Dr. Neil Morrow
Dr. Neil Morrow was born in 1935 in Brooklyn, New York, near the end of the Depression. His early life centered on his father's drugstore on Long Island, where the family first lived in a small space behind the store before moving into a house when Neil was five. His father, who had emigrated from Russia around age eleven, opened the store in 1929 and worked seven days a week. From age six, Neil helped by sweeping, emptying trash, and delivering prescriptions for tips. His grandparents, elderly and Yiddish-speaking, had come from Russia and lived in Washington Heights. Seeing neighbors depend on his father's advice planted early seeds of his interest in becoming a doctor.
Wanting to leave the snowy Northeast, Morrow looked to schools in the southern United States and enrolled at Baylor sight unseen, arriving by train to Waco in intense summer heat and adjusting to unfamiliar food and culture. He loved college life and made lifelong friends. He entered medical school in Pittsburgh in 1956, where he met his future wife, Reva, and completed a rotating internship. Facing the military draft during the Korean crisis, he served two years in the Air Force at a pilot training base in Oklahoma, where he became the base pediatrician and gained extensive experience treating a college-educated population.
Determined to return to Texas, Morrow opened his pediatric practice on Forest Lane in Dallas in 1965, starting with a two treatment room office and one nurse. He expanded twice before moving in 1975 to a larger office on LBJ. Over his career he witnessed enormous change in medicine, including the near disappearance of diseases like meningitis, measles, and chickenpox through vaccines, and the growing influence of insurance companies. He retired in 1998 and later lived in South Padre and California before returning to be near family. A great-grandfather, he advised the next generation to be yourself, stick up for your rights, and work hard.
Full Transcript
dr. 1935 Brooklyn New York towards the end of the depression let's go back there what can you tell me when you're a little boy our life was centered around my father's drugstore we lived actually in the back of the drugstore Wow in a one maybe 300 square feet hole in one had a kitchen one bathroom and the store was in the front of the building till I was five we moved into a house how do you remember being in that drugstore oh absolutely because life was like I say sent it around the store my mother worked in the store my father was there seven days a
week he ate lunch behind the counter basically never left from eight thirty in the morning to ten o'clock at night those years now see all I think about is the movie it's a wonderful life in the drugstore seen in there you know with the little soda fountain did he have a little sad soda fountain with a fabulous marble counter made out of orange Vermont normal Wow so it is like I'm imagining from the movies and i worked from age six doing various and sundry things from sweeping the floor to emptying the trash delivering orders because we delivered prescriptions we get tips of anywhere from a
nickel to 15 sensuous it was good good money at that time the depression affect your family at all well my father opened the store in 1929 of course most of his family said he was crazy to open up at the depth of the depression but it was a suburban community on Long Island right next to the new york city county line so the advantage was where people were moving there because of a smaller house cost right time you remember your grandparents of all very vaguely they were very elderly spoke Yiddish almost exclusively lived in a I think it was my father's father and maybe his
mother that came over from Russia my father came over from Russia right at about age 11 or 12 his birthday would vary from year to year so it you really couldn't tell ya but they lived in a high-rise apartment in Washington Heights which is northern New York City and it was dark damp they never had lights on they always had fruit on the table but I couldn't understand what they were talking about right and they really didn't pay much attention to me as opposed to today's great parents who were obsessed with their grandchildren now were you interested at all in sports when you're looking at
no I was heavy probably 20 25 pounds overweight everything was centered around the junction they were taught to work early I was just curious to see if Deborah ones with like a Yankee game Holly a Dodger game we went to Yankee game my fault took me so Joe DiMaggio Tommy Hendrick Casey Stengel that's something yeah Yankees were my team yeah yeah yeah and that was a heck of an era so you never quite got the see Babe Ruth play guess he what he was just known you were real little no no no seen Joe DiMaggio and those other guys you mentioned that satchel and Dom
Ted Williams yeah yeah as it was a great era where'd you go to school grammar school went to Brooklyn Avenue grammar school walking distance i would say six blocks from the store came home for lunch and that was through sixth grade the town was growing at that time so high school and junior high school were split high school in the morning junior high school in the afternoon and i think was reverse anyway that's interesting yeah so i went to school from 1230 in the afternoon to I think 4 30 or five o'clock in the afternoon it was labor the school Valley Stream Central High School
now is it in high school when you started to think about becoming a doctor i would say earlier than that people in those days really depended upon a pharmacist advice it was a neighborhood pharmacy they would ask my father all kinds of questions he took foreign bodies out of people's eyes and you would never dare do that today for fear of litigation right right i was never taught how to do that he taught me how to do so that's where the background of the seeds were set that the Azzurri who said that and my father was an influence because he didn't want me to quote
work for olympic right to be a professional well after high school now did you go to college or the service what was going on there was a great influence at the end of the Korean War the veterans coming at a school GI Bill medical schools were accepting about one out of every 15 right applicants there was still a Jewish quota it was rare and new number of schools were far less than there are today of medical schools I decided I want to go away from the New York area we had snow storm in 1947 24 inches of snow and so guess who had to shovel
it and I said if I ever leave this place I'll never go and live where it snows so I look for schools along the southern half the United States Florida in the early 50s did not have any schools that were of any renowned they were right not very good Tulane was a tough school to get in we had a couple of people that were in a banking business that were customers in the store that were doing a lot of business in Texas in the early 50s and really talked to state up and I said well maybe I'd like to go to school there so I
ended up at Baylor sight unseen 12 Jewish students you made smaller you made 13 I made 12 Wow so what there has to be some kind of a culture change for you well it was a big shock coming from New York but East eastern Long Island getting off a train because my father wouldn't let us fly in a hundred in 10 degree heat the end of august will snow no snow and an unaired condition dorm boy the food was basically foreign I had no idea what collard greens were chicken fried steak BBQ it was a bit of a change he was a change but let
me ask you you know I'm just curious what was the train ride like from New York to it was a Texas 2nite overnight and like you to leave six o'clock on a Friday evening and get to waco texas at about noon Sunday while he was long it was air-conditioned so that was comfortable had food service the train was air-conditioned yes Wow but there the Rue meant yes called a roomette which was like an airplane bathroom basically and he made this trip alone I made his trip with my mother she came down she came down to see see what was going on tell me about college
life what was it like for you it was great I I loved all the cultural differences I like the dorm life the first year and then a couple of roommates and I moved out into an apartment the second year for the next three years and I met people that i am still friendly with today one of which lives in waco one lives here none of them were Jewish now where did you met your wife in when I was in medical school okay I got into Medical School in 1956 got into two schools university of buffalo looked at the map and i said i don't think
i want to go there not in the Pittsburgh and I said well I'll know anything about that but it's only four hundred miles from New York so he left Texas to head up to Pittsburgh yeah I was banished to Pennsylvania yeah that's where you met the your future wife at the end of I guess the end of my sophomore year okay and then after you complete a medical school and then where'd you go those years you were doing rotating internships so I wanted to go back to Texas of course riva did not want to go to Texas I had a lot of good offers to
go into practice in the suburban Pittsburgh area Pittsburgh in 1959 had a major steel strike to close the city down it was totally non functioning and I said to myself this is not good you don't want to be in a city like it started out like that is controlled by one major industry and seattle at that time which was an option for an internship was controlled by boeing it's still pretty much is but not not as bad so i wanted to go back to Texas I missed the weather I hated the weather in Pittsburgh right the climate we did not have a football pool or
a basketball pool we had a weather cool when is the Sun going to show it may or june or not at all now you come so you come back down in Texas but you you spent some time in the service now well this was the Korean crisis right whole war and they were drafting anybody that was eligible there was a doctor Barry not related to the Washington DC Barry who came up with a plan to let the students finish Medical School and internship if they would sign a commitment to spend two years in the military ok so I was in our own Air Force ROTC
at Baylor and I went into the air force course you put in for your choice number one was Californian of it too was Florida I got Oklahoma which was not on the list we had a very interesting situation we were about 90 miles northwest of Oklahoma City on a pilot training base atc command they had just closed the hospital i had 100 bed hospital I dug a hole between the two runways and buried all the equipment what was that about we were screaming as physicians when we got there let us give it to the local hospital let us give it to the Indian Reservation know
you'll hurt the community economy so we grabbed what equipment that we could that we knew we'd need for office stethoscopes urine collectors all kinds of stuff but they buried it the end of my two years what were they doing reopening the hospital buying new equipment way but it was an Air Training Command and the base was run by a company called surveyor that did all the enlisted men's jobs the menial deaths we had pilot trainees they were all second lieutenants so it was a college educated population when I got on base they said you like kids cuz I just had an internship not a residency
and I said okay here the base pediatrician so I did almost all the Pediatrics on the base nobody else wanted what's the kids so the population was a college educated population similar to a suburban type of practice so it was great training when I got into a residency I knew more than any of these residents new and I'd had all these experience we were seeing Oh 50 60 80 patients who died where do you decide you can open up your practice I knew I wanted to come back to Texas again I had offers in pittsburgh but I just I thought the handwriting on the wall
the industries were dying it was still a big city at the time but they were losing population losing industry and I just didn't want that whether I needed to be where there was a young population where there was somewhat of a need this is 1965 in Dallas was not much further north in northwest highway right maybe maybe forest lane forest lane at the time and we drove around looking at swing sets and backyards to see how many my houses had swing sets chairs and because the trees were so small I couldn't support a swing a swing and I opened up on forest lane in a
to treatment room office at 193 dollar rent a month or one nurse assistant after two years expanded in the same building to a bigger office and then expanded again and then in 1975 moved on to a new building that then friend of mine built in a sixth treatment room office real plush office on LBJ in medicine how has it grown how has it changed from when you open the doors and a patient would come when when mom would walk that little child in what's the difference from then to what they have now available well first of all people respected a physician second you had an
office visit or whatever the charge was they wrote a check or they paid cash right he put him in the hospital and we always had patients in the hospital that was covered by insurance and we gradually saw the increasing of the insurance companies influencing what people thought they needed what people thought the insurance company should pay for people discipline their children differently they were very rigid they were still spanking them they were not catering to them they were not going to six activities every week kids playing in the front yard in the street in the backyard rode their bicycles to the next house next street
gradually parents became more dominant and how the child's life was run we've seen the biggest changes were in the infectious diseases there was a type of meningitis called a marvelous groupie that every resident saw 5200 cases his residency term we had two or three a year we had meningococcal meningitis these are all vaccines now residents don't even see some of these diseases we had chicken pox we had measles one out of every thousand kids with measles died of encephalitis one out of every five thousand with chickenpox had encephalitis so we saw all these diseases disappear and the likelihood of having patients today in the hospital
is very small and if it is it's a specialty situation that's probably going to be taken care of by a hospitalist you and that specialty was not an existing talking about the parents becoming a little bit more dominant with all the activities you know compared to the kids just playing in the backyard on their own is it for the better or the worse do you think I think it's for the worse that I think kids today by and large are not allowed to make mistakes that teaches them that everything is not positive in this world good job every everything a child does if they poop
in the pot it's a good job if they fall down they somebody picks them up you know the parents would say you dummy you tripped over that box get up parents mean well but i think that the generation today expects to only do good and the quality of life is more important especially to the physicians that are in practice today we were taught our practice comes first our family comes second doesn't sound very good today now in your lifetime you've lived through for president assassinated the challenger tragedy something good the moon landing course the 911 champ on tragedy there's something in your lifetime it really
affected you that you've noticed on the national scene I think the positive effect is the internet because it's changed everything that we do everything that everybody does for instance nobody learns cursive anymore you don't need to it's all typed the Internet's change the way medicine is practiced it's changing it more with electronic health records communications are better the Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer relevant so I really think the Internet has changed things for the better what was the happiest time in your life living in California when were you in California hi we've always spent a lot of time in California i started going to pediatric
meetings because I don't know well I just like California in 1972 and we keep finding meetings every year to go and learn to love the lifestyle out there which is not quite that different from the south western lifestyle quite a bit different from the Chicago lifestyle in New York lifestyle and after i retired in 98 we lived in South moved to South Padre moved to South Padre because my esma was much better biology so much better there at seven years on South Padre was a very happy time we had super good friends good weather a great lifestyle friend of mine moved to San Diego area
browbeat me and they're coming out and visiting him and I said nah I've been out San Diego had meeting out there it was cold in June I don't know if I want that so we went out there and I fell in love with everything about it so we started spending two or three or four months over the winter in California gradually increased it and when we sold our house in plano in 09 took a three year lease on a house in Rancho Santa Fe what brought you back Riva decided you missed the grandchildren too much you have three kids how many grandkids cf62 step-grandkid one
grand great and one great grandkids what advice does great-granddad want to leave to the next generation be yourself stick up for your rights be proud of what you do or card cuz it will pay off in the long run great advice man hey thanks for doing this