aARaARA ROSS-LEE

                           Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan
                               Interviewer



Mullan:     If you'd give me your name and spell it.



Ross-Lee:     Barbara Ross-Lee -- B-a-r-b-a-r-a R-o-s-s-L-e-e.



Mullan:     What is your date of birth?



Ross-Lee:     June 1st' 1942.



Mullan:     The date is the 18th of October, 1996.     It's a Friday

afternoon.     We're   sitting in Dr. Ross-Lee's office on rather a

wet, Southern Ohio afternoon--we're in Athens, Ohio.       Is that
right?


Ross-Lee:     That' s true.   Yes.



Mullan:     At the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Ohio

University.


Ross-Lee:     Right.
Mullan:   We are about to participate in a convocation ceremony.

Tell me a word about convocation. Where did that come from?           Is
that from the beginning of the school?


Ross-Lee:   Actually, it has been from the beginning.       I think

initially they were so surprised to have a class as quickly as
they did.   It's a young school.       It's only 20 years old.   And so
it's been a tradition since then.       We've used the Convocation to
award medals to people that have distinguished themselves either

helped the profession or have done something really significant
for the community or have made some important contribution to
health care.   We only have two major ceremonies--the convocation
and the graduation.     The coming and the going.    Although this
year we are going to introduce a white coat ceremony.


Mullan:   That's for?

Ross-Lee:   That's going to be at the end of the second year for

students going to the clerkships to mark their successful
progress into the clinical phase of their medical education.



Mullan:   That's great.   So you get them together.      I've never

been in a school that did anything before graduation by which

time you were jaded and remember to move on.




                                   2
Ross-Lee:     It's a caring school.



Mullan:     Yes.   That's great.   Well, let's talk a little bit about

you.   That's why we're here.      Tell me about your background and
why don't we start all the way back in 1942.         It was a great

year--the year I was born as well.


Ross-Lee:     Absolutely.



Mullan:     And tell me about where you were born and where you grew

UP


Ross-Lee:     Oh, I was born in Detroit, Michigan.      I was born at

Women's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.       I grew up in Detroit.      I
was the first of six children and actually, the same doctor, Dr.

Bernstein, delivered five of my mother's six children. And
that's the only time she ever went to the doctor, when it was

time to deliver.


Mullan:     And tell me about your family.   What did your Mom do and

what did your Dad do?       Your Mom made babies, that was clear.



Ross-Lee:     Well, yes.    She had a little help.    (Laughter) My

father worked for Anaconda American Brass in one of the factories


                                     3
in Detroit.    He spent most of his time in the plant, in the
union, so he was a union man.      The union was the UAW which later
became part of AFL/CIO.    He spent most of his time working at
American Brass; in fact, he retired from there.     During all of
that time, he was active in the union.     My mother was a
homemaker.     She sewed all of our clothes.   However, she had

attained more education than my Dad.     She taught in community
organizations before she and my Father got married.      She had a
year, if not two years, of college.     But she was a homemaker, she
was there for us most of the time.


Mullan:     Had his interest in the union been from the start or did

he get into that later on?



Ross-Lee:     Probably later on.   In fact, between my birth and my

sister's birth, he was in the military during the Second World
War.   He was an MP.   When he came out of the Service, he wanted
to be a policeman, but was unable to because of the racial
situation at the time.     So from that point he moved into the

factory and stayed there until he retired.      I think when the

labor movement really gained momentum, probably the early S O ' S ,
he became very active in the union.



Mullan:   Was that good for him or did it cause problems or--


                                   4
Ross-Lee:    No, I think it was good for him really. Although it

kept him away from the house and the family a lot.        In the late
5 0 ' s being a union rep allowed him to have a job when everybody

else had been laid off, because if anybody worked in the plant
they had to have a union rep there.      So even if one person

worked, as the union rep he worked.      It allowed him to at least
earn some money in the late 5 0 ' s .


Mullan:     He was still at the American Brass?



Ross-Lee: He was still at Anaconda American Brass.



Mullan:     UAW is auto workers.   Now did they--now did brass and

auto workers come together or is that a silly question?       I guess
union--



Ross-Lee:     You know, I really don't know except I guess they made

the parts for the auto industry in Detroit.       But other than that
I can't explain.     It's just that he spent his whole life in the
union and it consumed him to a large extent because he was gone a
lot.    There were some times when it helped as far as the family
went.     He was able to work when other people were laid off.



Mullan:     Did his involvement in the union, other than keeping him


                                    5
away from home influence you or your perception of work or
values?     Were union principles much talked about or part of your
upbringing?


Ross-Lee:     I don't know whether we had any real discussions, but

I think it was that his concept of working together as a team for

the underdog and looking out for everybody pervaded the family.
You know, helping and sharing were very much a part of our family
upbringing.     But as far as any specifics as it relates to the
union, I don't think that we ever had an in-depth conversation

about it.


Mullan:     Well, it sounds like having a sense of working together

is an important value.


Ross-Lee:     Yes.   And that really was important, all of the issues

of workplace equity and fairness.      Those were very much a part of

our growing up.


Mullan:     Your mother's influence as (unclear) with your father's

influence on the family, she being home and being with you more
of the time, did she stay home or did she go to work as well?



Ross-Lee:     Well, she worked from time-to-time.   It was a


                                   6
generation when, I think, women didn't work outside of the home.
And to do so somehow or another would have been demeaning to my
father as the breadwinner of the family.      So she did work from
time-to-time because we were poor and were frequently unable to
make ends meet.    Any crisis would be enough to compromise our

abilities to acquire things for years.      So she worked from time-

to-time.    But she was the one who was encouraging.    She was the

one who I think inspired the family to know that they could do
anything they wanted to if they worked hard enough.      I sometimes

joke that my mother felt that it was a sign of maturity to be
able to delay gratification.    To be able to put off the childish

immediate gratification in order to get a better reward later.

That was something she pushed all the time.       In the family we had

this big joke--she could delay gratification forever.       I mean,

forever.    I can remember, she wanted some new living room
furniture and we couldn't afford it.       She would not settle for

cheap furniture.    She wanted the best.    And so for five years we

had an empty living room with the best cocktail tables that she
could find.    We had no chairs but she saved and bought one couch
at a time as she could afford it.     So it was a big joke that when

you're around her you're going to have to learn to delay your
gratification.    You've got to work and plan but you'll get there.

You don't give up, you just keep on going.      And that's a sign of

maturity.    I think she probably had more of an influence on the



                                  7
kids then my father did.      He really was gone a lot, working all
the time.


Mullan:     You were the oldest?



Ross-Lee:     The oldest.



Mullan:     What sort of a role did you play?     Did that put you in a

surrogate role for Mom at times?


Ross-Lee:    Absolutely.    I can even remember when my brothers and

sisters were teenagers--my Mother would call me and say, "Let me

tell you what your son did."       I'd have to remind her that those
were not my children.       (Laughter) I think when you're older--



Mullan:     What is the span between you all?



Ross-Lee:     I am two years older than Diane and Diane is two years
older than Rita, Rita is a year older than Fred, Fred was a year
older than Arthur and I'm 13 years older than Chico--Wilbert, who
was the youngest. Another family joke is that thank God my
Father went into the Service, otherwise we would have had

brothers and sisters every year.        But, yes, I ' m the oldest and I
really served as a surrogate parent.        In 19--in 1952--in 1952, my


                                    8
mother went into the hospital with tuberculosis.      The family of
five children at the time, the youngest was only about a year
old, was shipped off to Alabama to live with my mother's sister
while my mother was hospitalized.       It really was at that time, I
was only about 10 years old, that it became clear that my role in

the family was going to be the surrogate parent.      The move out of
State was an effort to keep all of us together for that year so
that we wouldn't have to be split up.      So all five kids stayed
together in Alabama.     That time solidified my role as being the
surrogate parent.    I think that probably that role continues
today.    So much so, I think my father feels that I compete with
his authority as a parent.    They look at me as second Mom.     My

mother died about 12 years ago.       Only when they can't get
satisfaction from me do they turn to my father.       It's just kind
of a pattern built up over the years.



Mullan:    Interesting. My mother had tuberculosis in 1952 as

well.


Ross-Lee: Is that true?



Mullan:    It was her second bout, actually.     She had the first

just after I was born.     She was off line for about a year.    Your

mother was out for about a year?


                                  9
Ross-Lee:     For about a year.    Isn't that interesting.



Mullan:     That would be I guess about the time (unclear) that

streptomycin had come along at that point.


Ross-Lee:    Right.   Although my mother had to have a lung

resection.     She had part of her lung taken out.    That only
complicated her problems with breast cancer later.       She didn't
have good lung capacity.      It made her convalescence from the
mastectomy very difficult.        Isn't that interesting. Was she

hospitalized in a sanatorium?


Mullan:     Uh-huh.   Both times she went to Saranac in New York.

The first time was during the war and she was--she started in
Saranac, and then she followed my father who was in the service

out to San Bernadino in California.       The second time she stayed,
we were living in New York, she stayed in New York part of the

time and then she went to Saranac part of the time.       But from
what I remember, sort of the family lore, the second time was
when she      (Unclear) because the drugs were--


Ross-Lee:    A little bit.



Mullan:     --she went, I guess, culture negative much quicker.


                                     10
Ross-Lee:     Do you--are you the only child?



Mullan:     No, I'm the oldest of three.



Ross-Lee:     Did you become the surrogate parent during those times

of family crisis?



Mullan:     I was thinking about that as you were saying it.     And I

(unclear)


Ross-Lee: Crises set the dynamics of lifelong behavior.       That's

interesting.


Mullan:     What was Alabama like?    Was your mother from Alabama?



Ross-Lee:     Yes.   Interesting experience.    I couldn't wait to get

back up north.       In fact, my only experience now that I'm here in
Ohio, my only real experience with Cincinnati and Ohio occurred
every summer even before my mother got sick.       We would go down
south for the summer to visit her family.       The only thing I
remember about Cincinnati--Cincinnati is the place where you had
to get up out of your seats and go to the back of the bus.         That

was the turning point from north to south and that's all I
remember about Ohio.      Alabama was interesting at the time.     It


                                     11
was segregated--


Mullan:     This was when you were traveling?   You would travel

through Cincinnati--


Ross-Lee:    Right.   That was the turning point, you had to move--

your last stop north was in Cincinnati--and you had to get up and
move so that when you left Cincinnati you were in the South.

When I--we were--Alabama was segregated.     It was really, really
interesting. We lived in Bessemer (phonetic) Alabama which was a
relatively small city then--very segregated--and I was a reader
at that time, an avid reader but we were not allowed access to

the public library in Bessemer, Alabama.     I remember that.   There

were just so many places you just didn't go.    And I saw the Klu
Klux Klan parading down the main street which is where our home--
where we were living at the time.     It was just the mentality that
was altogether different.



Mullan:     How did that impact on you, it obviously hurt and

obviously was there but--


Ross-Lee:     I think we already, as a family, felt isolated. I

think it just made us feel further isolated from the community.

So to some extent it solidified the brothers and sisters


                                 12
together. We just were this little hub in this foreign place that
was different from anything that we were familiar with.      As a
child your world is small.      By leaving Detroit, we were leaving a
comfortable world, one that we knew.      We then traveled to Alabama
and had to get adjusted to going to school there in an
environment that was so different.       Things you took for granted
you could no longer take for granted.      You had to be less focused
on the concerns of your interaction with your friends or your
family than on a new hostile environment that had different rules

that you had to follow.       So, I think as a group we all became
much closer but also felt very isolated from what was going on
around us.    I don't think we ever really got over that year.       My
youngest sister still tells stories about Alabama.


Mullan:     Everybody was glad to come back at the end of the year?



Ross-Lee:     I really was.    Although coming back was a culture

shock as well.   We'd been gone for a year, I couldn't wait to
come back to a bigger world.      You know, one in which we didn't
have to feel so cramped. And we walked back into the city of
Detroit,    and I realized that the street we lived on was a little
narrow street, it wasn't this big thoroughfare that I remembered.
We got back before my mother got out of the hospital.      She--




                                    13
Mullan:     Where was she hospitalized?



Ross-Lee:     She was at a sanatorium in Howell (phonetic)

Michigan, which was about an hour away from Detroit at a time

when we didn't have a car.       We didn't come back to what was

normal.     In reality we came back to an empty house, my mother
still wasn't home and my father was still working very hard to
make ends meet.    One of my mother's sisters moved in with us so
that we could at least be back in Detroit.        Part of the reason

that I was happy to get home was that I was living with an uncle
in Alabama who was the meanest man I have ever met.


Mullan:     This was in Detroit?



Ross-Lee:     This was in Alabama.       That was part of the reason

that my mother insisted that we come home.        He was a very mean
man.   Actually, I've never forgiven my father for leaving us

there with that mean man.    He was never mean to us, but he was
very mean to his children in front of us.        Anyway--


Mullan:     You came back, you're now about 12?



Ross-Lee:    Uh-huh.   Eleven.




                                    14
Mullan:     Eleven.   Tell me about your adolescent.    What was it

like and you stayed in Detroit?


Ross-Lee:    Yes.   Actually it was a happy time.    We lived in an

inner city in a large apartment building.      There were a lot of
children.    The playground was less than a block away, the school
was right across the street.     It was really a community.    People

had lived there forever.     You could go blocks away and if you did
something wrong, they would tell your Mom.       I mean it was a real

community.    So it was wonderful.     I loved it.   It was safe.   I
didn't even know I was poor until I left that community.       I had

no idea we were poor.     I mean, everybody else lived the same way

we did, and so I didn't know we were poor until I went to junior
high school. I did not go to middle school--it was junior high
school in the area where I was supposed to, so I had to catch a
bus to school every day.



Mullan:     Why did you go to the different school?



Ross-Lee:    My mother didn't feel that it would give us the same

level of education as the school outside of the community.
Still, I mean, it was not our district school.       So I used a false
address and went to a different school.      I had to get up real
early every morning.     It was wonderful--1 mean the junior high


                                  15
school--because it got me back into reading.     I worked as a
library aide, so I challenged myself to read every single book in
the library before I graduated.    It was a junior high school
library, so it wasn't that big.    That was exciting.   I mean,
those years were real good.    I think I must have been in the

eighth grade when we moved from the area in Detroit where we'd

always lived, because Detroit went into a major recession. We
just couldn't afford to live in that community so we moved out.
That's when I think the family really ran into hard times.        That
was right before I graduated from middle school, before I started

high school.    It never really got any better after that point.
It was always a struggle from that point on.



Mullan:     That's because your Dad wasn't making as much?



Ross-Lee:   He wasn't making as much.   He finally did go back to

work, but we never really recovered from that.    I can remember
the battles over this.   My mother insisted that we take public
assistance--we had never taken public assistance--to move us out
of where we were living into the public housing projects because
we couldn't pay rent.    We were about to be evicted. My father
did not feel that he should ever take aid.   Her threat was--she

was leaving.    I mean she was taking the family out of there.      I
can remember that year of not having heat or electricity because


                                  16
we just couldn't afford to pay.    My father was bringing home $26
a week and the rent was $75 a month.      There were six kids, my
youngest brother was a baby at the time.      This was within a
couple of years of my mother getting out of the hospital.        We

moved into the projects.     I don't think my father ever recovered
from having to live in the projects.     We were one of the few
families that had a father in the projects.     He was still
working, but we were caught in the dynamics of the welfare
system.     The more we made, the more you had to pay to stay in the
projects.    You could never get out once you got in.    I mean,
although my father worked the whole time we were there.      If he
got a raise, or if he worked more days that week as the plant
started to recover, they would raise the rent so that whatever
extra you made, you paid.     It was really very interesting.      I
lived in the projects until I was 21--I    was going to Wayne State

University commuting on a day-to-day basis.       It wasn't until
Diane started singing, made some money, and bought a house to

move the family out of the projects.


Mullan:     Tell me about high school.   Was that high school in the

projects?


Ross-Lee:     No, it was Cass Technical High School.    It was a--

sort of like what they call a magnet school now.      It was a


                                  17
college preparatory school.      There were two in the city, Cass
Technical, which was science technical and then Commerce High
School, a business school.    They were right next to each other in
the near downtown area of Detroit.       It just so happened that the
projects were close to downtown so I could walk to Cass Tech on a
daily basis where most of the other kids took public
transportation from all over the city.


Mullan:     Was it a good school?



Ross-Lee:     Very good school.    It still is a wonderful school.

I've gone down there a couple of times and it's--


Mullan:     Cass Tech?



Ross-Lee:    Cass, C-a-s-s.   It's received all kinds of national

awards.     It is right now probably 98 percent black, and still its

college-bound rate and scholarship rate set national records.
It's a wonderful school.


Mullan:     Was it integrated?



Ross-Lee:     When I went there it was probably about 5 percent

black and the rest white.     It changed over time.


                                    18
Mullan:     How was that?   Was that difficult, comfortable,

controversial?


Ross-Lee:    My elementary school was all black.    The junior high

school I went to was probably about 75 white and 25 black and
Cass Tech was about 5 percent black.     There was still some bias.
The expectations for minority students were not very high.     But

you learn to live with bias.    And many of the students who

started with me did not finish.     By senior year, there were very

few of us left.   Most of us had been lost through some sort of

attrition.    We were relatively isolated.   I mean, it was
difficult to get involved in the social elements of the school.


Mullan:     What were thinking about career-wise at that point?

You were still an avid reader?



Ross-Lee:     Oh, yes.   I was really thinking about medicine then.
And expecting to go to college, not fully realizing that you need
money to do that.    It wasn't until after I started college that I

had to start being a bit more realistic about what I could afford

to do.


Mullan:     Was Wayne State a given?    Or was that--




                                   19
Ross-Lee:      Actually I had a scholarship to Albion but it didn't

pay for room and board.     I was admitted to Michigan State which
was where I wanted to go, and my father promised me that he was

going to be able to get the money--but at the last minute he
didn't.    So Wayne State was nice enough to let me in.    So I went

to Wayne for four years.     I really liked Wayne.   It probably was
much more comfortable from a diversity perspective.       It really is
a commuter college.     Yeah, I liked Wayne.   Wayne was better than
Cass Tech to some extent because the minorities were not so
isolated.    The interesting thing about Cass Tech is that the
music instructor would never let Diane sing.     She was a grade
behind me.     She said Diane didn't have the voice and would never
allow her to sing. After the Supremes made their first record,
Diane was a senior, some of the teachers insisted that she be
given an opportunity to try out for senior production.      I can
remember the teacher predicting that Diane would never be

successful singing.     It's just amazing.


Mullan:     So I wonder if she's ruing that today.

Ross-Lee: She probably sees it from a totally different

perspective.    Diane, certainly survived. But how do you do that
to kids?



Mullan:     Well, we'll come back and talk about Diane--


                                  20
Ross-Lee:     Yes.



Mullan:     --but in terms of Wayne State were you, what did you

major in and what were you thinking about then?



Ross-Lee:     I majored in chemistry and biology.   Actually, I

started off thinking I'd major in math and I took a quantitative
analysis course and decided no, maybe math isn't where I want to

go.   I was in chem/bio as a curriculum in high school, and so I

majored in chemistry and biology in college. Actually I started
in pre-med thinking that I would go on to med school. After two
years I decided that maybe I wasn't going to go to med school.      I

was average at a time when it was really difficult for minorities
to get into med school.


Mullan:     This is Barbara Ross-Lee



Ross-Lee:     Is this the kind of stuff you want?


Mullan:      Oh, yes, it's great.   This is Barbara Ross-Lee - Side 2

of the first tape.


      So you decided that getting into med school was going to be

tough.    I mean if (unclear) these kinds of competition in terms

                                    21
of being African American was going to make it extra tough.


Ross-Lee:    Yes.    I had none of those characteristics that

medical schools were looking for at the time.      So I decided to be
a little bit more realistic.      I don't know when I shifted out of
pre-med, but I decided that I'd get a degree in one of the
sciences instead.     Meanwhile, I fell in love and got married.     I
certainly couldn't go to medical school then.       In fact, my
wedding was two days after President Kennedy was shot.      Marriage

delayed my graduation for a year.       So instead of graduating--



Mullan:     The marriage.



Ross-Lee:     The marriage did.    Instead of coming out in '64, I

really came out in '65. And I came out with a bachelor's degree
in chemistry and biology.     And then I realized there is nothing
you can do with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology.        So

after interviewing with places like Parke-Davis, I did get a job.
 I was offered a job with Parke-Davis; my job was going to be

weighing rats.      The job was available because the person who had
it developed a sensitivity on her fingers from picking up the

rats by their tails.      That's what my bachelor's degree in science

was going to get me.      So I took a job working at a hospital; it
happened to be an osteopathic hospital.       That was my first


                                   22
contact with osteopathic medicine.      I worked as a--


Mullan:     This was in Detroit?



Ross-Lee:    Yes, actually it was in the suburbs of Detroit, in

Madison Heights.    The laboratory services were just starting to
become more mechanized with autoanalyzers and coltercounters.        In

fact, they were just doing RIA (radio immune assays) using the
old resin method.    They needed somebody with a science background
who would be able to troubleshoot and problem solve some of the
new machinery.    So that's how I got that job at Martin Place

Hospital laboratory.    It was wonderful, because it was a small

hospital, I got to learn to do everything they had in the lab.           I

soon realized that I had to do more in life than work in a

hospital.    What do you do after 10 years in the laboratory?      You
work in another lab.    You know, you just learn everything that's
done and there's no where else to grow.     I was just a little bit

frustrated with what appeared to be a dead end.     I has an
opportunity to go into the National Teacher Corps.        So I left the

laboratory to get a master's degree in education.     It was an
ideal choice because my first husband was a teacher.        If I had a
teaching certificate, we could both have time off in the summer.



Mullan:     And had the Teacher Corps required a credential or a


                                   23
degree or--


Ross-Lee:     A bachelor's, yes.   The concept was that with a

discipline degree and with some practical experience in the poor
and minority communities, you could earn a master's degree in
education, and you could effectively teach underprivileged

children.    So we went out into schools in teams.   I taught in
inner city Detroit.    In fact, I taught at the very school that
was next door to the projects that I had lived in.     It was down
near Wayne State University Medical School.


Mullan:     The degree that you had to take, was that a four-year

or was that just courses?



Ross-Lee:     It was a two-year program to get a Master of Arts

degree from the College of Education at Wayne State.



Mullan:     And you were teaching at the time, as well?



Ross-Lee:     And you were placed in a teaching environment and

taking some graduate courses in the evening at the same time.        So

we were placed in schools and so--



Mullan:     Would they pay you?


                                   24
Ross-Lee:    Yes.



Mullan:     This was part of the Teacher Corps program?



Ross-Lee:     Right, we got paid a teaching salary.



Mullan:     Uh-huh.



Ross-Lee:     It was the domestic version of the Peace Corps.   So I

earned a master's degree in teaching while I taught at an inner
city middle school in an experimental classroom.      I really liked
teaching which was kind of a carryover to my medical career.        I
really enjoyed it.     1 learned a lot about teaching methodology
because these were kids who were really difficult students.         In
fact, we went to all the teachers and requested "The kids you
don't want because they are discipline problems."     So we had an

experimental classroom.     There were five of us on the team with a

team leader, in a class with 50 students. We taught them.       A
couple of years ago I got a call from one of the students.      It
was just amazing.     He was doing very well and he remembered me.
He just wanted to call and tell me what he was doing.     These were
kids that if you'd go into their homes you would never look at

them the same way again--one kid, I don't know how he ever came

to school.    If I'd lived in his house, I don't think I would've


                                  25
come to school.      So   it gives you a more realistic perspective on
some of the challenges that kids have.       I think it's even worse
today because even schools aren't safe. As much as my class may
not have taken advantage of what a school could offer, the school
was safe.    I can't imagine how kids must feel when there's no
place you can go that's safe.       I mean, it has to affect your
psyche over the long-term.


Mullan:     This was, if I'm not mistaken, in the mid-60s now?



Ross-Lee:     Yes.



Mullan:     The Civil Rights Movement was underway.     How did that

affect you?



Ross-Lee:      It opened up medical school.    A friend of mine who

was also in the National Teacher Corps, he was in the class ahead

of me, came and said, "Barbara, they're opening up a new
osteopathic school.       Why don't you apply."   I was teaching school
at the time.     It was the year after I finished the National
Teacher Corps, and my marriage--my first marriage--had failed.           I
was trying to decide what was I going to do with the rest of my

life.     I had two babies--




                                     26
Mullan:     You had two babies while you were going to school and

teaching?


Ross-Lee:     Yes.   I never participated in a graduation ceremony

for my bachelor's or my master's degree.      I was pregnant both

times.    I didn't actually get handed one--until I got my

osteopathic degree.    This guy came to me in April or May of 1970
saying a new osteopathic school has opened.     You really ought to
go out there, they'll be taking their second class for the
following September.     So I investigated the osteopathic medical

school.     I didn't have enough hours in physics.   I had to make

the decision.whether to take a physics course in the summer.         So

I did.    They admitted me.


Mullan:     This was Michigan State?



Ross-Lee:     Michigan State.    Actually it was the Michigan College

of Osteopathic Medicine.      It didn't become a State school until
after the first year that I was in there.


Mullan:     It was in Lansing?



Ross-Lee:     It was in Pontiac.




                                   27
Mullan:       Originally.


Ross-Lee:      Originally.   I could commute to Pontiac from Detroit.

 It was about a half hour away.      The discussion, once I was
admitted, was that the school was to become a State school and
was going to be moved to Michigan State.      The profession thought
it would be linked to Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan,

not Michigan State in East Lansing, but the legislature decided
to link it to Michigan State.      It created a dilemma for me.   I
had two babies and I couldn't afford to move to East Lansing
because I was still working, substitute teaching, on the side
while I went to school.       It was too far to commute on a daily
basis.    So as it turned out the first two classes of the Michigan

College never had to go up to the campus so I never went to
school on the campus.       By the time they decided that the school
was going to be based at Michigan State, I was in my second year

and remained in Pontiac.



Mullan:       Before we pursue medical school and to get back on the

Civil Rights Movement, amplify for me a little more how the
comments you made on the Civil Rights Movement opening medical
school and how that worked out.      And, also, your thoughts about
the--as you look back on the civil rights era, it was--went over

across '68,     1968, and Martin Luther King's assassination, Detroit


                                    28
erupted--


Ross-Lee:    Oh, let me tell you all about that.     The riots were

'67 in Detroit.    I had just finished the Teacher Corps?



Mullan:     Were the riots \65?



Ross-Lee:    The riots in Detroit were in \67.



Mullan:     '67.



Ross-Lee:     It was an interesting time.   I had one child Stephen,

Monica wasn't born until January '69. So it was the summer of
\67. But during those riots, I mean, it was interesting.       I

lived on the northwest side of Detroit which was the safest area,

but my family--in the home that Diane had purchased--was right in

the riot area.     It started on 12th Street.   Dexter, which is

where my family lived was only maybe 10 blocks away.     So they
were very close.     The National Guard was all over the community.
All the stores were burned down and nobody could get food in the
community so we were trying to bring food in to my family from

the northwest side.     It was real touchy because the National

Guard was so trigger happy.    Diane, at that time, lived in
California and sent f o r my youngest brother who was about 12 or


                                  29
13 to leave Detroit.   In fact, he never came back after that.     He
spent the rest of his life in California. My oldest brother who
19 was arrested by the police for driving my sister's expensive

foreign car--and was beaten rather badly by the police during
that period of time.   After the riots, the Detroit News did a
survey of the entire Detroit community and they hired black
college students to do the surveys.    So I was a student surveyor.

My job was to go to all of the houses in a section of the east
side of Detroit and complete a questionnaire about whether or not
they participated in the riots, and what they did during the
riots.   It was a really interesting job for me.   I went into
homes that today if any child of mine said they would do what I
did, I'd probably have a heart attack.    But I did, and I don't
think my mother knew what I was doing.    I had these
questionnaires, I'd go and sit in these people's homes and I went
into places, I mean I knew I shouldn't be there even as I was

sitting there trying to get answers.     It's interesting that the
riots, even for those people that took part in the riots, had
galvanized the community so that they were focusing on property
and authority, not on people.   Even after the riots, I didn't
feel threatened physically as a person in these communities where
I shouldn't have been, because the focus was not on people; it

was on property.   I'm impressed today that I was doing the kind
of stuff that I did.   There were several of us performing


                                30
surveys, at least in my assigned community.    There was no threat
to any of us, whatsoever.     It wasn't like we were traveling in
teams or groups, we were out there by ourselves.    It was an
interesting perspective to be able to talk to a broad spectrum of
people from the black community--1 was kind of this fresh out of
college kid--and the perspective in the black community at that
time for people who were going to college was always supportive.
That's changed.   People in the black community would say, "Leave
that girl alone, she's a school girl.    Leave that girl alone."
"That's the college girl, leave her alone."    Or, "Can I help you-
-" I mean, education was revered. The culture of the black
community supported education. We've lost some of that in the
last generation. My youngest daughter told me that she met a man
that sounded just like Daddy who said, "Honey, don't let these
people get you down--get your education."     Everybody helped you
if you were trying to get education in the black community.     They

would protect you.   Didn't matter who they were.   I worked at the
post office for a year, in '64, my last year as an undergraduate.
Most of the workers in the post office were black, whereas most
of the supervisors were white, but the workers would say, 'Let
the school girl go home.''


Ross-Lee:   About the civil rights.    In Detroit the Civil Rights

Movement was quite visible.    Political empowerment was a direct


                                  31
result.     But economic empowerment was lost after the 1967 riots.
After King's death, when the new school was opening up, there was
a clear commitment to affirmative action; the classes would be
diverse.     That was impressive when the classes were so small in
the first couple classes.


Mullan:     And they were diverse?



Ross-Lee:     And they were diverse.



Mullan:      In a self-conscious way.   And the school--now this was

before it was part of the State system.


Ross-Lee:     Before it was part of the State system.



Mullan:      So it was a commitment of the leadership of the new

school and the osteopathic community?


Ross-Lee:     The leadership of the new school.   Not necessarily

the osteopathic community.


Mullan:     These were certain individuals?



Ross-Lee:     Do you know Mike Megan?


                                  32
Mullan:     Uh-huh.



Ross-Lee:     This was Mike Megan.    He was the dean of the new

school. And he was committed.        It was going to be diverse.   I
was in the second class.     In the first class there were two
blacks and one woman in a class of, I think, 17. And in my class
there was supposed to be 25.     There were three women admitted and
two blacks.    One of the women dropped out and we wound up with a
class of 21.     That was significant at the time, you know.   He was
committed and ultimately every class after that always had some
minorities.    But as the classes got bigger the percentages got
smaller.    I give him and the Civil Rights Movement credit for

that.


Mullan:     So you had two years in Pontiac and then two years of

clerkships which were--



Ross-Lee:   Actually, my class was a three year program, 33

months, three years.    We got very little time off.    It was very
tedious and then--so I spent two years in Pontiac and then a
year--a little over a year--in clerkships all over the State.          We
weren't based like most people are at one hospital.      We used all

the osteopathic hospitals in the State: the first year being

mostly basic science; part of our second year in systems approach


                                     33
were taught in the hospitals; and our final year clerkships.     We
had our lectures in the morning and then we went up on the floors
and rounded on GI patients or cardiology patients or neurology
patients in the afternoon.    It was possible because the class was
small.



Mullan:     A question that's much with us these days is that of
the quality of clinical education, how you measure it, how you
score it, and in schools that have rotations to many institutions
of which the osteopathic community has been always a strong

proponent or that's been a strong feature of osteopathic
education, the question always comes up, well how you do quality
assurance if you've got, you know, hundreds of people serving as
faculty members in dozens of settings. A: What was your
experience like as you went through it and B: now as you
superintend education how do you see that?   What are the

problems; what are the strengths?



Ross-Lee:     From the perspective of what I went through, the

class was small and we didn't need as many faculty.    The
profession was extremely committed to making this successful and
the college didn't have to use as many people in order to deliver
a curriculum. We had one neurologist for the whole class who not

only taught the neurology course but provided the neurology


                                 34
clinical experience.   The same thing with, well GI, we may have
had two or three faculty for lecture and clinical clerkship.
Physicians were willing to voluntarily give up a lot more of
their time.   We didn't need or have a lot of faculty. We just
had a select few that actually came in to lecture at the college
at the same time that we also went out into their clinical
practice for clerkship experiences.   It was tighter.   Having run
a preceptorship program with five, six hundred doctors in an
effort to provide early preceptorship experiences, for 125

students, it does become an issue of quality.   The program has to
have some requirements of your faculty for faculty development.
Your evaluation instruments have to be standardized and the
clinical sites monitored so that you get reliable information.
It takes a lot more effort and a lot more resources just to make
sure that your faculty, as well as your students, know and

address course expectations. You must visit these sites.     You
can't place students into unknown situations. Yes, it is a

challenge.    I think any system that uses preceptors in ambulatory

care training sites is going to have to deal with those problems.
It's not like having a captured patient and physician audience in
a hospital where you have monitoring systems and nurses are
always there.   Quality ambulatory education can be achieved, but
it does take different resources and strategies than the ones

that have been used to support in-patient educational programs.


                                 35
Mullan:     Back to the decisions that went into your selecting

medicine, were there any positions in your youth that were
important players to you either as role models or as family

figures?



Ross-Lee:    No, I grew up in a family that didn't really   seek

medical care.    We used emergency rooms.


Mullan:     So that your interest in medicine was exogenous in

effect, it came from--


Ross-Lee:      It was just based on seeing the need and also having

the perceptions, real or otherwise, that it was just not

available.


Mullan:     Tell me about your really thinking about osteopathy.

You mentioned that the hospital you worked in was an osteopathic
hospital.    Obviously with a new school opening up there were
opportunities.    Beyond that were there was there an appeal to
osteopathy or was it something that happened to be there--right
time, right place?



Ross-Lee:     Happened to be there--right time, right place.     I

could not, and with my prior experience, I couldn't really see


                                  36
any difference and it was medicine.     Just happened to be there--
right time, right place and happened to want me.      Perfect match.


Mullan:      So you blasted through school in three years, working

on the side, trailing your babies behind you--



Ross-Lee:      I don't think I could do it again.



Mullan:      The things one can do in youth.   So now the year is

like 1973.     What are you thinking about, what career do you see
running in front of you and what do you do?


Ross-Lee:     Well, you have to understand I felt guilty the whole

time I was in medical school. A guilt that I was not giving my

children a fair shake.     I relied on the sayings of the '60s and
early '70s--it's not how much time, it's the quality of time you
give.     I organized my whole life around my children and school,

but I felt guilty.    I felt that I could be working and making
real money and not struggling, and the kids would not have to be
without their mom.    I was only able to succeed because my family
helped.    My mother and my aunt and my sister helped me, they kept
my kids for me.    We all lived in a two-family house in the city
of Detroit.    Family was there all the time, so I could leave;
there was always somebody there with my children.     The only


                                  37
problem was nobody, not my mother nor my aunt drove, I had to
teach my mother how to drive; my aunt never learned.       But
ultimately it was an interesting time, I had support to do that.
I played games in organizing my life, and when I finished up my

degree, I did my internship in Martin Place, the same place that
I worked.     In fact, Martin Place had allowed me to work as a
student in the lab and so I worked 7 : O O a.m. to 7 : O O p.m. on
weekends in the lab as a tech in my final year of medical school.
I wanted to do a pediatric residency program.      I was the best

intern they ever had but I didn't get my pediatric residency
because the residency director felt that as a woman I might have
children and not practice.      He didn't want to waste the residency
on me.    Children's Hospital--


Mullan:      He goes in the same category as the singing teacher

where Diane couldn't sing.



Ross-Lee:      That's right.   And I can remember asking him "How can

you ask me that, I mean I went through medical school with two
babies.     How can you ask me if I might have more children and not
practice?"    Anyway, I didn't get the pediatric residency that I
wanted which was part of the reason I chose Martin Place, because

they had a great pediatric residency program.      I did get an offer
to do a residency program in Children's Hospital in Detroit which


                                   38
was the MD facility and had some D O s on staff, but I would have
to repeat my internship year.    Well, you know, for a lady who
started medical school at 28, which I thought was real old then,

divorced with two children; having to repeat a year was overkill.
Si I decided to hell with it, I'll go out into practice.       Which
is what I did.     I went out into practice in '74.


Mullan:      So the internship was a rotating internship and the

general practice tradition was (unclear) in osteopathy to begin
with.     Was family practice as a concept moving in osteopathy at

that time?



Ross-Lee:      There was one family practice residency program in

the entire profession at the time.       That was in Maine.   The
osteopathic tradition was general practice, achieved with a one
year rotating internship.



Mullan:     So the norm in osteopathy



Ross-Lee:     Was an internship and out into general practice.

That was the norm for everybody.       Taking a residency program was
an option for two kinds of DOS, the macho, or those who were too

chicken to go out into practice and stayed in the cocoon.




                                  39
Mullan:     So you went into practice in Detroit?



Ross-Lee:     Yea, I practiced in Detroit.



Mullan:     This is Dr. Ross-Lee - Tape 2, Side 1 continued.   So

the first year you were hired?



Ross-Lee:     Yes.   The first physician I was hired to work with

passed out a lot of codeine, amphetamines and Valium.    Ten
milligram Valium.     I worked for him for three months and walked

out one day and said I couldn't do that.


Mullan:     This was in Detroit?



Ross-Lee:     That was in Detroit. And then I worked for--it was

on the east side of Detroit--a large group that had about 10
clinics around the Detroit area and the suburbs.     I worked for

them for about six months before I left and opened my own
practice.    They didn't pass out drugs but it was a practice mill.
They could see 250 patients in a day starting at 9:30,   closing at
4:30   and not have one appointment.



Mullan:     How many docs?




                                   40
Ross-Lee:     Three.    It's amazing.   They could give lessons on how

to push patients.      It was quite impressive.    They were more
triage than actual treatment, but they still are a major force in
the city of Detroit.     They were so big and handled so many
Medicaid patients that whenever Medicaid wanted to make a
programmatic change, they consulted them.         So I worked for them

for about six months, actually from January 'til June and then I

opened my own practice the first of July.      And resented them for

the first three years.      I couldn't figure out why patients would
go to them in droves when I was dispensing good care struggling
to build a practice.



Mullan:     And you were on your own?



Ross-Lee:     It was a solo practice.    Alone for, actually for the

10 years I worked in the city of Detroit.      The name of the
practice was Community Family Practice--came before its time,

wouldn't you say?


Mullan:     Yes.



Ross-Lee:     It really was a family practice.      It really was a

community-focused practice.     I moved into a part of the city that
was undergoing dynamic change, a l o t of white flight.      Along with


                                   41
the flight of the original population, the physicians were moving
out as well.     So it was possible to build a really good practice
with lots of young families new to the community.        I was there

for 10 years.     It was great.


Mullan:     Did you hospitalize?



Ross-Lee:      No, I did not do much hospital care.    I made social

rounds on all my patients who were in hospitals, but I didn't
really care for them.     I felt it was my job to diagnose the
patient's problem and then refer to the appropriate specialist.

Most of the work had been done by the time they got to the
specialist.     I mean I didn't have somebody come in with a
headache and send them to a neurologist.        I worked up the
headache and then sent them to a neurologist for final diagnosis
and the treatment.    You don't see a lot of that anymore.        I think
a lot of that is discouraged by the ways in which insurance
companies pay.


Mullan:     What about ob, did you handle that?



Ross-Lee:      I handled all of the prenatal.    I worked with a group

of obstetricians.     I would send the patient to the obstetrician

in the second trimester for one visit to get to know the


                                   42
obstetricians and then again in the third trimester.     I would do
my social rounds at the time of delivery but I didn't actually
deliver.    I never started because I couldn't leave my kids at

home alone.    I had became more independent; I moved away from my

family home.    Even if it had been convenient for me, as a
trainee, I had experienced bad obstetric outcomes.     It took too
heavy an emotional toll on me.    In the year that I was in

training every dead baby delivered that year happened while I was
covering the house nights.    I elected as many nights as I could

because it gave me time to be home during the day with my kids.
I didn't have good experiences with ob.



Mullan:     How did you feel about practicing as you look back on

it?


Ross-Lee:      I loved it, I miss it.   That's the one thing I miss

about going into academic administration.      I don't have time to

practice.     Even when I was at Michigan State, in the family
medicine department, it's not the same as full-time practice.
It's not consistent practice, you only practice part time.       It
wasn't like being in private practice where I had real continuity
relationships with people and with families. Academia has never

been the same as when I was in private practice.      The closest

I've come to it, I worked in the Black Child and Family Institute


                                  43
in Lansing while Chairperson of Family Medicine and to a large
extent I was their only doctor, and so I was able to establish
continuity relationships.     But no, I miss it, I miss it a lot.


Mullan:     A lot is discussed in policy circles about the
importance of diversity and ethnic matching.    In other words,
that African American physicians in an African American community
has many benefits.    There's some controversy about that obviously

because the implication being that therefore, African American
docs should work in the African American community raises some
people's opposition no, it shouldn't be.   As somebody who put 10
years in as a practitioner, as a health educator, as a role
model, etc., etc., working in an African American community as an
African American woman, what are your reflections on that, what
import did your race and gender bring to your practice?


Ross-Lee:    A couple of mixed, I guess, reactions.   First of all,

as a minority coming from a minority community, I know that they
need the service and therefore I feel compelled and obligated, if
I have the skills, to provide service to this community that's

been kind of ignored and underserved.   That's one of the
pressures of the minority physician.    The other side of the coin
is all of my training was not in black community hospitals.   I
know, from a service perspective, that the skills I have could


                                 44
benefit many people.     It has nothing to do with who I am, it's
what I do.    But at the same time, I may serve the minority
community because of a personal preference knowing they are
underserved. Also, as a minority physician, people aren't
knocking down your door to come practice in Beverly Hills.       I

mean, to a large extent there's a very clear expectation that
practice in a minority community is what you'll do.       That limits
your opportunities as a minority physician.     But the third side
is, minority patients tend to have a different view of

physicians.   You know, to a minority, to a patient in need,
you're not white, black or green.      You're a doctor.   The sad part
is that minorities want and expect quality care from doctors
because they are doctors.    They frequently don't get it.     If we
depend upon only black physicians to treat black patients, we're
going to have an awful lot of continued early and preventable
deaths of black patients.    There just aren't enough minority

physicians to go around.    The needs are too great for what we
could supply even if we marshaled every black physician in this
country and gave them nothing but black patients.     To me that's
Jim Crow with a twist.    I resent that, I think that's the worst

thing you could do.    We really do need to have the health
professionals who are capable of delivering on the expectations

of all the patients for access to quality health care.      Patients

who need medical help expect that if you're a doctor you give it


                                  45
to them irrespective of who you are and who they are.      The system
hasn't gotten there yet.     That's what I think cultural competence
is all about.     In fact, I just spoke to the National Health
Service Corps recently.    One of the young white male physicians

stood up and made the statement that he appreciates cultural
competence and he has worked in many diverse communities, but
he's still the white male.    He was right, but he doesn't have to
change to be anything else.     I think there's the expectation from

the majority community that they have to somehow be different
than what they are to be accepted in the minority community.
That's not the case.     I read a long time ago, when I was with
Michigan State, a case perspective from a second-year student,
white male, in some eastern school.     He was talking about his
first experience doing a pelvic exam.     The patient happened to be
a black female.    Beside the anxieties of his first pelvic exam,
he had never had a personal interaction with blacks and
definitely not a black female. All at once it dawned on me, I

always look at the problem from the minority perspective.       There
are some issues on the other side that we don't address.       You do

not have to be something other than a white male in order to
treat effectively, and be sensitive to and competent in minority
cultures, but you have to accept the fact that being a white male
is not a barrier in that process.      I hope that's not too

confusing.



                                  46
Mullan:     No, I think it's an aspect, a perspective on a much

thought about situation that doesn't get much thought about.         I
can resonant with what we had in Chicago when I went to medical
school we had in ob/gyn we had two clinics, East-Side, West-Side
or something which we (unclear) in public which was a hundred

percent black at the time.    That's where the student experience
went on and yet it was treated as strictly a clinical interaction
and whether the anxieties and cultural gaps were being crossed.
Whatever the woman in stirrups is thinking there was no
attention, at least no above-board attention, given to what the
white males were experiencing or anxiety-wise, or learning-wise,
or experience-wise--



Ross-Lee:     Isn't that scary?   I mean, just think about it.

Actually, you taught me--you twisted my mind around to be

empathic towards the other side.        I think we never deal with that
other side of the situation.      It becomes a rigid piece and
somehow or another we get a reversal of who is the victim.       Quite
frankly I think both the patient and the physician are the
victims when we can't have them understand that a barrier exists
that doesn't need to be there.     Truly there's an expectation in
most of economically depressed and medically underserved

communities--when you're a doctor that's all they want.       They

don't care what you are.     If you're a doctor, they assume you


                                   47
care, they expect you to care about them, so you just have to
care.     You don't even have to understand. As long as they know
you care, they'll help you understand.    I really get concerned

about the project "3,000 by 2,000," I think it communicates the
wrong message.    When you get to 3,000, what does that mean?   What
are the 3,000 going to do?    Does that answer the problem in
minority health?    Anyway, I have some real concerns about how we
use words to describe the need, and how we somehow or another

build expectations that aren't real.



Mullan:     You wouldn't oppose 3,000 by 2,000?



Ross-Lee:      I don't, I support anything that would get one extra

minority student into medical school.    I don't oppose it, but I

do think we have to be very cautious about what we're

communicating with it.



Mullan:     Your point being that even if we were fortunate enough

to make 3,000 that would not solve the issue and the questions of
medical care are more complicated than simply the number of
minorities who we can educate, which at least in the short term,

isn't going to solve the problem.



Ross-Lee:     Yes, it's sort of like affirmative action.


                                  48
Affirmative action is a process; it never was an objective.
Because we've focused so much on the process, we've forgotten the
objective.    We're going to kill the process and we'll have
nothing to show for it--we never evaluated the effectiveness of
process toward reaching the objective.       You see the same thing
with 3,000 by 2,000.     It's a process to start moving us toward an

objective but we set it up like an objective. Are you going to
evaluate the objective once you get to 3 , 0 0 0 ?    Or is 3,000 the

end point?



Mullan:     Or don't get to 3,000.



Ross-Lee:     Absolutely.   And if you get there and say, "Well, now

we've got the 3,000.    However, we now know that in order to

address access and need, using this kind of strategy, we actually
5,000."     People will say, "Well, hell, you went to 3,000, why

didn't you start with your real 'objective.'          I'm not giving you

any more effort to reach 5,000."        You know?    3,000 is the wrong

message.


Mullan:     Let's turn if we could to the move that you made out of

practice into academia.     Tell me about that.



Ross-Lee:     Actually, I was in a reactionary mode.       No. 1, I'd


                                   49
been in practice for 10 years, and I really wanted to be
stimulated.    I mean you're starting to get a little bit bored.     I
was in solo practice, and I found myself being excited about
finding some terrible disease process and being disappointed if
it wasn't present.    I can't explain it any other way.   I really

needed to be stimulated in some other way, I started to be
reactive to a lot of what was going on as it related to health
care delivery.


Mullan:     What year are we up to?



Ross-Lee:     This is '81, '82.   The Michigan Medicaid Program

tried a couple of pilot strategies.    One they called the Primary
Sponsor Plan which they didn't actually capitate, they were
trying to better manage and control, lower income Medicaid
patients in Wayne County in the Detroit area.    They did a couple

of strategic things that made me very angry.    No. 1, they
decided-- because they had Medicaid mills in the cities--that one
way of getting rid of these mills, in this changing of the
financing system, would be to limit the number of patients that
any one doctor could have. It sounds okay except that I started a
practice from scratch, I built that practice from scratch, and,
in fact, it was a good balance of patients; only half my
patients, being a city clinic, were Medicaid.    I had 2,500


                                  50
Medicaid patients in my practice and that was 50 percent of my
practice.    They were asking me to give them back a thousand
patients.    I wasn't going to do it.   I became reactive to managed
care.    I challenged them and took them to court. As a result,

they finally said that for new physicians they would not enroll
more than 1,500 patients, but if you had more than 1 , 5 0 0 patients
you could keep your patients.     That's was really all I wanted,
just to keep my patients.    hat just started to taint the whole
practice for me.    I spent more time trying to get paid than I
actually spent seeing patients.     I'd reached a point where I was
talking to third party computers and not real people.     It became
a comedy of errors.    I started looking around for some other
things to do.    I joined the Navy Reserves. At the time I was
interested in maybe pursuing radiology in the Navy.     I applied
for a neurology residency and had been accepted as a neurologist
resident at Martin Place Hospital in Madison Heights, Michigan,
about the same time--I had been a clinical preceptor at Michigan
State ever since I'd been in practice--1 got a call from a search
committee saying 'we're   looking for a Chair for the Department of
Family Medicine and would I consider it?"    So I called them back

and said I wanted to know if I was a competitive candidate or did
they just need some affirmative action representation.     The guy

was really very cool, he said he'd check and he'd call me back.

So   he talked to the Dean, the same Dean that got me admitted to


                                  51
medical school, and asked him if I was really a competitive

candidate.     The Dean said yes.    So I applied for the Chair

position after I'd already been accepted as a neurology resident.
Ultimately, I was selected as their final candidate, and I made
my decision.     It was not without a lot of bias in the process.
The very Dean who accepted me into medical school was still Dean
at the school in which I was applying for the Chair position.        He
told me within an hour of my going up for the interview process
that I was unqualified to be a Chair and that I was wasting my
time.     It was such a nasty process.   At that point I had nothing
to lose; I didn't want to just disappear and go home because
nobody would know why I left.       I completed the interviews and
subsequently the Provost of the University said they couldn't
give the position to anybody else until I turned it down.         So I

started my academic career in a very interesting relationship
with my Dean who really did not want me to have the position.


Mullan:     And the feeling was there that you had not been in

academia, you hadn't done research, hadn't taught, hadn't
administered? What was--


Ross-Lee:     I think those were the raps.    Although the white male

that the Dean preferred for the position had comparable

credentials.    One of the objectives that I have as Dean is that


                                    52
we've got to build an academic cadre of osteopathic physicians.
This is a concern I have with the new schools that are opening
up.   We've got two schools opening up with people who have no
academic background, and they're going to be deans, leading the
development of these institutions.      It's not that it can't be

done, but I think the profession hasn't done a good j o b of
creating a pipeline for academicians and academic administrators.
I wasn't prepared either.      I truly wasn't.   I say that because I
know.     I was lucky.   I was in a public institution with a solid

infrastructure where I could learn.      That's not always the case.


Mullan:     How was it--what were the good and bad things?   You did

it for a decade?



Ross-Lee:     Yes.   The good things--1 think we did wonderful

things in the Department of Family Medicine.      The bad things--1

learned some lessons about faculty.      I can't say it any other way
except that many of them were often professionally disappointed.


Mullan:     Many of them are disappointing? Or are disappointed?



Ross-Lee:     Disappointing.



Mullan:     Some of them may be disappointed, too.


                                   53
Ross-Lee:    Yes, that's true.   That may be part of the reason why

there's such frustration and turf protection in academics.      The
jokes that they make about academia are almost true.     I find it
kind of sad, but my real challenge is to be able to know that
that's part of the culture and the environment in academics, and
to be able to use it to still move ahead.     It's still fun.


Mullan:     And did you find that among the various challenges the

students, the residents, research service, what did you--what
appealed to you particularly and what didn't particularly appeal

to you?


Ross-Lee:     The curriculum development really appealed to me.       I

really enjoyed that.    Being able to do things differently and
better, and connecting with the students more effectively.      I
enjoyed developing clinical programs.     I did not enjoy the

politics of higher education.     I think that's what I enjoyed the
least.    I really enjoyed attempting to start a focus on a more
scholarly perspective.    Even at Michigan State the osteopathic
profession--and I have no other way to describe it except that it
is a minority profession with a minority mentality.     It limits
their vision, and it makes them very defensive.     I've heard you

say "you're a small profession, you can change quickly."     In all

honesty, because we are a small profession--and it's not size,


                                  54
it's mentality--it's almost harder to change because we feel so
threatened by change.    It's like you've secured a space, and
you're afraid to step off of it because it can be taken from you.
It's not quite the same in a majority mentality.    So it's a

little bit harder to change.    One of the things I liked least
about being at Michigan State was the politics of the profession.
It truly was a good old boys club.     It's changing now.   It's not
there yet, it's why I would never work at a private osteopathic
college or probably any private school.     It's just too
politically good old boy dominated.    The public institution gives
me some process protection.



Mullan:     I'm watching the history of medicine unfold with

osteopathy arguably in the academic sphere being a hard charging
junior partner with Michigan State as being part of the eruption
of new schools.    It always seemed to me from the friendly
distance--distance that this was a sort part of creative energy

and new ideas as you know, charging or pushing its way onto the
scene.    But that's not quite--and you were there through a period
where the schools going from beyond adolescence into its more
ritual phase.   Amplify for me a little more what those within the
department in the school.     This was something of a battening

down?
I mean, we've got a piece of the rock and now we're going to hold


                                  55
onto it?    Or do I have that wrong?


Ross-Lee:    No.   That's more professional mentality.   Michigan

State was the exception, but it is also an exception that it
again became entrenched and compromised itself in the long run.
But Michigan State was the exception, it was the first public
osteopathic school.     The school had a dynamic, hard-driving, very
bright dean, and he took it where he wanted it to go.     In many
instances he told the rest of the professions where they should
go.   They couldn't really touch him because he was at a public
school.    Deans at the private schools--because their boards are
all political--would not be able to have the flexibility I think
that Mike Meegan had.    The whole profession was willing to allow
the school a lot more latitude in developing because it was the
first public school. Michigan State fed administrative

leadership to many of the other subsequent institutions. All the
people who started at Michigan State went other places and led
other schools.     This spread the influence from Michigan State,
and allowed MSU-COM to provide the leadership to move the
profession rapidly ahead.    But there was very little professional
development trickle down into the colleges. As leadership styles
become out of sync with the new challenges--then the institution
starts to stagnate which is really what happened at Michigan

State. Mike Megan was a dynamic leader, took the college through


                                  56
its growth and development stage, but he was not appropriate for
the maturation phase.


Mullan:     During this time, I actually think it was before you

joined the Navy, maybe it was earlier?       Tell me a little bit

about that, what has that been like?


Ross-Lee:     That was in 1982 and in fact, I stayed active most of

the time.    I really liked Navy for the educational potential.
You get opportunities to learn and to experience things that you
can't in the private sector.     I really, really liked it.   When
you're in medicine and you live medicine, particularly when I was
in practice, the only people you know are other doctors and the
only thing you do is talk to doctors.      The military offered an
opportunity to talk to different kinds of people.       I just loved
it for a whole bunch of reasons.       The last major course I took,

actually I'm in the inactive reserves right now, was a survival
course in Texas and I loved it.    I can't even break away for two
weeks to be able to do that kind of training, so I haven't done
active duty for quite a while.    When I was in D.C. for the Robert
Wood Johnson Fellowship program, I damned near got called up
within a month or two of being down there and I just couldn't
believe.    Ultimately, it worked itself out.    I just haven't been
as active as I think I should be as an obligation.


                                  57
Mullan:     This is Tape 2, Side 2 - Dr. Ross-Lee.     We're talking

about the Navy.    They promoted you?


Ross-Lee:     To Captain, and I was surprised.     But I figured they

were just doing that to be nice.        I don't think they want me as

an Admiral, which would be the next step up.       I miss being able

to take some of the courses.     I spent a couple of weeks at the
Medical Doctrine Center in Bethesda.       Just real interesting

things to do.     I miss that.


Mullan:     You also went, as you mentioned, spent a year as a

Robert Wood Johnson scholar or fellow in Washington.        Tell me

about that.


Ross-Lee:     I naively applied for it.      I had been involved in

policy at the State level--particularly involving State public

health reports:     children; perinatal centers; perinatal
regionalization; and minority health issues.        When I left
practice, I thought "if I go to academia, I'm going to impact
minority health or the health of youngsters."        Then I got to

academia, and I figured out it's a little hard to do, although
it's certainly a little bit easier than a private practice.           So I

became involved with the Public Health Department at the State

level.    I got more and more interested and actually taught policy


                                   58
formulation.      One of my peers showed me this Robert Wood Johnson
application.      I applied, naively thinking that I'd go and receive
didactic lessons in health policy.        I don't think I really

understood the actual practical aspect of being engaged in the
fellowship.



Mullan:       Which year?



Ross -Lee :     \90-'91.    I went to D.C., and I realized they were

looking for somebody who had some academic credentials in
research, of which I had none--as far as published papers or
funded projects.       I figured, \\I'm not going to get this," but it
was a nice experience to go to the Institute and talk to some of

the candidates.      Ultimately I was selected, and truly it was an
experience that changed my whole life.        I look at the world a

little differently now.



Mullan:       Capture that for me.


Ross-Lee:       It expanded my vision of what's possible.    It

afforded me an opportunity of being able to look at issues and
having a policy approach to problem solving.        I tell the fellows
in AOA Health Policy Fellowship "to take the high ground.          You
have to know what the problem is before you come up with the


                                     59
potential answers."     You can't just figure out the answers--
because that's what you are comfortable with--without truly
defining the problem.     S o I look at the world differently.



Mullan:      Because of who you work with or how you work?   What was

it?



Ross-Lee:      Because of the policy process itself.   I don't think

it mattered much who I would have worked with.     It's just the
process of looking at the problems differently.     You don't get
that kind of training, certainly not--


Mullan:     Was it working on the Hill as well as the orientation

part?



Ross-Lee:     Both.   It was the orientation that allowed us to talk

to people.     The people on the Hill talked to us differently than
if I myself had gone up to the Hill to talk to them about an
issue.     They were talking candidly and openly about how they saw
the world and how they saw themselves positioned in that world,
as well as predicting from their perspective what the world was
going to look like--which is quite interesting.     These people
were experts in the area, people that you could respect for their

opinion.    People who had spent time, and they were not reactive--


                                  60
they were coming to the issues from their own perspective.       Part
of it probably has to do with the polite culture of Washington,
D.C., where you never say anything bad, you can do anything

positively, even if you cut throats.     The orientation was really
quite interesting.     No. 1, to have a chance to interact with all
the leaders in policy, realizing there was no single right
solution and that policy was not a done deal.      They had no better
ideas on the issues than we did coming from the field.       So the
orientation was very important to let us know that nothing was

cast in stone.     The experience in the office was even more
important.     It let us know how to problem solve, so that we could

position a member around an issue.     You look at an issue
differently, not so much from what the possible solutions are,
but who are your partners on this issue? Whose on your side and
whose not on your side, and understanding why they're not on your
side.     A different way of looking at issues altogether.    What

Bill Bradley offered me was the opportunity to play politics with
the big boys and to champion the kinds of issues I was interested
in.


Mullan:      What did you work on particularly?



Ross-Lee:     A lot of Medicaid reform issues.    The Family Leave

Act--a respite care bill--his focus was primarily on the


                                  61
veteran's issues, Medicaid, and children's issues--particularly
immunization.   He was not very well educated on AIDS, which was a
rapidly emerging issue at that time in '90,    before people

understood the real threat of AIDS.   So that became part of my

j o b , to educate the Senator on AIDS so he would know how to vote

out there on the floor.   But our work was mostly on children's
issues.   Bill Bradley is, as you know, very committed to race
relations; I was there for the Thomas hearings, and able to give
him my perspective on his vote on Clarence Thomas.      It was
interesting.


Mullan:     What was it like coming back?



Ross-Lee:     It was, and I think all of us Fellows struggled with

this--it was deflating to some extent.      You are in the middle of
power, and then you move out of it.   The truth is, I would not

have wanted to work in a Senate office for a second year.        I
mean, the work it just repeats itself over and over again.       I'm
sure that I wouldn't want to do it twice in a row.     But the
Potomac is very seducing.    Capitol Hill is a wonderful place to
be.   Coming back to academia was a little deflating because it's
difficult to explain your experience and what it was like.

Nobody can really quite understand what the experience is all

about except that you worked in a Senator's office.     The


                                 62
challenge is being able to use that experience in a more positive
fashion at your institution.


Mullan:     Did this opportunity come along fairly soon after that?



Ross-Lee:     Well, following the Fellowship, I negotiated with the

new Dean at Michigan State for an Associate Deanship on Health

Policy.     I wanted to interact with the profession around policy
issues that I thought the profession needed to take some
positions on.    When I was in Washington, nobody in the Senate
staff had ever heard of osteopathic medicine.    We ran into crises

like being left out of the Medicaid regulations, or having bills
drafted that openly say you had to be board certified by the
American Board of Medical Specialties. You are aware of that
whole issue.    I don't think it was intentional.   I think people
just didn't understand, and so the Associate Dean's position was

supposedly to allow me to continue to work with folks at the

National and State level along with the AACOM and AOA.    While I
was in D.C., I'd met some students who were interning at AACOM.
They invited me to come and speak at OU after I got back to
Michigan State.    I went and spoke, and then the Deanship became

available.    I really had no aspirations to be Dean.   I never
thought that I'd leave Michigan, not that I didn't want to.       The

OUCOM students used to trap me at conventions and beg me apply


                                  63
for the Deanship.    Right now I probably don't have nearly the
contact with students I would love to have.      The students
recruited me for the position.      I mean they really did trap me,
they were looking for jobs for my husband, I want you to know.
They were really an interesting class. At that point, I did talk
to Frank Myers who was the Dean at Ohio University COM to see
whether it was possible.      The former Dean here, before Frank,
told me there's no way that OU, in the middle of Appalachia in

Southeast Ohio, would be able to accept a black female Dean.


Mullan:     How did you beat the process?   How did you beat the

odds?



Ross-Lee:     I don't know.   We function in the midst of so many

stereotypes that we start to set up our own barriers.      My thing
was "Well, maybe that's true.     I really don't know, but I'm not

taking your word for it.      I'm going to have to go down there, I'm

going to have to see it, and I'm going to have to be
uncomfortable."    That's how I got down here.


Mullan:     Was it a tough competition and how did you feel and how

did your family feel?



Ross-Lee:     Do you know Chris Meyer?   Chris Meyer's my Associate


                                   64
Dean.     He was my primary competition.    I looked at the tapes of
the three final candidates that came down here.        I will confess,
I wouldn't look at my tape, because I didn't want to be

disappointed. But I looked at their tapes and I didn't think
theirs were very good.     I think the competition was pretty good.
They had academic experience, but they didn't have the kind of
experience I had, as far as being a Chair of a Department or
anything of that sort.    One of the candidates had been the

President of the AOA and now is in academia in California but at
the time didn't have the kind of credentials that I did in
academia.     Chris Meyer had been part of the graduate medical
education environment and really didn't have undergraduate or

actual college experience.        From that perspective I had more

actual academic experience.       This University is very sensitized
to the cultural issues of the community in which we reside.          I

don't see the cultural issues, as much as I know that they are

important, as being pivotal to the success of OUCOM.
Socioeconomic conditions in this community are more important.


Mullan:     How has it been?



Ross-Lee:      It's been great.    This last year has been the worst

year--1 mean it's been the hardest year.       We are in a period of

dynamic change and the faculty accepts the need to change but I


                                     65
don't think that they will have to do anything different.


Mullan:     What characterized the change?



Ross-Lee:     We depend upon small community hospitals all around

the State to train our students, and hospitals are closing,

changing, merging and we have to solidify training.     At the same
time, we can't predict what will happen in Ohio, and Ohio has
been well-targeted by some of the major players in the insurance
and managed care business.      We can't be sure whether these
hospitals will continue to train our students--


Mullan:     Osteopathic only?



Ross-Lee: It started off osteopathic only.      It's no longer that

anymore.    Those mergers that stay involved in the training of

students, train our students for free.     They do it because the
students feed their residency program.     But, as the GME funding
changes many of these hospitals are going to get out of the
business, it's not worth it to them.     If they get out of the
business of graduate training they're not going to take our
students.   We had to position the college for whatever happened.
Which meant that we had to build a stronger practice base for

training locally. OUCOM is located in a grossly underserved area.


                                   66
This whole county.       We've got a county next door to us that has
one doctor for the whole county.        One of our residents just went
to join that doctor so now they have two doctors in the whole
county.     This is a very underserved area and so my strategy was
to build up our clinical base right here.        If every hospital in
the State closes, I still have an obligation to train 100
students and so we have to--we have the luxury of being in an
area that doesn't--that can expand whereas many of the other
medical schools around the State are having to shrink down and

downsize.    We've got space to expand, at least from a clinical
perspective.     So when I got here, a couple of things, we needed--



Mullan:     From a clinical perspective in terms of the number of

hospitals your in now?



Ross-Lee:     We could expand our clinical base, our college

clinical base.


Mullan:     In Athens?



Ross-Lee:     In Athens and surrounding counties.



Mullan:     Do you use a hospital here?




                                   67
Ross-Lee:      There are two community hospitals here that we use.

I don't know what their utilization rate is, but we have nearly
doubled the number of physicians since I got here three years
ago.   We had 36, we now have 66, 67 doctors.



Mullan:       On faculty?



Ross -Lee :     On faculty. We are still not meeting the community

needs.


Mullan:       You mean your service needs?



Ross -Lee :     Service needs.   We're doing much better.   So now we

are building a strong ambulatory base.        We have--


Mullan:       Based out of these hospitals?



Ross-Lee:      Actually based out of our clinic services.



Mullan:       You've got a clinic here on campus?



Ross-Lee:      We have a clinic here on campus.     Actually, you'll

get a chance to see it this evening.      We have satellite clinics

in counties all around.     We also have contractual relationships

                                    68
with the VA for in-patient/out-patient services as well as --


Mullan:     Which VA is that?



Ross-Lee:     Chelecothe County.   We provide services to many of

the area providers, we provide services for the southeast
psychiatric, and we do all of their primary physicals.     We geared
up our clinical base here.      Which means that as we change our
curriculum, we need more ambulatory training sites.      I'm sorry.
I get off on this stuff, you can tell, right?     We need more
ambulatory sites to train our students.      It's still a hospital-
based training program.    We have built--we have doubled our
patient load and our patient visits so we will be able to provide
early clinical contact exposure right here on site without having

to farm our students out--avoiding the issue of having a thousand

adjunct faculty to provide ambulatory training for 100 students--
so we can provide ambulatory training and we're starting to do

that here.    Meanwhile, we restructured our clinical training base
and we developed what we call a CORE-system which is a State-wide
integrated system for predoctoral and postdoctoral students.        We
restructured fast.    We did it so fast we didn't draw all the
faculties that are on campus with us which is why that third year
was a difficult year.    We had to move fast and then we had to pay

the price to bring people along later.      So we did that and it


                                   69
worked, but last year was a very difficult year.     There was a lot
of frustration and morale problems from faculty and just total
anxiety because we were changing.     They didn't understand and
they often didn't want to understand.    This year it's starting to

get a little bit easier.


Mullan:     Are most of your students from Ohio?   From this area?

What's the demographics?



Ross-Lee:     Usually we've been running about 70 to 75 percent of

our students from Ohio and 25 to 30 are from out of State.    The

interesting part is that we've had such a large out-of- State
percentage because we have used our out-of-state students slots
for minority students. We can't seem to attract minority
students from in the State although we're working on new
strategies now.    This college has a legislative mandate that 80

percent of our students must be from in State or sign a contract
to practice in State for five years after training.


Mullan:     Are you State supported with--what's the terminology

here?


Ross-Lee:     State funded.




                                 70
Mullan:     So you're part of the State University system?


Ross-Lee:    Right.   And so 80 percent of our students are

supposed to be from in State or they have to sign contracts.       So

all of our out-of-state students sign contracts to commit to
spending five years training in the State of Ohio if they are

from out of State.    Another thing we've done is to change that

because practice opportunities for graduates are changing.     For

example, a couple of students who finished anesthesiology

residencies had signed out-of-state contracts and couldn't find
jobs in the State.    The University had been making them pay back

money to the State if they had signed contracts in addition to
whatever educational loans they had.    It was not the intent of
the legislation to earn money on these students it was to try and
get them to stay in State.    What we have introduced is a waiver

clause that says if you complete a residency training program in
the State of Ohio in an osteopathic program we'll waive that
service requirement if you're from out-of-state.     In all honesty,
people tend to practice where they're trained.


Mullan:     Where do your folks get trained, in osteopathic,

allopathic division?



Ross-Lee:     We've a few mixed staff hospitals.   We have five


                                 71
CORES around the State.     One is in Northeast--


Mullan:     Five--



Ross-Lee:     Five Centers of Osteopathic Regional Education--

actually--



Mullan:     Core--c-o-r--



Ross-Lee:    C-0-R-E-S, Center for Osteopathic Regional Education.

Let me show you a picture which is easier to explain--



Mullan:     These are for graduate training?



Ross-Lee:    We're linking the undergraduate to the graduate in an

educational continuum--vertical integration.        In addition to

that, we have a State-wide consortia for residency programs.

Family medicine residents meet once a month from all five CORES
(13 hospitals) in effort to standardized some of the training to

make sure that all the residents--



Mullan:     This is only osteopathic?



Ross-Lee:     Some of the hospitals are not traditionally


                                  72
osteopathic.   St. Vincent's in the Northwest CORE is an MD
hospital.   They train students from the Medical College of Toledo
there, as well.   But they also happen to be a CORE site so we
train students, interns, and residents there.       In fact, most
hospitals in the State are mixed staff.       Some were historically
allopathic such as Obleness in the SE CORE, St. Vincent's NW,

Firelands NE, and Portsmouth SE.       Merges and affiliations have

accelerated the changes.


Mullan:     So your students graduating from here what do they do?



Ross-Lee:    When they graduate from here?     Most of them go into

residency programs in Ohio.    At least--


Mullan:     How large are your classes?



Ross-Lee:     One hundred.   At least 75 percent or more go into

training programs in Ohio.


Mullan:     In osteopathic training programs?



Ross-Lee:    About 70 percent in in-state osteopathic programs.

The other 10 or 20 percent--a lot go to Ohio State for their
family practice residency programs.       The other real issue is the


                                  73
pediatrics.   We don't have a pediatric residency program in State

so those people that go into peds can't go into the--


Mullan:     So in round terms 70 percent stay, 70 percent stay in

osteopathy.


Ross-Lee:     Yes, 70 percent in-state.   Actually maybe 85 percent

in osteopathic programs.   We've got a couple of other osteopathic

colleges that joined the Ohio CORE.   So there are about 40 pre-

doctoral students in the CORE at any one time.



Mullan:     Pursuing for a moment the question raised about the

changing hospital scene and the fact that often the cost of
teaching students has been underwritten or diffused into larger
agendas which are being jostled now and all of sudden many
institutions, many practitioners are saying well you know, it
cost me time, it cost me patient contact and I'm going to do

teaching and therefore, I can't do it or if I do it, I have to be
reimbursed.    Is that what you're seeing and how do you address

that, how does one address that long-term.


Ross-Lee:     Well, I'm not really seeing that.   I am seeing

physicians say they can't take as many students or as often.




                                 74
Mullan:     As opposed to we won't take them at all.



Ross-Lee:     As opposed to we won't take them at all.   We used to

pay honoraria to the faculty.    When we organized--


Mullan:     To the faculty.


Ross-Lee:     To the faculty.   When we organized the CORE system we

pulled all that money back to support this new educational
structure--three million dollars a year, a million from the
College and two million from the hospitals to help build an
administrative and educational structure with an Assistant Dean

and faculty development at each site.    We used to have one

faculty developer from the college who would just get on the

road, and go to all the sites and maybe give one program a year.
Well, given the changes and given our need to really impact
quality overall, we have faculty development people at every one
of those sites.    We have curriculum development people and
evaluationists who can make sure that ultimately we are
establishing some standards to improve the quality of what we
deliver.    The core system itself is structured so that it
integrates our undergraduates and our graduates. We've never

paid for any kind of overhead to have our students go into the

hospitals but the reality is that, even though we are a minority


                                  75
profession and we can't move quickly because we are a minority,
we've got a strong commitment to education.      That commitment
although threatened, remains.


Mullan:     Jumping to the big picture, what do you foresee in

these changing times as to the future of osteopathy?



Ross-Lee:     I see the similarities between the two professions

becoming greater than the differences.      I see the merging of the

hospital system's approach to care, and with it, a great change

in the dynamics of how we train.       The practices have been coming

together all along anyway.    As the hospitals come together, the

barriers against joint and combined training will erode.      When

this occurs, I see the distinctiveness between the two
professions disappear.    I don't think that the osteopathic

profession has done a good job in defining their distinctiveness.

I don't think we--1 think that ultimately we're not going to need

two professions to better define and practice the principles and
the philosophy of osteopathy that historically created a separate
and distinct profession.     I do think that the profession--I think

what osteopathic medicine has done from its minority position has
been unbelievable and I'm not sure that that's appreciated by the

allopathic world because we still are coming from a specialty

perspective and they don't yet see the value of primary care and


                                  76
how you can do such a wonderful job in a different kind of
environment and still come out with an excellent product.


Mullan:     Give me a word about your view of primary care and

where it's headed.    In spite of this interview being primary care
we really have taken it as a given and not articulated your
thoughts about it.    Had do you see it playing into the current
and future of osteopathy and medicine as a whole?



Ross-Lee:     Well, I personally feel that family medicine is the

primary care that people refer to.    I'm hoping that the market
will help to bridge the barriers between family medicine and
general internal medicine.    I think pediatrics belongs in a shop
by itself because it is more of a specialty than a generalist

discipline.


Mullan:     Barbara Ross-Lee, Tape 3 , Side A continued



Ross-Lee:     I think primary care is synonymous with family

medicine.    I think that general pediatrics and general internal

medicine need to disappear and coalesce into one generalist
discipline.    I think that family medicine, general internal
medicine, and general pediatrics ought to come together as one

discipline.    I think the current disciplines reflect a legacy of


                                 77
differences and focus on the professionals, not on the
populations or the services that need to be delivered.        I think

that when we talk primary care, we should be talking about one

discipline, not three.       I think they should come together.



Mullan:     We've talked a lot about professional things.    We

touched on your family early on both your family at large and, as
they say, your family creation but we've moved away from both.

Tell me a bit about you got remarried and had indeed those more

children that that early Dean was concerned about?


Ross-Lee:     Yes.     I got remarried and have what I call a "Brady

Bunch," although my youngest daughter sees it differently.         I

have two children from my first marriage, and we raised two
children from my husband's first marriage, and then we had one

child together.       Interestingly, our older two children are both
male, my oldest child was a boy and my husband's oldest child was
a boy, and now they're my two older children, both male, both
named Stephen.       This is really cute, they grew up in this house
with both boys named Stephen, completely different personalities.
They tended to know who you were calling just by the inflection
of your voice.       So, we had two Stephens in the house and it

worked okay, surprisingly. We have five children. My oldest

Stephen is an engineer with an MBA and he's in San Francisco now.


                                    78
My second oldest Stephen is in education; he's teaching in a
boy's   school in Muskegen, Michigan.     My third oldest is my oldest
daughter, Monica.     She's an ob/gyn resident at Wayne State
University in Michigan, the only one that went into medicine.         My
fourth child, Kevin, wants to be a football player, so he spent

this past year playing semi-pro ball.       I have real mixed feelings

about that.    He is working on a Master's in social work.     My
youngest child, Alaina, is a junior at Stanford and she's

interested in public policy.      She want's to be a Supreme Court
Justice.     I figure if she aims that high even if she falls short

she'll do okay.


Mullan:      That's great.   And your husband?



Ross-Lee:     My husband just retired as a K - 1 2 superintendent of a

school district in Michigan.      Right now he is an Associate

Professor in the College of Education here at OU.       He misses K-12

and I can appreciate that, I miss practice.       I'm not sure he's
going to stay down here in higher ed.       He doesn't like it as
much--it's not nearly as dynamic as K - 1 2 education.    I'm sure
this may be his last year here, and as much as he thought he
wanted to retire, I think he will be going back into some K - 1 2
system.     That's my immediate family.




                                   79
Mullan:     You sister Diana has come in and out of the story.

Tell me a bit about what it was like growing up with her and how,
I gathered she contributed a lot to the family--


Ross-Lee:     Yes, she did.   She--



Mullan:      Is it Diane or Diana?



Ross-Lee:     Diana.   We call her Diane.     I t ' s a big controversy.

It's spelled with an 'A"--



Mullan:     But your family calls her Diane?



Ross-Lee:     Actually, Dian.   Which is not quite Diane either.

Well, you know, I'm the oldest child and Diane is the second
child.    I always felt bad for her because she followed me in

school.     There's nothing worse, I think, than having to follow an

older sister or brother in school.        I was very bright and so she
was always trying to be different.        But, I mean, like most
families I don't see her as anything special--from a family
perspective.    Nobody ever expected her to make a whole lot of
money singing.    She used to sing, and I danced.       I thought I was
going to be a dancer, but I don't think she ever really thought
she was going to be a singer.    Until high school, when she


                                     80
started singing with this little group and it was more fun than
work.


Mullan:     Were these the Supremes?



Ross-Lee:     They were the Primettes.     They were the sister group

of a group called the Primes.      The Primes became the Temptations

and the Primettes became the Supremes.       The good old days.   And
Stevie Wonder will always be little Stevie Wonder to me.       Michael
Jackson and my youngest brother grew up together--it was a very
interesting time.    The sixties were special, and I don't think

they'll ever be recaptured or revisited in quite the same way.
It was really open opportunity at the time for a part of the
black culture the music that just exploded onto the national and
world scene.    Everything came together at the right time.


Mullan:     Why Detroit, I mean why--is it a happenstance of the

people who were here?


Ross-Lee:     Just a happenstance.      I think it was--it was really

Barry Gordy who was willing to sacrifice and struggle through it

and--



Mullan:     Who was Barry Gordy?


                                   81
Ross-Lee:    Barry Gordy is the owner of Motown and he was the one

who developed all of these artists; the timing was right, the
sound was different, and the sound was right.       Initially Diane
was not the leader of the group.       Florence Ballard   was the
leader, but Florence's voice did not come across well on records.
Did I tell you this story--I was telling somebody else about it
today.    The first song they ever recorded was Butter Popcorn.       It
didn't go anywhere.    Florence sang that song, so on the next cut,
as they call it, they changed singers.      Diane sang one side and
Mary sang the other side to see which voice would sell better.        I

can't even remember the name of the song, but that song hit the
charts and--


Mullan:     With Diane singing?



Ross-Lee:     With Diane singing it.     That was what I think

convinced, at least my mother, that Diane didn't have to go on to
college.    Diane and my father had long and many arguments about
her singing. He did not want her to sing.       He doesn't remember
that now.    In fact, when she graduated from high school they had
this one little record, Butter Popcorn, and that was enough to
get them on the Dick Clark tour.       So they went on this bus all
over the country on the Dick Clark tour.      They got something like

fifteen dollars a week that they could buy all the food and stuff


                                  82
they needed.      They slept on the bus--they lived on the bus.      It

was real difficult at first.      For a while my mother would travel
with her, because my father wouldn't let her go alone.       My mother
would be out on the road with Diane sleeping on these busses for
weeks at a time.      At the end of that year--my father said that he
would allow her to do it for a year and then she had to go to

school.    So    she was about to quit singing when the second song,
the one that she had led made the charts, it wasn't a hit by any
means, but it did get charted.      That was enough for her to be
able to engage my mother's support in allowing her to continue
singing.     That's how it happened.     Sometimes it's amazing how
things can pivot on one little piece.       Truly she almost--they
almost stopped singing. Ultimately my mother talked my father
into signing this contract with Motown, with Barry Gordy, that
meant she would have to be singing for a while--not just that one
year.     That's what happened, that's how she started singing.
It's funny--I didn't see her perform for years, because they were
on the road in other places and I was at Wayne State as a
freshman.       They came to Detroit to perform and I looked at her
and said, I
          '       can't believe it, you really are professionals."
They changed from these little girls that used to sing anywhere
at the drop of a hat--into a really poised little group.

Mullan:     Did you ever--was there a sense of you wished you'd

gone that route or--


                                    83
Ross-Lee:      There were many times when I wished I had that money,

but I never wanted to live that life.        I don't--you know people
don't recognize how really difficult it is.       With Diane's three
girls, my mother was with her a lot to help raise those kids; you
have to move your children and it is not an easy life.       Really I
feel awful bad for her.     I mean sometimes she says, "They don't

think I work hard.     They think you do."    But she's got a night
job, when you think about it.     I mean she works at night, she's

traveling all the time--the joke in the family is that she raises
her kids by phone.     I mean she talks to them all the time.    They
think of a phone as just like, "Mom's in the next room," but
that's how they were raised.     The real tragedy is she can't go
anywhere with her kids because people mob her.        When Rhonda was
in the hospital, she went to see Rhonda and the nurse got so
flustered that Diana Ross was there that she dropped one of the
babies.     When my mother had surgery on her breast and we were

standing there in tears--a lady walked up and said, "Excuse me,
would you sign an autograph?"     The mob scenes at shows--it's not
nearly as glamourous as people think.        I can remember my mother

saying she didn't want Diane to visit her in the hospital because
of the curious crowds.     She wanted some privacy.     It devastated
Diana--



Mullan:     Did she remain close to her family?


                                  84
Ross-Lee:      Oh, yes.   Actually, she and I are so busy that I

don't see her as much as I used to.      But the kids see each other
and I think that's even more important. My youngest daughter and

Diane's oldest daughter look more like sisters than they look

like their own brothers and sisters.      They're very close.   Rhonda
tells me all the time she's responsible for how good Alaina
turned out.     I think I was successful and our family survived,
because of my mother's extended family.      I mean, she had sisters

that jumped in and took care of us when she needed the help.       In
fact, she has one sister who lived with us always--always there
to help.     As much as my brothers and sisters can't do that kind

of stuff, because our lives keep taking different directions, I'm

pleased that we are able to keep our children close.     They visit
and they talk to one another much more than I ever get to see
Diane, or even my other sister Rita, for that matter.



Mullan:     What are the ages of some of the children--your sisters

and brothers?


Ross-Lee:     Rita is my youngest sister and she lives in Detroit

right now.    She's got two children and she has a foster child.
It's her dream to open a day-care center for AIDS babies and
she's been working on this dream now for five years.     Rita is the

typical mother figure.     She's the one who keeps the family


                                   85
history.    She can tell you who my great, great, great grandfather
was.   I don't have that kind of patience.      My oldest brother is
in Detroit and he was a manager for a home construction company.

It just went bankrupt, so right now he is looking for a job. My

middle brother was just murdered this past summer. My youngest
brother is in California, and he is a choreographer/dancer. My
brother that was killed, was a song writer.       He's done very well
writing songs.    In fact, two of his songs were just released by
Madonna.



Mullan:     Was it an accident?



Ross-Lee:     No, he was murdered.     Actually, we have no idea what

happened.    We think that he was killed--he and his wife--for the
money they had.    We don't know, but the people were arrested and
are going on trial in Detroit.    So   we just lived through this,
this past summer.    It's not a pretty story.


Mullan:     Well, your story is a wonderful story and I very much

appreciate your sharing it with me.       Is there anything, obviously
there are many other things we could talk about, anything that
you'd like to mention that we haven't talked about?



Ross-Lee:    The only thing I talk about when I speak to,


                                  86
particularly students or residents as it relates to medicine and
some of my personal concerns about the underserved, has to do
with my personal history. Although I don't perceive it as a bad
health history, it really is an interesting one.     I lost my very
first child from German Measles during the Rubella epidemic.       Not
that I knew I had it.     The child was born with transposition of
the great vessel.     It was after the birth that we were able to
determine that that's what I had.    During my last three
pregnancies I had an incompetent cervix. Alaina was very
premature, 2 3 weeks, and we didn't think she was going to
survive.    That was probably the worst time for my husband and I.
He wanted them to let her die.    He was afraid she'd be mentally

retarded.   So   we had battles in the hospital over her incubator.

But I lost the two subsequent pregnancies because of the
incompetent cervix.     I learned a lot of lessons along the way
about how people are treated in hospitals--how assumptions are
made based on what you look like versus what you come in with,

and how doctors don't listen.     It doesn't matter who you are,
doctors don't listen, it's a power position.    When I lost the
baby with the transposition of the great vessel, I was not in
medicine.   They misled me to think that this was a minor problem.
They didn't realize how much I needed to know the truth to better

prepare myself for what subsequently occurred.
Mullan:     How long did the baby live?



Ross-Lee:     Three days.   For the last two pregnancies, I had the

best high-risk person in all of Michigan who refused to believe

me when I said that I thought the membranes were leaking.      He
just said "you don't know what you're talking about."     I had to
depend upon this man to intercede.     Indeed, they were leaking,

they were ruptured.    I became septic and I lost that baby.
Anyway, other than that, that's my wonderful history.


Mullan:     Well good, thank you for sharing that.



Ross-Lee:    Okay.




                                  88