It tells me a lot about Dr. Cam Patterson, the new chancellor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, that he wants to meet for lunch at Little Rock's Lassis Inn. It tells me that he's getting a feel for Arkansas. And it tells me that he has good taste in food.
We sit at one of the tiny booths on East 27th Street and eat fried buffalo ribs (the kind that come from a bottom-dwelling carp, not the four-legged king of the Great Plains). The Lassis Inn's famous juke box is silent, but thoroughbred horse races are playing on television. As usual, owner Elihue Washington Jr. has cooked the fish perfectly.
Patterson is a nationally renowned cardiologist. If my wife complains about me having fried fish for lunch, I can tell her with a straight face that I was under close medical supervision.
The Lassis Inn started in the early 1900s when Joe and Molassis Watson began selling sandwiches out of the back of their home. Sales increased when fried fish was added to the menu. The current building was constructed in 1931. It was moved a short distance in the 1960s to make way for Interstate 30.
"They had intended to call the establishment the Watson Inn but decided on the derivative of Molassis Watson's name because they thought it sounded better," Revis Edmonds writes in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "Through the years, Lassis Inn has been known for more than its fish. In the years leading up to the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, Daisy Bates and other civil rights leaders held frequent meetings at the restaurant. It became known that Lassis Inn was one of the few safe places where people could gather to discuss the problems associated with segregation."
"This was the only place," says Washington, who bought the restaurant in 1989. "People couldn't go anywhere else."
We're having lunch on the exact date--Sept. 25--that the Little Rock Nine entered Central High for the first time for a full day of school. That was the day they came through the front door, escorted by the 101st Airborne Division. Patterson mentions that his oldest child is a student at Central High and is enchanted by the beauty of the building and the history that surrounds it. He says the course offerings are more varied than the school she attended in New York.
In a story titled "Ode to a Catfish House," Katherine Whitworth described the place this way: "The Lassis Inn hunkers alongside the interstate in a small, royal blue building. It is the architectural equivalent of minding your own business, and it's hard to notice unless you're looking for it."
Patterson took the reins at UAMS on June 1 after four years at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center and Komansky Children's Hospital/New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he was the chief operating officer. Don't let those years in New York fool you, and don't be fooled by the fact that Patterson was a research fellow in Boston for the Cardiovascular Biology Laboratory at the Harvard School of Public Health. He's a Southern boy, meaning that he knows how to relate to Arkansans.
Patterson was raised in Mobile, which is about the most Southern city there is; the kind of place where lawyers still wear seersucker in the summer and take long Friday lunches. He received his bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University, which often is called the Harvard of the South, and went on to earn a medical degree from the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and an MBA from the University of North Carolina.
Folks as smart as Patterson do their homework. He was well aware of the financial difficulties UAMS has experienced in recent years. He said he applied for the job because he was ready to return to the South and because he considers UAMS to be "an enterprise that has everything. We're the academic medical center for the entire state, and we have a responsibility for people across the state. There aren't many jobs like this one."
Patterson's wife Kristine is an infectious disease specialist. The couple has three children; the oldest is 16. Patterson says they've fallen in love with the state. He has fished for trout on the Little Red and White rivers. He has floated the lower Buffalo River.
"We have eight regional campuses, and I'm in the process of visiting them," Patterson says. "I've been all over the state, seeing it from a work perspective and a recreational perspective. This is a place filled with people who do the very best they can with what they have. It's a good place to raise our kids."
Patterson isn't going to mention it, but UAMS has been financially starved in recent years by the Legislature. Legislators fail to understand that UAMS has a mission in all parts of a state that rates low in most health-care statistics. With almost 10,300 employees, it's also one of the state's leading economic engines. If Arkansas is going to come close to reaching its potential, far more state funding for UAMS will be required.
I was heartened recently while reading a profile of Baker Kurrus, one of five candidates for mayor of Little Rock. He said leaders in the capital city must lobby the Legislature on behalf of UAMS and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which also is being starved. The other candidates should follow his lead.
In Patterson, UAMS appears to have found a leader who can relate to legislators when making the case for additional funding.
"This isn't the first time I've been to a place with financial challenges," he says. "I'm not scared of challenges. We must get back to being creative and innovative. We need to find ways to collaborate with other institutions across the state. At most other academic medical centers, you don't serve an entire state. You don't have the opportunities we have."
Patterson comes to Arkansas at a time when about two-thirds of the state is losing population. That means fewer doctors and fewer rural hospitals. It makes the telemedicine efforts at UAMS more important than ever. He tells the story of a woman in the rural Ozarks with whom he visited this summer. She travels 45 minutes for primary care.
As I finish my last rib, I think to myself that Cam Patterson just might be the most important person in Arkansas right now. Let's hope he gets the help he needs.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 09/30/2018