Dr. Raymond G. Pahle of West Allis - 1971

Dr. Raymond G. Pahle of West Allis (ISU ’54) – WVMA President 1971

  

 Raymond G. Pahle, DVM

Photo:  Courtesy of Dr. Ray Pahle

       I was president in 1971.  Previous to that, I was chairman of the Animal Technician Committee for the State of Wisconsin, and we had worked out a program with the Madison Area Technical College and were ready to institute an Animal Technician Training Program, a two-year curriculum for training animal technicians.  In my travels around the state to talk to local associations, I’d gotten an awful lot of questions and quite a bit of flack, in fact, from veterinarians, some of them claiming that we were training people to be veterinarians and were going to hurt their businesses.  But, fortunately, the majority of the veterinarians were for it and eventuality the technician school did come to reality; and to this day, I think it’s pretty well proven itself.

       Regarding my other activities in veterinary medicine, I’m the only President of the American Animal Hospital Association from Wisconsin, I was fortunate to be president there in 1981 and 1982.  There is another thing that John Kuenzi and I can take credit for.  We were the first ones to use gas anesthetic machines in the city.  St. Michael’s Hospital wanted to get rid of some anesthetic equipment, and they called me.  I went over there and picked up a couple old machines and John took one; and between the two of us, we learned how to do gas anesthesia.

       I did use my experience with the WVMA to carry over to the American Animal Hospital Association because I was one of the first chairmen of the Public Relations Committee of the Animal Hospital Association.   In those days, public relations was not really felt to be too important; it was just coming into the forefront, and we felt we had to do something to sell ourselves.  In AAHA we did a lot more in public relations and I think I carried some of the Wisconsin philosophy over into the national organization.

WVMA

      I was Public Relations chairman for a number of years, and probably the most success we had was with the State Fair exhibit. We started an exhibit at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1974. This was done to promote the veterinary school and to do something about public relations work on animal overpopulation. So we did surgical demonstrations - spaying and neutering - for about 10 or 11 days at the State Fair every year since 1974 and it's still going on. The initial response to that was very negative from several people - Animal Protective League and several other organizations were very upset at first that this was going to happen. Fortunately, we had the backing of the humane societies and Dr. Bill O'Rourke. I never will forget the support that he gave us, otherwise this thing would never have been successful.

       Probably the most favorite letter I ever got was four years later from the Animal Protective League. We had decided that maybe we were overexposing ourselves and we were going to stop the surgical demonstrations. This letter came, begging us to continue the procedure because it had done so much for animal population control. It was a complete turnaround from the groups that initially were opposed to us. The surgical demonstrations are pretty much in the same format that we started in 1974, doing four surgeries a day for the entire length of the Wisconsin State Fair. Budget-wise, it practically cost our association nothing because the state fair picked up a great majority of the price for running this operation. To start the state fair project, we received $2,500 each from Fromm and from Hill's so we built a $5,000 surgical suite at the state fair. About two years ago, the state fair actually built an entire Animal Science building, including a surgical suite and other animal exhibits, so we've graduated from a very small surgical suite to a more modern enlarged surgical suite for our surgical demonstrations.

When I was PR chairman, the AVMA had a secretaries and PR chairmen meeting. The secretaries and the PR chairmen from 48 states were invited to Chicago for this meeting. And it was at this meeting that we heard about surgical demonstrations at the Missouri State Fair – they were the ones that had started this - and I poked Bill and said, "Hey, that would be a great job for us." "Oh," he said, "that's too much of a job. That's a lot of work. We'd never get that done." Well, again that piqued my interest. So, I told him I'd like to run with it, and after that he gave me the fullest support of the Executive Board of Wisconsin. If it hadn't been for Bill, I don't think this thing would really have gone off because he was very much behind us. But it was the cooperation of all the veterinarians in the state that really made it go. It was a tremendous group of people to work with.

Other activities

        Regarding my other activities in veterinary medicine, I'm the only President of the American Animal Hospital Association from Wisconsin. I was fortunate to be president there in 1981 and 1982. There is another thing that John Kuenzi and I can take credit for. We were the first ones to use gas anesthetic machines in the city. St. Michael's Hospital wanted to get rid of some anesthetic equipment, and they called me. I went over there and picked up a couple old machines and John took one; and between the two of us, we learned how to do gas anesthesia.

       I did use some of my experience with the WVMA to carry over to the American Animal Hospital Association because I was one of the first chairmen of the Public Relations Committee of the American Animal Hospital Association. In those days, public relations were not really felt to be too important; it was just coming into the forefront, and we felt we had to do something to sell ourselves. In AAHA we did a lot more in public relations and I think I carried some of the Wisconsin philosophy over into the national organization.

       While with AAHA, I was on the Board for about eight years, starting out as just a representative from Wisconsin, then a district representative, and then eventually President of AAHA. I was fortunate to do a lot of traveling. I know one year I had to go to 27 different meetings, and I actually took a leave of absence from my practice and hired another veterinarian for a short while so I could get away a little bit more. I enjoyed the experience very much. I was able to travel all over the country - Alaska, Hawaii - for meetings and made a lot of good friends. I think to this day, I could almost go to every state in the union and stay with some veterinarian I know because of the relationship with this national organization.

Personal information

        I worked for my father in a meat market in West Allis and right across the street there was a veterinary hospital owned by a Dr. Sullivan, which is now the West Allis Animal Hospital. I always used to wander over there in my free time to watch them and he would show me some things and finally, after awhile, I told him I would like to become a veterinarian. He said, "That's the worst thing you could ever do." He said that's no life for you, there's no money in it, and he just tried to discourage me.

Well, that piqued my interest, and I wasn't discouraged. Ever since I was a freshman in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I went that route and when I was drafted into the Army, I got into the Veterinary Corps as an enlisted man. After being discharged from the Army, I enrolled at Iowa State College for my career in veterinary medicine.

       I graduated in 1954 and started there in 1948. I know in my veterinary career, I thought they only had five years to go; but, while I was in pre-vet, they added another year, so I had to go six years. As far as my family's concerned, we had five children, one son and four daughters.

One last comment.

       My first wife, Ethel Marie Pahle, was really an inspiration to me, and very helpful in our practice. She worked right alongside me in our practice. And without her, I don't think I ever would have gotten anywhere. She, unfortunately, passed away of cancer when she was only 47 years of age, but she will always be remembered. The Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association Auxiliary honored her, and there is a scholarship award given by the Animal Technician School each year, the Ethel Pahle Award, to an outstanding student at the Animal Tech School Program at Madison Area Technical College. I remarried another wonderful gal, Clarice, and I have been blessed to have had two great women in my life. After 43 years of practicing small animal medicine, I retired in July 1997.