History of the Medical College of Georgia

14. Edgar Fund and the 1950s

Chapter 14 Edgar Fund and the 1950s athology's Edgar Fund succeeded Kelly as the second president of MCG in July 1953. That fall an official celebration and investiture was held at the old Medical College with Chancellor and Mrs. Harmon Caldwell as special guests. The talk was of the future, what with a new president and a new hospital as well, and the mood was both ebullient and cordial. The modest Fund was praised almost as though he wasretiring from instead of starting out on his presidency and, consistent with his feelings when he handed over the reins of authority fiveyears later, he may have found it "embarrassing to stand before" the crowds and speak or be spoken to in such a fashion.1 Still, Fund was strong; Kelly was correct in thinking that he would be able to see the construction of the new hospital through to the end and also preside over its official opening. Fund probably realized that his was going to be no easy task. For that reason he wanted to have a reliable younger man at his right who could take some of the administrative and executive load. His request that Harry B. O'Rear be made dean of faculties was honored by the regents. Somewhat earlier the decisive and experienced Rufus T. Payne, who had been cognizant of Kelly's plans for a hospital even before they got on the drawing board, was placed in the position of dean of clinical instruction. His particular area of responsibility was to be setting up Talmadge Hospital and its programs and seeing to their proper administration. Payne's hand was much in evidence throughout the period of construction at Talmadge, and he remained a major force there until his retirement in 1971.2 Construction seemed to be going on everywhere. Additions were being 192 P 193 Edgar Fund and the 1950s made to the Dugas and Murphey buildings, and plans were being completed that were to lead to the erection of a new home for the mushrooming administration. These improvements were not, however, without their melancholy side, for in this rush for expansion and state monies the renovation of the venerable Newton building was being pushed further down the list of priorities. Newton was, in fact, fated to meet the same doom that greeted so many of Georgia's distinguished Victorian college buildings in the 1950s and 1960s. The feeling seemed to be that the straightforward lines of glass and steel were more appropriate for a school looking to the future instead of to the past. Even so, the Medical College of Georgia lost a bit of its soul when the wrecker's ball did its work where so many of MCG's distinguished alumni had been trained. Alfred Blalock, addressing the graduates in 1953, put his finger on the issue. Although he was talking about the evolving medical center complex planned by the school, what he said had relevance to the value of the built environment as well. "Size and quantity have always been quick to impress us in this country but it has been adequately demonstrated that such qualities alone are not sufficient."3 That fall the school prepared to welcome an incoming class of one hundred. Almost as soon as the skeletal form of the Talmadge Hospital began to take shape, differing opinions as to its purposes and operations began to surface. Reference has alreadybeen made to the change in responsibility for administration from the State Board of Health to the regents—a change Fund addressed at length in a June 1954 meeting of the faculty when he took up Payne's recommendations for procedures at Talmadge. With the regents now ultimately in command, the faculty could not charge for services rendered at the facility. Although it would still be possible to have a visiting or part-time faculty who could hold clinics and so on, these doctors would not be able to have private patients at the hospital and no individual practice was to be allowed. Patients were to be sent there onlyby their physicians and/or clinics, and were to be referred to the facility itself and not to any particular member of staff. Fund and Payne envisioned some indigent, part-pay, and full-pay patients, the latter more than likely to be sent to Talmadge because it offered a service that was nowhere else available in the section. There might even be afew out-of-state patients, he cautioned, but...