Bill Branham Lefler

LITTLE ROCK — As the only child of two older parents, Bill Lefler decided early on that he was a “mistake.”

This “mistake” from the Van Buren County town of Clinton grew up skinny-dipping in a swimming hole and playing almost every sport offered. He went from being a self-proclaimed mistake to a two-star general and a dentist who, in semi-retirement, still has a practice with more than 5,000 patients. During his military career, his patients included Mamie Eisenhower, Bob Dole, Strom Thurmond and a number of generals.

For a new acquaintance, it is hard to know what to call Lefler. General Lefler? Doctor Lefler? His parents named him Billie, but his friends call him Bill. His grandchildren call him Pop. And he sometimes refers to himself as Tog (The Old General).

“It depends on what you want,” the doctor/general says. “It took me five years to become a doctor and 25 years to become a general. Some people have even called me doctor-general. It really doesn’t matter. Call me whatever you like.”

Despite what you call Lefler, he is the kind of person who makes an instant friend of everyone he meets. Talkative and gregarious, he loves to tell his story and show off the tidbits he has collected from around the world. His passions include music and Bible study.

Today, Lefler lives in Hot Springs Village, where he retired with his wife, Carolyn, in 1994. The retirement came after an Army career that took him to 23 posts across the globe. In retirement, he quickly realized that he wanted more in life than just playing golf. So he got into a private practice and ended up one of the busiest residents of Hot Springs Village.

“He tried for about a year to play golf a lot and he got very tired of it,” Carolyn says. “He said he had to do more than play golf because it wasn’t enough to expend the energy that surrounds him.”

An only child, Lefler moved to Clinton with his parents when he was10. His father, Tom, had just retired as a conductor with Union Pacific Railroad and decided to return to his hometown. The Leflers bought the family farm from relatives - including 150 acres, a big white house, a wash house, a smoke house, a barn and a garden. When he was born, his father was 40 and his mother, Ethel, was 39.

At Clinton High School, Lefler played football and basketball and ran track. He wanted to go to Arkansas Technical College (now Arkansas Tech University) to play basketball. But his father, fearing he would flunk out, persuaded his son to go to Hendrix College with the promise of paying his tuition. Neither of his parents had a college education.

While at Hendrix, Lefler turned down a blind date with Carolyn because he had another date for the evening. But that night, he and his date ended up going out for a Coke with two other couples - including Carolyn. At that time, she was a high school student in Little Rock.

“That night, Carolyn and I made eye contact and I don’t remember seeing anyone but her,” he says of that summer day in 1951.

Lefler knew early on he wanted to be a dentist. He completed two years and two summers at Hendrix and then got into the Tennessee College of Dentistry. At that time, students didn’t need an undergraduate degree to get into dental school. He and Carolyn got married in 1955, and she helped put him through dental school.

But the money ran out and Lefler joined the Army to help pay for school. He planned on staying in the Army for four years but ended up with a military career of almost 35 years.

“Most of my career, I had no idea I would ever be a general,” he says. “I wanted to be a good clinician. I wanted to get graduate training in prosthodontics. I wanted to pass my boards. I wanted to teach. And I got to do all of that.”

At the end of his four years, Lefler left the military. He decided three months later that he had made a mistake and wanted to return. His old boss liked him and his work and got him back into the Army.

He was assigned in 1961 to Fort Benning, Ga., as a crown and bridge dental officer. By 1963, he was stationed in Paris as chief of fixed prosthodontics. He held other positions at other posts when he was sent in 1972 to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where his titles included clinic chief of the department of dentistry, chief of fixed prosthodontics service and director of the prosthodontics residency program. He said that assignment was the “hardest job I ever had in the Army.” It was at Walter Reed where he met and worked on some of his most famous patients.

“The only thing that kept me sane, literally, was handball,” Lefler recalls. “I would go to the Pentagon athletic club and play handball.”

MAMIE EISENHOWER’S WINE

At Walter Reed, Lefler says, he had developed a “pretty good reputation.” But he didn’t have the military education required to become a general. By this point, he was a colonel. He considered retiring, but was asked in 1976 to become the commander at Fort Jackson, S.C. By 1979, he was promoted to brigadier general.

Lefler’s father, who died in 1957, was a private and an ammunition truck driver in the First World War. Lefler still has his dad’s metal helmet and dog tags prominently displayed in his home office.

“He was thrilled when I was promoted to lieutenant in dental school,” Lefler says. “He would never believe I made general.”

As brigadier general, Lefler was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he was deputy director of the Army Health Services Command and director of dental services. From 1984-1986, he was in Heidelberg, Germany, as deputy commander of the 7th Medical Command. Then he was promoted to major general and became assistant surgeon general for Dental Services and chief of the Army Dental Corps.

When he was promoted to brigadier general, MamieEisenhower gave him a bottle of 1949 red wine. She said French officials had given it to her husband, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“We abused it [tremendously]. I carried it to South Carolina. I carried it to Washington. I carried it to San Antonio. One day, this French general came over and saw it and he about had a stroke. I had it sitting on top of the refrigerator. He got a book on wine and he came back and showed me it was worth $500 to maybe $750.”

He then took the wine to his basement and “tipped it just right” to preserve it. He opened the wine in December 1986 when he was promoted to major general and shared it with his family.

“It was wonderful,” he says of the wine.

He also has framed autographed photos of Mrs. Eisenhower in his dental office and home. One says “For Colonel ‘Bill’ Lefler with warm regards. Mamie Dowd Eisenhower.”

GOLDEN YEARS - OR NOT

After four years as a major general, Lefler decided it was time to retire. He then went to work for two years as director of the American Dental Association in Washington. He quit when he realized it wasn’t the right job for him.

His wife suggested Hot Springs Village after touring it with her mother and sister. Since it was a gated community made up mostlyof retirees, Carolyn Lefler thought her husband would think it was “just like a military post.”

Lefler decided to check out Hot Springs Village on his own and ended up buying a house - without Carolyn seeing it. But the two-level home near the front gate of Hot Springs Village turned out to be the perfect space for Lefler to show off his memorabilia.

The lower story of their house is filled with relics of his past - medals, autographed photos of presidents and generals, various bits of family history. Most of the rugs in his downstairs den are Turkish. He bought them while on assignment and, after several glasses of a Turkish liqueur, ended up buying more rugs than he expected.

“We had two installations in Turkey and I sent word that I would really like to buy a Turkish rug. I go over and I am in uniform with my group and we fly over and we go over and meet this guy,” Lefler says. “He said, ‘General, you look tired. Could I get you a little something to drink?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ It was delicious and he said, ‘How about some more?’ I drank three and bought eight rugs.”

He keeps some of his military wardrobe in a closet - but not all. He threw some of his dress uniforms away. He also has his “general’s gun.”

“When you make general, they give you all kinds of stuff. You get a weapon - this isnot loaded,” he says, holding the pistol. “This is really neat. It is a general officer’s model. They only make 1,500 and I am number 771.”

He also collects rocks and uses a thick, black pen to write on the bottom where and when he found them. One rock says “Hitler’s house, 2006.”

He also plays the trumpet, piano and harmonica - skills he demonstrated for recent visitors. He played his own song, “Traveling Along God’s Pathway,” on the piano, and a jazz classic, “Basin Street Blues,” on the trumpet.

“As a boy, I would sit out on the porch on a swing and I could play anything by ear,” he says. “I still can, but my lips aren’t so hot anymore.”

In retirement, Lefler played golf for a while, but soon found out he was too energetic and needed something more. A former dental school classmate, Dr. Ed Blaine, talked Lefler into going into private practice at his Hot Springs Village clinic. After two years, Lefler bought the practice from him.

In 2003, Lefler’s oldest son, Dr. Tom Lefler, retired from the Army as a colonel. Tom Lefler is also a dentist and decided to join his father’s practice. The two Leflers are now dental partners and Tom Lefler runs the clinic, which has more than 5,000 patients. They bought the offices next to their clinic and are about to expand and renovate the facility.

Lefler has two other children. Dr. Mark Lefler is a family practice physician in Hot Springs who spent seven years on active Army duty, ending his military career as a major. Daughter Tracey Lefler Salter was a dental hygienist. She and her husband, Jack, live in Little Rock.

NO SMOKING ALLOWED

In 2000, then Gov. Mike Huckabee asked Lefler to chair a 21-member health-care roundtable. His wife was concerned about how much time it would take, but “it won’t take much time,” he told her. “That’s what I always say.”

In 2001, Huckabee asked Lefler to serve on the Arkansas Tobacco Settlement Commission. Lefler wanted to do it, but knew that Carolyn would be against it. So when he went to the first meeting, he told his wife he had business to do in Little Rock. At that first meeting, he waselected chairman.

“Carolyn and I were having dinner that evening and we were watching the news and they said we have a new chairman of the Tobacco Settlement Commission - Maj. Gen. Bill Lefler,” he recalls. “She said, ‘What!’ and I said, ‘Oh, honey, it isn’t going to take that long.”

Lefler was reappointed to the commission by Gov. Mike Beebe. His second term ends this month and a retirement party is scheduled for Oct. 28.

The commission evaluates and monitors all programs funded by the tobacco settlement - estimated at $62 million annually - including research, education and healthcare projects.

“He is such a tremendous force,” says Aaron Black, the commission’s executive director. “The general has brought a tremendous amount of health expertise from his many years of service in the U.S. military. ... When he walks into a room, he is a commanding presence.He is tremendously friendly. He is as nice to the people who clean the office as he is the people who run the office.”

LEFLER AND GOD

A deeply religious man, Lefler has developed his own course work for the Bible classes he teaches at Hot Springs Village United Methodist Church. He also created his own logo, a gyroscope in the center, with the letters “L” and “G” - which stands for Lefler and God - on each side.

“A gyroscope will spin in balance and will stay on a pin so if you get your personal, professional and spiritual life in order then you will spin,”he says. “If you get something out of balance things happen. You should do a gyroscopic examination of your life periodically to make sure you are in balance.”

So is he in balance now?

“I have been out of balance like everybody else but try to stay in balance. I am in balance now, absolutely,” he says.

He wakes between 3:30 and 4 a.m. every day, starting with what he calls Tog’s (The Old General’s) Daily Prayer, which he wrote:

“I meet God in the morning when the day is at its best. His presence comes like sunshine like glory in my breast. All day long his presence lingers through the worldly wrath. We travel in perfect harmony along this troubled path. I know, I know the secret based on many a challenging day. You must meet God in the morning if you want him along the way.”SELF PORTRAIT Bill Lefler

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH Oct. 20, 1933, Rawlins, Wyo.

MY LAST MEAL WOULD BE Steak au poivre (pepper steak), escargot, a nice salad, creme brulee and a nice red wine, probably a merlot.

MY FAVORITE MUSICIAN IS Louis Armstrong.

THE GREATEST BOOK I’VE EVER READ IS The Bible, of course, no question about it. And I have actually read it.

THE MOST RECENT BOOK I’VE READ IS Who Gets to Narrate the World, by Robert E. Webber. I liked it so much, I ordered seven of them to give away to friends.

MY PERSONAL HERO IS President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

MY MOST FAMOUS PATIENTS INCLUDE Mamie Eisenhower, Bob Dole, Strom Thurmond, Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway and Mrs. George Marshall.

MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY WOULD INCLUDE My former coaches, Carl Whillock (basketball), James Tumlinson (football), Morris Mallett (basketball), Mike Malham Sr. (football and basketball), Ivan Grove (football and track) and Lee Morton Hutto (basketball), along with Gen. Albert Wedemeyer.

MY PROUDEST MOMENT WAS When I was able to marry my wife, Carolyn.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Spezorentomatic (a word he coined to mean “energized by God”).

High Profile, Pages 47 on 10/18/2009

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