:51] Jerry Walden: Yes. I went to Alma College and when I graduated, Carroll had a graduating class of about 120. It was pretty small school and I didn't think my social skills were that great, and so on. I looked at bigger schools. I applied to University of Detroit, maybe to U of M. I think I did. But Alma had a class size of a total enrollment of 850, I think when I went there. So it was a really small school. But it was great because they made a point of knowing who you were and you knew everybody on campus. That was cool. I went to Alma for three years and then got into medical school here. So I took my senior year and wrapped it into my freshman year of medical school and got into U of M to do that. I think I've answered the question, but maybe.
[00:57:05] INTERVIEWER: Did you play any sports or engage in any other extracurricular activities?
[00:57:13] Jerry Walden: I played basketball in high school and I tried out for basketball in college and I had a couple of injuries and I didn't have the talent. It wipe me out. I knew I needed to pay attention to my studies if I was going to get through Alma in three years and so I left the sports behind then.
[00:57:43] INTERVIEWER: What about your school experience is different from as you know today?
[00:57:50] Jerry Walden: Well, there's quite a bit different than I was in a you have to go through security to get into school now, that would have been unthinkable back in that day. I know I do a little volunteering at the Fc schools and they have police on duty. I don't know whether you did here at Skyline too or not. The security element has changed considerably. School size is bigger around here and by a lot and it looks a lot more like you're in a college campus. The beauty of the building, we had a pretty nice building in that we moved into. When I started elementary school, which was also the high school, and it was a really old building in Carroll. Sports, you guys have all sports, all kinds of clubs. We had none of that. After school if we weren't in sports, we were playing around and then eating and probably doing homework. It's changed quite a bit. I think the curriculum as well. Curriculum has changed a lot to math courses or are so much more sophisticated and you all like taping this interview. We never thought about doing that. On the other hand, I had a friend who was crazy inventor thing and he made a diving bell out of a roll bell and put a window in it and so we could go down underwater in this diving bell. He is always trying to make a perpetual motion machine. When we hit storm he had an old car and would get a drive through the snow drifts inside of town trying to get stuck and then get unstuck, just messing around and stuff like that.
[01:00:20] INTERVIEWER: How was the social interaction back then versus now?
[01:00:26] Jerry Walden: Yeah, that's also changed considerably. Great question. The biggest thing is that you really wanted to have a boyfriend or girlfriend back in those days, and I think these days it seems like it's not nearly as important. You're always falling in love with somebody and people were whispering, well, this person likes this person, and this and that. It looks in today's world like there's not as much pressure to be related to somebody that way, and you do more things, probably intersex things with both boys and girls than we did. Then if you're doing something with a girl, you're probably dating and trying to figure out some way to spend time like that.
[01:01:24] INTERVIEWER: We're going to move on to popular culture, will you please describe the popular music at this time?
[01:01:37] Jerry Walden: Well, rock and roll came into being, and so all white artists like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis and the Beatles came and got popular. Black artists were provided in the music. They weren't always getting the clay, but Little Richard and many black artists came into being as I grew up too. Now, it was very danceable music. It put a little jumping in your walk and your step. You enjoyed that music, and we'd have it on like you guys do. Play your music when you can. We had no ear buds or any walking music so you'd had a phonograph of some sort, and play these little '45s, and then if you might play the '76s too which had more songs. Concerts were not so much but deejays came into being. The radio announcer was called a deejay, playing that music, and then deejays would come to the school dances and things like that, or sometimes you did it yourself.
[01:03:18] INTERVIEWER: Didn't music have any particular dances associated with it?
[01:03:23] Jerry Walden: Yeah. Well, of course the slow dance was the two-step back then and that was always pretty easy to do and fun to be holding a person of the opposite sex doing that. Rock had various steps that went with it. The disco came in probably sometime during college, I guess. The twirling balls in the air, I felt like reverberating off, reflecting off that, and that was a big deal for a while.
[01:04:29] INTERVIEWER: What were some popular clothing or hairstyles at this time?
[01:04:32] Jerry Walden: In high school boys started feathering their hair in the back and growing it longer, and it's called the duck tail. Girls, they had various styles, I think, so that had hair either short or long, they went back-and-forth. That's what I remember. Butch. A lot of people had their hair cut very short. I did for awhile, and crew cuts.
[01:05:15] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other [inaudible 01:05:17] or styles of [inaudible 01:05:17] ?
[01:05:23] Jerry Walden: Well, some music was becoming more popular, and artists. You probably know that the Beatles were really a big deal when they came in. Breadths come in, and a little after that, I guess Bob Marley, and brought, brought up the Caribbean sound. We were exposed, some to classical and some to jazz, but not nearly as much as pop and rock and roll.
[01:06:12] INTERVIEWER: Were there any slang terms, phrases or words you used that aren't any commonly used today?
[01:06:35] Jerry Walden: Many of them are the same terms I used. Well I can say, man, or cool, or a good-looking stuff, that's still chicks for girls. Things that you still might say but you don't often say them today.
[01:07:03] INTERVIEWER: Routine and special activities. What was a typical day like for you in this time period ?
[01:07:12] Jerry Walden: Get up and get dressed and have breakfast. Go to class, probably practice basketball after classes, and I went out for for baseball too. At the time that I did that, you had to walk to practice and it was over a mile and I didn't have all the equipment that I needed, so I soon gave that up, the uniform, etc. Then at night time, you do your homework if you had some, and if not, you might find a friend. We didn't even use the telephone that much. It was mostly you'd make a plan in school if you're going to get together, and of course we had experimental smoking and drinking. Did a little of that along the way. Mostly smoking because it was easier to get cigarettes than it was to get beer. But experimenting, having fun. But working through and we all knew that we were pretty much interested in the group that I hung out with in going to college and everybody was pretty much expected to do that. Even though I don't think my parents ever talked to me about going to college, but they knew that I was going to go, so you had to get keep your grades up in order to do that. Study.
[01:09:01] INTERVIEWER: What did you do for fun?
[01:09:04] Jerry Walden: Well, sports were fun. In the summertime we took swimming lessons for several years and learned to swim and eventually became a lifeguard. It was one of my summer jobs. In the summertime from eighth grade on, I was always working and doing something. Building a host for summer, and then working as a lifeguard or working on a farm. When I worked on the farm, there were a lot of other guys that did that as well. They had a specialized seed corn growing farm, and so they had to have a lot of help to make the corn pure, and that was us kids. There'd be 15 of us that would ride out to the farm and work there. A continuation of what we did when we were small kids, we would still look for a game of some sort, or who had a car so you could ride around with them or where were they going. There were a number of little drive in restaurants at that time. Not a number but there was probably two in my town, and they were on opposite ends of towns. We'd get in the car and drive to one restaurant. We drive in and get a Coke or something if we had money. Then drive to the other end and see who was out and talk to them. Just hanging out and doing little things.
[01:10:51] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special days, events or family traditions you remember from this time?
[01:10:56] Jerry Walden: Our town was a county seat so we had what was called a county fair every year and that would last about a week. Sometimes I earned some money by helping the fair owners to setup. They would have you pulling on tent ropes and whatever. But me and my friends loved to ride on the rise and so we would do that. They had 4-H grounds there, and they made donuts which were actually fried, really delicious. They gave those away free. You can imagine how many of those we would eat. Insider came along with that, and so yeah, those kinds of activities were kind of highlights.
[01:12:14] Interviewer: Do have any special sayings for expressions during this time?
[01:12:26] Jerry Walden: Well, my mother and father both have a lot of little sayings that they might say. Like, you got to think grass is greener on the other side of the road or get a move on. Things that they might say, but there weren't any things that my sister and I particularly hung onto that I can recall.
[01:13:06] Interviewer: Any changes in your family life during your school years.
[01:13:13] Jerry Walden: My father was a big time smoker and he got into some health problems. He was hospitalized with a couple of times for maybe two weeks to a month. Both times, I guess, and unfortunately, although he died of cancer, he he didn't have cancer at that time and he eventually got better and probably also related to smoking and may have been hospitalized for that. I think he hadn't been bleeding some. But other than that, everybody stayed pretty healthy and things our family, it was pretty much intact all the time.
[01:14:07] Interviewer: Were there any special days events or family [inaudible 01:14:10]?
[01:14:17] Jerry Walden: Just the usual getting together. The county had or the area had a beam festival, that was back in the day. Now every town has a festival. We go to New Orleans, they have 50 or 100 no once a year. But back then this bean festival was what was pretty unusual and they had a bean glean and she was from five different counties around there. That happened in the fall it was a big time for the cider and donuts and those things. But like I said, that was one festival that I remember no, hardly any other place that had a festival at that time. It was a unique.
[01:15:16] Interviewer: Which holidays did you come in and celebrate? How holiday traditions celebrated in your family? Is your family created traditions celebrations?
[01:15:31] Jerry Walden: Well, we would celebrate Christmas, as I said, and when we were younger, Everybody got quite a few presence. When you got to be 18, the presence dropped off and then you would just swap a gift with the rest of your extended family, and by drawing a card or a number, I think in gift-giving them became much more simple. My father would always get books and for his Christmas and his birthday, he loved to read, and but the holidays changed. I've been married and divorced and remarried. My first family pretty much we don't keep up with each other, and so my daughters are much more into doing their own thing and holidays. That's but now I've got my wife's family. I will center our holiday time.
[01:16:55] Interviewer: What special food tradition does your family have? Have any recipes been preserved passed down family from generation to generation. Have any family stories connected to the preparations of special foods.
[01:17:12] Jerry Walden: My mother was a great cook, as I mentioned, and she baked at least once a week. She baked pies maybe twice a week. We had lots of different pie, and I love that. Butter pie was a pie that I think probably came from my father's side of the family, but she did it and it's just pretty much milk and some butter, and you make, it turns out to be a custard by as brown sugar, and I really love that, and it's pretty simple, but it's really great, and we just say we might have father's a meat and potatoes person. Mostly food that was always well done. Never had a steak that was going to be rare or anything like that. But we had good food, but it was simple.
[01:18:25] Interviewer: Socially things. When thinking back to your school you should learn social or historical events taking place at this time and how did they personally affect you and your family?
[01:18:42] Jerry Walden: Well. World War II, as I mentioned, was important, and then after that there is the period of the Cold War with Russia, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we didn't know that was going to erupt into a big war and maybe even a nuclear problem. That was huge. Civil rights began during the protests, probably during college, mostly early 60s. That was really a major thing with Dr. King leading them arches and the boycotts and Malcolm X and speaking out and saying things pretty angrily, forcefully, and a little late guy going somewhere or everybody else that looked pretty much like me. There's a lot happening then. Unions were organizing, kids were young. The Vietnam War became in during my college days as well and big things happening that way.
[01:20:17] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when you were in school the duck and cover do you stay safe from any blast?
[01:20:30] Jerry Walden: Well, that's an interesting question. We didn't have in my home. When you talked about going to the basement in the event of some war or maybe some nuclear disaster. I think we might have had a little bit of supplies in our basement. My mother was a canter, so she had things down there. But they're just not really related to that but. Yeah. I guess in school, occasionally at least we would have air raid drills and stuff like that. But I don't remember it very well. I don't think they have, I think, people got went through that phase where they thought it was important and then they decided maybe it wasn't going to work. Wasn't that important.
[01:21:33] INTERVIEWER: Can give us at the end of the session.
[01:21:35] Jerry Walden: Great.
[01:21:38] INTERVIEWER: Good afternoon. We're going to start with adulthood marriage and family life. After you finished high school, where did you live?
[01:21:48] Jerry Walden: I went to college and went to Alma College before that. I spent three years there. Then applied to medical school and get accepted to the University of Michigan and a couple of other places and ended up coming here to, and I birth to medical school for four years, and that's where I met my wife.
[01:22:14] INTERVIEWER: What are some of memorable things about these places?
[01:22:19] Jerry Walden: Oh, well, the thing about Alma, which is particularly good for me because I was a small town kid and it was a small campus and good liberal arts school. The dean of the school made sure to know everybody's name, memorize your picture so that when you arrive on campus, he knew who you were. That was the way that school functions. Most of your professors get to know you. After I returned years later, I was still known as somebody even though I wasn't particularly outstanding student at the time. Just average. But people knew you if you're especially in your major. That part, and the kids all you knew just about everybody on campus. So that was a great thing for me. I loved it. That small place and being familiar. I needed that. But as time went on, and I thought maybe I would try to do this pre-med in three years because of finances. I was ready to move on to a bigger pond. After the end of three years in Michigan, really fit well when I came here, big campus. Lots of difference. What's more going on? I was ready for it.
[01:23:54] INTERVIEWER: How did you come to live in [inaudible 01:23:55]?
[01:23:55] Jerry Walden: Well, like I said, I had accepted, then I did my medical school here. I didn't really think I would come back. That's the question coming up. After you've been here a while, you think, well, maybe I need to be somewhere else. Medical school life is a grind, and most times people feel a little bit unloved and unwelcomed because you're at the bottom of the totem pole in this very hierarchical system of medicine. I was ready to go somewhere where I would be more appreciated. I left for a year of internship in Philadelphia, Philadelphia general happened to go with eight other Michigan guys. I guess that they're all guys. Women weren't nearly as prominent in medicine back in my day. Then I did three years in public health and was looking for a place to practice and decided that this was the place. Because I needed an unusual place to practice.
[01:25:19] INTERVIEWER: Did you remain in [inaudible 01:25:20] or did you move around throughout your adult life? What are some of the reasons that you moved there?
[01:25:30] Jerry Walden: When I got through it, I was actually in Terre Haute, Indiana, during my public health time at a prison there. I was a penitentiary physician. Terre Haute was quite poor and quite small. I decided at that time that I wanted to try to do something that would involve interracial medicine. They'll be more diversity in my practice than most people were shooting for or were encountering in family medicine. I started looking for that and I looked in Detroit, and then was one practice there, but it was mostly geared towards specialty practices, internal medicine. This was a watershed time when family medicine was just becoming a specialty and general practice was going out. I was more on the general practice model since family medicine wasn't really known. Most people were starting to get into specialties, and I didn't really want to do that. I did find one person who is a GP who was working here in Ann Arbor, who is doing what I wanted to do, and that was Ed Pierce. He had started Summit Medical Center at that time. Ed just left his old practice and decided he wanted to do something that had more diversity and was more low-income aimed. He wanted a partner. Hadn't been out for a few months and he was busy. I came and liked the practice and liked him, and so I came and joined him in 1969 when I was done with my military obligation, with my public obligation.
[01:27:36] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me a little about your marriage and your family? First tell me about your spouse? Where and when did you meet? What was it like when you were dating? Tell me about your engagement and your wedding. Repeat if necessary, for multiple ages.
[01:27:55] Jerry Walden: Well, I have had two marriages. My first wife, Jane, was a nurse. We met on the wards at University of Michigan. May have met also casually at a tennis court. Since we were both playing tennis at the time, so she and I shared a lot of things as far as interests and people interested in poverty and helping poor people. She was a Mennonite, which we were both in our faith doing new things or at least I'd come back to being a person of faith at that time during college. I was searching for somebody who is also interested in religion and exploring their faith and exploring their commitment to look to other people. Then Jane met many of those standards or interests. We enjoyed a lot of things together. We liked being outdoors, liked going for walks, liked go to sports.
[01:29:32] Jerry Walden: Her father and mother were involved at Sears. He was a Sear store manager and had a place on east so we would go out to vacation on the shore up there in Connecticut. She was smart and interested in people and that was a great thing for me. We developed because we're both in medicine. That was a helpful thing as well. We had two kids and our marriage that lasted 25 years. Like many marriages, there were problems with ours so eventually those problems became irreconcilable and we decided to get a divorce. Then after a period of a couple of years I married Julie. She's my wife now. She's a social worker and also has a Masters in Business and happened to be the daughter of my close coworker at Packard Community Clinic, which I founded. Her mother and I had gone to the same church. She was a smart woman with a degree but wasn't trained specifically in medicine, but she became my office manager. I knew my wife for a long time both in the church and in the practice. Eventually we started dating after a period of time when I was free to do that. She's still able, she's very smart, she's very interested again, in causes and in people in making good things happen for people. As long been interested in racial challenges and attempts to improve things. She eventually took her mother's role as office manager and then office director and I maintain my medical director duties and we functioned as a team for 20 years, I guess. Well, maybe I guess we didn't work quite that long together, but for a long time and we had a great mom and pap practice, doctor practice and other physicians and other nurse practitioners and physician assistants. It became a practice that was pretty on the edge as far as the finances for a long time because we charged on a sliding fee scale and we accepted a lot of Medicaid and other uninsured people and so it was probably the poorest practice in the area as far as the finances went. A lot of physicians with debts and things could come and eventually decided they needed to leave. I loved it. We had a very diverse practice. Well, I'm getting off into another area, so I'll stop there.
[01:33:26] Interviewer: What was your wedding like?
[01:33:31] Jerry Walden: The first one was pretty traditional. I didn't know that there was a Mennonite church in the area and her father, mother, I think had become a little more mainstream and weren't necessarily going to Mennonite church in their area. We got married at First Pres and as you probably know, First Pres is a big church and a lot of pomp and circumstance there and Ernest Campbell was the minister at the time he was a great guy and he married us. We had six or seven attendance, I think and it was just a beautiful wedding, lots of flowers and cakes and things. Second wedding was what you might expect is it was different. Julie and I have both been to Mexico a number of times. Love Mexico, love their culture and love to dance and the music. Music has always been pretty central to us. We arranged a Mexican Fiesta, we dressed in Mexican costume I had a simple shirt and she had a simple dress and we had Mariachis and a DJ and we had food, we had the reception of the North Campus Commons. We catered it ourselves, Julie got all kinds of Mexican dishes made by the university's chefs and we had a lot of dancing and it was just a great celebration, lot of fun. First wedding was in December or January rather, and the second one was in August. The weathers was much more something that you can appreciate being outside and so people came and stayed with us over the weekend and that was the way that we honeymoon that time in Northern Michigan. That was beautiful. Different times, different weddings. But both of them good.
[01:36:09] Interviewer: The next question is about children.
[01:36:11] Jerry Walden: Yes.
[01:36:12] Interviewer: Tell me about your children and what life was like when they were young and living in the house.
[01:36:19] Jerry Walden: Sure. Well, I've got two children and then my second wife, Julie, has got a daughter as well. We have three daughters. But my two grew up here in Novi, went to local schools. Went to Pattengill and to St. Francis for middle-school there. But anyway they had the education that was here, went to Huron High School both of them. Kids are great. They're both really beautiful young women, both of them very talented. Sharon the younger caught the second child syndrome I think and she and I used to have these little battles about whether she would do any studying or not. [LAUGHTER] Her oldest sister, Julie, was on track to go to postgraduate education. She ended up being a physician as well. That's the way the first child, second child often works up. Sharon is just going to graduate school and right now gained her degree and she just got all A's and she said, well, I could hear you saying just do your best [LAUGHTER] to me. They played off each other, they became very close and they are best of friends today, which is really nice. They do a lot of things together and stay in very close touch and we're really grateful for that. They've each got children, have careers and the older one is an internal medicine doctor who's been practicing as a hospitalist quite a bit in the Wisconsin area, and the younger one lives here in Novi and has three kids. Well, initially she worked for head injury and now she's been working for social services and as a case manager for them. Very good. They're both very good.
[01:39:09] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your work in US.
[01:39:13] Jerry Walden: Well work was really wonderful actually. It was better than I expected. I think that was largely due to providing a service that was recognized that especially Black patients were very welcoming, very happy to be treated well and we have a lot of fun together and we wanted to be the best practice in town, so we really wanted to have high-quality standards. I think we did achieve at least some of that. Everybody wants to do that. But the goal is the thing. We had a very diverse practice. At one time we measured it and we had a third, African-American and a third white, and a third everybody else. We have a lot of Latinos, a lot of people from Russia. Whenever communities were immigrating into the state, they ended up coming into our practice often and a lot of the university people because they wanted to support us and they realized that we had this base that was 60% insured and 40% either uninsured or under-insured. We really needed the insured people too and they loved it too. The waiting room was always a great place where people were interacting in ways that they probably didn't have that many experiences in other places. To be a part of all of that and to be leading that was just a great privilege. Loved it.
[01:41:30] INTERVIEWER: What typical day like during your working years of your adult life?
[01:41:34] Jerry Walden: That's an interesting question. [LAUGHTER] Well, when [inaudible 01:41:38] and l started out, we lasted four years together then we had enough difference and I have enough growth behind me and it was time for me to move on. But we first started out on this little three room house. I think we had three exam rooms, three small bedrooms. We couldn't practice together and there was just not enough room, so one of us would get up and go to the hospital and the other one to go to the office. The person in the hospital would see, the five or six or seven patients that we have there. Then we're doing obstetrics too so we might have a baby or two to see what might be doing, circumcisions or whatever in the hospital. Then that person would go home and come to the office in the middle of the afternoon and evening and the other person, I guess worked straight through. There's probably some little overlap there, I'm not remembering for sure. Very small place. The central waiting room was no bigger than this space. Probably about 18 or 20 feet long and 12 feet wide and so everything was there. The receptionist's desk was there. She was talking to patients on the phone and people were lined up around the edge of the room. If they didn't have a seat, they might be sitting on the floor. This is back in the good old hippy days. We had a lot of big street people that came in or marginal to Ann Arbor but hanging out here and doing music and stuff. We were taking care of some of those people as well as the Black and white communities that were more traditional. Then somebody convinced Ed to do methadone practice. Methadone has just been approved as a treatment for heroin addiction. We ran a methadone and he elected me to do this because he had had a run in with the law over a peace match where he got thrown to the ground. This is Vietnam War days. He thought, well, maybe I'm too high a profile, you do the methadone. We'd go to St. Joes and pick up the methadone on a daily basis and we started distributing patients. Before long they get way out of hand and they started stealing and stealing other things. That part of the practice was just another addition on top of getting up in the middle of night and delivering a baby or going to whichever shift you're on in this office. Quite crazy. But by the time I started my practice, four years later week, I was still doing OB and I did that for probably another five years. But we didn't put the methadone practice into better hands by them. Fortunately, that was quite a time.
[01:45:08] INTERVIEWER: What did your family enjoy doing together when your kids were still at home?
[01:45:14] Jerry Walden: Well, lots of things. Going to go to movies, going out to eat, going for walks, going camping, loved camping. Since my in-laws were in the East and had a place on the shore, we would usually go there for a week once a year. I always took time off in my medical times. A lot of my colleagues chose not to do that as much. They're too busy to leave or thought they would get busier if they did leave or couldn't find somebody to cover for them, but I never let that stop me. I always took a week off every whatever three months. We did something and lots of traveling. Kids liked doing all that stuff pretty much until you don't when you're a teenager, sometimes where you start thinking about your friends and not as much about your family for a while.
[01:46:24] INTERVIEWER: What were your personal favorite things to do for fun?
[01:46:37] Jerry Walden: Well, I like to do sports. When I was a kid, I did a lot of hunting. We both be doing hunting and fishing. At this time in my adult life, I didn't do much of that, but I love to play sports, loved to play basketball, loved to swim, be outside in the water. Then I started running when I was about my mid 30s. Just about the time that I left the first practice and started Packard Community Clinic I started running. I'd done a little bit of swimming before that. One of the docs would go out and swim during his lunch hour and I thought, how do you do that? This was Alex Gutts. He was a great internist in town. Alex said, well, if you want to do something, you just do it. I said, I guess that's right. I started doing a little bit of swimming. I found that starting to jog or to run was easier than swallowing water in the pool and quicker in some sense, so I started running. Well, I'm still doing it today actually, two three times a week. That was my [OVERLAPPING].
[01:48:04] FEMALE_1: Good morning skyline. This is [inaudible 01:48:04] .
[01:48:04] INTERVIEWER: What were your personal favorite things to do for fun?
[01:48:11] Jerry Walden: I liked outdoor things a lot. I like to run and to swim, and those are probably my favorites. I played basketball when I was a kid, but didn't really find it easy to play. You'd have to get some other people together, so I really focused on things that I could do alone and running was something that I picked up on as early on and I guess I was really thinking, well, I don't have any time to do this. I was talking to one of my colleagues, Alex Gutts, and he was a great internist here in the East lab at noontime. I said, well, maybe I could do that, but I don't know how you do that, Alex. He said, If you want to do something, you just do it. I thought about that and I started to do some of those things and have maintained those until today. I still do some running and I still like to swim too, but I'm more a runner than a swimmer. l like to go into sports activities, like going to musical concerts. Always love music, l like to sing and go into the ark now is a great thing. Loved movies, so go to movies quite a bit where we have season passes at the Michigan Theater, Zoe. Whenever we want to, we jump in the car and go to a movie. Those are the things, travel. Being outside gardening zone. I think that's about the top of it.
[01:50:08] INTERVIEWER: Are there any special days events or family traditions you practiced that differ from your childhood traditions?
[01:50:18] Jerry Walden: Well, not specifically, I guess. One of the things that we did with my kids and my brother-in-law Mike Dudley worked for Hudson's and so he and some of his friends were in the Hudson's parade. That was a Thanksgiving and that was a tradition for several years while the kids were growing up. We would get up early in the morning, drive down to Detroit and drive I guess we'd stay with my brother-in-law and sister overnight and then get up early in the morning and get our cold clothes on and go get breakfast, which was fun and be maybe 10 kids and 10 fathers or even more. Then we'd find that place down Woodward Avenue and watch the parade and then come back and eat turkey and watch the lions game. That happened for a number of years and the kids still remember that a lot. Mike, as I said was in the parade sometimes he was a clown and he'd come around and come up to the kids and tweak through cheeks or whatever and make some fun. That was a lot of fun. Other holidays we just a standard things having Christmas and New Years and Fourth of July a bit. That's it.
[01:52:03] INTERVIEWER: Was the Hudson parade the one with the big balloons?
[01:52:06] Jerry Walden: Yeah. Big balloons, big flux. Is was a National parade. It was always on television at that time. I guess it's, I don't know whether Macy's store, I have it in an hour or not they might if they get morphed into Macy's.
[01:52:21] INTERVIEWER: What was your favorite balloon [inaudible 01:52:26] ?
[01:52:26] Jerry Walden: Well, I guess I liked the Seven Dwarfs and they did Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
[01:52:36] INTERVIEWER: Popular culture in your adult years. Please describe the popular music of this time.
[01:52:48] Jerry Walden: Well, it was rock and roll and that became a big thing and then underlying the rock and roll was blues and jazz. We were just starting to see fast dancing, the Beatles game at that diamond and the black artists got some prominence of Little Richard and the big bopper and different performers like that were more highlighted. Then the groups for puffs before this, before that. I can remember a lot of them, but some of them are still active today and then Rachel's and before him blocking, but a lot of Stevie Wonder after him, or maybe contemporary with him. There are a lot of really good musicians and so both pop and rock and roll. It was an exciting time to be around and to be dancing.
[01:54:21] INTERVIEWER: I got a question. What was your favorite band during that era that you enjoyed the most?
[01:54:28] Jerry Walden: Probably the Platters. They were really hot and fellow, I liked to [inaudible 01:54:37] a lot and just those two, three groups I think.
[01:54:50] INTERVIEWER: Did the music have any particular dances associated with them?
[01:54:54] Jerry Walden: Oh yeah. We weren't doing the twist and that became very infectious and a big deal. Then they have disco game in to later on 5-10 years after that and free dancing. I just knew, I think to a lot of people not to be close dancing and partnered.
[01:55:39] INTERVIEWER: What were the popular hairstyles of this time?
[01:55:44] Jerry Walden: Well, in high school the ductile became a thing and a lot of people had crew cuts just before that. Those are the two things that I remember the most you had to try to emulate both of those things. I had a crew cut for a long time and as did a lot of kids and then they grew there. Then the ponytail, boys doing that was a wild thing too, because it was really counter-cultural. I was thinking with my friend the other day he did this last year and he had the stroke so he couldn't respond right now two me on thing but I think the boys back then wore their pants about as low as they do today [LAUGHTER] and I had completely forgotten that I was just thinking, well, come on guys pull up your, but I think we were starting to wear them as low as we could back in those days too. Everybody curated combing their hair, combing that ductile.
[01:57:02] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other trends or styles of this era?
[01:57:13] Jerry Walden: Well, we have yeah, we do have suede shoes for a awhile. We had white bucks shoes for awhile. Sometimes you rolled up your jeans, sometimes you wore them straight. Sometimes you rolled up your shirt. Kids were smoking a lot more than I think maybe not more, but all of us were trying it because of the health all the health scarce and not been public at that time. My parents were smoking and we decided we wanted to smoke and we'd roll up our cigarettes in the their sleeve or put them sometimes in their pants. Cuff to or in our back pocket and wherever you could hide the cigarettes. Women, they were doing all kinds of different things with styles too, but I wouldn't say what sweaters or bank for awhile.
[01:58:32] Jerry Walden: That's what I remember.
[01:58:37] INTERVIEWER: Were there any slang terms, phrases, or words used that aren't in common use today?
[01:58:45] Jerry Walden: Well, we said cool a lot. They probably don't say that as much now. We said, that's heavy. We might say, your mama says, or something like that. We might say, get down. That's neat. Some of my friends would say, well, the thing and they would use the thing for every noun, so I was doing that thing, and that thing, and that thing, so you didn't know what they were talking about, but they thought you did. That's about it.
[01:59:48] INTERVIEWER: When thinking back on your working adult life, what important social or historical events were taking place at this time and how did they personally affect you and your family?
[02:00:02] Jerry Walden: Well, that's a great question. Lots of things happened during my working life. JFK gets shot I think in '67, '69, right back then. That was a major tragedy. Then shortly after he gets shot, Martin Luther King who was leading the civil rights movement got shot. Malcolm X, who was also leading got shot. Bobby Kennedy got shot. We had all those assassinations, which were just devastating, it took out so much of our leadership and made you feel like you were going to continue and that we were going to be leaderless forever and we'd lose our moral center. The Vietnam War was going on, and that was real important to me. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go or not. I was pretty sure I didn't, but I didn't know many people who weren't going to go. I had decided that even though I was probably going to be finished with my medical studies and wouldn't necessarily be in a combat zone, but I didn't really want to kill anybody, and I didn't want to be killed either. But I was more concerned with being put in a position where you might have to fire at somebody. I had done enough hunting, so I knew what happens when you shoot things, but game is different than people. I didn't understand the war, the importance of it. I didn't think the argument was made that we should be there. I applied for public health service and I wanted to go to an Indian reservation, which was the one of the best things you could do if you had to spend a couple of years before you went into medical practice in a traditional practice. I got drafted, I was in Philadelphia at the time, I was two-thirds through my internship and it was in the spring of the year, I got my draft notice and I didn't know whether I was accepted in public health or not, so I went to Washington and saw my Congressman to see what I could do, to see what they were doing and he checked and he said, well, your public health is going to happen, nut it's not going to happen in an Indian reservation because those are all taken up. There's a place at this penitentiary in Terre Haute that you could go, if you want to. I didn't know whether I wanted to go to a penitentiary. I'd never thought of being inside the walls and everything you think about jail and penitentiaries is not very cool and it might be dangerous. I thought about it a little bit, asked some mentors in my hospital and they discouraged me from going there, but I ended up going there because I didn't really want to go to Vietnam. Then it ended up later that was a very important decision because I became a medical expert for prisoners later in my career and fulfilled a very valuable service both to them and to myself going into prisons again and getting comfortable there and doing some really good work for those prisoners who were getting not such great medical care. Now I've lost the question.
[02:04:06] INTERVIEWER: When thinking back on your work in adult life, what important social and historical events were taking place?
[02:04:14] Jerry Walden: There was Vietnam and it was a very difficult time for the country because a lot of people went up and then they had to come back and they might not be appreciated the way they would hope to be. A lot of people fought going and either dropped out of the country or just opposed in their marches. I don't think our leadership, I don't think Bob McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense at that time, was very bright. But I don't think he didn't really come clean about what was going on in Vietnam. In the history of it if you watch, I've just watched one episode, but Burns is doing a good job with that. The history was very complicated because Vietnam had been occupied by China, I think by Japan, and they had been fighting for independence for almost 100 years by that time. It was very complicated. We went through that and then afterwards, civil rights was still a major focus for us and still is today because we're still have this legacy of slavery and people being considered two-thirds of a person under the constitution is when the founding fathers set it up. The importance of the southern block of states and how many presidents have been Southerners. They haven't gotten over the Civil War, and neither has the North, I don't think, and certainly blacks have always suffered from that with both slavery and Jim Crow and the mass incarceration and not getting in on some of the effects of the GI Bill, the good things, the mortgage things, and home ownership and valuable places. We're still living with that legacy, trying to figure ourselves out and that's really been important to me and to my wife Julie for our life.
[02:06:57] INTERVIEWER: Thank you for doing this interview.
[02:06:58] Jerry Walden: You're welcome.
[02:07:05] INTERVIEWER: What was your primary field of employment? How did you first get started, with fish particularly traditions, skill or job. What got you interested?
[02:07:18] Jerry Walden: Well, I became a doc a family physician, but that was a little bit of a difficulty in which maybe some of you are experiencing too. When I was in 10th grade or 11th grade, I started to worry a little bit because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I'm not sure whether I've covered this already, but my sister was at Central Michigan in education and she got me some testing done there to see what my attitude would be. The thyroid call after a day's worth of tests, which are pretty cool and here I was at Central Michigan and that was a big deal for me at the time. It came out that I should do something outdoors and maybe be a conservation officer. The conservation officer that I knew at the time well, I liked him a lot, he didn't seem to have very exciting jobs. [LAUGHTER] I just said that's not what I wanted to do, so that didn't help at all. Then I ended up just by luck, sheer happenstance that I came upon medicine, started thinking about different careers. Didn't know my doctor very well, he'd been graph them and not very communicative and I didn't see him much. But medicine seemed it could work and so the more I thought about it, the more I thought about positive things and then when I got an album, I knew other people who were in pre-med and they all had either had people in their family who are doctors or or whatever, but they had good experiences too. It seemed like that was going to work out for me. It was a good choice.
[02:09:15] INTERVIEWER: Describe the steps in the process involving in your job from start to finish. What's involved? What raw materials are used? Do you get your materials, supplies, ingredients? How are they prepared? Have you changed over time? How and why?
[02:09:38] Jerry Walden: Well, everybody knows it, you got to have that stethoscope. Everybody in primary care in family medicine, this is carrying their stethoscope around and being able to do a good heart examination is pretty central to good practice. Then you've got an ophthalmoscope to look in the eyes and otoscope to look in the ears and so those are our our tools. Many of us in primary care hoped that we would have something that was a little fancier because most of the money that's generated in medicine this is made by doing special exams with putting a scope ups, somebody's behind them or doing something that and the kaleidoscope are called colonoscopy get, get you a lot more money than looking into years. Both valuable things, but they got the money in we didn't. We were doing probably pretty basic tools. I'd say right now. The thing that's changed so much in the computer and trying to integrate the record and into the computer is major and I was with my wife at an appointment yesterday for her and the doctor brought in ascribe. Trying to keep that data in the record is difficult for those of us who are older than us a certain age. Your people sometimes can do it, but then they sometimes lose eye contact with their patients and that's the two very important and basic things that we had before was icon deck and the laying on of hands. If you needed to touch the person really to have an office visit. For most of us and we believe a lot in that the power of touch and if you didn't take a person's Paul's blood-pressure, listen to their heart, just do something. Even if you thought that was just an additional thing, you were doing something that got you in touch with the person. I think relax them and made them feel more whole than it made you feel the visit was a good thing. The stethoscope, of course, is funny because it keeps you a little distance from that but you almost always do move from the stethoscope from your ears to your hands. Those are the things I think that family medicine does not vary too much from that. It's still reading faces too is very important. You get very good at that, asking good questions. Get good at finding the specific questions that really helped unlock what's going on with your patient. Those are the things that never James Madison and complete all these changes, new drugs and things. You need to continue to educate yourself and I have a lifetime subscription to The New England Journal and read it in the middle of the night when I can't sleep or whatever. It's one of the better journalism in a good way to keep up.
[02:13:29] INTERVIEWER: When you mentioned like touching was part of.
[02:13:34] Jerry Walden: Yes.
[02:13:35] INTERVIEWER: Did you ever touch someone's shoulder just to deliver the bad news?
[02:13:41] Jerry Walden: Yes.
[02:13:44] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 02:13:44].
[02:13:45] Jerry Walden: Yes, Although I think that sometimes that's too familiar with it's bad new. But sometimes it works real well and it depends on how, that person. I think if you if you do or don't, but certainly shaking their hands, maybe giving them a hug if it's appropriate. After you've done some of this, you have to figure out what your boundaries are and what's appropriate. But good boundaries is very important too and that's something that they didn't teach us in medical school but you have to learn.
[02:14:30] INTERVIEWER: What was a typical day during the adult life.
[02:14:37] Jerry Walden: Good question. For most of my adult life I did hospital medicine. That's not happening anymore and I guess probably for the last five years I didn't do that. If I was doing hospital medicine and I had a patient or two or maybe three or four in the hospital to have to figure out how long it was going to take and be at least 15 minutes for each patient and maybe longer as you get up early and get shaves and going go to the hospital first. Then if she had obstetrics during the early part of my practice, that was really important to it and those babies game whenever they came. You might be leaving the office at any particular time, but then go into the office and started out usually about 09:00 O'clock and seeing patients until noon. Usually say to them about every 15 minutes. The neat thing about family medicine was that there's somebody with a different problem always. There was routine patients was we're not routine person. There was no real routine so you might have somebody with a coal and you might have somebody who has an earache, but you might also have somebody with a wound or you might have somebody with a heart ache of some major depressive thing. Sometimes those warning for things that they came in with and you had to decide whether you are going to unpack that and tried to be involved in it, which I thought was important. You're doing that that kind of thing. You have to have lunch, come back and do it again. Had evening hours and Saturday hours for most of my practice, but not all might have somebody else doing it. We'd rotate so that we can some of us could be off and evening hours and Saturday hours were important. Probably we're practice more than they are today and then you might be on call. Usually, we had a call scheduled that varied from one time I was in a great big group of 26 of us I think so. We're on call for everybody's patients once once a month about and then usually when it started out, I might be alone for and be on call every night. Usually at least a physician assistant with me and we'd share some call but they might not be able to take the goals of their OB or had some or if they didn't feel comfortable with the kids, then they wouldn't take those calls. It was a complicated schedule and he carried you beeper and you went to bed with with one here on the pillow and, one year thinking about what might be happening next but you got through it and it was it was still a wonderful life.
[02:18:00] INTERVIEWER: What specific training or skills required for your job? The tools involved, how, when are used?
[02:18:10] Jerry Walden: Well, everybody wants to medical school and everybody takes at least one year of postgraduate training, an internship. That was all that was required back when I graduated and I was ready to go into practice. They weren't any family medicine, well, they probably were a few family medicine or excuse me, residencies but not very many. I didn't really know too much about them and really know that I wanted to spend any more time. I went into the practice. But I first had the obligation from Uncle Sam. I went into the Public Health Service for those two years. Nowadays, people do residencies that go from two more years on top of that internship, which gives you a residency of three years, usually to five years to 10 years. If you can specialize and you can have fellowships and you can do more surgery, then you can do post-doc training and this and that and get more specialized. It's possible to do at least 7-10 years of training after medical school. Did that answer our question?
[02:19:39] Madison: Yeah. What technology changes occurred during your working years?
[02:19:46] Jerry Walden: As we talked, the computer was the big thing and the integrated record. But even before that, we were starting to dictate charts. The little handheld dictaphone became important and then you had to find a stenographer that could take your notes and transcribe them into a record. But that has really changed medicine, because in general practice, many doctors kept a lot of things on their head. Then they might have a little 3*5 card on each patient. Or 4*6, something pretty small, and they would just write a little note to themselves and with a visit. Of course, malpractice became much more a problem during the years that I was practicing. If you had a bad outcome and especially if you are complicit in that did something either wrong or something didn't go right, you might get sued. If you have a little 3*5 card and you're trying to defend yourself and say, well, you know, I did this and this and this and they say, well, where is it written down, doctor? You say, no. It's right. Oh, no, it isn't there. Everybody can get pushed out of doing that. Then that was that brought about the dictated note. Then eventually it went to the integrated record. We did a lot of work on that at Packard Community Clinic. We started to bring in people with the technology to make our own integrated record. Nowadays, most places, I think the university has gone through at least three different iterations in the last 10 years or so. Sometimes a commercial product and sometimes when they designed themselves. Then you have to try to see, well, okay, we've got it for us. There's the hospital practice and there's outpatient practice and they talk to each other, maybe not because some of the computer systems are not talking. Then there's St. John's across the river. Can we talk to them? Not now and so patient goes from one side of the river to the other and season other doctors, they might not know anything about the rate. It's very complex and it's not been solved yet, but it's on the way. The doctors who are doing that they're all in practice just trying to make this thing work. Unfortunately, I left medical practice 10 years ago. Right at that time, the integrated electronic medical record became very important in our practice. I didn't have to do that much and that was good.
[02:22:56] Madison: What was the biggest difference in your primary field of employment from the time you started until now?
[02:23:06] Jerry Walden: Well, I think that medical records made the biggest difference because now everybody can find the more data on patients and sometimes they can share the data if they can get on the same platform and be able to identify themselves. If they've got privileges to do that so they can look at the record that your patient has from another source. The data-sharing is so important, but it's also created this monster that you have to figure out how to do it. One of my friends said a strep throat person who came in and we had to do 50 checks of different data boxes for that. Whereas when we started and in practice we would just say patient has an inflamed throat. I can see such and such characteristics that make me think it's strep. I did a strep culture. It was positive. I give them an antibiotic thing they've got. Then because it's so complicated, when doctors don't have a scribe, they have to focus on in inputting this data. Often they're looking at their machine, their computer, and not looking at their patient, which is left people feeling like they're being abandoned by that process. Then is left doctors feeling like, well, I don't really know my patients as well. It's a problem. But hopefully it'll be worked out. But and scribes are part of the answer.
[02:24:59] Madison: How do you judge excellence within your field. What makes someone repeat to present in that field?
[02:25:12] Jerry Walden: That's a great question. I think there's excellence in knowledge and we all appreciate that, that certain people have a wealth of knowledge. You have to have a good fundamental knowledge base. You have to be able to think of things that might not represent the unusual thing. So often you see a patient who looks exactly like the last patient that had something simple. Or it looks like the last patient that had something complex, but this patient has a few different things going on. Or you try to find those differences and then that it's something else. You have to say, well, when I see a patient, I'm thinking of x pretty soon because it starts to fit that there's enough of these characteristics, probably as this, but it's got a few other characteristics. What else could it be? And so you develop what's called differential diagnosis. Being able to develop a good differential diagnosis and having some other ideas about what this could be, can be lifesaving and it's very important. Then I think since so many of us have problems in our lives, emotional problems or family problems or job problems or whatever. Having a sense of empathy and an ability to reach out and say, well, it looks like you're not feeling like yourself today. Can you talk to me about that or I'd like to ask you a difficult question? Maybe the question is about emotions or about substance abuse or something like that. Then you have to. That's another form of excellence. I think that needs to happen. Then lastly, I think there's a need to dig deeper and to come back to problems. I told Guan Gawunde, G-A-W-U-N-D-E, I think it's his last name. He's a great Harvard surgeon and he's written books on medicine in one of his is on persistence. I think it's persistence or a word that is similar to that. W'ell need to keep after some problem or be available.
[02:28:06] Madison: Maybe someone represented in the medical field.
[02:28:11] Jerry Walden: I didn't do that.
[02:28:12] INTERVIEWER: What makes him respected in medical field?
[02:28:17] Jerry Walden: Well, so excellence is certainly a big part of that. People who put themselves in other people's shoes can take the patient's role, or can be advocates for the patient. I think advocacy is important and so that's my present life. I'm trying to work in gun violence so I'm being an advocate for patients. I think it's an area that's been lost by the physician community and so we've got a group of over 500 physicians who are working on this that want to get the physician's voice back on this important issue. I'm also doing some work with students in what's called restorative discipline at Pepsi high school. I think that advocacy for our kids, especially kids that are being underrepresented is important.
[02:29:29] INTERVIEWER: What do you value most about what you did for a living and why?
[02:29:38] Jerry Walden: Well, I've talked about that some already. I just had a wonderful time with a very diverse practice and people there who brought a lot of humor, a lot of pain, a lot of story, a lot of relationships. A lot of my patients knew each other or were related to each other and a lot of respect for our practice. I loved all that. Then as I was winding down my practice I got involved with doing this medical expert work for prisoners. Again, I found that they were very vulnerable. They didn't have good representation. People needed to look at the medical care that they were receiving and when it wasn't up to standard which it often wasn't, we needed to describe that and we'd go to court and describe it. Hopefully the judge would rule on our side and try to push the prisons and the authorities simply better things happen. I loved that part too.
[02:31:00] INTERVIEWER: What is the base difference in your primary field of employment from the time you said until now?
[02:31:08] Jerry Walden: Well, so doctors don't go to the hospital as much anymore. They don't have their own patients the hospitalists has become the chief way of taking care of patients in the hospital. Some of us still would go and make social rounds and see people anyway and find out what was happening and keep up that way. Which is very valuable but it's an extra burden so it doesn't always get done. I think that hospitalists, the electronic record, and then medicine has moved I haven't mentioned this before, but it has moved from the ability to just hang up a shingle so to speak anywhere and have a patient base because now you have to either be having access to a group of patients through their insurance company. Insurance has been very big in this. Most people practice in groups now. The basket value it's especially nice for the doctor but you don't always know your patients that well. If you're going in for a routine thing you don't care usually, but if you're going in for something that you've been cared for on a continuing basis or for an emotional problem, you probably would like to see somebody that you know for that. All those things have changed. Some good, some not so good.
[02:33:00] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about any moves you've made during your working years and retirement prior to your decision to move to the current residents?
[02:33:12] Jerry Walden: Say that again.
[02:33:14] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about any moves you made during your working years and retirement prior to your decision to move to your current resident?
[02:33:23] Jerry Walden: Well, so I lived temporarily in a house when I first came to town and then bought another house. We moved from that to an apartment for a little while, which seemed like it would be easier to maintain, and we bought another house and I spent probably 20 years there that was on the east side of town. The other places were on the west side. Then that was when I established Packard Community Clinic, which is not Packard Health. Then after my divorce we sold that house. My second wife and I moved once from where we were living when we first got married to the house that we're living in now. Several moves. I'm not sure that I answered your question, but.
[02:34:33] INTERVIEWER: You did. How did you come to live in your current residents?
[02:34:34] Jerry Walden: We saw this house it was almost nighttime. It was really a pretty house. It's in an old neighborhood, had lots of trees, have little boardwalk going up to the front of the house, had lots of big windows and had backyard filled with trees too and the inside of the house was quite nice and it was larger than where we've been living. I thought, oh man, this is really cool. We were excited. We were bidding on this house and somebody had already put a price and met the seller's price. We put a higher bid. I woke up the next morning thinking, oh, that's too much money. I hope we don't get this house. [LAUGHTER] Buyer's remorse. Of course, we did give the house. It has worked out just fine. We've remodeled it quite a few times but it's a great house. I love being there. Got a wood stove that I love burning wood and seeing the fire and taking care of chopping and sign wood and splitting wood. I love this present house. We're probably going to move before too long, but maybe not.
[02:36:11] INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about your current living situation?
[02:36:14] Jerry Walden: Well, as I said, I like that also. I really like that stove. We've got dogs and we have a perimeter fence so the dogs can be out in the yard. That's pretty nice. I take them running with me about three times a week so they get some exercise. Yeah, the house is great. It's a little large for us but it's great for entertaining and we enjoy it.
[02:36:43] INTERVIEWER: What kind of dogs do you have?
[02:36:46] Jerry Walden: We've got two mixes. They're both Poodles. One is with a terrier or a Wheaten Terrier Poodle, and the other one is with a Spaniel Poodle. Come blocking that. We've had dogs for about the last 10 years and I always thought we travel too much to have them, but we accommodate that and that's great.
[02:37:24] INTERVIEWER: Are you still close with your work partners?
[02:37:26] Jerry Walden: No.
[02:37:31] Jerry Walden: One of the women that worked with me is working [inaudible 02:37:44] and is working with me on the gun violence issue, and I've got a lot of physician involvement with me on that of course, because we're all doctors in that group or medical students. I'm still getting my medical care from my old office, although I had a big surgery about five years ago. So most of my care shifted then to the university for a while. We have a 501C3 that I established, a non-profit, and so there's no ownership of that, but there are certainly responsibility and it was good to transition out of having the major responsibility for that when I retired and move on, and so partly that distancing from the present people has developed out of a moving on process.
[02:39:07] INTERVIEWER: What was your favorite part about the job?
[02:39:12] Jerry Walden: The people were amazing. I see them on the streets yet sometimes, see death notices sometimes of people that I remember and it's great to read their obituaries, sometimes I see things I didn't even know. But most of the time I knew who this person was pretty well. A lot of very good people that I had a part in their lives.
[02:39:50] INTERVIEWER: How far away did you have to [inaudible 02:39:55]
[02:39:55] Jerry Walden: Not very far, so it's probably a mile and a half from my office to my home. If I went to the hospital, that would be another four or five miles going back-and-forth there. Often I went to meetings if I didn't have patients. Because that's some of the educational necessities that you meet, and also seeing your colleagues and having the ability to talk to them about problems, patients, etc, that you weren't sure what to do with. Not a long travel.
[02:40:44] INTERVIEWER: Did you ever have struggles with you?
[02:40:47] Jerry Walden: Oh, [LAUGHTER] sure. There were some financial struggles. Definitely we needed to treat ourselves as if we're an independent practice. We needed to degenerate the money to bring in. You're always thinking about when you have a new physician or a new practitioner, are you going to pay for that person? Then there's the problems with if people are uninsured, how are they going to get their hospitalizations paid for? Who's going to see them? Will the specialists see them or do they need drugs and how are they got to pay for those? A lot of which is met by social services, but not nearly all of it or if they've got a substance abuse problem and there's no beds anymore, where do they go for that? How do you get them into treatment if they don't want to be? There's lots of things that happened that are problems. Meeting problems is part of life. That's part of the good thing too.
[02:42:21] INTERVIEWER: How did your family life change for you when you and your spouse retired and all of your children left home?
[02:42:34] Jerry Walden: Well, the kids left home my first marriage. It's a little hard to remember but things filled up quickly with all your responsibilities and so you didn't do quite as much together. With retirement, things have found me pretty quickly and so I'm pretty involved with, tomorrow I speak with a group of medical students about gun violence at the university. We've got a bill in the Senate that wants to put guns into schools and hospitals and bars, and anybody who's got a permit could bring a gun in. So there's things that seem pretty crazy to those of us who know the statistics of having a bad thing happen with people who are maybe even well-trained, but they're not the police or the authorities that you expect they're going to take care of your problems if you need a gun and hopefully you don't need a gun in [LAUGHTER] school. There's those things that are coming up that we go to Lansing to oppose and write the governor and writers, Congress people and call each other and have to get organized about. There's always seems like something and we're pretty active in their church too, so we have things there and then with our kids and I'm really close to one of my daughters, so we're trying to get her all sorted out with her foot injury, ankle injury. And then as you get older, you get more informed, you have your own problems. I had some health problems, I had to deal with those.
[02:44:53] INTERVIEWER: What did your family enjoy doing together?
[02:44:58] Jerry Walden: Well, we still like the outdoors. We still like music and dance and for a while, Julie and I went to Mexico and did some volunteering and then we started going to Louisiana in a craw fish festival down there and dancing and eat craw fish. And then we got involved after Katrina in New Orleans, and so we've been going into New Orleans so for a month. We like to travel.
[02:45:39] INTERVIEWER: Are there any special days, events, or family traditions you especially enjoy at this time of your life?
[02:45:49] Jerry Walden: Well, vacation. [LAUGHTER] I like to travel, although I've done most of what I wanted to do that way. But we do still enjoy going, we go to South for the winter time on February. If you haven't noticed, it's a pretty gray month here, so about that time you go a little stir crazy if you're living in vibrant and it's about the only time a year that it isn't beautiful here, as far as I'm concerned. I like to be outdoors in the winter time, but it gets a little cold and damp. We like to travel and often leave in February or March and go South, go to Florida, and then usually go and see my sister. Sometimes going to see some friends in Key West, sometimes go to the Apalachicola, which is a beautiful place in the Florida Panhandle. Then we go to New Orleans for a month. It's usually Easter while we're there and we've got great, we go to a B&B and have some great hosts there. We really love the people that run this B&B. That's always nice. Summertime, my birthday is in the summertime I have a great birthday party and invite a lot of people only. Doors to dominate and get together there. The traditional holidays are nice, Christmas and Thanksgiving. I like Thanksgiving a lot but nothing beyond those things.
[02:47:46] INTERVIEWER: In thinking your life after retirement or your kids left home up to the present. What important social or historical events are taking place and how did they personally affect you and your family?
[02:48:03] Jerry Walden: Well [NOISE] we've gone through the Vietnam War, which was just a major thing I think for the country and still is. In all the subsequent wars, I think have also been really important and hard for us. We got involved in Latin America and in ways with Nicaragua and a little bit with our stance on Cuba because we love music and because of the island culture infects New Orleans loved all those islands in Mexico. We've kept the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war and those have been important to the country as a whole. I think that today it's this partisan politics that's so difficult for all of us. I think that the president is rather inept, at least as a statesman. He might be a good politician, but I don't think he tries to do much healing. It's left us as a pretty divided nation and I think we're trying to figure out how to do that better. Which with gun violence, it's another one of those smaller scale conflicts with two ideas. One is guns make you safer on those guns don't make you safer and how you bridge those differences. I think that there's problems but it is going to make all of us as citizens more responsible to try to figure out how we do things better. Just took a vacation in Scotland and Scotland is going to try to be carbon neutral in 2020 and we are going to try to be carbon neutral in what? 2070 maybe, or they're going to try to do it in two years from here. They are some of the biggest recyclers in the world right now. You can't see examples and they have what was considered the best educational system in the world. Maybe not now, so you can look to other countries and other cultures and see where we could do things a little bit better and that's great because we don't need to reinvent the wheel. I think I answered.
[02:51:16] INTERVIEWER: When thinking back at your entire life, what important social, historical events had the greatest impact?
[02:51:28] Jerry Walden: Well, I'd say it was probably the Civil Rights Movement in Dr. King and Malcolm X. But I think it's very close with Vietnam War. They both were linked for one thing and a lot of people who are poor, who were more to have gone to Vietnam. The civil rights movement in a sense was not just civil rights for blacks, but was really civil rights for everybody. The women's movement tagged on to that and had shared some of the same needs and the gay rights movement tagged on to that and shared some of the same needs and now we're into immigration rights and that shares some of the same needs. All these things are important I think and still yet to be decided how we're going to live through them, live with them.
[02:52:46] INTERVIEWER: What family heirlooms or keepsakes in momentos do you possess? What's their story and why are they valuable to you?
[02:52:59] Jerry Walden: Well, I think I have a lot of things that came from my family. I've got one quilt, I'm still deciding who it's going to go to. It was given to me by my grandmother and she probably had some scotch heritage and so she made this quilt. Both she and my grandfather grew up in that. Well, my grandfather was born in 1846, so a long time ago, and she was probably born in the 1850s-60s. Got a quilt that I've got to pass on, get some jewelry from my mother, and some silver from my mother. Probably some dishes, but not very many things like that.
[02:54:15] INTERVIEWER: Thinking back over your entire life, what are your most problem memories?
[02:54:26] Jerry Walden: Well, I guess my weddings were proud times. Getting into medical school was huge for me, and then I've had some positive courtroom decisions for the prisoners. They were very proud, used to deliver babies. There's nothing like delivering a baby. It's just such an exciting time. The same people in the practice are going into their home and being really warmly welcomed. Those kinds of things.
[02:55:23] INTERVIEWER: What would you say has changed most from the time you were my age to now?
[02:55:31] Jerry Walden: Well, we've talked some about the electronics. I think for electronics has been huge. It's just so different. You can be in contact with people like you never would before. When I went away to college, I called home every three weeks or so. I went home about every seven weeks when all my clothes were dirty and I needed some laundry and I needed to sleep. Electronics has just been a huge change.
[02:56:20] INTERVIEWER: What advice would you give to our generation?
[02:56:22] Jerry Walden: I would advise you to make a difference and decide how you can do that, and maybe don't decide because it will come to you, I think, to try to find a job that you love or a job that's meaningful. Try to find what your heart can get involved in and to be a good person in whatever way you can think about being good. Find some friends, laugh, enjoy yourselves.
[02:57:07] INTERVIEWER: If you could change one thing about our generation, what would you change?
[02:57:14] Jerry Walden: Well, I'm not a good critic. My friend and I often talk about the loss of going outside to play that we had when we were kids. That was all that we did. Every summer, when you got up in the morning, you through your clothes on and you were gone for the rest of the day somewhere in a small town or in the city. You live in the city, I live in the small town. We played cops and robbers. We played all kinds of ball. We played with little things. We went swimming, we played basketball, all those kinds of things. I don't see kids doing that as much now. Being out on your bike, we never got taken anywhere in my small town, so you could get as far away as you could walk or bike. I think you all have your own things that you're doing. I don't think there's any going back to my day, necessarily. I'm a little bit concerned about the competitiveness of sports that need to be so good. Little concerned about that school too, that you all have to be on your way to being number 1 in something. We didn't have to do that. My friends were all going to college, most of them, but we never talked about it. We didn't share grades. We just were, and so nobody really knew what a class standing was or anything like that until graduation. I think there's some value in that. But those times have gone, so you all will figure it out.
[02:59:37] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any grandchildren, what are their names?
[02:59:43] Jerry Walden: I have seven. Leland and Macy and Lily are my daughters. Then I have my younger daughters, Sharon and Michael. My other older daughter, Julie, and then my wife, Julie has Emmie and then Caroline. Gabrielle is my older daughter's younger child. Elly, not Emmie.
[03:00:32] INTERVIEWER: What are your children's names?
[03:00:35] Jerry Walden: Julie and Sharon and Amanda.
[03:00:39] INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
[03:00:44] Jerry Walden: Well, I think we've talked a lot about what my life has been like. I don't think I have anything else.
[03:00:54] INTERVIEWER: Thank you for doing this interview.
[03:00:56] Jerry Walden: Thank you for having me.
[03:01:02] INTERVIEWER: We're going to have it in about a week.
[03:01:04] INTERVIEWER: We want to have it done in a week. [LAUGHTER]
[03:01:07] Jerry Walden: Busy, busy. I see a couple of friends who I didn't know we're part of this group. That's nice too. See what they talked about.
[03:01:20] INTERVIEWER: Are you guys ready to start? I'm going to start off by asking everyone to turn their phone to silent, like do not disturb, so it doesn't beep on us. Do you guys have anything?
[03:01:34] Jerry Walden: Yeah.
[03:01:42] Jerry Walden: Good detail.
[03:01:44] INTERVIEWER: You can call for a break anytime you'd want just by asking us for a break. We have water for you. Also, please remember you can decline to answer any questions that we asked you if you feel it's not relevant or you just don't know an answer to it. Good morning, Dr. Walden. We really enjoy learning about you. We're so happy to see you again. We will be asking you questions that will help us produce a 3-5 minute video. We will ask you some questions more than once so you can portray the best answers. In the final production, we will also ask you questions that we might have already asked during the previous interview session so we can edit the film quickly. The screening is only two weeks away. For our video project, we want you to focus on level of travel in the advocacy of the reduction of gun violence and practitioners against gun violence, and the impact of your recent travel.
[03:02:58] INTERVIEWER: The first set of questions focuses on your childhood and college years impacting your decision to become a doctor. We need to provide some context for the audience. Where did you grow up?
[03:03:13] Jerry Walden: I was born and raised in Caro, Michigan, which is in the Thumb of Michigan.
[03:03:21] INTERVIEWER: In what decade did you grow up into Europe?
[03:03:25] Jerry Walden: That was in the '40s. I was born in 1941. A long time.
[03:03:30] INTERVIEWER: We would like to know about your education. What colleges did you attend if any?
[03:03:38] Jerry Walden: Yes, I went to Alma College, also a Michigan college, in the middle of the state.
[03:03:45] INTERVIEWER: What did you study while you were at Alma?
[03:03:49] Jerry Walden: I was on a pre-medical curriculum, so it was science. Chemistry, and biology major then.
[03:03:59] INTERVIEWER: Did you attend any other colleges?
[03:04:01] Jerry Walden: No only at Alma.
[03:04:04] INTERVIEWER: What factors influenced your college decision?
[03:04:08] Jerry Walden: Well, as from a small town, graduating class was only 120, and I was not prepared to come to a big school like Michigan. I looked at the couple of larger campuses, university of Detroit and Michigan, and decided that I really needed to a small place to get my maturity and get my study habits going. So Alma was a great place for me.
[03:04:38] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe your living arrangements while you were in college?
[03:04:43] Jerry Walden: Yes. I spent three years there and then moved on to the University of Michigan. I was in the dorm all three years. Very old dorm in the first year, and then new dorm, I think the second and third years with a roommate in each time.
[03:05:06] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any protests on campus while you were in college?
[03:05:11] Jerry Walden: No. I remember seeing a play, Cry Beloved Freedom there was a play about South Africa. But aside from that, I was still becoming the person I am today. I still am coming from small town, Michigan and civil rights movement was starting, but not quite yet for the most part. I was pretty insulated from a lot of things going on in the country, in the world.
[03:06:03] INTERVIEWER: Can you explain it how the civil rights movement was started leaking like [inaudible 03:06:10] ?
[03:06:11] Jerry Walden: Well, I don't have a great answer to that. I think I was so focused on getting better studies or keeping up. I didn't have very good language skills and my writing wasn't good. I didn't take in high school English composition, I avoided that one. I had a lot of things to work on to try to keep keep pretty good grades. I had decided early on that if I could go through this portion in three years rather than four that this was going to be a good thing for me, and try to get to medical school.
[03:07:00] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 03:07:00] I'm sorry to interrupt, [inaudible 03:07:06]
[03:07:08] INTERVIEWER: What made your decision of going to pre-med? Was there like something that happened?
[03:07:15] Jerry Walden: But I was in a little crisis.
[03:07:19] INTERVIEWER: You're going to have to start over there.
[03:07:22] Jerry Walden: Sure.
[03:07:24] INTERVIEWER: The first set of interview questions. This is on your childhood and college years impacting your decision to become a doctor. We need you to provide some context for your audience as to where you grew up?
[03:07:37] Jerry Walden: Sure. I grew up in in Caro, Michigan. That's in the Thumb small-town there.
[03:07:46] INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about your hometown?
[03:07:49] Jerry Walden: It was great place to be. As a child. It gave you a lot of freedom. It was small enough so you knew everyone. It was very homogeneous. It was an all white town practically so that was a distinct disadvantage. But the advantages of being a farm community were that there was work to be done if you wanted to work, and it was just a great place to grow up and became free to explore how to be a kid on your own.
[03:08:32] INTERVIEWER: Do you have one really distinct memory of that growing?
[03:08:37] Jerry Walden: My father liked to hunt and fish so I would go hunting lots of nights, small game hunting for pheasants, rabbits. On the weekends, we went hunting almost every weekend went fishing. I like to work on the farms that were there and then later became a lifeguard and swimming instructor so I hung around the pool, and so there were a lot of good good jobs for me. My childhood was really quite good.
[03:09:10] INTERVIEWER: At what age did you move from Caro?
[03:09:14] Jerry Walden: I actually was born outside of Caro on a farm. My parents had gone there during the depression years and then my dad went back to work for Detroit Edison men. Aside from a short stint and the period during when I was about four when I lived in Caro all my growing up time until I went to college.
[03:09:43] INTERVIEWER: What they decade was this?
[03:09:45] Jerry Walden: This is in the '40s.
[03:09:48] INTERVIEWER: We'd like to know more about your education. What college, did you attend?
[03:09:53] Jerry Walden: I went to Alma College, small college in liberal arts college in the middle of the state.
[03:10:00] INTERVIEWER: What were your influences that impacted your college decision?
[03:10:06] Jerry Walden: Well, I needed a good place as far as I decided then to become a doctor if I could, and I need an education at a college where he had a pretty good chance of going to medical school from that place. I also wanted a small place because I'd come from a small high school with only 120 in my graduating class.
[03:10:29] INTERVIEWER: Do you know anyone that's also a doctor that gave you influence while you were growing up?
[03:10:35] Jerry Walden: Well, that's a great question. I didn't have. I had a couple of relationships with care doctors. Mostly, I didn't know them and so I have a little crisis trying to decide what I was going to be when I was a junior in high school. Fortunately, I had a sister who was at Central Michigan and she got me into some testing to see what my aptitudes we're after a day's worth of testing, they said, well, you'd probably want to do something outdoors. Because as I've told you, I liked outdoor things. But I didn't like conservation officer. I knew the conservation officer, and really liked him, but I didn't want his life so that I didn't know what to do. Somehow I stumbled on medicine as being the thing that might be really a great career. The doctors I didn't know. I had to push themselves, I think a little bit to get into medicine, and I thought that was going to be good for me to be pushed a little bit.
[03:11:48] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any protests on campus while you were in college or around you?
[03:11:55] Jerry Walden: Yes, I don't really recall very much of anything. I recall going to cry The Beloved Country, which is a few goal play I think about South Africa. Wonderful play. But it didn't quite match up because I think it was a little bit before the civil rights were coming. The biggest protests would have been strikes and I don't really recall. There weren't any close to Alma that I recall.
[03:12:31] INTERVIEWER: Could you describe your living arrangements during college?
[03:12:35] Jerry Walden: Yes. I lived in a dome, over three years I was there. I had a roommate each each time, had some great roommates. That was a new experience to be living with another guy from those times. I spent the three years there and then left for Michigan.
[03:13:01] INTERVIEWER: What made you want to become a medical practitioner?
[03:13:05] Jerry Walden: That's all the people that I knew as physicians, not very well, but somewhat were family physicians. I was open to other things, but always thought about that family medicine would be what I wanted to do. It's the relationships with patients, I think are just unbeatable, just it's the best division of medicine to be in as far as getting good people to people, skills, and relationships, and you see the whole family. So that you really get to start with the births and the deaths and see everything. I had five generations at times and families. So know your families.
[03:14:03] INTERVIEWER: You helped the lives of lots of individuals and families. How did that shape you as an individual?
[03:14:12] Jerry Walden: Well, I think you'd get shaped because when you're in a relationship with patients, you can ask any question that you want to. You can really be very personal with them, and I saw during my training, some people didn't really want to be relating to people who had tough problems maybe addiction, maybe cancer. I thought, I want to know about those things, and I found that especially in a practice like mine where there are a lot of minority people, they taught you a lot about their culture, and it was like, this is like eating a new food. This is all good. They taught me a lot about humility too, but they taught me about joy, and the joy of being in a relationship.
[03:15:22] INTERVIEWER: What was the name of the place you worked?
[03:15:25] Jerry Walden: I started Packard Community Clinic, which is in-between Ann Arbor nips line. I First came back to Ann Arbor at Summit Medical Center and spent four years there with Dr. Ed Pierce, and then I left there and started Packard in 1973.
[03:15:48] INTERVIEWER: As you reflect on your career, what accomplishments are you most proud of?
[03:15:54] Jerry Walden: Those relationships. One patient when I went to see him on Mondays, he said, come on in Dr. Walden, rest your coat. Phrases like that. Make yourself at home stay a little bit, and enjoy a little bit of time with me. Then I came to love going to funerals, I came to hate addiction. At first we started a methadone clinic, which is the first one and probably in this state, I'm pretty sure. We thought, oh, this is going to be easy. Methadone is going to be an easy substitute for heroin and we're going to cure everybody. Well, it's a lot more to it than they have them. We had 60 patients and they were very complex and they were running us all over the map, calling them at various times because they'd forgotten their drugs doing this, doing that, stealing stuff. We moved out of our little house into the community center and they took the meat from the freezer there. It would be hard to watch the urine testing to see if they were really off heroin. It was very complex on top of practicing in the hospital and in the clinic simultaneously. Finally, we got out from under that. I didn't want anything to do with addiction for five years at least, and then I went to an alcohol seminar and learned some things like one-on-one, they'll beat you every time, which is pretty true. My drug is more important to me than anything else, so, I'm going to talk you out of your pen, your pencil, or your watch, your money. That I learned a little bit about addiction and I came back to that. That was very rewarding because you can save lives by intervening with addiction, with alcoholism, and other addictions. I love that part, and it's a little bit long answer, but it's pretty a special area for me. I love deliveries, I did those for 10 years, and then I still took care of babies and take care of people when they're dying too is another area that's difficult at first, we tended to look at this as a failure back in those days, but then you understand, well, we all are going to do this thing, so let me learn a little bit about what this person is going to teach me at the end of their life. It's nice.
[03:18:57] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any memories with the colleagues that you worked with?
[03:19:01] Jerry Walden: Oh yes. Yeah, many.
[03:19:03] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe one of them?
[03:19:06] Jerry Walden: Well, sure. They're two radiologists at St. Joe's, Dr. Cooper Isaca, and Dr. Lee. These two guys, when you're in family medicine, and at that time they weren't residencies that were very common, so most people just did a year of internship and then went into practice. We knew we didn't know a lot and so stopping them to see these two radiologists and have them look at chest X-ray with us, and tell us well, this over here, this is an infection as this guy has gotten pneumonia, and what are you doing? How are you treating him? I don't think that's quite right, and these guys just love to teach you. Cooper Isaca would say, oh boy Sam, what do you have there? And you'd give him your X-rays. There's a lot of commonality, a lot of collegiality at St. Joe's. People were happy to teach you anything or talk with you about any of your patients. That was really wonderful. Then practicing in the office with good people, I had lots of good doctors that came through the clinic with me, and fortunately, it's still in existence now as Packard Health.
[03:20:39] INTERVIEWER: For the second set of questions, we're going to focus on the travel.
[03:20:42] Jerry Walden: Okay.
[03:20:45] INTERVIEWER: What inspired you to want to travel the world?
[03:20:50] Jerry Walden: I haven't really traveled the world. I've been to Mexico quite a few times, and many of the times, I think there's both the adventure of travel and there's the service of travel. My wife actually first went down to Mexico, to Chiapas in '94, and we were connected with another church in Wisconsin that was relating to the refugees from Guatemala that had come to Mexico. The 100,000 people came across the Mexico border during the Guatemalan uprisings and the civil war. We were asked to come in and provide some medical care and do some other things with that community. We went to Chiapas for probably 10 years from '94 to about 2004, and then those refugees went back and we soon stopped doing that. Then 2005, Katrina happened in New Orleans, and my wife Julie and I had been going to Breaux Bridge which is a smaller town near New Orleans, to a crawfish festival because we like to eat crawfish and they have a great dancing weekend there. But after Katrina, we started going to New Orleans and volunteering there at the clinic, and soon after that, let's see, was I retired then? Not quite. Well, I think we probably went down the year that I retired, because we waited two years after the storm before we did that. There's those things. Then going to Europe is wonderful, and I first had an externship during my senior year of medical school in Nigeria. That was a really special time. I spent three months there. My proctor or mentor, his wife got cancer and he had to leave, and so I became the doctor as a medical student for this small hospital, which probably had 1,000 visits a day of people coming in from outside medical care. Very busy place. I had bad experience in Africa, and then we had visited Rome and on the way, so I knew a little bit about Europe. Then my wife and I went to France and to Ireland and England. I've had lots of travel, and travel was again just a wonderful time to experience another culture, see some beauty, see how people built things. 2,000, 3,000 years ago. It's a wonderful opportunity.
[03:24:23] INTERVIEWER: While you're traveling, did that at all affect your relationship back at home with your family?
[03:24:30] Jerry Walden: Well, my family was mostly with me, so I've been married twice. My first wife and I went to Nigeria together, and then I guess Julie and I have done all the rest of the traveling and we've always been together.
[03:24:48] INTERVIEWER: Is that something you both are interested in?
[03:24:50] Jerry Walden: Yes. She's a social worker and has a business masters too. She later on became the clinic director at Packard, but she's also got skills in social work, people skills, and she's got great people skills in management too, so she did all personnel things at the clinic. But she also likes to do that when she travels, likes to meet people and intervene with at least getting to know them.
[03:25:31] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe one or two of your favorite places that you've traveled?
[03:25:36] Jerry Walden: Well, New Orleans is our favorite right now, I guess. It's a beautiful city. First of all, it's an African-American-dominant city population-wise.
[03:25:56] Jerry Walden: It's got great food and it's got great music and the rivers they're also has got all the problems that we have in the country with race. It may have been a very good city early on because there are a lot of free people of color there and that provided a better balance and there's been since that time in our country. But now it's just struggling, they took down some civil war monuments that shouldn't be a big deal if it was or is and there just sorting things out. It's still with our basic wage of $8 an hour. You can't live on that. The economy and struggles for people who don't have special status and more money.
[03:26:59] INTERVIEWER: How often do you travel.
[03:27:01] Jerry Walden: We spent two two months, a year, pretty much going to Florida and see my sister and spend the weekend in Apalachicola and then going on for about a month in New Orleans. We stay very close to the river, so it's great to be there for that too and in music is wonderful. We took a trip to Scotland last year for three weeks, so we'd like to travel. I'm a little less anxious to travel around the world these days, but my wife loves it so we keep it balanced.
[03:27:49] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe to me your ventures or experience for you and your wife doing the travels?
[03:27:59] Jerry Walden: Sure. We fell into this place in New Orleans where we stay and it's blocked from the Levee. It's a very old house and the people who run it have been in New Orleans for generations. It is has a Jewish background, but he's Catholic now and his family, he's probably been in the country from the 1700s in the Charlotte in the South. They're Southerners, his wife is Irish ancestors and they'd been there a long time, so they really make us comfortable with where they live and he's a great cook and we have and he is one type titles and martial arts and he's widely read. He's just this wonderful guy. We really liked to stay there with them and then we go over to the Marin Ye, which is near the French Quarter. It's the best place for music and we loved the music there and the restaurants are good and I like to go to black churches nearby that's got a 66 member band. They are wonderful musicians it's a great place to be. There's some New Orleans has been I like to learn about what's been going on. What happened during the Civil War, what's happened with race and in relationships since that time. That's one of our favorite places to go, we've got family in Boston, we've got family in California and Wisconsin, so we go some two to the two coasts. My boss and family just bought a place on Cape Cod because my son-in-law works there, so that's a great place to visit. The drama still on the question.
[03:30:38] INTERVIEWER: The question was, could you disrupt any of your adventures and experiences with your wife?
[03:30:45] Jerry Walden: Well, both in Chiapas and Nigeria we learned a lot about another culture. In Nigeria all the nurses were male most of the people working were male at that time, and so we learned about how men in that culture, we're providing the care that were mostly female roles here. I followed Nigeria. Nigeria is suffers from the colonialism that so many places still do. Well, there's like 150 different dialects or languages spoken there so it's not just one place even though it was formed into a place and so that's maybe the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan in many places where you try to push people together and call them a country. But Nigeria has had its problems got a lot of wealth of oil. Sometimes that's a curse and like it isn't maybe in the Middle East, big wealth brings bigger problems in managing it. The haves and the have-nots tend to be more dramatic than they are without those resources. Love to learn about Nigeria in Africa love to be in, in Europe, looked to be in Chiapas. Japanese is just a beautiful place to, but quite poor and of course, the language barriers we we learned some Spanish, but Spanish is only in an intermediate intermediary language and so we didn't quite get to the I understand you really well because I speak exactly your language and as it would've been nice to.
[03:33:18] INTERVIEWER: Describe how your dedication, to family has [inaudible 03:33:27] .
[03:33:31] Jerry Walden: Say that one more time.
[03:33:37] INTERVIEWER: The question is very fine it's how has your family and traveling, how are they coinciding. Do they fit all together?
[03:33:56] Jerry Walden: Well, it's an interesting question. I did. How our family and in travel. I guess the thing I would say about that is that there's this kind of trade-offs in life. When you're traveling you're not at home, so you not participate in things that are going on. Usually are you being pulled away and yet you also being blessed by going someplace where you can learn something more and reviving your spirits and getting rested. I think it's a kind of rest at least. My wife she especially loves to travel. So that's a great thing to see her really happy. On the other hand, you're leaving things to it and some of your responsibilities are being shouldered by other people and you just have to hope that that's going to work out. Doctors lives sometimes that's a big problem because you're so busy with your practice that you don't really engage as well as you showed in the family life. I don't know quite what you do. You try your best and talk as well as you can.
[03:35:39] INTERVIEWER: Has separating your doctor life and then your regular family life, has that caused any issues with work and families?
[03:35:57] Jerry Walden: I think it's been pretty good. I mentioned that I've had two marriages so I don't know what role the work-life played in the divorce, for the first time. Probably not huge but it always pulls you away and you might have been able to be a better father if you'd had more time to do that. If you've taken more time more time.
[03:36:33] INTERVIEWER: Is that something you worry about with your current marriage right now? That work get in the way?
[03:36:41] Jerry Walden: I'm retired now so I have got time to focus on us more than I did then.
[03:36:50] INTERVIEWER: With every trip you've taken so far, are you from the fact that music plays a huge role?
[03:36:58] Jerry Walden: Yes.
[03:36:58] INTERVIEWER: Just because of you and your wife just love music of different cultures, the dancing part of it.
[03:37:08] Jerry Walden: Music is life. Music is wonderful. There's a George Shirley competition at the School of Music at the University. I happened to take care of professor Shirley from during my practice times, he's a classically trained baritone, I guess, or tenor I'm not sure musician who has traveled Europe. It's been a part of that music is great and this morning I was reading this little commentary about the psalms and they say that they're supposed to be sung. I've not sung the psalms but I love to sing. I sing around the house, my father did that.
[03:38:02] Jerry Walden: My wife since I know a thousand songs, I'd probably do actually, I know a lot of songs that I learned. I loved that. I love to sing. We both love music and music is just a lot of joy. Dancing is even better. It's really a great thing. I think that medicine really as Mr. Shirley was telling me that it's always been integrated at some arts and medicine, arts and science. Medicine owes a lot to the arts.
[03:38:42] INTERVIEWER: We are going to move into our third set of questions and these are focused on reducing the guns in America. Based on our e-mails that we've had, it gave me the impression that that's what you're working towards.
[03:38:58] Jerry Walden: My two focus right now are gun violence prevention and I'm also spending some time explaining community High School and restorative discipline there. I like you guys you're great agent and it's great energy to be around you. I like working with kids. I am very strongly desirous that we find ways to reduce gun violence and save people's lives and their injuries.
[03:39:40] INTERVIEWER: Have you have any experiences with gun violence, were you a victim?
[03:39:47] Jerry Walden: I've not been a victim. No. But I have had two patients, one is Ricardo Hart he's in prison right now and he was involved in a robbery and murder that happened in this community 35 years ago. He's been convicted. He drove the car and he's been convicted in his life without parole and I worked for the last 10-15 years. We consider each other brothers and I'm trying to get him out of prison and he's going to maybe succeed if the governor pardons him, he's got to have a commutation. He's one of my patients and knew him as a child. His family, the Hart family in Ypsilanti. Then the Stewart family. Kamaras Stewart was shot and killed by a drive-by bullet, she was at a barbecue. This happened 20 years ago, I guess. I was a profound experience for me and for her family. Her mother worked at St. Joe's, of course they were patients so I knew them really well.
[03:41:15] INTERVIEWER: What factors influence your decision to advocate for the reduction in gun violence?
[03:41:23] Jerry Walden: I want to see gun violence changed in that happened in probably two levels. The personal level of having these two people in my practice probably were more, but those are the ones that I am most strongly influenced by. Then a number of us get together for coffee. Since my retirement I joined this group. We were drinking coffee and 2007 when Virginia Tech happened and three of us were physicians and we said, well, we don't hear much of a physician voice who's talking about this, what can we do? We decided to go to the mayor and ask them to sign on for mayors against illegal guns. We did that, he said no, that didn't have a gun problem.
[03:42:23] Jerry Walden: And he said, Oh, okay. I guess we can't do anything then. When Gabby Giffords got shot in 2011, it just triggered something in my brain. I said, here's a congresswoman being shot for no reason. This is like the kids being shot today. It's something triggers you and you say, Oh my God, why are we doing this? We have to do something. Then I started with Andy's wife with my buddy. I knew the groups primarily so I went to various groups at St. Joe's and started asking them to join us and we create a physician voice. Now we have 600 docks in Michigan and we have a voice, it's strong but not strong enough to make a change. We need the legislators we got to wait till November to see if we can gain more change there too.
[03:43:34] INTERVIEWER: Did you have a voice in creating physicians and [inaudible 03:43:36].
[03:43:39] Jerry Walden: Yes, it was my voice and Andy's that started this. We are the co-founders.
[03:43:47] INTERVIEWER: So this is going to be on television is there a message that you'd like to say in front of the camera?
[03:43:54] Jerry Walden: Yes. I would like to say that all of us need to pay attention to gun violence prevention, to learn about it and to vote for people who are going to reduce the amount of guns that we have in this country and to provide better gun laws. It's incredibly important and now the students are so energized I think we're going to change things.
[03:44:27] INTERVIEWER: When did you become interested in reducing gun violence as a physician?
[03:44:32] Jerry Walden: Well, 2007 on Virginia Tech happened and they made a movie and we showed the movie locally and there was a nice response to that. Living for 32 as the name of the movie and the man that made it. Collin. I'm forgetting his last name right now, but he did a great job. He was shot four times and I came back from those injuries. That convinced me David Hemingway, who runs the Injury Prevention Center for Harvard Medical School, came in. I gave some lectures for us early on and he's wonderful. He's got a book, private guns, public health, and all about this is written 100 articles and he's very passionate and so it's easy to become passionate one see you understand that we are such outliers and all other industrialized countries have 20 times less gun deaths than we do. It's not 5% it's not, 100% it's 20 times and so we have 35,000 and they have 50 [LAUGHTER] or 500, some ridiculously low number of deaths. Just because we love our guns I think they do something good for us and don't really require them to be treated with the respect that they need to be treated.
[03:46:19] INTERVIEWER: You have been on personal travel recently to Florida. Were you in Florida when the [inaudible 03:46:27] happened?
[03:46:35] Jerry Walden: No. That was before I was almost at the same time, I think. I think we left March 1st and that was in February.
[03:46:53] INTERVIEWER: While you were in Florida did it have any meaning for [inaudible 03:46:59] ?
[03:47:04] Jerry Walden: Well, we can see people getting organized and the kids that have spoken down there. Just amazing. It takes some energy because it doesn't take long before all the legislators fall back on and well, it's too early to do anything, or we should study this, or we should pray. We should do something else besides may make any substantive changes. But those kids who went to the state legislator and really did change some things. I've heard from the AMT of one of the girls was killed. Her name is Gutenberg and its name is Abby. You leaderless and Abby, really wants to form a group. She lives in Cincinnati. She wants to form a group like ours their. Mom's demand action has got a great voice. Michigan Coalition Against Gun Violence. Was in Michigan or part of that. That's got a good advice. We're starting in and there's lots of groups. We just need to make them more cohesive and we need to find this height as the NRA does. Even though we might not have the money that they have, what we need to be very passionate about this.
[03:48:48] INTERVIEWER: Have you ever met [inaudible 03:48:49] or a [inaudible 03:48:51] family member following this issue?
[03:49:02] Jerry Walden: I don't know that I have. This is another area that we haven't talked about. But I spent about 10 years as a medical expert, for prisoners in Michigan. There was a large suit that had been going on since the 1980s where the judge ruled in the '80s that the prisoners had right to better health care and put some stipulations on what that should look like and then they have medical experts like myself and I started in 1999, come into the prisons every two years. I know a lot about Michigan male prisoners and many of them had been gunshot victims. Many of them are in wheelchairs because they can't walk and had spinal cord injuries. Many of them have lost an arm from a from a gunshot. Not only do gunshots cause death, they cause a lot of injuries and the injuries are really severe. I've met many of those people. I guess in some sense I've met gunshot survivors.
[03:50:27] INTERVIEWER: From those experiences how does that impacted your [inaudible 03:50:31]?
[03:50:36] Jerry Walden: Well, it's it makes me sad. And anytime you see somebody who's lost a family member to death or lost a family member to an injury either then if they end up in prison, but also if they're just on the streets, it's a long struggle to get your health back and many people don't. I think they won. One of the things that we're overlooking in this whole conversation around guns is what it means to shoot somebody, and how it would impact your life if you didn't knew that you either injured somebody so that they were not hold anymore or you kill them? I think we just aren't thinking about that. I couldn't live with that very easily. I would be pretty shattered if I did that. Why are we so insistent that we can shoot somebody or pulling down on somebody. I think it's a terrible idea.
[03:51:53] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 03:51:53] there a solution to introducing handguns?
[03:51:59] Jerry Walden: Yes, it's pretty simple. We need a public health approach, which actually is both simple but it also includes everything. Like what we did with cars back in the days when there were a lot more deaths on the highway, we started designing better highways, and took trees off the side of the road, we put bumpers on the cars, we put the lights higher so that you could see when a car was stopping or stopped. All those kind of things, seat belts, of course. We need to do all those things. We need to have really good registration of guns, and shouldn't be able to pass any gun without a registration of it, knowing whose it is. We should have the smart technology for the bullets, so that you can prove which gun comes from, that kind of thing. We should have locks on the guns, so nobody can open up a gun and use it unless it's the owners. No kid can get it and shoot somebody. All these public health approaches are pretty well-known, they're just not being played in place. Then we should limit the guns. There's no reason if we have a desire like Australia did, when they brought their guns back and reduced the amount of people who can have them. You can't take them out on the road with you unless you've got to put it in a special place in your trunk, and you have to have a locked safe in your home, and all these things to treat those guns with respect. Now it's also going to be more costly, so people are going to think about, "Well, do I really want to spend my $5,000 that's going to take?" One Australia comic says, "Well, the way to get the guns off the streets as to make them worth $30,000. [LAUGHTER] Then some kid on the street isn't going to say, well, give me a gun, or some older person either." [LAUGHTER] $30,000 is a nice price to be a restrictive price.
[03:54:04] INTERVIEWER: Each state has a different age requirement for guns. What do you feel is an appropriate age or someone to own a gun in their possession?
[03:54:16] Jerry Walden: Well that's a great question. The studies on our brain development suggests that we're really not that mature until we're about 25. I think that's probably the best age. Those cultures where maybe in the country where people are used to using guns earlier, but most of those people are like I was, when I was a kid I had a shotgun, and shotguns are not going to be, well this last murder in Texas, unfortunately he did use a shotgun, but you have to be very close to kill somebody with a shotgun, and very intentional on it. The age of 25 is what I'd suggest.
[03:55:06] INTERVIEWER: Do you still own guns even though all of this is still going on?
[03:55:14] Jerry Walden: Well I gave my shotgun to another relative not too long ago. I still like the idea of going hunting, but I don't know whether I like the idea of shooting something, so it's coincided with, I haven't hunted for 30 years probably.
[03:55:36] INTERVIEWER: Do you feel like there's a safety need for someone to own a gun in their house? Like to be protective o [inaudible 03:55:46] ?
[03:55:47] Jerry Walden: Well it doesn't work out, that is to have a gun and use it for protection. The American Academy of Pediatrics says just don't have guns in your home because too often the kids find them and they use them, or if they're safely stored, you're not going to get up in the middle of night and go put your flashlight to your gun safe and get out your gun, usually. It's 2-5 times more likely that you're going to shoot a family member. In the studies where you shoot somebody that enters your house, usually they were unarmed, so you're hurting an unarmed person. Yell at them, or call the cops, get out of a baseball bat. Do something if you need to. But guns are not the thing to do.
[03:56:53] INTERVIEWER: What advice would you give to young people like high schoolers in terms to what they can do to help reduce gun violence in schools.
[03:57:03] Jerry Walden: That's a great question. Well I think if it's your issue, first of all, you need to register to vote, because we need everybody to vote from the time that you're voting age. I always vote, and I hope you will too. I think that one of the other initiatives that I'm excited about is called the Sandy Hook Promise, which hasn't come to Michigan very much yet.
[03:57:34] INTERVIEWER: Is that the same as Rachel's Challenge?
[03:57:39] Jerry Walden: Might be related. I think Rachel was part of Sandy Hook.
[03:57:44] INTERVIEWER: They had that as [inaudible 03:57:44]
[03:57:50] Jerry Walden: The Sandy Hook Promise has two major premises. Just say hello, which aims at making sure that no kid is isolated in school, and that everybody keeps up with each other, so that when people do feel like they might be suicidal and depressed, or they are interested in starting a shooting or something like that, you know who they are. Also just builds great culture in your school. Just say hello and say something, or put you in relationship with an adult, so that if you do think that there's something going on with this person, you have to say something and they will translate that. I think there's a third part, which is the ask, that when you go into another person's house you ask if there's a gun there and if it's being safely stored.
[03:58:54] INTERVIEWER: That's the end of our questions, unless you have [OVERLAPPING]
[03:58:56] INTERVIEWER: I have a question. For the physicians against gun violence, what exactly do you guys do?
[03:59:08] Jerry Walden: Well we're taking the public health approach. The public health approach to me means that you do anything that has some scientific basis that might help. We spend some time with curriculum building. We give lectures at the university to their psychiatric rotation, about every six weeks. We spent some time educating physicians, and that usually happens at a grand rounds. Grand rounds are these little meetings where you come in and you usually get some credit for doing this, and there's a topic presented and ours is gun violence prevention. We're doing those two things. We go lancing if there's a bill coming up that we should either oppose or support. We write to the governor, write to the legislators. We're going to be hosting legislators at Dr. [inaudible 04:00:10] home, June 14th, for a meeting to raise some money for the legislators that are trying to get better laws. We're educating ourselves, we're advocating. That's our mission statement, is that we're educated and empowered to advocate for gun violence prevention.
[04:00:37] INTERVIEWER: You don't have to answer this question if you feel it's not a good question. Do you feel gun violence is related to mental health issues?
[04:00:49] Jerry Walden: Well, yes and no. There are certainly a small percentage of people who have mental health issues. It's usually anger issues as well. We have yet called anger a mental health problem, but people, [LAUGHTER] ourselves included, probably shouldn't have a gun when we're really angry. But that's not mental health. It's only a small percentage of people who have mental health issues that shouldn't have a gun. If they're addicted, they shouldn't have, to either alcohol or any other substance. A lot of people who are addicted carry a gun in their car, or a truck or whatever. [NOISE] But most people with mental health issues aren't the ones we need to worry about, that they quite often are victims of some kind of violence, and maybe gun violence would be one of their victimization. As we know from the kids who have gotten shot by police thinking that they, well, either suicide by cop, which has happened to people that I've known of, or where the person just pseudo-threatens a cop with a knife or a toy gun, or maybe a real gun, but isn't really going to shoot it, shoot the cop who expects to be shot. Suicide and victimization is the real problem for mental illness.
[04:02:35] INTERVIEWER: That's the end of our interview.
[04:02:37] Jerry Walden: Good.

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2022

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