Dr. Robert Merrill stepped down as Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics in 1974, and Dr. W. T. (Tommy) Dungan assumed the role of interim chair. Dr. Robert Arrington, a medical graduate of UAMS and the Department of Pediatrics Residency Program, and who served as chief of the Division of Neonatology for 38 years, recalled: “They formed a search committee as they always do and they put Dr. Bob Fiser, a young Associate Professor who had recently joined the faculty, on the search committee and they looked for six months and they had several potential people to be interviewed. Nobody wanted this job because it was not a prime job in Pediatrics at that point – small faculty, trapped in the adult hospital, where only obstetrics was our counterpart.
After about six months Bob Fiser told the committee: “You know, I think I could do just as good a job as anybody we’ve interviewed and I’m interested in it.” In March 1975, Robert Fiser was appointed the fifth full-time Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the age of 32, the youngest Department of Pediatric Chair in the country. This appointment set off a chain reaction of growth of the Department of Pediatrics and Arkansas Children’s Hospital that continued for the next 40 years.
Dr. Fiser brought a vision as he assumed his new role, which included bringing “National Recognition” to Arkansas Children’s Hospital and developing a training program that would provide enough pediatricians to provide high-quality medical care for all children of Arkansas. He is remembered as a person of high energy, persuasion and a visionary.
Dr. J.B. Norton, one of Fiser’s first faculty recruits who arrived in 1975, recalled Fiser telling him: “I want to build a children’s hospital and I want to train pediatricians and I want to put a pediatrician in every town in Arkansas. I want you to help me recruit the best faculty I can recruit in various subspecialties. I want to train general pediatricians in a children’s hospital that will provide the highest technical and professional quality of care that we can so that, when these young men and women go out to small towns in Arkansas, they will know when they’ve got a really sick kid they can send it back to Little Rock and they will know that child will get the best possible care,” and that is what we did. “Bob encouraged us to do that in a way that was energetic, aggressive, assertive and fun.”
Dr. Rhonda Dick, a student and pediatric resident under Fiser, described his style as a leader; “He was a very strong leader, but he was also very down to earth. He was the type to be just as able to talk to the medical students as to the other attendings, very involved, very charismatic, very sure of himself, just someone we all looked up to and respected, but we felt comfortable talking to him, laughing with him. ‘Captain Bob-’ that is what we called him. ‘Captain Bob and the Starship Pediatrics,’ is what we said when I was a resident.”
Dr. Richard Jacobs, who was a student and pediatric resident under Dr. Fiser, who later became Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics in 2005, described Fiser’s style and approach to recruiting. “Dr. Fiser was a visionary, dreamer, entrepreneur, and a true leader. Dr. Fiser could sell fur coats in a desert! I mean he was a cheerleader and a salesman. I ran into Dr. Fiser during the first year of my fellowship at the Society for Pediatric Research meeting. I was presenting a platform presentation of my research. He came and sat in the front row and smiled during my entire presentation. Afterward, he came up and asked how things were going. He said, ‘When you finish I want you to go out and get all the job offers you can and then call me because I am going to beat every one of them. You’re coming back to be on the faculty with me.’” And Dr. Jacobs did join the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics in 1983 when he completed his fellowship. Dr. Fiser focused on recruiting the best of the residents who trained at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Jacobs commented: “Of my residency group and of UAMS medical students who trained in pediatrics elsewhere, the number of people who came back after their specialty training is amazing and adds to the ‘legend’ of Dr. Fiser. These included Drs. Becky Rogers and Bonnie Taylor in Neonatology, Eileen Ellis in Nephrology, Debra Fiser in Critical Care, Ernie Kiel in Cardiology, and Larry Simmons in General Pediatrics among many others.”
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the first female graduate of UAMS, and longtime faculty member of the Department of Pediatrics of UAMS who was named Surgeon General under President Bill Clinton, made this comment about Dr. Fiser. “I think the best thing that ever happened to the Department of Pediatrics back then was Bob Fiser. He was smart, visionary, aggressive and probably took some risks that he shouldn’t have taken. But he did it in the interest of children and for the state of Arkansas to make things better and I am very proud of what he did. Dr. Fiser was a real mover and shaker in changing the culture of the Department of Pediatrics; he recruited a lot of great people to really make better tertiary care.”
Along with the amazing growth of the hospital and the number of faculty and residents the early years were recalled as a time of mutual support. Dr. Debra Fiser, who received her medical degree from UAMS and later became Chair of the Department of Pediatrics in 1995 and Dean of the School of Medicine in 2006, recalls: “I think the thing that is very special about our Department is that we have historically had a culture that has really been almost a family type culture- one where people take care of each other, nurture each other.”
Fiser established that culture by focusing on the well-being and success of every one of his faculty. But it wasn’t all work and no play, Jacobs commented, “(i)t was really a fun time because the people that were really important loved this place and they loved the people and the kids in the state. … I think what was really cool and special about this place is that there was a group of people, (kind of a core), that had the same values and the same goals. They just liked each other, and they really got along.”
One of the best examples of how the faculty had fun in those years was the annual “Mardi Gras” party. Dr. Russell Steele was recruited to the Department of Pediatrics in 1978 as an Infectious Disease specialist. He and his wife Jenny were natives of New Orleans, and they had an annual party to celebrate Mardi Gras. Everyone on the faculty took this seriously and dressed appropriately. The food was authentic, prizes were offered for the best costumes, and there was even a parade around the house. (See pictures.) Dr. Rhonda Dick, who served as chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine for more than 20 years, recalled, “In the old days it was sort of a smaller kind of, I call it a ‘Good old boys network’ even though I am not a boy. We would have parties like at the end of the year for the graduating residents all day long out at Maumelle Country Club pool. We would spend the whole day out there swimming, playing golf—residents and attendings. We had parties like that with skits that made fun of each other. You know, we just had a lot of fun back then.”