A Heart to Serve Read online

  Frail and aging, Emma Wood, of Electric Mills, Mississippi, was not accustomed to train travel. In fact, she would never have been in Meridian that day if her three-year-old grandson, Harlan Scoggins, hadn’t badly injured his back. The family doctor had wrapped the child in a stiff plaster cast and encouraged Emma’s daughter and son-in-law to see a specialist at a hospital just outside New Orleans. Of modest means, the young parents could not afford the time to make the trip, so Grandma Emma volunteered.

  Shortly before 3:00 P.M., Emma Wood heard her train called. She carefully picked up young Harlan and made her way out of the station, through the passengers’ entrance gate, and down the main concourse, right onto track three. Perhaps she was frightened or confused by the sight of the stationmaster rushing up the platform and waving his arms at her; possibly it was the awful screeching noise that puzzled her and prevented her from hearing his shouts, or perhaps she was distracted in her struggle to carry her grandson in his awkward cast. Whatever it was, Emma turned slowly, only to see the huge black engine billowing smoke and bearing down on her.

  Stark terror flashed across her face, and she froze in place.

  Sprinting along the platform, shouting and waving his arms, Grandfather barely nudged ahead of the train. He saw Emma’s dilemma and recognized she had no further chance to escape. At the last second, he hurled himself off the platform right in front of the locomotive and slammed into the transfixed woman on the tracks, the impact shoving Emma and her grandson off the track and out of the way of danger. But Grandfather wasn’t so lucky. The locomotive smacked into Jake Frist, tossing him more than twenty feet in the air, his side crushed by the front of the engine, his leg snapped in two when it caught in the locomotive’s sill. Grandfather landed on the boardwalk next to the tracks, his head scraping along the planks and cement, shredding his face.

  C. C. Redwood, the train’s engineer, could only watch in horror. He later said that in that instant, he knew for certain the stationmaster at the Meridian terminal would be killed. In fact, as the train slowly came to a stop, everyone who saw my grandfather lying crumpled and motionless on the station’s wooden planks knew he was dead.

  A crowd quickly gathered around Emma and her young grandchild. Except for a few scrapes and bruises, and shaking with fear, they seemed okay. Still lying on the wooden planks, Grandfather was cut and bleeding, but breathing, still talking, amazingly still alive.

  A Mobile & Ohio physician, Dr. Gully, ran from the station and attended to my grandfather, still slumped on the sidewalk next to the tracks. Somehow, after the hullabaloo at the tracks calmed down, Dr. Gully arranged to transfer all three of the victims, Emma Wood and three-year-old Harlan as well as my grandfather, to Meridian’s Turner Hospital.

  Someone must have informed Grandmother Frist, because she headed off for the hospital to find him, bringing the family doctor, S. H. Hairston, with her. Dr. Hairston later said that he found Jake alive, but he was “in a poor state and in much pain.” The doctor described Granddaddy Jake’s condition in his medical journal, noting that Jake’s left leg was fractured between the knee and ankle; he had a huge contusion along the left hip and deep lacerations around the skull. Whether he said so or not, Dr. Hairston knew his patient would be a long time recovering.

  Granddaddy Jake stayed at the hospital for two weeks, then was confined to his home for nine months. For the better part of a year, he was completely disabled. When he finally returned to work at the station, he could walk only with the aid of a cane. The limp, as Dr. Hairston described it, was slight, but it belied the true depth of Jake’s pain and injury.

  “At the present time,” wrote Hairston on February 6, 1915, “he attends to his duties with great difficulty, and I feel that he has not recovered and will not for some time fully recover.” Dr. Hairston was right.

  Back then, in the heyday of the railroads, two coveted awards existed for acts of extreme bravery in connection with the industry. One was the Andrew Carnegie “Hero Award,” which came with a medal and a thousand-dollar stipend for the education of the recipient’s children. Only sixteen of the medals had been awarded in the decade since the act had gone into effect. The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded the seventeenth to my grandfather.

  The second coveted honor was the Medal of Honor for Lifesaving on Railroads, which Congress had established in 1905. In March 1915, the White House awarded this medal to Granddaddy Jake. The letter, signed by Woodrow Wilson, stated, “You have been awarded a medal for extreme daring whereby on February 3, 1914, you imperiled your life in saving the lives of others. I am pleased to convey to you herewith this medal as a testimonial of the nation’s appreciation of your courageous and praiseworthy act.”

  Grandfather’s medal was passed down as one of our family’s most cherished treasures. Years later, I would borrow it from my cousin Johnny Frist to keep in my office when I became majority leader of the United States Senate—a reminder of the intergenerational responsibility we have as parents and families to pass on our values.

  Meanwhile, by November 1914, my grandfather had gone back to work, much sooner than he should have. Partly, I like to think, he did so from a common Frist family trait—the absolute abhorrence of inactivity. (My wife, Karyn, teases that all Frist males hate sleep! And she’s probably right.) But the next four years were increasingly difficult for Grandfather, as his physical condition grew worse. In 1919, having never fully recovered from the events of the railway accident, my grandfather suffered a stroke and died, his death most probably connected with the physical complications that stemmed from the injuries he received when he was struck by the locomotive. He was only fifty-six years of age, and he left behind a widow, four children, and a massive debt.

  My father was a mere eight years old when Granddaddy Jake died. He experienced a deep sense of loss, which I’m not certain he ever got over. Years later, when I’d ask my dad how he developed such genuine humility, he’d always refer to the loss of his dad.

  The heroic tale that my father and his siblings heard as they grew up engendered an absolute devotion to family. Moreover, the story instilled in those of us in future generations the will, the urge, to respond instinctively with action, the drive to make one’s mark, and the need to do so somehow by helping others live better and more fulfilling lives; better yet, if possible, by saving lives.

  MY GRANDFATHER’S DEATH CAST A LONG SHADOW OVER THE LIFE of the family he left behind, especially over his youngest son, Tommy, my father. Without a pension, a life insurance policy payout, or the income from the railroad, the family was forced to turn their home into a boardinghouse, just to make do. Grandmother revamped the original ten rooms of the house into fourteen to ensure adequate rent. Mindful of her young children, Jennie looked for what she called “quality” guests, and ran a strict, upright establishment. Years later, Dad told me, “Mother was very careful to select people with education and who were cultured,” hinting I’m sure that throughout life, in good times and bad, I should choose my friends wisely. He never defined cultured for me, but over the years I learned that his definition had very little to do with fine manners, the arts, or formal education, but more with honesty, character, and respect for others.

  The eclectic group who rented rooms from my grandmother could easily have been the cast of a Broadway musical. Among those living there at various times were the Reverend Pennyman, an Episcopal minister; a young Jewish bank teller named Mose Gaston, who eventually became president of a Meridian bank, and his gentile wife; a sophisticated lumberman named Mahlon Floyd Parker, who was married to a stylish English woman and drove an expensive Marmon, one of the premier vehicles of the time; two pretty Meridian schoolteachers; a professional golfer—a young Scotsman—who ran the local course; a demure woman who could neither hear nor speak; and Jerry Hairston, a retired minor league baseball player who now worked for the railroad.

  A nurse and at least two doctors also boarded at Grandmother’s. One of the doctors was Dr. Franklin Gail Reilly,
a University of Tennessee graduate who fought in World War I, and then went on to get specialized training in pediatrics. Dr. Reilly settled in Meridian in 1922 as Mississippi’s first residency-trained pediatrician. He lived at Jennie’s boardinghouse with his wife, Harriet, and baby son, Billy. During my dad’s childhood, “Dr. Gail” often took the young Tommy Frist along with him on house calls. Dr. Reilly later founded a hospital in Meridian that is still thriving. His son, Billy, grew up to be a prominent pediatrician like his dad, and today runs the hospital his father founded.

  The other doctor living at the boardinghouse was Jerry Hairston’s brother, Dr. S. H. Hairston, the physician who had cared for my grandfather after his accident. Hairston, a man who would have a profound influence on my father’s life, developed a solid surgical practice and eventually founded another Meridian hospital.

  Peering into the past from my vantage point today, it is easy to see that while Dad learned much from the various renters at the boardinghouse, he was most intrigued by the medical doctors. Through them, he enjoyed stories about all kinds of patients; he listened carefully to the doctors’ diagnoses and grew fascinated by their treatments. Dad’s early interest in medicine was piqued as he listened to the conversations around the dinner table each evening. Dr. Hairston, especially, became a mentor, tutoring Dad in his studies and encouraging his budding interest in medicine. Eventually, Dr. Hairston hired young Tommy Frist at his fifty-five-bed Meridian hospital, where Dad worked after school every day.

  Equally influential in my dad’s early years was his hero worship of older brother John Chester—Chet, as everyone but Grandmother called him. Because of their age difference, it’s not surprising that a fatherless boy like my dad should turn to his elder brother as a substitute, a role model; indeed, Chet was like a surrogate father to my dad. They were practically inseparable. Chet loved his younger brother with intensity and served throughout their years in grammar and high school as Dad’s champion and protector. On the other hand, Dad’s hero worship of his brother exacerbated his own shyness and would lead him to question his “inferiority,” and why he never did anything as well as Chet.

  Grandmother recognized Dad’s need for approval and provided him with additional emotional support; Dad reciprocated with an unalloyed love for her. Dad made certain that he never disappointed his mom; he always treated her with the utmost respect, willingly obeyed her commands, and lived as straight as an arrow. He never smoked, never drank, never cursed; he was a model of integrity reflecting the Christian values his mother taught him. When he started earning a meager amount of spending money, he always gave his mother a portion of what he’d made. When he went off to college, he continued that practice, and wrote to her almost daily.

  Dad later told me, “My mother never raised her voice or scolded me one time in her life. Likewise, because of her influence, I have never raised my voice or spanked any of my children. I have never really been angry at one of my children.”

  I can’t vouch for the “being angry” part, but I can attest to the fact that Dad never punished my four siblings or me by spanking or scolding. Nor did our mother. They expected us to do the “right thing” and make wise decisions and always used affirmation and positive reinforcement or quiet expressions of disappointment if we stepped out of line and needed to be reprimanded. It seems almost hard to imagine, nowadays, that Mom and Dad could raise a family of five children with such a positive philosophy and value system—but they did. Clearly, Dad emulated his mom in the parenting of his own children.

  After two years at Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis, Dad transferred to Ole Miss, where he enrolled in the premed certificate program. Besides intriguing him, medicine offered what he wanted most: a way to provide a good living for the family he hoped to have one day and a profession that would validate his father’s selfless, impulsive sacrifice. He loved people, and he wanted to touch them just as Dr. Hairston had done.

  Unfortunately, Dad didn’t have the funds to attend medical school. Undaunted, he went to Ole Miss two weeks early to earn a little money. He picked up the trunks and baggage of the more affluent students as they arrived at the railroad station in Oxford and then lugged them by mule-drawn wagon to the dormitories. He set about earning his tuition at Mississippi by publishing a football calendar, on which he sold space to local stores and other advertisers. Dad also ran a concession stand at the home basketball games, where he earned a whopping fifteen dollars one night—a lot of money in those days. He was an entrepreneur—by instinct and by necessity.

  In 1928 and 1929, there were no play-by-play radio or television sports broadcasts, so, capitalizing on Ole Miss’s great football tradition, Dad came up with an idea to provide “play by play” reports to the Oxford students who could not travel to the away games. Using Western Union, Dad had the details of the game transmitted to him at Ole Miss, where he charged fans a dollar to sit in the gymnasium and listen to his account of the game, announced through a megaphone.

  Dad relished mixing hard work with creativity. Years later, he told me that he always found it easy to create a job when he needed money, even during the Great Depression. “It was easy for me to get a job,” Dad recalled, “because I was willing to work. And, I guess I was innovative.”

  Dad was a little lucky as well. For instance, one of Dad’s jobs was babysitting for the dean of the two-year medical school, Dr. Billy S. Guyton, a prominent ear, nose, and throat specialist. Dr. Guyton took a liking to the hardworking Tommy Frist. When it came time for the tall, redheaded student to apply for the final two years of his medical training, Dr. Guyton called the dean at Vanderbilt in Nashville. When Dad told Dr. Guyton that he had no money, not even enough to get to Nashville, Dean Guyton loaded his family and their babysitter into his car and drove Dad from Oxford all the way up to Nashville.

  Fifty years later, the Guyton and Frist families crossed paths once again. Dean Guyton’s son Arthur later wrote the most widely read physiology textbook in the world. When I was a surgical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, for two years I worked side by side with Robert Guyton and Steve Guyton, two of Arthur’s ten children—all of whom, quite remarkably, became physicians.

  In 1931, upon graduating from Ole Miss with his “Preclinical Medical Certificate,” Dad entered Vanderbilt Medical School with ten dollars in his pocket and his heart set on becoming a surgeon. He didn’t know another person on campus, but as he’d done for his undergraduate studies, Dad once again earned the money for his own education by working at odd jobs and exercising his entrepreneurial flair. In exchange for room and board, he recruited medical-student boarders for a Mrs. Compton, whose house became affectionately known around campus as “Pauper’s Paradise.”

  Dad completed his studies at Vanderbilt Medical School in two years, although he hinted that constantly working may have caused him not to do as well as he had hoped. “I graduated, not with very good grades,” he said. “I had a high B average, but not an A, because I didn’t have time to study.” Nevertheless, he launched out on the final leg of his lifelong dream to become a surgeon—the all-encompassing residency training at a university hospital.

  Dad went to Iowa City for a rotating internship at the various University of Iowa hospitals, but near the end of his first year of residency, he suffered a collapsed lung. At the time, his condition was diagnosed as tuberculosis, and he was forced to drop out of the program—on doctor’s orders—for about six months. During that time, he was cared for by his mother, who had moved farther south to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

  Dad returned to Iowa to finish the remaining eighteen months of his training, but he soon encountered a stumbling block he couldn’t get around. Despite his best efforts, he ran out of money during the second year of his doctor’s residency program at the University of Iowa. Dad was out of options. It was time to apply what he had learned and try to make a living.

  Although Dad was disappointed about leaving his residency, squelching his d
ream of becoming a surgeon, he was excited to get back to Nashville to see Dorothy Harrison Cate, a vibrant young teacher originally from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with whom he had fallen in love while at Vanderbilt. Dorothy was the sister of a prominent Nashville physician, Dr. William R. Cate Sr., who had developed a thriving private practice as a general medical doctor.

  Dad set up his medical practice in downtown Nashville in 1935, teaching Vanderbilt residents and medical students on the side. Dr. Cate and Dad had become good friends, so when the established doctor invited Dad to join his medical practice as a junior partner in 1937, my father readily agreed. Dad and Dr. Cate worked together for five years.

  Dad threw himself into the practice with Dr. Cate, courting Dorothy after work, and succeeded at both endeavors. He and Dorothy married and set up housekeeping in Nashville, where Dad continued to partner with his brother-in-law. Times were tough, and it took a lot of hard work for a new, young doctor to build a practice, but Dad never shied away from hard work; in fact, he embraced it. He supplemented his income by conducting routine physicals for a local insurance company and by treating patients at the state penitentiary, where he earned fifty dollars per month.

  When America entered World War II, Dad did, too, starting as a first lieutenant and working his way up to major in the Army Medical Corps. He served as chief of internal medicine for three years at Maxwell Field Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. After the war, Dad returned to Nashville, set up his own medical practice, and started from scratch again. Two years later, he became partners in a new clinic with Dr. Addison Scoville, with whom he would practice for the next half century.