Doris Merritt Oral History Interview

Mahon: Okay and now this one is live as well, so we’re going to go ahead and start. Today is Friday, March 8, 2019. My name is Leeah Mahon, Graduate Intern on this oral history project and Masters’ student in Public History at Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). 

Today, I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Doris Merritt at her home in Indianapolis. 

This interview is sponsored and funded by the Administration of IUPUI and it is co-sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence. 

I will place a more complete biography of Dr. Merritt with the transcript of this interview, but for now, I will briefly offer the following biographical summary: 

Dr. Doris Merritt earned her Bachelors in English Literature from Hunter College of the University of the City of New York in 1944. In 1944, during World War II, Dr. Merritt joined the Women’s Auxiliary of the Navy, the W.A.V.E.S., and served as Lieutenant until 1946. After the War, in 1946, Dr. Merritt began pursuing classes to fill premedical requirements at George Washington University. In 1948, she was admitted to George Washington University School of Medicine, and earned her M.D. from there in 1952. She was one of three women in a class of eighty. Dr. Merritt had a fellowship at Duke and then, in 1961, went with her husband to the National Institutes of Health where she served a three-year stint as the Executive Secretary of the Cardiovascular and General Medicine Study Sections. In 1961, Dr. Merritt and her husband accepted positions at Indiana University. She became Director of Medical Research Grants and Contracts and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. At the IU School of Medicine, Dr. Merritt advanced through the ranks, becoming Associate Professor in 1968 and Full Professor in 1973. Dr. Merritt held several appointments at IU and IUPUI including, but not limited to, Assistant Dean of Research, School of Medicine… 

Merritt: Do you want me to give you corrections as we go? 

Mahon: Yeah. Here, let me pause this. 

Okay. Dr. Merritt held several appointments at IU and IUPUI including, but not limited to, Assistant Dean of Research, School of Medicine, from 1962 to 1978; Associate Dean, School of Medicine, from 1988 to 1995; Interim Dean of the School of Engineering and Technology, 1995 to 1997; and Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, from 1995 to 1997. In 1978, Dr. Merritt and her husband, Don, returned to the National Institutes of Health, she as Special Assistant to the NIH Director for Training, and he as a Medical Officer at the National Library of Medicine. She returned to IUPUI in 1988. You can go ahead. 

Merritt: Okay. I became Acting Director of the National Center for Nursing Research. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: And that’s pretty important. 

Mahon: Alright. (pause) Dr. Merritt has to her credit numerous scientific publications beginning in 1956 with McGovern and Merritt – you might have to help me with this word… 

Merritt: Sarcoidosis. 

Mahon: Yes, sarcoidosis? 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: Sarcoidosis in Childhood, Advances in Pediatrics, Vol. III, and running through Infant Nutrition: Benchmark Papers in Human Physiology in 1976. She is also the author of a significant number of professional publications, including Discrimination and the Woman Executive in Business Horizon, in 1969. 

Dr. Merritt has been inducted into the American Academy of Pediatrics (1958) and is the First Honorary Physician-Member of Sigma Theta Tau, the international nursing honor society. She was the first woman to chair an advisory board at the National Library of Medicine and received Honorary Doctors of Science from both Purdue and Indiana Universities. 

Merritt: . . .It was the Board of Regents. 

Mahon: . . .That was the specific position, was the Board of Regents from 1978 to 1980. 

Merritt: . . .Because it was a presidential appointment. 

Mahon: Okay. In addition to these, two separate awards have been created in Dr. Merritt’s honor, the first being the Doris H. Merritt Award to Honor Service to Nursing by a Non-Nurse, offered annually by the Indiana University School of Nursing, and the Doris H. Merritt Leadership Award offered annually from the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology. Dr. Merritt retired from the Indiana University School of Medicine and IUPUI in 1998… 

Merritt: Actually, there was a third one. Women’s Health, do you have that down there? 

Mahon: A third award? 

Merritt: Yeah, because it’s an annual lecture in Women’s Health. 

Mahon: Yes. 

Merritt: Okay. 

Mahon: I do remember that. And we will have, you know, we’ll be talking more in depth about of these things throughout the interview. 

Dr. Merritt retired from the Indiana University School of Medicine and IUPUI in 1998, becoming Professor Emerita. 

Before we begin the interview, I am going to ask your permission to do the same things you just agreed to in writing, just in case the paperwork ever got lost. , I’m asking your permission to do the following: 

Record this interview; prepare a verbatim transcript of the interview; deposit the interview and the verbatim transcript with the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and with the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence; and finally, Directors of the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and the Tobias Center may make the interview and verbatim transcript available to their patrons, which may include posting all or part the audio recording and transcription to their respective websites. 

Can I have your permission to do these things? 

Merritt: You do. 

Mahon: Okay. So, let’s get started. I’m going to start off just asking you a little bit about your early life, just to have some demographics on the record. When and where were you born? 

Merritt: I was born in New York City in Manhattan. 

Mahon: And who were your parents? 

Merritt: My parents were Lillian Kunslich (SPELLING???) Honig and Aaron Honig. 

Mahon: Where were they, where were they from? What’s that last name? 

Merritt: Kunslich (SPELLING???) is Austrian and Honig is – uh, it’s German; I don’t know what part of Germany. 

Mahon: Oh, okay. Okay. 

Merritt: Austrian/Hungarian. 

Mahon: Okay. Did you have any brothers or sisters? 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: No. What did your father do for a living? 

Merritt: He was an attorney. He called himself a Counsellor at Law. 

Mahon: A Counsellor at Law, I like that. 

Merritt: He would say that the sign of a good attorney was the number of cases he kept out of court. 

Mahon: Oh. How about your mother? 

Merritt: My mother was extraordinary. She pretended she couldn’t do a thing on her own, but when both of my grandparents – maternal and paternal grandmothers – 

had to come to live with us, my mother insisted that she get out of the house or lose her mind. She persuaded a good friend of my father’s, or a client, who owned a series of women’s lingerie shops to give her a part-time job. She ended up being the manager of the Fifth Avenue store. 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: But to hear her tell it, she didn’t do a thing (INAUDIBLE), it was just because he was so nice in helping her. 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: In her day, it was considered unladylike to be a good manager. 

Mahon: As you look back on your youth, what did you learn from your parents that shaped the adult that you became later? 

Merritt: I learned from my father that the hallmark of what you do is to do what you think is right. I learned from my mother, I never wanted to get married. And I learned from my dearest, dearest aunt – my mother’s younger sister – how to read long before I went to kindergarten. 

Mahon: That was my next question – other than your parents, any other individuals that had an impact on your life – so, your aunt would be one of them? 

Merritt: Absolutely; definitely. The only other individual who had a real impact on my life was a high school teacher. Is she in there? 

Mahon: She is in here, yep. 

Merritt: Alrighty, then we don’t need to go into her… 

Mahon: We’ll get down to her. 

Merritt: Midge Balf was wonderful. 

Mahon: Yes. So, that brings me to – where did you attend high school? 

Merritt: Hunter College High School. 

Mahon: And you graduated from college in 1940. What did you hope that the future would hold for you when you graduated? 

Merritt: Just to be independent. 

Mahon: And now, on to Ms. Balf. In your unpublished autobiography that you were kind enough to allow me to read, you mentioned that while in high school, a young student English teacher named Midge Balf was, and I quote, “The best thing to ever happen to me in all of my education.” Why was Ms. Balf such an important force in your young life? 

Merritt: Well, she was young and dynamic, and she gave me a C on my first composition, and it was the only time in my life I ever questioned a teacher. I went up in absolute fury and asked her how I got a C because that was a good composition, that was an A composition. And she said to me, “For anybody else it would be; for you, it’s a C.” And I thought, “Boy, I’m going to show her.” 

Mahon: You just took it as a challenge then? 

Merritt: It sure was. She used to take the subway – Hunter College was on the east side of Central Park and the subway she took home was on the west side of Central Park. I lived on the west side of Central Park, and I used to wait for her every day after school, and we would walk home across the park together. She taught me about art, she taught me about reading, taught me a great deal. 

Mahon: What, if anything, did she teach you about – or what affect did she have on the student that you later became then? 

Merritt: You know, I really can’t answer that because I don’t know. I just know that she broadened my horizons enormously and she sent me a reading list, that I still have actually, that had everything she thought from poetry through novels to plays to philosophy that a young woman should read. And going through and reading it, I checked it off and read it. Except for A Pilgrim’s Progress, with the chapter on The Slough of Despond, I think she just opened the world a little bit to me in a way that – my mother’s notion of a good life for a woman was to marry a rich man who would take care of her. 

Mahon: Okay, I see. So, you also mentioned several times in your biography and in the pre-interview, that you were a, “lazy student,” is what you called yourself, and that you really only cared about graduating, getting a job, and being independent. 

Merritt: Absolutely. 

Mahon: How did your parents feel about you wanting to live independently as a young single woman in the 1940s? 

Merritt: They were absolutely infuriated, would not permit it, and since I wasn’t twenty-one, I joined the Navy, and that was alright because it was Officers Training School. 

Mahon: Right. So, did you ever feel pressured to adhere to the strict stereotypes placed on women at the time? 

Merritt: No, if anything, I rebelled against it. 

Mahon: Okay. You also mentioned the following in your autobiography about your middle school years, and I quote, “I never had the slightest inclination to play the lead. I liked the variety of doing everything else. So, I guess that characteristic was present from a very early time.” What did you mean by that characteristic was present from an early time? 

Merritt: I think if you look at everything I have done, I very seldom ran anything. What I liked to do was to get other people started on doing what they wanted to do and support them in getting what they wanted. I was just trying to think; I like people knowing that I had the ear of the person who made the decisions… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … without actually having to be responsible for the decisions. 

Mahon: Okay. So… 

Merritt: That’s a good cop-out, isn’t it? 

Mahon: Yes, yeah it is. You got the ball rolling, but you weren’t necessarily… 

Merritt: Didn’t have to run – on occasion I did, but. 

Mahon: Yeah. It’s apparent now that you were throughout your life, especially your professional life, a leader in multiple positions that you held. Did you every see yourself as a leader, or did you just see yourself as doing what you had to do? 

Merritt: I saw myself as doing what had to be done. As a matter of fact, it was Angela McBride who first pointed out to me that this is one of the definitions of leadership. 

Mahon: Since we are on the topic of leadership and this interview is sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership, I am going to talk now about leadership specifically. I’m going to ask some pointed questions about that. I’m definitely not going to try to list all of your leadership positions because I don’t think I could ever do you justice if I did that, but like we did at the beginning in the biography, we listed a few positions and I’m going to list a few more here. Once again, when I’m finished, if you want to add any in there that you would like specifically to talk about, we can do that. You said that you were a Junior-Grade Lieutenant… 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: … in the Navy, a pediatrician, a professor of pediatrics, you were Director of Research Grants at the National Institutes of Health, you were an Assistant Dean of Research in the School of Medicine, Associate Dean in the School of Medicine, Interim Dean of the School of Engineering and Technology, and Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, just to name a few. 

Merritt: I don’t think I was ever Director of Research Grants at the NIH. 

Mahon: No? 

Merritt: I was responsible for training at NIH and I was Director of the first Center for National Research in Nursing. 

Mahon: At IU? 

Merritt: NIH. 

Mahon: Oh, okay. 

Merritt: At NIH. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: I’m back at NIH now, but the director there was mostly in training and in the Center for National Research – National Center for Nursing Research. 

Mahon: So many positions. So, thinking back before you had all of that professional experience, what was your view of leadership as a young woman? 

Merritt: I never thought about it. 

Mahon: You never did? 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: So, how then did that evolve as you moved through these positions? Did you develop a stronger sense of what you thought a leader was? 

Merritt: No, again, I never really thought about leadership. As I went through the positions, I always did the best I could in the position I was to make it a good position; and because I did well, people asked me to do other things. 

Mahon: And you just saw that as… 

Merritt: I just saw that as what you did. 

Mahon: Right. Now that you had all this experience and you’re looking back, what would your view of leadership be? 

Merritt: Somebody who encourages other people to get things done. But always with an eye to appointing the person that was going to go in the direction you thought was the right direction to go in. That’s a convoluted statement. (LAUGHING) 

Mahon: You did – it’s clear, it was clear to me at least after reading your biography that you exerted leadership at a time and under circumstances when women were not really in leadership positions. 

Merritt: No, it was the time of burning the bra, which I thought was nonsense. If I burned my bra, I would have had no bosom at all, and it was very well accepted. (LAUGHING) Maybe it was because I had the M.D. that people respected me, but I remember on my second visit to NIH, as we were going out the door, the young man held it open for me and I said, “Thank you,” and he said “(gasp) I am so relieved; I thought you would be upset because I opened the door for you.” It was that kind of stuff that was going on, which never made sense to me at all. 

Mahon: Right. So, you felt that you were able to do the things that you were able to do and be as successful as you were because you held an M.D. and you were… 

Merritt: I think that helped, and being a woman helped me too. There were very few of us, and it surprised people when you turned out to be capable. 

Mahon: After holding these various positions, do you think that women exercise leadership in a way similar to or different than men? 

Merritt: I think it’s somewhat different for men. Women are more likely to ensure cooperation rather than give orders, and when they do give orders, they are not as successful. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: I think, for example, the dean that followed Angela McBride was from an Army background or a military background. She was less successful a dean because her tendency was to think of leadership as giving orders rather than luring people and motivating them to doing what they should do. And I think women generally do that better, unless sometimes, of course, you have to tell people what to do; it has to be what they want to do. You can usually motivate people by knowing what they want to do and making it possible for them to do it. 

Mahon: Right. Okay. Well, now I’m going to switch back to your high school years, continue chronologically as we were, now that we’re – I mean, we’ll talk about leadership more throughout the interview, but I just wanted a section where we talked about a few questions specifically. You were in high school when the U.S. got involved in the Second World War. What was it like to be a teenager during the Second World War? Or, do you remember anything specifically or did it just seem…? 

Merritt: It was just part of life. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: No, I don’t remember anything specifically. 

Mahon: So, you don’t think… 

Merritt: I remember rationing… 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: … and I remember learning that when you used a tin can, you had to crush it before you threw it away. I remember making tin foil balls, chewing gum wrappers, for example, with the tin foil – you scrunched them together and made balls. The balls of aluminum were useful… 

Mahon: Oh. 

Merritt: … but I remember margarine, when there was no butter. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: And margarine in those days because of the Wisconsin farm lobby could not be colored. So, margarine was sold in a deadly white, horrible looking lardish plastic bag with a capsule in it and you had to break the capsule and then mush it around in the bag to color the margarine. 

Mahon: Oh. 

Merritt: And we used to throw this thing back and forth in order to get it mixed properly. 

Mahon: You remember, what you remember most is mainly about the food… 

Merritt: Food. 

Mahon: … the changes in the food. 

Merritt: Yeah, and there were a lot of uniforms, of course. And then in college, which was also part of the war, then we did things at the United Service Organizations and that sort of thing. 

Mahon: You didn’t hear or know necessarily about anything that was going on in Europe? 

Merritt: I had surprisingly little interest in it. 

Mahon: Yeah. Okay. 

Merritt: I do remember D-Day, everybody… 

Mahon: Yeah, of course. 

Merritt: … and Pearl Harbor… 

Mahon: But just day-to-day you don’t remember… 

Merritt: …Pearl Harbor, but no, just day-to-day, I have no real memories of the war. 

Mahon: Okay. So, when you did graduate from high school, where did you think you were headed? 

Merritt: Right to college because Hunter High School was the training ground for Hunter College. It was an all-girls school then and if you graduated from Hunter High, you were automatically admitted to the college. 

Mahon: So, you did graduate from… 

Merritt: Hunter High School. 

Mahon: … from Hunter High School and then you graduated from Hunter College with a Bachelors in English Literature, and that was in 1942. So, shortly after… 

Merritt: 1944? I graduated from college in 1944? 

Mahon: I pulled it off your resume, or your, yeah, your CV, so I think was 1940… 

Merritt: Good Lord. 

Mahon: … your college. 

Merritt: Yeah, 1944. Yeah. 

Mahon: From college in 1944? 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: Okay. So, you graduated, did you graduate from high school in 1942? Was that high school? 

Merritt: High school was 1940. 

Mahon: Because you, you were not in college as long… 

Merritt: No, three and a half years in college. 

Mahon: … because you had some… 

Merritt: I wanted to get out. I just – part of being lazy was taking literature classes which did not require labs. 

Mahon: Right. Shortly after you graduated from Hunter College in 1944, you noted that you were eligible, as a top student in your class, to be tested to be admitted to the W.A.V.E.S. and you decided to do that. 

Merritt: That was while I was a senior, I was recruited into the W.A.V.E.S. 

Mahon: Okay, you were recruited into the W.A.V.E.S. 

Merritt: Recruited, right. 

Mahon: And, just for the benefit of anyone listening to this interview that might not know what W.A.V.E.S. stands for, W.A.V.E.S. stands for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. Why did you choose this path instead of finding a secretary/editor position that you originally intended for after college? 

Merritt: I actually had a secretary/editor position, but then the only reason I wanted it was to live alone and I couldn’t do that, so I chose the Navy rather than staying at home. 

Mahon: Because you did not want to stay home with your parents. 

Merritt: I did not want to stay home with my parents. 

Mahon: That was actually my next question. You also mentioned in your biography that because you handled classified information in the Navy, you and other women in the W.A.V.E.S. had to be officers. 

Merritt: Exactly. 

Mahon: But you also said that you were nothing more than glorified secretaries. 

Merritt: Precisely. 

Mahon: So, what did you mean by that? 

Merritt: We did a lot of typing. We were supposed to code material. I was such a terrible typist that they almost didn’t need me to use a coding machine, and they finally took me off it and they put me on a message delivery desk. And, of course, I read the messages and I read the distribution, and it didn’t take long to find out what messages went to what offices and I would, you know, when I thought they were to go an office they weren’t listed as going to, and I would take them up to the commander of the watch and he finally decided that maybe I ought to do the routing rather than the delivery because I had a grasp of where the messages were to go. 

Mahon: Did you feel that what you were doing was important then or did you…? 

Merritt: I felt it was important, and I also felt it was very distressing because that brought the war home to me in a way nothing else did. We were still at war with Japan and on the night watches we would get these lists and lists and lists of wounded and dead that had to be sent to their parents or relatives and was very depressing. 

Mahon: Yeah, that would be, that would be really hard. Also, this was one of my favorite sections to read in your biography, so you also mentioned that on at least two separate occasions, you were handed a gun to deliver a message that you had no idea how to use. (LAUGHING) How did it make you feel that you were forced to carry a gun that you were never taught how to use? 

Merritt: I felt it was like the old slogan in New York City, “Don’t fight City Hall.” It’s just the rule; follow the rule, and it was nonsense. You couldn’t change it. The only way to change rules was not from beating it on the outside in, but getting on the inside and changing them, and that really taught me a lesson. 

Mahon: Towards the end of the war, you knew that you would soon be out of a job and that you had to decide what you were going to do next. In your biography, you said quote “I wanted something that would be interesting and would support me comfortable, without requiring dependence on a man.” Why was economic independence so important to you? 

Merritt: I wouldn’t have to get married and be dependent on a man. 

Mahon: Right. This was a time when most women were, as you’ve said, accustomed to getting married and having kids, staying home. 

Merritt: (INAUDIBLE) 

Mahon: Right, and you wanted no part of that life. 

Merritt: No. Now, don’t misunderstand me. See, my mother and father were the happiest married couple… 

Mahon: Of course. 

Merritt: … I have ever known and, but that was because she doted on him and took care of him. She did his nails. It was – that was just not for me. 

Mahon: You didn’t, yeah. 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: I understand. 

Merritt: And that was my view of marriage… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … was taking care of a man. 

Mahon: Well, that’s what you saw your whole life. 

Merritt: That’s what I saw. 

Mahon: So, do you feel that you were ever judged for wanting a career and economic independence? 

Merritt: Oh, my gosh, yes. 

Mahon: Before of marriage? 

Merritt: Oh, yes. 

Mahon: Yeah. By just…? 

Merritt: My mother and their friends; not my aunt, not my father, but it was sort of – we didn’t know that gay-lesbian rights in those days and I think that some people may have thought that was part of it, but it had nothing to do with me. 

Mahon: You also noted in your biography that you decided on medical school as your next step because your dad was a lawyer and advised you against law because he said there weren’t many opportunities for women. 

Merritt: Correct. 

Mahon: And your maternal grandfather had been a doctor. 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: Other than these factors, what else made you so sure that you wanted to pursue a degree to become a doctor rather than just working with the degree that you had? 

Merritt: I think that summed it up. 

Mahon: Yeah? The… 

Merritt: Yeah. 

Mahon: … your family. 

Merritt: I had no particular feeling of being good to mankind… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … that was sort of things that people say in interviews… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … when you ask them why they want to be a doctor. I just thought it would be very interesting and something that would keep me happy. 

Mahon: Okay. So, because you were an English literature major in undergrad, you did have to take some prereqs in order to get into a medical… 

Merritt: I essentially had to take a second baccalaureate. 

Mahon: Right. So, you said in your biography that you made an appointment with the chairman of the admissions committee at George Washington University School of Medicine. He told you that there were only two or three women that were admitted a year and that you needed to take prerequisites and then come back. You also said in there that you didn’t think that he thought you would come back. 

Merritt: No, he didn’t. I think he thought he was getting rid of me for good. 

Mahon: Right. So, after two years of working as a switchboard operator and a student assistant in zoology, which I thought was very interesting, and qualitative chemistry, while also taking classes, you were finally admitted into medical school. You began at George Washington University School of Medicine in 1946. 

Merritt: Right. 

Mahon: So, after learning how much work it was going to take for you to even have a chance of admission, why were you so persistent about becoming a doctor? 

Merritt: Stubborn. 

Mahon: Just pure stubborn. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: Pure stubborn, yes, and what else I tried to do. 

Mahon: Right. You were one of three women admitted to your program and you noted in your biography, “I was wise enough to know how to deflect the teasing with good nature. What I really couldn’t abide was having to wait for the wolf whistles and 

clapping to quiet down every time I was called on in class.” Did you ever feel the dynamic of medical school and the different things you were forced to endure, like the teasing, set you or other women up to fail in the program? 

Merritt: Well, they certainly gave me a dislike for speaking in public ever since, and I never lost It, when in college and high school, I used to be in plays and all sorts of things. 

Mahon: But you were in an all-women’s school, so… 

Merritt: All-women's school, yeah. 

Mahon: You never had that teasing until medical school. 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: What did you do to survive this kind of male-dominated dynamic of medical school? 

Merritt: Kept my mouth shut for the most part. 

Mahon: And what about the other women in your class? Because I know that there were three total, but then there were only two. 

Merritt: The reason there were only two at the end is that one young lady actually came from Indiana and she applied for transfer because the difference in tuition was huge between a state school and a private school. She transferred out in the second year. The third young woman was really much too young for medical school and she was crushed by the boys teasing her. I remember one day she came to me in actually tears. I don't know if I put this in the biography… 

Mahon: No, I don't remember that. 

Merritt: She came to me in actually tears and said, “We have to go see the dean; we have to go this minute.” And I said, “Gloria, why?” She said, “Well, they can't do this to us.” I said, “Who can't do what to us?” She said, “Well, the boys can't do this to us.” It turned out at the end of your first year – the end of your second year, you took a class called Physical Diagnosis; and because the class was some eighty-eight people, they split us into two and they were putting one girl in each group. And she said that they boys told her that when It came to breast and vaginal examinations, they were going to work on her because she was the only woman. 

Mahon: Oh, my. 

Merritt: And she was actually naïve enough to believe that. 

Mahon: To believe that were being serious. 

Merritt: So, she really had a hard time. 

Mahon: Did she finish? 

Merritt: Oh, yeah. 

Mahon: She did. 

Merritt: She became a pathologist. . . 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merrit: . . .I think she wanted nothing to do with living people at all after that. 

Mahon: I can't say I blame her after that. You found out very quickly after working in a male geriatric ward for one of your clinical rotations that that was not the type of medicine that you wanted to practice. Luckily, one of your professors, by the name of McGovern, could you tell me his full name now? 

Merritt: John P. 

Mahon: John P. McGovern, recommended you to Dean Davison at Duke University for a pediatric internship and you ended up receiving it. What attracted you to pediatrics? 

Merritt: Well, they weren't adults. 

Mahon: They weren't adult males. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: Or females, for that matter. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: It was a thing I could relate to most, I guess. I didn’t really like children. I didn’t dislike them. It was just the only thing open at that time. Really, women could do very little at that time, except dermatology. Dermatology, in those days, was called dermatology and syphilogy because syphilis manifested itself so soften in skin diseases and so that was not – They didn’t have many women anesthetists then as they do now; anesthesiologists, I should say. 

Mahon: . . .Anesthesiologists. 

Merritt: So, pediatrics seemed the right way to go. Having gone that far… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … I had to specialize in something. 

Mahon: Okay. So, how did your pediatric internship affect the path that you later chose as a doctor do you think? 

Merritt: I enjoyed it. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: I had complete reverence for – respect for the man who was our senior mentor, Dr. Harris, and he was very hard on his interns. He expected perfection and he never really got it, but he was a challenge to please. And, in those days at Duke, when a patient was admitted to the hospital, their private doctor became a consultant and the patient was a patient of the staff in the hospital. The intern and resident had control of the patient, so to speak, and the senior mentor in the hospital was the one who supervised. I would always opt for Dr. Harris because I learned so much from him even though he was terribly strict, and my other fellow interns and residents were delighted with it because he just frightened them. 

Mahon: Really, and he was the supervisor? 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: He then became chairman of the department. 

Mahon: Okay. Also during this part of your life, you mentioned that you met the man that would be your husband. 

Merritt: Met him in medical school. 

Mahon: Met him in medical school, and that you married in January of 1953. I was wondering if you could tell me… 

Merritt: May of 1953. 

Mahon: May of 1953? 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: I was wondering if you could just tell me a little bit about him. 

Merritt: He was very bright. He’s the best diagnostician I ever met. It’s kind of a shame he went into research and genetics, but he became interested in genetics when we were at the National Institutes of Health. He was determined to start his own department and we were fortunate enough to be recruited into Indiana University School of Medicine. 

Mahon: Since we talked a lot about how you just never thought that you would get married, what made you choose to marry? 

Merritt: I fell in love. 

Mahon: Simple as that. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: He was just straightforward. My mother was delighted, everybody was delighted. It was the thing to do. 

Mahon: And this was before you graduated medical school? So, you were still… 

Merritt: I was still… 

Mahon: … in medical school? 

Merritt: … single in medical school. I didn’t get engaged until my internship year. 

Mahon: Okay. After your internship at Duke, you became a Pediatrics Fellow with the George Washington University School of Medicine from 1953 to 1954. 

Merritt: Right. 

Mahon: You were able to coauthor your first publication with your professor, Dr. McGovern, on sar – you’re going to have to help me again… 

Merritt: Sarcoidosis. 

Mahon: … sarcoidosis in children. Was this a big deal for you, to be able to publish, or did you just see it as part of the many tasks you did for Dr. McGovern? 

Merritt: It was actually a big deal and it wasn’t the first time. I think the first publication was… 

Mahon: This is the first one that appears on your CV for me. 

Merritt: Then that was the first one. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: I didn’t realize until later, I had done all the work on it. I had a shoebox full of index cards of references from around the world. It was a good job. It was a thorough one. I had enough German and French that I could get through that literature pretty much. I had problems with – fortunately there wasn’t much at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Library that I couldn’t handle, and I always felt in the back of my mind a little bit of – hmmm, what is the word – I was a little bit annoyed that he put his name first on that work because I had done it all… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … and he hadn’t done much except find the publisher. 

Mahon: That’s understandable. 

Merritt: . . .Later on, when I did a chapter for Dean Davison at Duke. . . 

Mahon: . . .Yes, I remember this. 

Merritt: . . .And I put his name first, he sent it back with his name second. He said, “You did the work; why should I get the credit?” That was the most valuable lesson I have learned, I think, in terms of dealing with people; and maybe it’s part of leadership too, you give credit where credit is due. You don’t try and take it yourself. 

Mahon: And that was with Dean Davison? 

Merritt: That was Dean Davison who is the first Dean of Duke Medical School. Duke was fairly young then. 

Mahon: Duke Medical School was young then? 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: You also ended up working with Dr. McGovern in his private practice and you noted in your biography on the experience, and I quote, “I knew right then that I could never go into private practice.” 

Merritt: Right. 

Mahon: Can you explain exactly why this experience turned you off to private practice? 

Merritt: It was dull. 

Mahon: Dull? 

Merritt: In general, children aren’t much of a challenge when it comes to medical diagnosis and, in those days, they still got German measles and whooping cough and that sort of thing. I also found, and this was just me and I’m not proud of it, I had absolutely no patience with mothers who I didn’t think showed any common sense. I mean, you get a call in the middle of the night with a mother who’s saying, “My child can’t breathe,” and the obvious question is through the mouth or through the nose. I mean, the child could breathe. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: One mother, I still don’t know what happened to her, she couldn’t find the thermometer after taking the child’s temperature. 

Mahon: Oh, my. 

Merritt: And, of course, I went to see if by any chance she had forced it all the way up and she hadn’t. I don’t know what happened to that thermometer. (LAUGHING) It was that sort of thing, or babies with colic, which is sad anyway; all you can do is walk them and pat them, but they would call when they were exact - absolutely stressed out, and I understand this. It was not something I cared to deal with. We made house calls then. 

Mahon: Yes, I remember reading about that as well. 

Merritt: It cost $5.00 for a house call; $2.00 for an office visit. 

Mahon: Wow. It’s quite different now. 

Merritt: To say the least. Nobody makes house calls. 

Mahon: No. In 1955, you finally started your residency at Duke University Hospital in pediatrics. During your residency, you were appointed to the faculty as the pediatric instructor to run the pediatric cardiac clinic and do some laboratory 

research, which is also another one of my favorite parts. You noted, in your biography, that Duke had just started initiating open heart surgery in 1956. I’m now going to quote a piece of your biography where you made what was seen then as a breakthrough discovery on stopping the heart during open heart surgery. I quote “The research was mostly trial and error, but I eventually came up with a cocktail that worked quickly to stop the heart and restore it to a normal beat as soon as it was perfused with normal saline. It wasn’t long before I got tired of killing cats and was inspired to stop the heart and store the whole apparatus, stopped isolated heart and all, in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning, the chilled heart started up immediately when perfused with room temperature saline. I had to confess why our requisitions for cats had dropped off. Much to my amazement, Jerry interpreted my laziness as serendipity and gave me high marks for scientific ingenuity instead of a slap on the wrist. We described the technique in a brief article and submitted it for publication in the Proceedings of the Society for Science and Biology and they refused it with comments from the reviewers saying it was a hoax. They did finally print it after we sent them copies of the original data.” I don't think that I could have summed it up in my own words, which is why I had to read it. (LAUGHING) Can you talk a little bit about the implications of the discovery that you made and what they have today on the medical world? 

Merritt: Oh, I think today they’re just old hat, but at the time they were trying all sorts of ways to stop the heart so that they could work on it. It was just part of the slow acquisition of knowledge that is now just history. 

Mahon: And I remember you talking about at the time you did not like clinical research or clinical trials because you didn't like the animal aspect of having to do that over and over again. 

Merritt: No, I didn't like that. 

Mahon: So, that was also… 

Merritt: It was dull. 

Mahon: Yeah, not your thing. Also at this time, you got pregnant for your first child. Were you ever worried that you wouldn't finish your schooling once you had the baby? Or did you know that regardless, you were going to finish? 

Merritt: Oh, I knew I would finish. It never occurred to me that I would stop. 

Mahon: That you wouldn't. 

Merritt: My chief concern was how to take care of the baby after it was born. 

Mahon: Yes. My next question is did you worry about how you would balance your career as a new doctor and a new mother? 

Merritt: I should have, but I didn't. I just found somebody who could stay with the child during the day. By that time, of course, I was off night call, so it wasn't that much of a problem. 

Mahon: How did you end up handling this all, that is graduating medical school and having a baby just days apart? 

Merritt: Now, I had the baby while I was in my residency. It was in my last year of residency and my husband had just gotten a job at the National Institutes of Health, and I decided maybe it was time I stayed home and was a mother. I was still writing some articles for Dean Davison actually, and so I had something to do. I had my stepsister-in-law with us, she was young, to take care of the baby when we moved to Washington. When I finished the chapter in the book, and my sister-in-law went home, there I was with a baby. And, boy, I took that kid in that perambulator where you had little strollers at the time to every possible museum in Washington and parks and all sorts of things, and realized the women in the neighborhood were all lovely women, most of the actually with college degrees, but they were happy to stay home and be mothers. They did a lot of coffee drinking and I got to the point where I didn't even have time to read because they were always dropping in. I think the turning point came one day when Don came home for lunch and he heard the vacuum clearer going. I guess I wrote about that. 

Mahon: You did. 

Merritt: And he opened the door and there I was sitting reading with the vacuum cleaner going. 

Mahon: Yep. 

Merritt: And I said, “Well, that was the only way I could keep people out,” and we realized I had to get a job. 

Mahon: Is this when you realized you knew you would never fit in with the housewives? 

Merritt: . . .I could never sit home with the housewives. I could never be a stay-at-home mom. It just wasn't my character. Again, I'm not proud of it, it’s just what it was. 

Mahon: Yes, yes. You did hit on a few of the questions that I was going to ask you anyway. As you were saying, after this experience, you noted in your biography that it was clear to both you and Don that you needed to go back to work and you decided to apply to the National Heart Institute's intramural program for a research position. You were immediately accepted for the following July, and you also noted in your biography, "Since neither my husband, baby, or dog were going to survive the status quo, I applied to Ernest Allen, Director of the fledgling Division of Research Grants, which was hard put to find scientific administrators, especially physicians, to run study sections.” Can you explain what you meant by your husband, baby and dog would not be able to survive the status quo? (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: I wasn't a very happy camper and I got quite short-tempered, and it was clear I was bored. 

Mahon: You then became the Executive Secretary of the Cardiovascular Study Section and the General Medicine Study Section in Division of Research Grants at the National Institutes of Health. You noted in your biography that upon receiving 

this position, you were the misfit among the neighbor ladies which had college degrees and were good stay-at-home wives and mothers. Why did you consider yourself a misfit among these women, which you kind of already hit on, but…? 

Merritt: Well, I just didn't fit in. 

Mahon: You were the working mom. 

Merritt: I was the working mom and happy to do it. I didn't have to do it. 

Mahon: . . .Right, right. Did you prefer being the misfit as opposed to their version of normality? 

Merritt: I never cared what other people think… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … thought. Even as a child, I just, it didn't, other people's opinions sort of mattered, but not enough to change what I did. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: But when I say sort of mattered, I would prefer they'd like me than that they dislike me, but that was sort of their problem, not mine. 

Mahon: You were going to do what you felt was best. I see. It’s clear in your biography that you were more than willing to do what needed to be done to get the job done, even if it meant coming in on the weekend to clean your own office. Can you explain briefly what your responsibilities were as Executive Secretary of the Cardiovascular and General Medicine Study Sections? 

Merritt: You were responsible for receiving applications, reviewing them, assigning them to members of the Study Section, which was the review group that would rate them in priority fashion for their contributions or presumable future contributions to medicine. You got the applications, you assigned them, you sent them out. You had a chairman who ran the Study Section meetings which were three times a year, but you took notes during the meetings and then you were responsible for a summary sheet – they called them pink sheets – of what the discussion was of the project and recording the priority number and the reasons for giving it that priority. You were not supposed to communicate with the investigators themselves. You were also responsible for setting up what they called site visits – visits of the reviewers to laboratories where they felt they had to be onsite in order to come to a decision – and making the arrangements for the travel for yourself. They made their own travel, but you made the hotel reservations, the food, activities, and so forth in the actual visit. 

Mahon: Right. Were there, I know that there were because I don’t feel like there’s a job that doesn’t have challenges, but were there any challenges that you remember facing in this position? 

Merritt: The only real challenge in the position was fun. And I was overwhelmed by the fact that the chairman of my first Study Section was a Nobel Laureate. And I discovered later, he was quite upset when he learned that I was replacing the current Executive Secretary, who was a much older woman, and he felt that this neophyte coming in could not manage the section. Well, it turned out that I was far more organized than she was, let’s put it that way. And I ran it in a much more efficient fashion so much so that at the end of the first year, he wrote to the Director of the National Institutes of Health to apologize for his first letter saying that he didn’t think he was putting the right person in the job because I had done it so well. I didn’t find that out until much later… 

Mahon: Really? 

Merritt: … that he had done that. 

Mahon: So, was this… 

Merritt: But the challenge, the challenge was trying to let the reviewers work at the job as fun and not as much work as they had before, to make things as easy as possible for them so that they could concentrate on the review of their applications and the discussion and not the mechanics that went into getting the material and the information that they needed. 

Mahon: So, was this Nobel Prize winner, was this André Cournand that you’re talking about? 

Merritt: . . .Yes, yes. 

Mahon: Okay. So, you mentioned him, who was a Nobel Prize winner, as was Homer Smith… 

Merritt: Now, Homer Smith never got the Nobel Prize, but he was well-known as the… 

Mahon: Dean of the Renal Physiologists. 

Merritt: Yeah. 

Mahon: Yeah. So, those were two people that were on… 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: … your first Study Section. So, how did people like them have an impact on that, on your professional career? 

Merritt: I think their impact on my professional career was that whenever I needed a character reference or a reference of any kind, they were very kind in giving it to me. And two other people on my Study Section in those days – the Executive Secretary also was responsible for appointing the members of the Study Section. It meant you had to know the people who were active in the field and who the foremost in it. It turned out totally unforeseen that two of the people I appointed 

to my Study Sections, or had appointed, turned out to be future Directors of the National Institutes of Health… 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: … which, when I went back to work for them, was why they took me back… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … I think… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … because they knew me. 

Mahon: Also around this time, you became pregnant with your second baby, but decided not to tell anyone and to avoid conversation about it at work for as long as you could. (LAUGHING) Why did you decide to do that? 

Merritt: Simply because I didn't want to be treated as though I was an invalid, which people tended to do with pregnant women in those days. 

Mahon: Yes. I couldn't believe this, honestly. You noted in your biography that you did not take maternity leave after having your baby, but returned back to work just one week after. . . 

Merritt: It was easy. I had good help at home. I had another child, I was five minutes away from the office, I could get in the car, breastfeed and go back, and I was big on breastfeeding. I always thought that was necessary… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … at least for the first six weeks… 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: … when you transfer your own immune system, so to speak, or its activity to the baby. 

Mahon: Right. Why did you feel it was important for you to not take maternity leave and just sort of continue to work. 

Merritt: It would have been the same old thing. I would have sat home doing nothing but… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … taking care of babies. 

Mahon: Right. Okay. So, by the summer of 1960, you noted in your biography that Don was ready to move back into a medical school environment and that you were 

not sorry about leaving NIH because you were quote “just not of the stuff which good bureaucrats are made.” 

Merritt: That's absolutely true. 

Mahon: What'd you mean by that statement? 

Merritt: Well, for example, I was always – maybe from my English background, English literature background – I was always very easy with my pen and I could write, and I liked to write. And I discovered, as an exec sec, that all the people out there for whom we were reviewing applications had absolutely no idea what an executive secretary did or what happened to their applications. So, I wrote an article entitled, “Executive Secretary: Research Catalyst” – and by the way, if you ask me what I think of myself in general, I would say catalyst was the right word. You potentiate a result without being part of it. I think that's what I did in a way. Anyway, I wrote this thing up and it said what an executive secretary did and I sent it to be published, which if you're in an academic environment, you write, you send it off, you publish it. And it was published and all hell broke loose among my fellow exec secs in the – apparently, in the federal government, you’re not supposed to publish unless you go through a review committee that says that what you’ve written is not damaging to the public, to the government, to the federalists, and everything else – and I was horrified. It had never occurred to me that I had to put something that was my own feeling that I was publishing for review to somebody else. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: Well, they couldn’t do anything about it, so I was chastised for that, as I was chastised for cleaning my office. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I was chastised for getting things done. I was the only executive secretary with two Study Sections, and I had asked for the second one because the intermittent work of one Study Section just didn’t keep me busy. 

Mahon: You got bored. 

Merritt. I got bored, yeah. 

Mahon: When you and Don decided to move, what did you think that you were going to do next, or what did you want to do next? 

Merritt: What I wanted to do next was to help people write research grants and get funded. I’d found my niche finally – was help people do what they want to do. 

Mahon: I read that when you left NIH, you later found out that four people had to be brought in to do the one position that you did. How did that make you feel when you found that out? 

Merritt: It made me laugh, but both the General Medical Study Section and the Cardiovascular Study Section were the two largest sections and they broke each of those in half, so that they needed an executive secretary for each. And then I also had been routing applications when they came into Study Sections and councils for review and funding and they needed somebody to do that. I don’t know how to explain it. I just could do it easily and I did it. 

Mahon: And you were surprised that… 

Merritt: Yeah, I was surprised that… 

Mahon: … four people were needed. 

Merritt: … it was ridiculous. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: But typical with the government, too, I might say. 

Mahon: Right. So… 

Merritt: I was not happy – unhappy to leave the Civil Service and I didn’t like going back (INAUDIBLE). 

Mahon: Yeah. So, this is when you moved to your first… 

Merritt: Right. 

Mahon: … stint at the IU School of Medicine. I’m going to just note something quickly for people that don’t know much about IUPUI and the formation of IUPUI. 

A note on IU in Indianapolis in 1961. IUPUI was not established as an institution with multiple schools in Indianapolis until 1969. When you joined the faculty in 1961, you were a faculty member under the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, but which was headquartered in Bloomington. The School of Medicine had a presence in Indianapolis because of the clinical opportunities for doctors within the city. Students completed their first two years of medical school in Bloomington and then came to Indianapolis for their clinical years. 

Merritt: That had just stopped, yes.. 

Mahon: You and Don were recruited by John Hickman, Chairman of the Indiana University School of Medicine, in 1961. He wanted Don for Infectious Diseases and you in the Dean’s Office to work with faculty on obtaining grants, NIH grants specifically because you knew best how they worked. However, you also noted in your biography that the Dean at the time, and I’m not sure what his first name is, Van, Vanoy…? 

Merritt: John Van Nuys. 

Mahon: Okay, John Van Nuys was reluctant about bringing a woman onto the staff which, at the time, had a total of approximately 150 people, less than five being women. Did this make you want to join the faculty at the IU School of Medicine more or did it kind of dissuade you? 

Merritt: It was immaterial. 

Mahon: You also noted that Dean – and I might have – Vanoys, is that how? 

Merritt: Van Nuys (pronounced “van niece”). 

Mahon: Nuys (pronounced “van niece”) – I’m going to write that down so I can... 

Merritt: I know it’s hard – N-U-Y-S is hard to pronounce. 

Mahon: Yes. Dean Van Nuys was also reluctant about hiring a husband and wife, albeit in different departments, because it would be too much money. (LAUGHING) At this point, you were fed up with the runaround and were willing to accept a position at Duke Medical School, which had offered you a comparable position. After telling John Hickman this, you had a verbal offer within… 

Merritt: That’s Hickam – H-I-C-K-A-M. 

Mahon: Okay. So, after telling John Hickam this, you had a verbal offer within ten minutes. 

Merritt: His office was one story up from the Dean’s Office, and apparently he went downstairs right away and said, “Do it now.” 

Mahon: Do you credit yourself with being able to maneuver your way around bureaucracy to get the ball moving? 

Merritt: Yeah. 

Mahon: Yeah, because that’s what I took away from that story. (LAUGHING) It seems like a common theme throughout your life, that you will go around to get what needs to be done. . . 

Merritt: Don’t take no for an answer. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: There’s always a way to get it done. 

Mahon: Is this a skill that you’ve retained throughout your life then? 

Merritt: Happily. 

Mahon: Your official position upon starting at the IU School of Medicine was Director of Medical Research Grants and Contracts, correct? 

Merritt: Correct. 

Mahon: And you officially began in January of 1961 and continued in this position for three years. 

Merritt: I became Assistant Dean after the first year. That’s where that went. 

Mahon: Okay. Assistant Dean after first year, okay. Can you explain what the state of the Medical School was upon your arrival? You. . . 

Merritt: It was actually practitioners teaching school and when John Hickam was hired, he was hired to bring research to the campus. There was research going on, but it was private research, I would say. Physicians would have their own personal contracts or agreements with pharmaceutical companies to carry out what we would now – the real researchers didn’t think of as research because it was kind of clinical application. With John and the people he hired, he started the, he started a national – wait a minute. He started a heart program, a heart center, cardiovascular center and a clinical research center. Both of those centers were started with John, and he had hired people who were capable of running them. When they were both reviewed as large program grants, I got a call from the NIH saying, “Doris, we cannot give two large grants to one department that is so new; which one do you want to accept, the heart program or the clinical research program?” And I said, “I can’t make that decision” and went to John. John said he wasn’t about to make that decision, that he wouldn’t have had his professors apply for two of them – well, he applied for the heart one himself – if he didn’t think we could manage them, and the NIH would have to make that decision. And I called back and said that we thought we could handle them both and we got them both. I think the clinical research center stayed in place for about eighteen years or more and the heart program almost as long. 

Mahon: Right. What other things did your position officially entail? 

Merritt: It officially entails writing, trying to find out how much research and who was doing it on the campus and because there was no central location for it. What people don’t normally recognize is that grants are not made to the individual, to the principal investigator, but are made to the university, and so the university is the official signature on applications that go out; or should be. The whole research system was just beginning then. We’re talking around fifty years ago or more. There was no real system and people were not organized. I finally managed to set up a system where all grant applications had to go through the Dean’s Office, namely me, with the route sheet. I could not sign the applications off; I had to send them to Bloomington for an official signature down there. The grants, in those days, were made to the IU Foundation, not to IU, and the IU Foundation collected the indirect costs off the grants and then gave the money, less the indirect costs, to the University to do the research. That system was in effect for a long time until – and I don’t recall the particulars leading up to it – but they became more and more accustomed at the University Accounting Office that when my name was signed on a route sheet and I let it go, they did not have to make corrections. Over a period of time, I asked that I be allowed to sign them directly for IU in Indianapolis instead of routing them through Bloomington. 

Mahon: Right, because everything had to go through Bloomington at the time. 

Merritt: . . .Everything had to go through Bloomington at the time, and at the time, we didn’t have fax machines; we had a courier. 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: The courier came at 12:00 and he left at 5:00. So, you had a constraint in time limits, and I have to tell you, research people are not every happy with deadlines and they were always late. It made for a difficult situation. It was much better when I was able to sign them out myself. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And I was allowed to sign Herman B. Wells. 

Mahon: Yeah, I remember this; this portion as well. 

Merritt: Then things -- again, dates and times are sort of mixed up in my mind -- but along the way, it turned out that they changed the application face page in some way and I read it said that the signator assures that there is no legal action pending against the grantee institution applying. And at that time, the IU Foundation was under legal attack for some of the things that had been done by its then Director. Well, Herman Wells’ signature was on it as President of the IU and I called down to his office and said, “Mr. Wells, I can’t sign your name to this because it would be lying.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And, at that time then, the grants system changed so that applications were made to the IU University instead of the Foundation and I was signing Mr. Wells’ signature as President of IU, and I had the authority to do that. 

Mahon: Right. Okay. Yeah, because I did have questions about – because you did mention several times that in your first eleven years at IU that there was a huge disconnect between Indianapolis and Bloomington, and there was so much maneuvering and bureaucracy that you had to go through just to do the simplest things like you were saying. 

Merritt: Exactly. But if you do your job well, and that was my job was to do it well, people came to depend on you and to realize that you were accurate and you could (INAUDIBLE – SHUFFLING PAPERS). 

Mahon: Right. What other things did you do outside of your official responsibilities? I do have some things listed here that I hope you’ll mention, but if not, then I’ll bring them up. 

Merritt: . . .You’ll have to remind me. Well, my official responsibility, of course, was to the School of Medicine, but if people in other schools had questions, I was delighted to help them and so I helped people in Nursing. I very much was involved in their getting their new building. 

Mahon: Yes. 

Merritt: And I helped people in Engineering. Actually, I helped people at Purdue Engineering when they were at 38th Street simply because they were there and they asked, and sure. Certainly, the School of Dentistry and the School of Nursing, and anybody who asked, I helped. It was just what I did. 

Mahon: I remember a specific situation where you were asked to help rewrite a grant proposal for the School of Business to NASA, and that was one of my favorites. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: It was one of my favorites too. That was just plain fun. I don’t – dates will tell you – but it can’t have been more than my second year at IU… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … and the courier brought at noon this tome that looked like a Masters’ research thesis, and it had a note on it from Mr. Wells, whom I adored, by the way. He was gender blind. He was just a wonderful man. And it said, “Doris, what do you think of this?” And you could hardly tell it was an application, but they were asking for $250,000 someplace in this. And I read through all of this and it was in response for a request from NASA to transfer NASA research results into the common economy because NASA was being reviled, so to speak, for spending all this money that wasn’t benefiting everybody; it was just benefiting the NASA program. They wanted a research result transfer center, and I read through all of this and it was treatise on what it took to transfer research results to the private economic community. It didn’t say how it was going to do it, it didn’t say who was going to do it, the budget said we can probably do this for $250,000. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And I looked at this and said, “Wow!” (LAUGHING) It didn’t even have an Executive Summary. . . 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merrit: . . .which everybody in government has which is a one-page summary so people don’t have to read the thing. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I had thought well, okay, and I said to my secretary, who I still see, “We’ve got to do something with this.” I put it into the NIH format which started out with the significance of (INAUDIBLE) of method of procedure, which I made up out of clear air, what would need to read this and follow the method and a budget for what I thought would show $250,000 that would get it done. Then the significance of it, and put it all together in a research format and took this thesis and put it in on as an Appendix, and wrote an Executive Summary in front of the Appendix and in two days, I had it back on Mr. Wells’ desk saying, “I don’t know anything about NASA, I don’t know what the research applications were for it, and I don’t know what they’re looking for, but if I were doing it for NIH, this is the way I would do it.” Then I had a call the next morning from Mr. Wells saying we 

would be going to Washington the next day with the Dean of the School of Business, Weimer, and the three of us took off to the Director’s Office at NASA. 

Mahon: Oh, my gosh. 

Merritt: His name was Webb and Mr. Wells said, “You suggested that we look at this again and here’s the result,” and he handed it to Webb and Webb looked at the summary page, he looked at the application, and he said, “Oh, I think we can do business with this,” and we got the $250,000… 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: … practically right there and to say I was golden, you know, their words for it. That was the beginning of the Aerospace Research Application Center. 

Mahon: Yeah. I just enjoyed all of these different stories of people asking you to do things that were just not related to your position. 

Merritt: . . .Absolutely not at all, and I had more fun. 

Mahon: And I just loved that I would think back to the fact that a pediatrician is doing all of this stuff, and I just loved that aspect of reading the biography, all the different, all the different areas of study and work that you operated in. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: I used to say laughingly that I had the good fortune to work with a number of men who felt if they just found me the right position, they could leave me in it. (LAUGHING) 

Mahon: I believe that. I’m going to list, because you did hold so many different positions at IU and IUPUI and the IU School of Medicine, so I’m going to list them here and then -- you know, when I’m finished, like I said before, feel free to jump in and tell me if something was not right or wrong order or whatever. From 1965 to 1967, you were appointed as Assistant Dean for Research; from 1965 to 1968, you were the Director of Sponsored Programs and Assistant to the Provost. 

Merritt: That’s, people forget that IU once had a Provost, and that was Ken Penrod. He was brought in to bring together the – I think it was Stahr who was President then who brought a little bit more organization into IU. They used to say jokingly that if you wanted to do business with Purdue, you got a memorandum which was numbered; if you wanted to do business with IU, you met in the men’s washroom. (LAUGHING) That was not too far from the truth frankly. Stahr decided that he would organize what later became IUPUI under one Provost and I became Special Assistant to the Provost and Dean for Research and Sponsored Programs of what was then the beginning of IUPUI. 

Mahon: Right. So, the next chronological position, you were Associate Dean for Research and Advanced Studies, and that was from 1967 to – I couldn’t see the date on the CV, so I wasn’t sure how long you were in that position. It was cut off on that area, but I know you began in 1967 in that position. And then from 1968 to 1971, you were Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs. 

Merritt: Now, I insisted on their calling it Dean for the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, and that was when IUPUI was formed… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … because a director of an office like this becomes sort of a, it’s a watch dog, it’s a compliance office and that was not my style. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I like to get things started and up and running, so I insisted that it be a Dean so it had an academic title. It was a good thing to do; it was the right thing to do. 

Mahon: Dean for the… 

Merritt: Research and Sponsored Programs. 

Mahon: … for the office of – okay. But also, during this time, you became Associate and then full Professor of Pediatrics. Let’s not forget you were still teaching during all of this. 

Merritt: I stopped teaching after about the first ten years, but they were happy to keep me on, as I had to have a department (INAUDIBLE). 

Mahon: Right. Did you ever feel like you were changing positions as soon as you got in one or did you enjoy the different experiences? 

Merritt: I enjoyed the different experiences, yes. 

Mahon: It is apparent that research is a common theme throughout your career. Why did you enjoy positions that focused on research specifically? What did you like about research? 

Merritt: There’s always something new and the people who did it were bright. Oh, they were smart people and they were fun to deal with, and they also were not always law abiding. I don’t mean that they did things illegally… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … but they didn’t follow the rules because they were looking for something new. So, it was fun to work with them. I don’t know if I ever said this in here, but, for example, when you put in a research application, it takes a long period of time, as much as six to eight months before you find out if it’s going to be approved and paid, and in your application, you write down the kind of research equipment that you need. Well, people are constantly coming out with new research equipment. By the time you get the grant, they want the new piece, not the old piece, and the accounting office that’s checking off on these purchase orders would call them and say, “You can’t have this because it’s not specified in the grant.” And they would call me, you know, frantic. “I don’t want this old piece of equipment.” And I learned and I got quite familiar and friendly with the auditing group and they learned to understand that if I said it was alright if they bought the 

new equipment, they could have the new equipment. I also got into that loop, but if they had been just ordinary people, they would have yes or no sir, three bags full, sorry, and they wouldn’t have gotten what they needed. 

Mahon: Right. So, you enjoyed the innovation of it all? 

Merritt: Correct. 

Mahon: Which one of the various positions, if any, was your favorite during your first stint at the IU School of Medicine or IUPUI? 

Merritt: That’s hard to say. I know what was the second, but not the first. I think I liked them all. 

Mahon: Yeah, you had a lot of different positions. 

Merritt: Yeah, they were all fun. 

Mahon: How did your leadership style change as you moved through these different positions, or do you think it did at all? 

Merritt: I think it just solidified. 

Mahon: Solidified in what way? 

Merritt: Trying to get other people to do… 

Mahon: What you wanted? 

Merritt: Well, what they wanted which was usually what I wanted or I wouldn’t have done it, I guess. 

Mahon: Right. It’s clear, after all of this so far in your life, that, like I said before, you were very good at maneuvering your way around bureaucracy and administrative blocks to achieve the things you saw as important and that you saw was important for the people that depended on you as well. 

Merritt: And part of the maneuvering was the willingness to take responsibility and it was like the auditing thing. They were afraid on their own account to “okay” something and they needed somebody who would be willing to take the flack if it was wrong. 

Mahon: . . .You were willing to go to bat for people. 

Merritt: Because part of me wanted to go to bat for people always. 

Mahon: I’m going to quote you once more. You said, “My first several years at IU were spent in setting up an office and learning how to slip through administrative crevices to get things done so our faculty could get money and do the research as easily as possible.” And there is, there was a specific situation that stuck out to me that I thought demonstrated this and that is with the Hill-Burton Act that was to fund new medical facilities in Indianapolis which would in turn serve 

medical students in their clinical rotations. (LAUGHING) This award was approved for about $7 million with IU matching $14 million to reach the $21 million to build. As no sign of official notice showed in contractual bids, time limits running short, you took action. So, can you tell me what you did to get the ball rolling? 

Merritt: Well, as I remember, I had to find out who at the, in the public health, the Indiana public health system was responsible for releasing the money, because it was given to the State and it took a little while to run that guy down. And I made an appointment and went to see him and asked him if there was anything I could do to expedite the transfer of the money. And he said, well, he was concerned about the one-third/two-third match and it had something to do with I think I gave them sixty-six cents and I took thirty-four, and that was to me one-third/two-thirds matching – I don’t know. But it turned out that he was really hung up on this thirty-four cents and I finally said, “Well, I could amend the request,” and that I had the authority to sign for the bottom line. And as long as I amended it so that it was an even split or some such thing, he released the funds. 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: . . .But I felt very sorry for that man because he had never handled that amount of money and it was a large sum, and he was scared to death that if he let it go, you know, he could lose his job. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I always understood that, but… 

Mahon: Was this typical of somebody in your type of position to do, to drive down, you know, to go to the source? 

Merritt: I don’t know that other people did that as much as I did… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … but I have, what little mentoring I have done, I have always told the young women – it’s almost always been young women – to go to the top when you can and do it yourself; don’t delegate it. 

Mahon: Right. Do you think that the IU School of Medicine would have been nearly as successful in receiving research grants and funding had you not done what you did in your first eleven years there? 

Merritt: Frankly, no. 

Mahon: No? I don’t think so either. 

Merritt: No, they would not. 

Mahon: So… 

Merritt: Much more, they knew it and they were very appreciative, everybody was. 

Mahon: Right, right. After the consolidation of the IU and Purdue presences in Indianapolis in 1969, the first Chancellor of IUPUI, Maynard Hine, asked you to become his Special Assistant. You rejected his offer because you each, and I quote, “had a very different approach to leadership and you knew you wouldn’t be able to represent him as he would wish.” How were your leadership styles different? 

Merritt: He was quite dictatorial, and I just wasn’t. 

Mahon: Right. Can you define what you felt you were then, as opposed to being dictatorial, you were more… 

Merritt: Catalyst. 

Mahon: What is a catalyst? (LAUGHING) Oh, so you were part of the IU School of Medicine before IUPUI was created during their creation and after the creation. Were there any major changes in your position during the turbulent time of the changes that were going on? 

Merritt: I think I was asked to represent IUPUI more with the city because there were very few of us actually. You know, it was a very small organization on top, and that’s how I became part of the Indianapolis Progress Committee… 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: … the Mayor’s Indianapolis Progress Committee and where I met Mayor Lugar and had the, really the privilege of working with the presidents of the banks and the insurance companies, the people who sat in their meetings during their monthly meetings and literally determined the outline of where they wanted the city to go. And it was a huge experience, it really was. And, of course, I was the only woman ever at these. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: It taught me a lot about the city, and it taught me – it gave me an instinct of what IUPUI could be to the city if we could in some ways manage to work together. I didn’t, it was just a feeling that it was there. I didn’t know how to implement it and I never tried, but I knew – well, I did try later, and I knew some of the ways later, but with things like infant mortality and wherever we could. Planned Parenthood was also one of the things that was started at IU then, and that had to be part of the city. No, it couldn’t be part of the University. So, there were ways I could help interface and bring the University’s support to the activity for the city. 

Mahon: Did you feel that the University had some type of responsibility to help better the city, now that it had this large presence… 

Merritt: Yes, I did. 

Mahon: … right in the middle of downtown. 

Merritt: Yes, I did. 

Mahon: Did you sense any type of animosity between… 

Merritt: It wasn’t, it wasn’t animosity. It was just sort of it’s not our business. 

Mahon: With… 

Merritt: With the University… 

Mahon: Okay, with the University. 

Merritt: … University, and the city didn’t know how to ask for what it might have needed. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: It was, they just weren’t accustomed to working together. They were two separate bureaucracies, if you will. 

Mahon: Right. Okay. And now suddenly, there’s this large presence of the University where it wasn’t there before. 

Merritt: Yes, no, and also the presence of the University actually meant a great deal in bringing money to the city. Which the city didn’t recognize because it was thought at that time at the state legislature, the state budget supported the School of Medicine. Well, it didn’t. Actually the state funds were a very small part of the budge of the Medical School which was a good portion research income which paid for technicians and equipment and, you know, all sorts of services. 

Mahon: Did you see any big changes in the IU School of Medicine after the creation of IUPUI? 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: No? 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: No real big effect there? I’m going to talk a little bit about Herman Wells now because he seemed like a very important figure throughout your professional life. During your first stint at IU, you developed a very close working relationship with Herman Wells. And for those that are not familiar, Herman Wells was the eleventh President of Indiana University. 

Merritt: . . .And its greatest. 

Mahon: After another Oral History interview that I conducted with your friend and former colleague, Dr. Angela McBride, she told me that Herman was an administrator that you had the highest respect for, and this is also apparent through the sections in your biography that pertained to IU. So, can you tell me a little bit about your relationships with Dr. Wells and why he was such an important force in your career? 

Merritt: I think, number one, because he accepted me. When I became an Assistant Dean in the School of Medicine, I don’t think there were three women Deans in the United States. 

Mahon: You were the first female Dean at the time – you were the only female Dean at the time? 

Merritt: There was one who was Dean of the Women’s College of Medicine in Philadelphia. 

Mahon: But you were the only female Dean at IU. 

Merritt: At IU, yes, so far as I know, except for Nursing; and the Dean of the School of Nursing reported to the Dean of the School of Medicine… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … at the time, and Herman Wells had no problem with this. Obviously, he had no problem with asking for what he thought might be help with the School of Business application to NASA, and he very early put me on his IU Foundation Research Committee, which was sort of a fluke. I don’t know if I talked about that. 

Mahon: I don’t recall it. 

Merritt: In the School of Medicine, there were just three Deans. There was me, there was Lautzenheiser for Finance, and there was Mahoney for Education. My office was in the old board room library where I sat at one end of my desk and the secretary sat at the other. We were processing applications for continuation of NIH grants that were forms that had, I think, something like six carbon copies and when we had to make a correction on one of those applications on a manual typewriter, you couldn’t hit hard enough, I wish I said this in there because it was so funny. It just blurred in the last ones, and I asked Art, who was the Dean for Finance, for an electric typewriter and he said, no, he couldn’t give me one and I said, “Well, they only cost $250,” and he said, “No it won’t, it’ll cost me $750.” I said, “What?” He said, “Well, I give your secretary one, my secretary’s going to want one, the Dean’s secretary’s going to want a new one, so it’s going to cost me $750.” But don’t tell me I can’t have an electric typewriter. So, I thought, and I said, “Well, I know what I’ll do,” and I wrote a request to Herman Wells, as President of the IU Foundation and Research Committee Chairman for a request for $250. I said, “Now this doesn’t seem like research support, but if our carbons snap out, we’re supposed to get $800,000,” – or it was $8,000, I would never get us $800,000 – “and we got $3,000, and of course, they couldn’t read it clearly, obviously, this isn’t a good thing, so I would really appreciate it if the Foundation could give me $250 for a typewriter.” Well, of course, they were hysterical when they got this, and I didn’t realize that Lautzenheiser was representing the School of Medicine on the IU Research Board… 

Mahon: And who was that? 

Merritt: Mr. Lautzenheiser. 

Mahon: Yes. 

Merritt: They absolutely teased him to death on this and I got my electric typewriter and the Dean’s secretary got hers and so did his. But that’s the sort of thing I meant by trying to go through the spaces in the administration, and to do it with humor. Anytime you can make people laugh, they are happy to say yes, particularly if it’s something that makes sense and you’re not pointing out how idiotic the background is, you’re just saying how this is what you need. 

Mahon: Right. Okay. 

Merritt: And Mr. Wells, of course, then appointed me to that Committee. 

Mahon: Yes, yes. After seventeen years at IU, your husband, Don, wanted to pursue a more national position as Medical Officer for the National Library of Medicine developing a computerized genetics database. 

Merritt: Exactly. 

Mahon: You then contacted an old NIH colleague, the Director of the NIH, Don Frederickson, about helping you find a job with NIH. And you did mention before that a few people you appointed then became directors and he was one of them. . . 

Merritt: . . .He was one of them. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: And I called and I said, “Don, I’d like to come back; is there anything I can do?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “What?” He said, “I don’t know, I’ll let you know. And I called back in a week and I said, “Is there anything you’ve found you’d like me to do?” He said, “Yes, I’d like you to take over training,” and I said fine because in dealing with training grants at the School of Medicine, I had a number of things I thought the NIH ought to change to make them more effective (INAUDIBLE) and I knew as Special Assistant for Training I could probably get that done. So, that’s what I went back as, a Special Assistant to the Director for Research Training. 

Mahon: Okay. And this took you back to Maryland, Bethesda. Okay. What exactly did the position entail? What did you do in this position? 

Merritt: In those days, Research Training fellowships and traineeships were supported by something called the National Research Service Board. They had a very small allowance. I think it was something like $1,800 a year for trainees and $3,600 for fellows. I may not have the numbers correct, but it was clear that in order to get those numbers right is we have to change the NIH budget, and in order to change the NIH budget, you had to deal with the directors of the Institutes. There were eleven or twelve of them then, there are more now. (SHUFFLING PAPERS) And the Congress, of course, approved the money and it was a dual system. As a matter of fact, budgeting in the United States is – I’m sure it hasn’t changed all that much, but it was really strange, and it was all very new. The Office of Management and Budget – it was the Bureau of the Budget – again, it 

doesn’t matter what the names were, but they sent the Institute a budget that we were supposed to adhere to. It was the President’s budget that the President was going to present. So, that was one budget. But what the Institutes would normally get would be how the Appropriations Committee of the Senate finally acted on that budget. They had two budgets they were dealing with; one was the Appropriations Committee budget and it was a two-step, you had to get it – oh dear, my mind is really lost on this one. 

Mahon: That’s okay. 

Merritt: But there were two, there were two committees. First, you had to justify it and then you had to approve it and there were two committees that did this. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: The people who were responsible for writing the actual legislation were the congressional aides. And the congressional aides, of course, were always put on – they were always influenced by the lobbyists. And the lobbyists were – there was a whole group of lobbyists for medical research. I knew I would wander off-track if I weren’t being specific. 

Mahon: That’s okay. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: In order to get the stipends raised, I had to get the Institute directors to agree that they could do this. If they raised the stipends, they would actually have to support fewer trainees and fellows. They recognized that the stipends had to be raised, but they didn’t want to lower the number of trainees and, you know, it’s between a rock and a hard place. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: But by the time I got finished trying to support this, I realized that a fellow, who is somebody who completed a post-doc, had completed his PhD and M.D., had completed the M.D., were being asked to live lower than the poverty level. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: So, I was in my own sort of dilemma. I also was in an excellent position because I was part of the Federal Government, the NIH, I had come from the academic community, I was trusted by the academic community, and the lobbyists for the academic community – and I hope I have this written out … 

Mahon: I know that you do in your biography, yes. 

Merritt: Okay, in technical detail… 

Mahon: Yes, yes. 

Merritt: They actually had a small organization that didn’t have a name and it didn’t have an address; it had a postbox. They met once a week to discuss among themselves – the biologists, the chemists, the microbiologists – what they 

thought they ought to instruct their lobbyists to instruct the Congress doing, and they invited me to meet with them and I accepted. This in itself turned out to have been something that they could never get anybody from NIH to do before because you’re not supposed to talk… 

Mahon: Right, right. 

Merritt: … well, somebody had to talk to them… 

Mahon: To the Congress? 

Merritt: … to this group that talked to the lobbyists that talked to the Congress. 

Mahon: Right, the chain. 

Merritt: Somebody had to talk to the clinical federation or whatever it was. And I say the details – thank God I wrote it for (INAUDIBLE). I reported directly to the Director of the NIH, but for administrative purposes, I was under the Director for Extramural Research and Training, a guy I loved. When I came to work for him, he said, “Look, you’re not working for me, you’re really working for Don. Just keep me informed as to what you’re doing so I don’t get blindsided.” So, we had a wonderful working relationship. 

Mahon: And what was his name? 

Merritt: Raub. 

Mahon: Raub. 

Merritt: Phil Raub. 

Mahon: Phil Raub, okay. 

Merritt: He was, he was one of the best civil servants I knew. I went to him and I said, “Look, I don’t want you to say yes or no, I’m just telling you I’m doing this in case anybody tells you.” He said, “Woops!” And I said, “and I’ll tell Don too.” So, I went to Don Frederickson and I said, “Again, you don’t know this, but you have to know in case anybody comes at you. I’m talking to these people,” and he said, “Fine.” So, I could give them the information that they could pass on (INAUDIBLE). To make a long story short, the Appropriations Committee did approve a huge increase in training – some millions, twenty-three, I don’t know, it was a large number – and we did manage then to keep the same number of trainees and to get their stipends increased, and I worked very much behind the scene on that. And again, it was slipping through the cracks in order to get it done. I remember quite a bit about life in general during that. 

Mahon: But this was 7,000 people at NIH that you were instrumental in getting their first pay increase in over ten years. 

Merritt: 17,000. 

Mahon: 17,000, wow. 

Merritt: It’s a very complicated story actually. 

Mahon: But the end result is quite incredible. 

Merritt: . . .But the end result was worth it. Then they later – there were a lot of other things about the NIH (INAUDIBLE – TAPPING ON TABLE) that was payback and a few other things which I think I elaborated on. I couldn’t remember the details today if you asked me. 

Mahon: That’s okay. You were also only the second woman to ever serve in the inner cabinet. 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: What was that like? 

Merritt: Again, it was fun. 

Mahon: It was fun. 

Merritt: It was fun. I had all the academic credentials, so I was well-accepted by it. The NIH acted more like a university than it did a government bureaucracy and they were good people to work for. I liked them, then. Now it’s a bureaucracy in itself. 

Mahon: Yeah. You were then assigned to be the Director of the National Center for Nursing Research. 

Merritt: And that was something I never anticipated. 

Mahon: Right. This research had just been shifted, the National Center for Nursing Research, had just been shifted from the Division of Nursing at HRSA to NIH. 

Merritt: Correct. 

Mahon: So, they were new at NIH. 

Merritt: They were new to NIH; NIH didn’t want them. The Director then, Jim Wyngaarden, would tell you he said, “Nursing Research is an oxymoronism; there is no such thing. You will get them up and get them started; I’m not giving you an extra penny; I’m not giving you any people.” I said, “You can’t do this to me.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: “They bled, fought and died through, this is – so it’s an overturn, this was a presidential veto to get this thing started up, and you’re going to put an M.D. in charge of the nurses that they’ve been fighting to get out from under forever.” He said, “Yes, and just keep it out of my hair.” Oh, those poor people. They were so used to being sat on and regimented and they had no offices, they had no self-esteem, they were buried in an educational system in HRSA which was as 

bureaucratic as they came. And I had no people. I think there were maybe eight of them. They had no idea what the NIH system was like. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: They didn’t know about dual reviews of applications. They didn’t know about scientific reviews and then a different authority handling the grants themselves. They just didn’t know. And there I was – I didn’t have a budget officer, an executive officer, anything. I went to my friends at NIH and the directors of the Institutes who were just marvelous, and said, “Can you temporarily assign me one of your people who would be willing to come into this fledgling center and bring it into today’s world?” And they did. Ruth Kirschstein, who was Director of GMS, and she sent me a budget officer who was terrific. I got an executive officer from the woman who ran the resources program. I got a publicity officer from somebody else. They all lent me people who then were willing to help get this organization in shape. I had no space. I’ve always said, “Give me space and I’ll get you money.” It’s always been space, space, space. And I went to Cal, who was the chief administrative officer at NIH, I said, “I’ve got to have space.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: He said, “No, they’re up the pike at (INAUDIBLE); they can stay there.” I said, “They can’t, Cal. You don’t want this group identified up there; you want them here. I said you come with me and we go up there.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: Well, when he looked at the two rooms that they were set up in with file cabinets for walls and a telephone out in the hall if they wanted to make long distance calls, he said, “No, this can’t happen.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And he found, in the National Library of Medicine – the National Library of Medicine is three feet under, three stories underground and one story up because the (INAUDIBLE). 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: He found in the first subbasement a photographic lab that had been discontinued for photography that the Director of the National Library of Medicine was holding for something, and I went to him – and I knew him – and I said, “Just lend me the space.” He said, “There’s no such thing as lending you the space; you get in and I’ll never get you out.” I said, “Honestly, I’ll give you a pint of blood; I’ve got to have that space.” Well, he did give it me and we were able to move the nurses down there. And they had a lot of support at NIH. It just wasn’t from the top highfalutin scientists. Well, we got through it and we, it was, a new center hadn’t been started at NIH I think for something like fifteen years. 

Mahon: Wow. 

Merritt: There was not blueprint and I had to sort of say, well, this is where I’m going, this is the next step and get down to the bottom and then work myself through it. And we did it. 

Mahon: How do you think the National Center for Nursing Research benefited by moving to NIH, in what ways? 

Merritt: Incredibly. They got a decent system of review, they got decent reviewers, they got a larger budget, they got respect in the world, and I discovered what nursing research was… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … which I didn’t know. In setting it up, I had no idea even. I was just given this mandate: start a center. It didn’t say what the divisions of the center would be. I didn’t know nursing research. I didn’t know what they should be. I had to go back and I read the Congressional Daily a couple of times to read the request for the center and (INAUDIBLE). And anyway, I put it all together and had what I thought was a working organization. I still didn’t know if it were right or wrong. I didn’t even know who to turn to. And I got a call from one of the women – I don’t know if it was the ANA, the American Nurses Association, or the Executives in Nursing, one of those four groups – who asked if they could come and visit with me. And they walked into the office and they were obviously sort of leery of coming in and I just welcomed them with open arms. I practically hugged them and when they saw what I needed and what they could give me and what I was willing to do, working with them made it possible because they approved of the sections that I had pulled out of maternity and child health and things. And said yes, go along this way, this is right. And they helped me with the names of reviewers. They just introduced me to nursing and nursing research. 

Mahon: So, what did it feel like being a physician leading nurses? Did you feel like, was there any initial pushback? 

Merritt: I felt as though I was totally out of place and I didn’t know what I was doing and that I was a neophyte and they were the experts. I mean, it was absolutely backwards from the way they thought I would look at it. 

Mahon: Right. You eventually did get, as you said, the NCNR up and running and it even eventually was elevated from a center to an institute status. 

Merritt: Yes, yes. 

Mahon: Can you tell me the difference, myself and other people that may listen… 

Merritt: Between a center and institute? 

Mahon: Yes, please. And why one is more prestigious than the other. 

Merritt: Well, the institute is obviously more prestigious, and I’m not sure I know what the difference is exactly. It has its own budget and it’s independent. The NIH 

directors of the Institutes have actually more power than the Director of the NIH. The Director of the NIH has no budget. It’s the Institutes that get the budget. 

Mahon: Oh. 

Merritt: And contributions from the Institute make up the director’s budget office. 

Mahon: Oh, okay. 

Merritt: The director has to work largely through persuasion and tactics and political influence. So, he does have a good deal of prestige, but he doesn’t have the money to (INAUDIBLE). 1:50:50 So, the institutes are more independent than the centers which are responsible, I think, mostly to the director. 

Mahon: After all of this success over nine years at NIH for the second time, you decided to move back to Indiana and back to the School of Medicine at IU. 

Merritt: That was because my husband died. 

Mahon: Okay, and you moved back in what – do you remember what year you moved back for the second time? 

Merritt: Don died in 1987… 

Mahon: And you decided to move back to Indiana? 

Merritt: … 1986, and I went back to – and I had always read and thought that you don’t make decisions the year after you’re widowed, but I knew during the 1987 year that I really wanted to go back. My kids were here; my ties were here. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: And my friends who kept visiting kept saying, “Doris, why don’t you come back, why don’t you come back?” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And one of them who was close to the Dean – I knew Walter Daly because I had worked with him sort of at telephone’s length and we had always had a wonderful relationship. I didn’t really know him, and this friend Conrad Johnston said to me, “Doris, Walter would really like you back,” and I thought, well, if he wants me back, why doesn’t he ask. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: Now that I know Walter, it’s not his way. So, he said, “Call and see if -- I called him and I said, “I would really be interested in coming back to Indiana if there were anything for me to do.” And he said, “What would you like to do?” And I said, in my usual fashion, “Whatever needs doing.” And he said, “Can you be more specific?” And I said, “Well, I can be on a couple of things that needed doing when I left and haven’t been done yet. We don’t have a center for aging, we don’t have a cancer center, and we don’t have a” – there’s some other center 

we didn’t have. I said, “I think all of those could stand some work.” And he said, “Well, when you’re in Indianapolis, stop by and see me.” And then I called Steve Beering, who was President of Purdue that I had known well when he was at the School of Medicine, and said the same thing to him, “I’d like to come back to Indiana; is there anything I can do at Purdue?” And he said, “I’ll find something for you, you bet, but you belong in the School of Medicine. So, if Walter doesn’t” – his words were, “If Walter doesn’t have the sense to hire you, I will.” Well, Walter did and… 

Mahon: You officially returned to Indiana in 1988. 

Merritt: Exactly. 

Mahon: And, I think that that’s where we’ll pick up next time when we talk. 

Merritt: Wow. Oh, it’s been a long session. 

(END RECORDING) 

Mahon: That one’s going and then I’m going to turn this one on, and now this one’s going. Okay. Today is Friday, April 5, 2019. My name is Leeah Mahon, Graduate Intern on this oral history project and Masters’ student in Public History at Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). 

Today, I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Doris Merritt at her home in Indianapolis. 

This interview is sponsored and funded by the Administration of IUPUI and it is co-sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence. 

This is the second recording session with Dr. Merritt. 

There is a biographical sketch of Dr. Merritt at the start of the first recording session. 

Before we begin the interview, I’m going to ask you your permission to do the same things that you just agreed to do in writing, just in case the paperwork you signed gets misplaced or lost. I’m asking your permission to do the following: record this interview, prepare a verbatim transcript of this interview, deposit the interview and the verbatim transcript with the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and with the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, and Directors of the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and the Tobias Center may make the interview and verbatim transcript available to their patrons, which may include posting all or part of the audio recording and transcription to their respective websites. Do I have your permission to do these things? 

Merritt: You do. 

Mahon: Alrighty, let’s get started. In a second, we’re going to talk about you’re second stint to IUPUI, but first I just wanted to ask you something that you mentioned before we turned on the recording. I want to know about the first office established when Maynard Hine was made the Chancellor of IUPUI. 

Merritt: Well, as always, there was very little extra space on campus. Space has always been a problem. So, where was he to have his office? And the University had purchased a little building on the south side of Michigan between the School of Dentistry and well, I guess, whatever was on the other side of it. It had been a cleaners – it had been Curley’s Cleaners – and in the back of Curley’s Cleaners was a one-man insurance office. So, it was a little tiny discrete building and the front of it was all glass; as you would expect in a cleaners. It had no landscaping around it, just big hunks of gravel. At the time, there were a lot of sit-ins and unrest on the Bloomington campus. 

Mahon: Oh. 

Merritt: And here we were going to be in an isolated building with large hunks of gravel in front of a glass windowed front, and Maynard Hine did not care for that at all. He chose to take an inner office and he put me in the outer office where I had a full view of Michigan Avenue and we had draped the windows. I can just say that we were in there until they found space in the basement of the Union Building when Glenn Irwin became Chancellor. Very few people remember Curley’s Cleaners and the insurance room which, was our conference room. 

Mahon: Well, now we will know and it is on recording. 

Merritt: Alright. (LAUGHING) You know the first office for IUPUI was Curley’s Cleaners. 

Mahon: Yes, that’ll be on the record now. Now we’re going to move on to your return to IUPUI in 1988. You decided to return to IUPUI after the passing of your husband, Don. You mentioned that you had your friends and family there, so you decided to move back to Indiana. Upon returning to IUPUI in 1988, the Dean of the Medical School, Walter Daly, appointed you as Associate Dean of the School of Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics on a tenure track. Also, upon your return, Jerry Bepko, the Chancellor of IUPUI at the time, asked you to serve as his Assistant for Economic Development. You agreed to fill all positions; why? 

Merritt: I always said yes. I’m sort of like Ado Annie in Oklahoma! – I’m just a girl who can’t say no – and it seemed like a challenge. (LAUGHING) And I understood that there is a lot of criticism from people who really didn’t know any better about the state supporting public universities, and particularly research programs. The state did not support research because they didn’t see the value. I always tried to point out to people how many people we employ, how many technicians, how much equipment we purchased, and how much we did for the community in an economic sense. My name was sort of associated with that, plus the earlier work I had done. 

Mahon: Okay. Did you ever feel overwhelmed by all of those positions or regret taking on so much when you returned? 

Merritt: Not really. 

Mahon: No? 

Merritt: . . .I never regretted the economic development business particularly when Ehrlich asked me to be his Special Assistant. He was the President of the University… 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: … and do the same thing as I did for Bepko. I had no money so nobody was interested in helping me. But I had enough that I managed to put out a publication, Indiana University Means Business, and used the same contact points within both Bloomington and Indianapolis of people that would be willing to consult with industry if they asked to do it. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: We put this on the desk of every legislator in the Indiana Statehouse and, as far as publicity was concerned and public relations, it was great. I don’t know if anybody ever took advantage of the information. It was overwhelming in that I didn’t know what to do that would make any kind of impact. 

Mahon: As far as the economic development of the position went… 

Merritt: Exactly. 

Mahon: … because you didn’t have any official… 

Merritt: I had no official… 

Mahon: Experience. 

Merritt: … experience and I had no official budget and I really didn’t know a blessed thing about economic development. 

Mahon: Right. Well, you mentioned in your biography that your job description as Associate Dean, moving on to that, was to do whatever needed to be done, and that seems to be your motto with all of the jobs that you’ve had. Did you enjoy such an open portfolio, or did you wish that there was more structure? 

Merritt: Oh, I loved it. 

Mahon: You loved it? 

Merritt: I never really wanted to do anything continuously and it was fun to have new projects to do every time. With Walter Daly, he really gave me a free hand. He would give me something he wanted done and then say go do it. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And that worked. (hits table) 

Mahon: Yeah, you enjoyed just the freedom to, to do what you wanted to do and what needed to be done? 

Merritt: Yes, and people were very helpful. Of course, it doesn’t hurt. People’s idea of clout is what they invest in you, not what you really have. 

Mahon: . . .Right, right. 

Merritt: And if they know you can talk to somebody who really is in a position of power, they’re inclined to be helpful. 

Mahon: Well, you also mentioned in your biography that you were instrumental in the Medical School’s designation as a Cancer Center and a Center for Aging. The Cancer Center was one of your biggest achievements as Associate Dean. You believed that the IU School of Medicine deserved national recognition for its work in cancer research and treatment, as well as more grant funding, and you were determined to make that happen. What did you do to make it happen? 

Merritt: That was really difficult because we had three giants in cancer research on campus and nobody wanted a czar for cancer over them, certainly none of these three people did. I went around to them and to the chairmen of their departments and they all agreed it would be lovely to have cancer research center, but they could not agree on a director. One name kept coming up as somebody who was doing cancer research, sort of impassioned, but it was the same name from several people, and that was a man named Steve Williams who worked at the VA Hospital. 

Mahon: Okay. . . 

Merritt: He was not a real what they call researcher. He was a clinical trials person. So nobody thought of him as being cancer research, but because his name kept coming up, I finally asked to see him and called to make an appointment to see him actually. He said no, he’d come to my office, which I always used to go to new people’s office to make them feel comfortable. I realized that he and I were operating on the same radar, that he was coming to my office. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: He was the most modest man. He had a heart condition that I didn’t know about at the time and he didn’t really want to take on any kind of direct leadership and he didn’t see himself as being director of anything. He just wanted to do his job as he did it and did it well. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: It took a lot of persuasion actually. His wife was an attorney and I had to have lunch with her to talk to her about what this would mean in terms of his family life. 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: And finally, they agreed that he would take it on and he did. He had never written a grant before. Now I worked with him and he was just superb to work for, and he did build the Cancer Center. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: It took a lot of doing. It was a planning grant and then after the planning grant, we got a regular cancer center grant and it was high time we had one; we certainly deserved it. 

Mahon: You had to pull three separate organizations on campus together that were doing cancer research? 

Merritt: Yes, three people actually. 

Mahon: Three people, okay. 

Merritt: Three individuals. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: Larry Einhorn, who did testicular cancer, was known all over for it – and good heavens, I don’t know how I could forget his name; he would never forgive me – Weber, George Weber… 

Mahon: George Weber. 

Merritt: … who was doing a lot of basic cancer research. And then there was a very strong cancer research unit in Hematology, and all these people agreed that they could work together as a center. And Williams, with great tact and finesse, managed to do this. 

Mahon: What problems did you face, if any, when helping to create this? 

Merritt: I actually had to convince the Dean at the time, who was not Walter Daly. Daly had -- Daly started it, but it was Bob Holden who was the Dean at the time, and Holden didn’t like the idea of a director of a center reporting to him directly and having the freedom to speak for the School. 

Mahon: I see. 

Merritt: It took a little bit of conversation with Holden to get him to agree that when the site visitors came that he would say yes, he would pay attention to what the Cancer Center Director said. 

Mahon: That he would still have authority. 

Merritt: Yes, that’s the word, thank you. Good word. (LAUGHING) 

Mahon: Yes. Another achievement of yours that stuck out to me when you were Associate Dean, was the establishment of an outpatient Clinical Research Center. 

Merritt: Yes. There were a lot of small companies and physicians who had plans to do, who did research, that they had to have human -- do human experiments on, clinical trials. And clinical trials are terribly expensive and they couldn’t afford to set up their own clinical trials. Now, we had a Clinical Trials Research Center, but that was an entirely different thing. That was on campus. This was to be on campus for people off campus to bring their ideas in and have us do the clinical trials, testing on them, and the woman who started that with me was Rose Fife. She did a very, very good job with that and she actually made money with the clinical trials. And we had to actually to put together a business plan to convince the hospital that it was worthwhile to give us three rooms that we could do these trials in. In the business plan, we foresaw that we could make a small profit on this and indeed we did. It was never a lot of money, but it paid for itself and it served a good purpose. 

Mahon: Does this still exist today? 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: No. 

Merritt: Well, I don’t think so. Rose went on to start the Center for Women’s Excellence and I don’t - I think she passed it on to somebody else, but I don’t remember to whom. 

Mahon: Okay. You were also involved in the Kinsey Institutes at Bloomington as a Chair on a search committee to find a new director. (LAUGHING) This is a jump, this is a jump to Bloomington, but this also stuck out me because the Kinsey Institute was an extremely interesting place. 

Merritt: It was fascinating, and the Kinsey Institute had been under an Acting Director for two years and she was sick and tired of it, and I don’t blame her. There were a lot of prima donnas doing research and that. And the Committee had to, it was represented by law, by medicine – no, not medicine – by law, psychiatry, women’s studies. They had at least – I think business was on it. One of the Committee members was a well-

known homosexual who was well-respected from Australia. It was a fascinating committee and we advertised worldwide, and they had tried this for two years and they hadn’t been able to locate anybody. When they did, somebody in a group was always not in favor of it. They could not get somebody they would agree on. Through good fortune, there was somebody available in Brittan who was looking to head such a thing and was qualified to do so. Again, it was one of those personal things – he was divorced and had married one of his younger associates and he wanted to get out and he had - across the ocean was just great for him. . . 

Mahon: Right. Escape. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: . . .Yeah, it was good for him, it was good for us, and I finally got everybody to agree to this. Using a little bit of charm and trickery, when I took a straw vote, I started, I was sitting at the head of a table, I started at my left and everybody approved. The chief dissenter was the last one on the right and he, seeing that the tide was totally against him, finally said reluctantly he would go along with it. Well, by that time, we were doing things pretty well (INAUDIBLE) and I immediately emailed the results of the search to the Vice President who was in charge of the group and he announced it the following day. It was in the papers… 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: … because news, newspapers were just on top of Kinsey. All you had to do was say Kinsey and… 

Mahon: Right, right. 

Merritt: … there’s a reporter in. This man took umbrage at this and wrote a letter to the editor saying that this was reported as a unanimous decision, but it really wasn’t. Well, it was, but it wasn’t because he really had severe reservations about this, and I was asked please to refute this… 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: … and I thought no, there are some things I learned that you just keep quiet about and it’ll go away. I never fanned the fires by reporting and it did go away. And he was a very successful Director and things worked out very well for the Institute. 

Mahon: Do you think that there was a lot of trouble finding a Director because of what the Kinsey Institute is and how taboo it was seen as? 

Merritt: Yes, and it was famous, but it was taboo. 

Mahon: Yes. 

Merritt: You are right, exactly. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: So, it drew a lot of flack. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And there weren’t many people qualified at the time who were openly doing sex research. 

Mahon: Right, right. Why do you think they chose you to Chair the Search Committee, of all people? (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: I, you know, I don’t know why they chose me for that. I don’t know why they chose me to do a lot of things, except I sometimes think that they’d say, Well, let’s see if she can pull this one off.” 

Mahon: Because you pulled everything else off so far. 

Merritt: Yeah, the others were, “maybe she can do this.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I really think I was their last resort, so to speak. 

Mahon: Well, you made it happen in the end. So, that’s all that matters. 

Merritt: It might have by that time with anyone, frankly. I mean, two years is a long time… 

Mahon: That is a very long time. 

Merritt: … for people to sit in meetings. 

Mahon: Yes. Now I’m going to move on to one of the most interesting parts, I thought, of your biography that I read. You mentioned that the academic laboratory animal accreditation certification was quote “one of the least satisfactory things you had to do at the IU School of Medicine.” Can you tell me why? 

Merritt: Yes. Laboratory animal research is intrinsic to a lot of research and this was a time, if you know the PETA people, People Against Research in Animals… 

Mahon: Yes. 

Merritt: … and it was a huge -- well -- a huge national affair. There were a lot of stringent requirements in animal research and we really did not have very 

good animal research facilities, but we had to develop them and they have been developed, and the woman who took over the original design of them did a very good job, but she was a veterinarian. She was married to the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, but she had no administrative experience whatsoever and she had a terrible time trying to control the technicians who were really dieners and they were very low-paid. They had no particular education to take care of animals. And because of her own insecurity, she was absolutely stubborn and adamant about following rules to the point where they didn’t make sense. The investigators didn’t like to work with her at all. The other thing we didn’t have, we needed an accreditation from the Animal Laboratory Care Institute to show that we were up-to-snuff in all of our handlings of animals, both the handling and the harassing of them, and we were not accredited. She kept saying she was going to write it, she was going to write it, she was going to write it, but nothing ever showed. The worst thing that finally pushed me to going to the Dean and saying we really have to do something drastic, was when one of our major investigators had a large grant up for review and the site visitor who came to the site wanted to speak to the head of the laboratory animal care to be sure that he would have space for his animals. And she absolutely, when she talked to them, she said, “I can’t guarantee it at all.” He may get this grant – I mean, it was several hundred thousand a year – but… 

Mahon: That’s a lot of money to gamble with. 

Merritt: It sure was, but I can’t assure that he’ll have quarters to put his animals, and he called me, and he was just frantic. I knew the group was on campus, but he asked if I would come over and speak to them. So, I came over and assured them that the Dean’s Office would never ever submit a grant where we couldn’t house the animals and we would be able to house the animals, and he did get his grant, but I should not have to do that and she should have been more able to give that assurance. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: So, I convinced her that she needed a Special Assistant and I was fortunately – again, fate works in wonderful ways – her name is Kathy Vokowad (SPELLING???) and her husband had been given a wonderful job in Indianapolis and she had a, she was a DVM with a PhD and she was looking for a job. I told her what the situation was and asked her if she would be willing to come into it and try and help take things and make them go. She said yes and I talked to the Dean and we decided we would give Dr. Henry a year’s administrative leave – I think we made that one up, frankly – with pay so she could write the AAALC accreditation request. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: She did write the report finally, and it was not well-done, and it had to be redone, which Kathy did. And at that point, she thought she was being harassed unfairly and she resigned, and it was good for her and it was good for us. Actually, I think she lives, by that time, she was taking tranquilizers just to, well we found some in her desk when she left… 

Mahon: Oh, my. 

Merritt: … but just to try and maintain. I felt very sorry for her because she was a good person, she was doing the best she could, and she just wasn’t equipped for it. 

Mahon: Struggling, yeah. 

Merritt: And then Kathy took over and everybody breathed a sigh of relief… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … and we were accredited and things worked smoothly until – and that was another one – I discovered that our Animal Care Committee, the Advisory Committee, had had one of our investigators under review for some time for doing things that were a little bit questionable with how he was dealing with animals. Then they found him in complete – well, he just lied about what he was doing, and he had his graduate students lie about what he was doing. The thing was then, that if you were caught being noncompliant by the NIH, they would take away, they’d stop every grant to the institution. And they almost did that with Johns Hopkins later on – they caught somebody and didn’t report it fast enough. So, I had to tell this young man, who was just overeager – he was really a very good investigator that I had to take away his grant and put somebody else in charge of it, which his Chairman took over the grant. (stop) 

Mahon: And this is, because I think that this is the situation I was going to ask you about next – this was with the Lab Animal Resource Center, correct? 

Merritt: Yes, yes. 

Mahon: This is when you were the Vice Chancellor and Dean of Research and Graduate Studies… 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: … from 1997 to 1998, and that he lied to the Oversight Committee of… 

Merritt: He just lied. 

Mahon: … about his compliance procedures. 

Merritt: And they hated to come to me because they thought they should solve it for themselves, but they couldn’t. It was one where they really had to have somebody in my position to say to this guy, “we’re taking away your grant privileges.” 

Mahon: Well, and like you said, it, it risked the health of everybody involved in the investigation and jeopardized the School of Medicine’s reputation. 

Merritt: And all of that is well and good, but it also jeopardized about four million dollars-worth of grants. 

Mahon: Right. Can you explain, as the leader in this situation, what hard choices you had to make to rectify the situation? 

Merritt: Rectifying the situation wasn’t so difficult, it was trying to explain to this young man that this was not a personal thing. 

Mahon: So, that was the hardest part? 

Merritt: That was the hardest part and also to get him situated, give him time enough to get himself another job. And I did call – you couldn’t put this in writing – I did call the Chairman of the department he went to and said you better keep a close eye on what he’s doing because he’s done it twice before; and I’m sure he’s learned his lesson, but he may not have. 

Mahon: You would hope. 

Merritt: Yeah. 

Mahon: Would you consider this one the hardest situations you had to deal with as a leader at IUPUI? 

Merritt: Yes, yes. Like anybody else, you don’t like to fire people; you don’t like to get them in trouble. Animals to me is – I still have a cap though that says LARC on it that they gave as sort of an ad (INAUDIBLE) Laboratory Animal Care. It says LARC across it; it’s a blue cap, which is now faded to a pale gray. 

Mahon: Moving on, you mentioned in your biography that you saw your position as Assistant to the President and Chancellor in Economic Development as a token female position… 

Merritt: Not female; just token. 

Mahon: … just token position? 

Merritt: A male could’ve done it too. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: It wasn’t female. 

Mahon: It was just, you were for show pretty much? 

Merritt: I was for show. I was to show an interest for the University and not cost them anything. 

Mahon: What initiatives did you take to help with economic development in the IU School of Medicine despite your lack of knowledge on the subject? 

Merritt: Well, the state did give one grant for economic development and there was a small group headed by – his first name was Jeremy – that had some money from the state to support new ventures. And then on this campus, on IUPUI, it was Morton Marcus who was a well-known economic development expert and statistician, and he had a grant from the state to support his publication. They both came from the same office and it was clear to me that if I could get both of these grants under one heading that we would make a little more money because they could give it as a sort of inter-campus thing, and I did. When I went to see Morton the first time, the first thing he said to me was, “What do you know about economic development?” And I said, “Nothing, that’s why I’m here.” We became fast friends after that because it was clear when I made the appointment, he was ready to kick me out of the office. And we did get a little more money in the state because I think the grant came to me and then I distributed it to the two of them. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: But having it come to one person instead of two made it a better vehicle for support. 

Mahon: Yeah. Did you face any problems in this position? 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: No? 

Merritt: Dealing with, I tried to get the Deans who were – the Business School Deans… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … oh, my goodness… 

Mahon: Just dealing with them, could you tell me about that? 

Merritt: They had tried to get the Deans of the various business schools together to find out what they thought I could do, and as soon as they found out that the President wasn’t putting any money into this, they didn’t want anything at all and they really just didn’t even want to cooperate. But they were willing to give me information so I could put my booklet together. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: That they thought was alright. 

Mahon: So, they at least helped a little bit in the situation. 

Merritt: They helped a little bit. Well, they didn’t, they didn’t say no, let’s say. 

Mahon: Right, yeah. Throughout your time at the IU School of Medicine, you also continued to serve as an NIH consultant off and on and were appointed to serve as the first Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Review Board for Biomedical and Behavioral Research Facilities for the NIH Division of Research Resources. You received this four-year appointment when you were seventy years old. 

Merritt: Yeah and boy was I flattered. 

Mahon: Right. What made you continue to add yet another thing to your plate at this point? 

Merritt: It sounded like fun, and it really was because can you imagine a discussion group of thirty people around a table? But we had architects because we were talking about buildings, we had scientists because we talking about science, we had administrators because we were talking about building science and putting them on campus. And it was just a fun group and they all did what they should, and we spent our money wisely, I thought. 

Mahon: Did this feel like work to you or it was just something…? 

Merritt: I have to tell you that, except for the animal bit, nothing felt like work. 

Mahon: Really? Just, and you enjoyed doing all of it. 

Merritt: I just loved it. Yes. 

Mahon: Well, by 1994, you mentioned that you were ready to stop working full-time and cut back on your hours, which you did; however, you were contacted by Jerry Bepko one night asking you to be the Interim Dean of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, as if it could not get any weirder. (LAUGHING) The previous Dean had up and left the Saturday before the fall semester began after disagreements among he 

and his faculty. What was going through your mind when Bepko asked you to do this? 

Merritt: Well, I was a street tramp when the phone rang. It was about 9:30 at night or 10:00, and there had been trouble in the school. It was pretty clear there was trouble in the school, and they had asked me because I had worked with some of the engineers in bioengineering getting the engineers to work with some of the physicians who were interested. I knew the engineers and Jerry had asked me to go over there and talk to a group of the faculty and find out what their problem was. And I had gone over and I had talked to the faculty and group, and they really had a long list of concerns that they didn’t like what the new Dean was doing, and it wasn’t surprising. The former Dean, not the one I replaced, but the former Dean had been Dean for about, oh, ever since the school had started. . . 

Mahon: Oh wow. 

Merritt: . . .and it was a pretty laissez-faire bit. The engineers consulted where they pleased, they did what they wanted, they were little chiefdoms in and of themselves. And when the new Dean came in, he came in from Lilly, he was going to immediately change all that. He was going to get this organized, put it on a really good business level. And you don’t take a faculty that’s been used to doing what it damn well pleased for ten years and say thou shalt. Well, they shadn’t (sic) and they went and they complained bitterly and they drew up a list of some fifteen or sixteen or more things that they insisted that would be changed before they would support the Dean any longer. I showed the Dean the list and most of them, I said, “You know you could really just do this fairly easily if you just delay the changes that you want to make, which are good changes and should be made”… 

Mahon: Just not all at once; that’s a lot. 

Merritt: … “but you just don’t walk in and” – well, I can’t say to him – he should have known you don’t walk in and do it overnight… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … but he just, he just absolutely couldn’t abide this and he literally, he came in on that weekend and cleaned out his office and walked out. 

Mahon: So, prior to you being asked to be the Interim Dean, you were trying to mediate the situation. 

Merritt: Yes, I was. 

Mahon: Okay, okay. 

Merritt: And obviously with no success. 

Mahon: Well, it seems like you had a tough situation to try to work with. 

Merritt: But Jerry appointed an Executive Committee and they said that they wanted me to be their Dean, and this just shows to go (sic) what Board of Trustees can do if they want to. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I was absolutely unqualified for this. I didn’t have tenure in any school, which you had to have to be a Dean. 

Mahon: Oh. 

Merritt: Oh, yeah. You had to be tenured someplace. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: You certainly needed to have the training and the background that was essential to you doing this… 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: … and the other one was is you weren’t supposed to hold an administrative position after you were sixtey-five. 

Mahon: Well, you did that. 

Merritt: I’m certain – so they forgot all that and made me Acting Dean. 

Mahon: Well, this made you then the first female Dean of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology. 

Merritt: Yes, and I also said I didn’t know how Purdue would feel about that because they were in an awkward situation. They had academically reported to Purdue at West Lafayette and administratively reported to Jerry Bepko on this campus. So, I said, “What does the President of Purdue think about this, Steve Beering?” And Jerry said, “Well, he’d talked to Steve,” and Steve had been Dean at the School of Medicine, so I knew him and I had actually been influential in getting him appointed in the first place – not as Dean, but on the faculty. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And Steve said to Jerry, “Well, if he could be President of Purdue, I could certainly be a Dean in one of his schools.” So, they accepted that. 

Mahon: Why did you end up, did you have any reservations about accepting the position or did you know that…? 

Merritt: Well, I knew somebody had to do it and I knew it could be done. I figured as long as I had the support of the faculty, I certainly could do the administration and I knew how to deal with people and, frankly, they needed a mother. They had been (INAUDIBLE)… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … and it worked out very well. It really did. They were very helpful the faculty was wonderfully supportive. I did have two real problems. 

Mahon: I was going to ask you that next – what issues did you face? 

Merritt: One of the things that the (INAUDIBLE) name was Potvin (SPELLING???) had tried to do was he wanted PhDs in Chairs of all the departments. Well, in engineering, you have engineers and you have technologies. You had mechanical engineers and electrical engineers and you have electrical engineering technology and mechanical engineering technology. And, in the technology, the Masters’ Degree is usually the terminal degree. His chairmen did not have PhDs and he wanted all of the faculty to have PhDs. This really wasn’t very realistic. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: He appointed an extremely qualified man to one of these and actually much too good for the position, and he could not work – the faculty liked him, but they couldn’t meet his expectations because they didn’t have the training he had. I wanted very much to keep him at the school, but I knew we had to have another Chair. We were starting at the time – we had the opportunity for the state to start a forensic laboratory and I asked him if he would be Director of that and give up the Chair. He was delighted to do it. It was a lateral transfer; it wasn’t a demotion at all. And the person who then came in, it was mechanical engineering technology training, yeah. Why can’t I remember whether it was mechanical or electrical? I think it was mechanical. The man who then took on the chairmanship did a good job of it. Actually when I left, one of the awards I liked more than anything was from the technicians in that department drew up a engineering plan with all sorts of – I could probably even show it to you – circuits on it, which was a circuit board and it was given to Doris Merritt, Wonder Woman. (loud banging on table) 

Mahon: Oh, that’s your official title. 

Merritt: That was my official title for that department… 

Mahon: That’s a pretty good title. 

Merritt: … and they were just very good about it. The other one I didn’t realize until later turned out to be a pathological liar, and I had never dealt with that before. He just couldn’t tell the truth. I think even if he could’ve told the truth and it was the right thing to do, he still couldn’t tell the truth… 

Mahon: That’s a very intimidating... 

Merritt: … and his, his faculty knew it and they wanted to get rid of him… 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: … and I, I didn’t know how to do that. Then I discovered that his wife was getting a degree, a Masters’ Degree, and she was lacking one course to fulfill the requirements and he established one course for one student with one teacher so that she could get her degree. 

Mahon: Was that allowed? 

Merritt: It’s a terrible breech of etiquette. 

Mahon: Right. . . 

Merritt: It was a conflict of interest and actually she passed her exam, she was a good person, she deserved the degree, but he couldn’t do that. But I gave him a choice of being tried for, well, non-integrity, I guess, and stepping down from the Chair. So, he did step down from the Chair rather than face the Conflict of Interest Committee. 

Mahon: And he was the Chair of what? 

Merritt: It was, I think it was, I think that was electrical engineering… 

Mahon: Oh, okay, okay. 

Merritt: … or mechanic – one of the two, I’m getting them mixed up. 

Mahon: One of the two; that’s okay. 

Merritt: When Oner Yurtseven came in who was the real Dean who followed me, he immediately assigned him to a position in our outreach post in Malaysia… 

Mahon: Oh, wow. 

Merritt: … and got him off campus, finally. He later got hired by another school and I often wondered what they did with him. 

Mahon: Right. So, what about -- I remember reading about an issue that you faced with the U.S. Navy’s academic partnership with the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology Can you. . . 

Merritt: This was a very strange thing and it really had more to do with the Navy and it went through a little with economic development. There was – this is complicated – there was a school in the middle of the Mohave Dessert called the Electronic Manufacturing Productivity Facility (EMPF), and the Navy wanted to move it out of the Mohave Dessert and put it closer to another Naval development. Well, in the City of Indianapolis, we had Naval Avionics development, which was a huge enterprise where they did research in naval activities and there was no space on their campus to move the EMPF to. They asked if IUPUI could find space for it, but we had no space for it either, but we wanted to cooperate with the city that was very much interested in getting this whole group here because there’s more money, more people, more income. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: We located a spot of land on the canal, which was then practically, well, it was nothing. There was no development there at all. It was tenements and so forth. There was a spot of land there that we could get, and we could build a building on, but we didn’t have money for construction. So, they worked out a plan whereby if we would give them the building, they would give us a contract to do the teaching in the EMPF and we then could charge the fees to the companies that had to send their technicians to the school. And the fees that the companies paid for tuition would come to us which would cover the cost of building the building. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: Quite a go-around. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: And everybody wanted this except one group in the Navy who wanted it to go to Philadelphia. And this is what I was totally ignorant of and wish I was still ignorant of, didn’t realize the politics that went on between admirals in the Navy and which admiral wanted which facility in their city. 

Mahon: Right. Oh, I see. 

Merritt: Anyway, I guess the Indianapolis admiral won and we got the EMPF. Then we had to advertise for a Director of it. And since part of our rationale for being involved at all was that we could use it to teach our engineering students in their laboratories, we needed somebody who was academic. Well, as luck would have it, we found a wonderfully qualified man who had a PhD in engineering and in business and he agreed to take 

the position of EMPF Director. But when we advertised for the position, they sent this one admiral who was promised the job and he came to the interview acting as though the job was already his. You know, he came, he was just totally conceited and thought he was doing us a favor by even coming. So, when we appointed Gary Burkhart instead of him, he was furious when he went home, and his contingent was furious who was supporting that admiral. Well, I had no idea this was going on. Who did? In any event, the reason the EMPF could charge tuition is that all the technicians who worked for manufacturing plants who had contracts with the Navy had to be certified by the EMPF; and all of those people, all of their CEOs, got together and lobbied to have that requirement removed. As soon as that requirement was removed, they no longer had to pay tuition and we had no support for the EMPF… 

Mahon: Oh, no. 

Merritt: … that would allow us to cover the rent. 

Mahon: Right, right. 

Merritt: Well, the Navy decided that maybe that wasn’t fair. They gave us a contract to manage the facility. Of course, there was nobody else – and to perform certain services to the facility. There was nobody else’s name could go on the contract but mine, so mine was on the contract. That I didn’t care for at all, but there was no choice. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: The man who was my pathogenic liar was the one who was supposed to provide the services for the facility. So, when I went the first year to write the progress report and I got this progress report from him, I knew he hadn’t done this stuff. 

Mahon: Right. What he had wrote, you knew he had not done. . . 

Merritt: . . .What he had -- I knew he had not done and I couldn’t lie about it. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: So, I went to Gary Burkhart and Gary did manage to put something together for me which told the truth but managed to keep us out of hot water. Eventually, the Navy decided that they would move the EMPF to Philadelphia. 

Mahon: After all that. 

Merritt: After all of that, after all the expense they had in moving some forty people and their families and shipping their goods and everything else. 

Mahon: Oh, my. 

Merritt: And again, it had to do with admirals fighting admirals and one admiral’s daughter was married to another admiral’s son… 

Mahon: Oh, my. 

Merritt: … and the person who came up with the competing grant to keep the EMPF was actually still employed by the Navy when he had his name on it as Principal Investigator. It was a tremendous mess. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: Jerry Bepko and I wanted very much to actually bring legal charges. We talked to people in the Judge Advocate General Office, and we were told we would probably win. But we realized if we did that, we wouldn’t get the contract back and in addition to that, we would put up such bad vibes between the Navy and IUPUI that if we ever wanted to work with them again, we couldn’t. So, we just threw up our hands and let the whole thing go. 

Mahon: But you could’ve pressed charges against the Navy. 

Merritt: . . .Oh, we could’ve pressed charges. I left a whole document – the entire documented story with our own attorney, with the IUPUI attorney and the IU attorney, but they never, it’s just there someplace. 

Mahon: What a mess. 

Merritt: What a mess. 

Mahon: Well, on the complete other end of the spectrum a very significant achievement you made as Interim Dean of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, was the establishment of a Biomedical Engineering PhD degree. . . 

Merritt: Yes, and I’m really proud of that… 

Mahon: Yes. 

Merritt: … because we had all the bits and pieces for it and, of course, Purdue at West Lafayette did not want to have PhD students on the Indianapolis campus because they thought it would lose them from students, frankly. And they also sort of looked down their noses at the credentials of the people who taught in “an extension center.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: Well, we were hardly an extension center, but that’s the way it was felt. We did have one or two students who went back and forth, but they were getting their degree from West Lafayette rather than from IUPUI, which was fine, but we really wanted a bioengineering department on campus. Fortunately, a grant opportunity came along for Purdue to go for a bioengineering center and they couldn’t do it without the support of a medical school. When two of their vice presidents came down to talk to the Dean Daly in Medicine to ask if he would cooperate, he said, “Well, obviously,” since I was Acting Dean of the School of Engineering that he would leave it entirely in my hands. And then Walter said, as he often did, to me, “Just do what you think is right.” 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And I just frankly said I wasn’t going to support them and sign off on the application unless they approved our program. It was pure blackmail, but they did. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: They did and later on, of course, we had our own program and it’s a good one and we had a professorship in biomedical engineering. 

Mahon: So, why was it so important to you to get this degree established? 

Merritt: It was very important. It was good for the School of Medicine, it was good for the School of Engineering, it was good for the students who didn’t want to spend time in West Lafayette. They still had to take some courses in West Lafayette, but they preferred to be full-time here. And, of course, we are now such a huge campus, it was just part of the growth of the campus. It was right for the campus. 

Mahon: Right. After your year-long stint in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, you resumed your roles in the IU School of Medicine. The Purdue School of Engineering and Technology awarded you an honorary Doctorate of Science in 1997 for your role as the… 

Merritt: Purdue University offered the doctorate. It’s the University… 

Mahon: … just the University in general. 

Merritt: Yes, the University offers the doctorate. 

Mahon: Okay. So, Purdue University awarded you an honorary Doctorate of Science in 1997. 

Merritt: Yes, they did, which was very nice. 

Mahon: How did you feel that the position that you held for that year changed your view of leadership, or did it? 

Merritt: I never, as I’ve said before, I’ve never really thought of myself as a leader, I was just leading. 

Mahon: You were just doing what you had to do. 

Merritt: Doing what I had to do to get it done. 

Mahon: Right. In 1997, what you called your peaceful return to the Medical School, did not last long when you received yet another call from Chancellor Bepko, this time asking you to act as the Associate Vice President for Research at IU. 

Merritt: Vice Chancellor. 

Mahon: Vice Chancellor. . . 

Merritt: Oh, yes. It was Vice President. 

Mahon: Vice President, Associate Vice President for Research at IU and… 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: … Vice Chancellor for Research in Graduate Studies… 

Merritt: That’s correct. 

Mahon: … for IUPUI. You agreed to do so for what you said would be six months. 

Merritt: Six months – I was tired of getting up at 6:00 in the morning for 8:00 meetings. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I was seventy, yeah. 

Mahon: You were over seventy at this time. 

Merritt: Yeah, I sure was. 

Mahon: What kinds of things did you do in these roles? 

Merritt: Well, first we had to have a job description and it was a kind of difficult little thing because you can’t be an Associate Vice President reporting to the Vice President and President of the University and a Vice Chancellor and reporting to the Chancellor, when the Chancellor had a Vice Chancellor who considered himself in charge of all the Vice Chancellors. 

So, I tried to put together a job description with lots of dotted lines and solid lines showing who reported to whom. I was pretty adamant about reporting only to Jerry and to the Vice President and not going through the Vice Chancellor. (tapping on table) 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: The Vice Chancellor obviously didn’t care for this and we couldn’t get, I couldn’t get the job description cleared. I understood Jerry’s predicament, he didn’t want to upset his Vice Chancellor, on the other hand, he didn’t particular want to upset the President either. And after the first six months, I couldn’t get the job description through, which was my job, although there were things to do at the Graduate School that I did. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And my hands were tied, I couldn’t do anything. So, I went to my own Vice President and I said, “I’m sorry, I did this for six months. I said I’d do it and I’m leaving, and I’m getting no place. There’s no point in your paying me to sit here with something that nobody’s approving.” So, he went to the President and got it approved pretty fast. But they hadn’t even appointed a Search and Screen Committee for the job because they didn’t have the job description. It took six months to get that done and then it took another while to get a Search and Screen Committee appointed. 

Mahon: So, you were asked to be in this position as kind of a placeholder to create the job description while they were trying to find… 

Merritt: Exactly, and as you’ve probably gathered, that’s not what I wanted to do. 

Mahon: No. Nope. 

Merritt: I did do some things for the Graduate School. The Associate Dean for Graduate Studies on the campus was pretty set in her ways and she made it almost impossible to get new degrees approved, and again, it’s a growing campus. We had to have our Masters’ degrees and new Doctorates approved. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: There was no reason why they shouldn’t be and there were too many hurdles that were being put up to make it impossible to do it, and Sheila was just having no part of it. I reorganized her Advisory Committee and put together some rules and regulations that she had to abide by. And Nasser Paydar, who is now Chancellor at IUPUI, actually did a wonderful job in putting together a brochure which showed exactly what you had to do in each school to go through the process of getting a graduate degree. 

I left before that thing was fully approved by everybody, but I suspect it was still in use. 

Mahon: You ended up staying in these final positions at IU and IUPUI for a year, not six months, and after, in 1998, you decided that you were ready to retire for good. 

Merritt: It was eighteen months by then. 

Mahon: Okay. 

Merritt: And they had finally found somebody to take the job and I realized I could really retire. I mean, I was going to be successful the fourth time in retiring. 

Mahon: So, you felt that you… 

Merritt: I’d done my job. 

Mahon: You had done your job… 

Merritt: As much as I… 

Mahon: … in general, but especially in that position to help whoever was going to be in it next be successful. 

Merritt: Yes. 

Mahon: After everything that you did, what made you realize that you were finally ready to be done with your official work? 

Merritt: I think I was just tired. 

Mahon: I’m sure you were. (LAUGHING) 

Merritt: I was burned out. 

Mahon: Yeah. 

Merritt: I didn’t, I didn’t like getting up early in the morning. I really didn’t, I loved Jerry Bepko; I loved working with him, but being a Vice Chancellor means sitting in all sorts of committee meetings that were duller than dish wash. I mean, his cabinet had to look at things like parking, and I can tell you more about starlings and parking garage trees than you care to know, and it was just, it wasn’t exciting… 

Mahon: Right, yeah. 

Merritt: … and I wasn’t contributing anything that anybody else couldn’t contribute. There was no point in my being there. 

Mahon: Right. To kind of begin to wrap it up, which with your incredibly long career, is hard to do, you became Professor Emerita Indiana University School of Medicine in 1998. In all your years, you served your country in the Navy during World War II, you taught pediatrics at Duke and Indiana University, held several administrative positions at NIH and Indiana University, including Executive Secretary of the Cardiovascular and General Medicine Study Sections, NIH; Research Training and Research Resources Officer, NIH; Assistant Dean for Medical Research, IU School of Medicine; Assistant Dean for Research, IU; Dean of Research and Sponsored Programs, IUPUI; and, of course, your Interim Deanship in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, just to name a few because that is not an extensive list of your… 

Merritt: I think we have to add, though… 

Mahon: Yes, of course. 

Merritt: … the first Director of the National Center for Nursing Research at NIH. 

Mahon: Yes, absolutely. 

Merritt: Which is now an Institute. 

Mahon: Yes. Well, that being said, do you ever look back on all of the positions you held and find it hard to believe that you actually did all of that? 

Merritt: Yeah and raised a family too. 

Mahon: Yes, exactly, exactly. 

Merritt: Of course, I had a patient husband and delightful two young men who most of the time stayed out of trouble and good help at home. 

Mahon: Right. I know that you’ve mentioned multiple times that you never, in all these positions, saw yourself as a leader. But do you think that from beginning to end that you grew as a leader and as a person through all these, these administrative… 

Merritt: Oh, absolutely. 

Mahon: … positions? 

Merritt: I always was a tactful person, but I learned how to motivate people… 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: … and I learned not to be dictatorial and I learned I was good at it, and people liked me, and I liked people, and maybe that’s a big part of it… 

Mahon: I think so. 

Merritt: … you have to like people. 

Mahon: Yes, yes. If you don’t like people, then you’re probably not going to be very successful… 

Merritt: No. 

Mahon: … working with them as closely as you did especially. You did mention to me in our pre-interview that the way to get things done is to work backwards. Do you feel like this is how you led such a successful career? 

Merritt: I think so because when I was asked to do something, I didn’t start at the beginning and say, “Now where am I going?” I started by saying, “Where do I think I want to get to?” And starting from the endpoint and working backward showed me the way forward. 

Mahon: Right. So, in 1994, the Doris H. Merritt Award to Honor Service to Nursing by a Non-Nurse was created in your honor by the IU School of Nursing. In 1997, the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology also created an award in your honor titled the Doris H. Merritt Leadership Award. Each award is presented annually to a deserving candidate. In 2000, an annual lecture in women’s health was established in your honor, as well. How does it make you feel to have two distinguished schools honor you and your life in those ways? 

Merritt: It’s really three schools, you know. It’s amazing. 

Mahon: Yeah, it is. 

Merritt: I’m just, I’m very grateful. 

Mahon: Yes. Is there anything that you look back on that you are particularly proud of? 

Merritt: I think two things; one was getting an increase in stipends in fellowships when I was at the NIH for all of the 17,000 who’d been in training and not getting paid enough to really subsist on. And the thing that will have the most lasting effect, I know, was starting the National Center for Nursing Research and setting up its various departments with the help of the nurses. I didn’t do that alone but managing to get that done and get it on its feet so it became an Institute. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: I think those two things, the National Research Service Award salary increase people will not know, and there’s no reason why they should, but setting up the National Center for Nursing Research the way it was set up, that will have a lasting influence… 

Mahon: Yeah, absolutely. 

Merritt: … and just going into the future, and I’m proud of that. 

Mahon: Right, yeah. What do you wish to be known for? 

Merritt: Oh, good Lord. 

Mahon: I know. It is a loaded question. 

Merritt: I never thought about it. Um. . . 

Mahon: I guess, if you would like me to rephrase it, what do you think that you’re known for, because you most certainly are? 

Merritt: I guess for getting things done. 

Mahon: I would agree with that. 

Merritt: I think that’s it. 

Mahon: Yeah? 

Merritt: Yes, and for doing it honestly and fairly. 

Mahon: Yes. Well, those are wonderful things to be known for. 

Merritt: Maybe for having a sense of humor. (LAUGHING) 

Mahon: Yes, yes, that always makes things better. What have you been doing since you retired from the IU School of Medicine and IUPUI? 

Merritt: Oh, dear. Well, of course, on my homeowners association, I served as the President of that. I tried a number of things. I worked for a while down reading to the blind on radio… 

Mahon: Oh, okay. 

Merritt: … but that, that was for the vision impaired, not necessarily blind, reading the newspaper. That was alright except the obituaries, I didn’t like to read those. 

Mahon: Yeah, yeah. 

Merritt: And the other thing I discovered, it’s very difficult to read the comics and make them funny. 

Mahon: Yeah, that would be. 

Merritt: They’re not very funny when just read the comics. 

Mahon: No, no they’re not. 

Merritt: I did that for a while, but not for very long. I worked for a number of years in the Media Center at North Central High School here, and did some computer work for them, made up some indices. I have a wonderful certificate from the Board of Education thanking me for that. It’s just a little piece of paper and it was, they wanted to make some recognition; it was all they could do, and I just treasure that. 

Mahon: Right. 

Merritt: And now, of course, I’m old and impaired in many ways, and I spend my time talking to people a lot, and I have a lot of friends. I’m blessed by having two stints of employment, so to speak, at IU. I have two generations of friends so that even though I’m approaching ninety-six, most of my friends now are in their seventies. And fortunately, I have friends in my seventies because there are no more in their nineties. 

Mahon: Right. Is it funny to look at your friends in their nineties and remember what you were doing when you were their age? 

Merritt: Well, I think it’s funny for them because when they complain, they look at me and they say, “But you were still working!” (LAUGHING) 

Mahon: And you’re like yeah, I don’t know how. 

Merritt: Yeah, I was still working, and that’s, I rather enjoy life still. 

Mahon: So, is there anything at all that I have not asked you would you like to mention to have on the record? 

Merritt: Leeah, I don’t think so. It’s been a delight to talk to you and you are a superb interviewer. You really are. 

Mahon: Oh, thank you. 

Merritt: I guess you do your homework, is part of it, but you’re just plain fun. 

Mahon: Well, thank you. I think you are too, and on behalf of the Administration of IUPUI and the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, I thank you for sitting with me for this interview. 

Merritt: I’ve enjoyed it. 

(END RECORDING)