<Begin Segment 22>

DW: Oh, what was Bill talking about with (Barbara)?

JJ: Well, this is just, I guess...

DW: A societal thing.

JJ: When I started my practice, I hired this black lady to clean up the office. And we had a consulting service come in to help us. When you go to dental school, they teach you how to be a dentist, but not a businessman, and I needed to know more about how to run a business. So we had a consulting service in, and they interviewed all the people I had working for me. And the lady that was doing the interviewing said that if you really wanted a top-notch employee, you need to move Barbie away from the mop and put her in the chair. And so just on the strength of what they said, I made her my chair-side assistant, and she stayed with me for thirty-five years 'til she retired for health issues.

DW: She runs the whole place.

JJ: Just the most fantastic person you could ever want to work for you. And the kids just loved her, I mean, she was just... we had two generations of children that grew up with Barbie at the chair side, and they all to this day, they all want to know about Barbie.

KL: Oh. When did she make that move? Around what year was that?

JJ: When I hired her?

KL: When you hired her, and then when she switched to being your assistant.

JJ: Well, I hired her... let's see, I got out of the service in '66, so probably around '68 is when I hired her. And she didn't, she was only less than a year when we had the consulting service come in. And I was, it just so happened I was needing a chair side, and that was part of their deal, they were going to interview to get the new chair side. Because I'd decided I had to have two people out front, and move one of the chair side up front, and then hired her. And I mean, it was just... they hit it right on the head. She had people skills out of this world.

DW: Yes.

JJ: And also very smart, very good assistant.

DW: And also I lived so far away, Bill and Nita go to Jim for dental work, but I'm in California so I don't do this very often. But I remember I was there once and you were doing something with my teeth, I don't remember what. But anyway, Barbie is the one who will come in and say, "All right, Jim, you talk all the time. Shut up and get busy 'cause you got people waitin'."

KL: Uh-huh, she keeps you in --

DW: And you walk in the door and she's say, "Oh, Dot, I don't ever get to see you," and give me this big hug.

KL: Now, did you move back to Arkansas after dental school, or did you practice in Memphis?

JJ: Well, I went in the army right out of dental school, and was in Europe for three years. And this was right when Vietnam was getting active. And I got out of the army, and actually, they were going to send me to Vietnam, but I had signed an agreement with the army to serve a third year in France. And that agreement somehow got me out of going to Vietnam. My commanding officer came to me and said that I had like a six-week window, that if I didn't want to go to Vietnam, I had an out. And I didn't want to go, and so I got out and went back to Arkansas and practiced. I started working with the Title XIX government project working in the schools. I fixed up a little mobile clinic, and I went to Dyess.

DW: You had all the black communities, too.

JJ: Yeah, I went to all the little communities around there. But that led to -- and then I also was headed to, I wanted to go to northwest Arkansas, Jasper, up that area. Took my wife up there, and it was kind of a winter weekend, it rained the whole weekend, and she cried the whole weekend. [Laughs] So I decided I wouldn't go to Jasper. We had a good deal come to us, offered to us in Marion, Arkansas. I was living in West Memphis at the time, and that's where I started my practice.

DW: Still live there, yeah. His wife's a nurse, and she's worked a lot of time in Memphis as an RN, yeah.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.