Dr. Michael Carroll, Transcript Section 2

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KAREN: And so then how did you get involved with the health aides, with working with health aides?

DR. CARROLL: So in the village of Tanana, we had a 25-bed hospital that was right at the mouth of the Tanana River as it comes into the Yukon. This was a hospital that was built, I think, in the '20s or '30s, in association with what was at what time known as Ft. Gibbon. The fort closed, the hospital facilities remained over the years, and served the Interior of Alaska Native communities.

Generally speaking, those are Athabascan villages that ranged from Kaltag to Circle, from Nenana to Arctic Village, and Anaktuvuk Pass. Anaktuvuk Pass would be the only Eskimo village of any consequence within the subregion. And this was the hospital for many years for Native Americans in the Interior to be hospitalized.

KAREN: So instead of coming to Fairbanks, they would go to Tanana?

DR. CARROLL: Well, Fairbanks had the old St. Joseph's Hospital at that time, and then there was Bassett Army Hospital, and so some would be cared for in those two facilities.

But many of the people in the Native villages, it was closer for them to come to Tanana, especially from the middle downriver areas, and others, it was a choice because they really weren't comfortable with coming to Fairbanks, it being quite a bit bigger than some of the villages that they were living in. And so they liked it being a smaller setting.

The hospital existed up until, oh, I think about the mid '80s, and then was closed, and all of that function was transferred to the Tanana Chiefs' facility clinic in Fairbanks.

KAREN: That's the --

DR. CARROLL: I'm sorry.

KAREN: Chief Andrew Isaac's, is that the name?

DR. CARROLL: It's referred to as the Andrew Isaac Clinic. Back in the '70s, it wasn't referred to as the Andrew Isaac Clinic, it was just -- it may have been the Indian Health Service Clinic, or I don't even know if we had a name at that time. It was probably in the mid '80s it was given a name, Andrew Isaac Health Center.

KAREN: Okay. Why did you choose to become a physician?

DR. CARROLL: Oh, I guess I was originally going to be an organic chemist, but I thought that that was not something that I really wanted to do for a lifetime when I really sat down and thought about it.

Being a physician had some of the same intellectual challenges as far as chemistry and biochemistry, but it also gave you -- it gave myself and I think most of the people a chance to interact with individuals, and in the case of physician, patients, and I thought that that was something I wanted to do and have liked doing and continue to do.

KAREN: And I didn't ask you when you were born.

DR. CARROLL: I was born in 1944.

KAREN: Okay. In Portland?

DR. CARROLL: In Atlanta, Georgia.

KAREN: Oh.