John P. McGovern, MD: A Lifetime of Stories

Chapter Four. The Texas Medical Center of Houston

The creation of the Texas Medical Center during the early 1940s is an interesting story in itself—one that frames Jack McGovern’s life from the day he arrived in Houston in the spring of 1956 until he died. Long before McGovern went to Houston, men like George Hermann and Monroe Anderson had made their fortunes there, and they had given back repeatedly to the city they loved. They had provided a template for both civic pride and citizenship, and McGovern respected it deeply. Their stories were among his favorites because they gave back to the city that had provided them great opportunities. Perhaps the example of their generosity contributed in some small way to his own. The Texas Medical Center emerged during World War II from a mosquito -infested forest that, being over three miles from Houston’s downtown, was considered too far out to be of value. Today it is one of the nation’s great medical treasures. It includes twenty-one academic institutions and fourteen hospitals that collectively coordinated 7.2 million patient visits in 2012. At this writing the center has more than 106,000 employees in addition to 49,000 students training in the life sciences. It is a medical city very different from the tranquil forest that the two bachelors who developed it knew in their lifetimes.1 Two Bachelors and a Vision Monroe Dunaway Anderson (1873–1939) died in Houston the year Jack McGovern graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. At the time The Texas Medical Center of Houston Chapter Four 118 | chapter four of his death, Anderson had a personal fortune estimated at $20 million.2 But he had not always been a rich man. In fact, he had started out a bank teller in the small Tennessee town of Jackson. Anderson was not unlike the famous young banker George Bailey, portrayed by Jimmy Stewart in the classic 1947 movie It’s a Wonderful Life.3 He was considered one of the most trustworthy young men in Jackson, and, sitting behind the teller’s window of Peoples National Bank, he had a front-row seat on the world of finance, where he watched and learned as others made good and bad decisions that separated financial success from failure. Monroe’s older brother Frank was not much interested in sitting at a desk. Frank’s big break came when the James Monroe Clayton family moved to Jackson from Tupelo, Mississippi. The Claytons had deep roots in cotton farming and commerce, and when Frank Anderson met the Claytons’ son Will, the dream team of cotton merchandizing was born. Will took action on his dream when he left Jackson for New York, to gain invaluable experience there working for the American Cotton Company. In time Will Clayton and Frank and Monroe Anderson finalized their plans to start their own cotton merchandizing company with $9,000, each contributing a third.4 On August 1, 1904, Anderson, Clayton & Co. was launched. Each partner brought special skills to the new company. The affable Frank Anderson, at thirty-six, was the senior member of the group and emanated a no-nonsense love of the business that contributed daily to the company’s good reputation among cotton farmers and ginners. Monroe, thirty-one, but seasoned beyond his years, brought his financial experience . Will Clayton, at twenty-four the youngest of the group, provided his New York American Cotton Company experience, which included both negotiation skills and essential contacts with key people in New York City and Europe. In 1905 Will’s brother, Ben Clayton, only twenty-two at the time, also joined the new business and brought with him his extensive knowledge of railroads and transportation.5 Ben had been a stenographer for the top executives in New York at the American Cotton Company and was as good at listening and learning from the best in the business as he was at transcribing their meetings and correspondence. The company began operations in Oklahoma, where cotton was more than abundant, but the young entrepreneurs soon recognized that Houston, down on the Texas Gulf Coast, was the place to be. The hurricane of 1900 texas medical center of houston | 119 that had devastated Galveston, the main port in the state, leaving more than six thousand dead,6 had made Houston the state’s center of commerce. In 1904 Houston undertook an ambitious project, financed by federal funds, to cut a ship...