Dr. William Hilleman of Richland Center - WVMA
President 1987
Photo: Courtesy of Dr. William Hilleman
Personal
information
I am a 1966
graduate of Iowa State. I was born and raised on a small farm in central Iowa,
Marshall County and always had a fondness for working with livestock. I enjoyed
farming, but at the time, it didn't appear that you could make a living on 160
acre farm; the land was not very available. By the time I was 17 or 18 years
old, it became obvious that I’d probably get along with my father a lot better
for a lot longer if we didn't work together every day.
So, I went
to Iowa State, with veterinary medicine in the back of mind. After a couple
years of pre-veterinary school, I applied for admission to the College of
Veterinary Medicine; not expecting to be accepted, but thought that I would
have my foot in the door for the following year. However, they surprised me and
accepted me.
After a
couple of years of veterinary school, we had a visit from the army recruiter.
He mentioned that, unless we were veterans or married, we ought to visit with
him. By the time he got through screening out the people that were veterans or
married, I think there were 16 of us left in the room. And he suggested that we
all promptly volunteer for the army because he was planning on being at our
graduation ceremony and drafting us about the time we hit the bottom step. Of
course, at that time, Vietnam was blowing up big, or starting to blow. There
were probably 13 of us that volunteered at that point. We had a commitment to
join active duty within 60 days of the date of graduation, but we got rid of
two years of stand-by reserve time without having to go to a meeting or wear a
uniform. Most of us felt that, if we didn't get military experience behind us
and we were draft-eligible, we would probably have a difficult time finding a
job. A person would be reluctant to hire us, thinking that we could be drafted
at some short notice.
By the
way, the recruiter did keep his word, and he did draft those other two or three
guys. The day they graduated, he was at the ceremony and handed them a draft
notice when they hit the bottom step of the stage.
I ended up
going down to Ft. Sam Houston where they were full beyond capacity. There were
800 physicians, and 400 dentists, and 80 veterinarians that were taking basic
training there at that time. Since they didn't have housing for everyone, it
was easy to pick the 80 veterinarians and move us into a brand new
air-conditioned San Antonio Sheridan with two swimming pools, and four tennis courts, and a couple of golf courses. We were getting
$10 a day per diem for living there; we thought we were really in heaven.
Veterinary practice
After I
graduated, I came back to Richland Center. I had been here as a sophomore
student and met the Bradfords and went out with Virginia vaccinating calves,
because there were always plenty of calves on the list to do. Then, during the
next year of school, my college roommate ended up becoming engaged to Dr.
Bradford’s younger sister. So I got to know them a little better. I came back
here as a summer student between my junior and senior year, and lived
out at the house with Dr. Brad and Virginia Bradford. They treated me like I
was their son. I lived there and ate well and rode with Brad on calls.
After I
graduated, I knew I was committed to go to the military right away, so I did
that, served 13 months in Korea, which was kind of interesting duty. I had
never been out of the country before, just a green farm kid from Iowa and it
was kind of a culture shock to go to the Orient. When I came back from
overseas, I was stationed at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas as the prison veterinarian
and post-veterinarian at Ft. Leavenworth.
It's kind of
interesting how I ended up coming back to Richland Center. I hold Dr. Brad and
Virginia Bradford in the highest of regards because they always treated me so
well. When I was overseas in Korea, I didn’t really think very much about
practice. I was just trying to get through the 13 months. But as I got short
over there, I started thinking I'm only going to have six months left in the
military and then I'll have to find a position. I hadn't corresponded with the
Bradfords on a very regular basis while I was in the service. So, I wrote that
I had really enjoyed my time in Richland Center and I enjoyed the area, and I
enjoyed working with them, and if they were still looking for someone to help,
I would be interested in the position. We had really never discussed anything
about me coming back.
I didn’t
hear anything from them for a couple of weeks. I finally got a letter from them
that was written on Shireman Clinic's letterhead. It had my name on the
letterhead. Dr. Bradford's comment was that I'd better come back and work there
because otherwise they were going to have to throwaway an awful lot of
stationery. That's how I was hired.
Dr. Brad
said, "You make half the calls, you take half the money." And that's
how it worked. They treated me very well. I've worked Dr. Brad for 30 years now
and never went home angry at him. I never ended a day when I was mad at the guy
because he just always treated me so well; I couldn't possibly be unhappy.
Anybody's
that been a large animal veterinarian should remember to say something about
their wife and family because they face quite a burden with the veterinarian
being occupied much of the time. I ended up marrying the girl who was the girl
next door to the girl I was dating. We married when I came back from overseas.
She's managed to tolerate me ever since. We have seven children. I have two
boys and five girls. Haven't got any of the girls married yet, so I'm looking
for somebody who has a real good aluminum ladder because I'm not sure I can
afford seven weddings, five daughters. We are very proud of all of them because
they are all good citizens.
Being in
practice here with the Bradfords has been an interesting experience. It's one
of the rare situations to have a father and mother, Dr. F.J. and Dr. V.F.
Bradford, be in a practice and I became part of that family. Prior to my coming
to the practice, Virginia had been severely injured in an automobile accident
and has been somewhat handicapped ever since. She did most of the small animal
work and Brad and I did most of the large animal practice. Later on, their son,
Mike, attended Iowa State, became interested in veterinary medicine and after
graduating returned to the practice. A few years after that, his sister, Dr.
Pat Bradford, attended the University of Missouri in journalism. It wasn't very
long before
she switched her major, and applied to veterinary school.
She returned to practice and, at that point, Dr. Virginia retired from the
practice. So, I have had the experience of being really in a family arrangement
where we have a father, son, mother, daughter all in the same practice. And,
I'm the other guy. I've been the other guy here for 30 years.
WVMA
I came
interested in the WVMA primarily because Dr. Bradford was a strong believer in
the Southwest Wisconsin Association. One
of the few times we both left the practice at the same time, was to attend a
Southwest Wisconsin Association meeting.
They were usually held within 30 or 40 miles of our practice, so it
wasn’t that difficult to get there. I
was impressed with the people that were in the Southwest. Some of my predecessors were instrumental in
that association and later became involved with the WVMA, people like Dr.
Dennis Carr, Dr. Bob Jackson, Dr. Ralph Day, and Dr. Ed Lindner. I was impressed with their
professionalism. All of these gentlemen
had been a state officer or on WVMA Executive Board and gave very complete and
impressive reports on the activities of the executive board.
I served a
term on the executive board and was asked if I would be a candidate for
president-elect. I was surprised and
quite honored to have been asked. I was
elected in 1986 and served a President of the WVMA in1987. At that time I was elected president-elect,
Dr. Bill O’Rourke announced that he was going to be retiring and would serve
one more year as executive secretary.
The newly elected president, Dr. Ed Lindner from Dodgeville, appointed
me to serve on the committee to advertise for a new executive. At that point we were calling it executive
secretary. The title got changed to
executive director as we progressed.
We
advertised for that position, started screening some of the applicants, and we
had several executive board meetings to interview some of the applicants. Prior to that time, the WVMA had been guided
by Bill O’Rourke as executive secretary on a part-time basis. We had a rather small and humble office, as
compared to today’s standards, in the basement of the Joyce funeral Home. Some of our membership thought that the
location was not very professional in appearance. And Bill announced that he was going to
retire, there were a lot of decisions to be made, whether or not we would have
a full-time position, and where we would have our office. (Our office went
along with Bill O’Rourke because it was his facility.) There were some rather heated discussions and
lots of decisions to be made. We did
eventually decide the time had come to have it be a full-time position. There were a lot of times when public
appearance or the appearance of a very professional organization was somewhat
called into question. The decision to
acquire an office that was not only more spacious, but also more professional
in its appearance, was one of the things that was important to a lot of the
membership.
My
presidency started off with a new executive director, instead of an executive
secretary, as a full-time position. The
board had decided to hire Leslie Schoenfeld.
I think it was the first time that we had had a woman serve as a major
office on the executive board.
Legislative
concerns and issues
There were
lots of concerns about whether or not we were going to have a full-time
lobbyist. We had a gentleman who had
done some lobbying for us kind of on an as-needed basis. There was a lot of the membership that
thought that we should have a full-time lobbyist. Obviously, the legislative aspect of things
that were going to face the state association were getting to be significant
and would continued to grow. I think
this is a very significant part of what the state association is all about.
Individually, we can’t do very much about legislation
that affects us, favorably or unfavorably.
As an association, with a lot of help from the Legislative Committee, we
have been able to favorably impact a lot of legislation that might have really
hurt the veterinarians in the state.
A number of
things that I can think of offhand. One,
of course, recently, has been the rabies bill.
There has been an ongoing battle about palpators. There’s been some discussion regarding lien
law which we’ve never really been able to muster. But we have at least expressed the fact that
veterinarians have to be considered when a farmer is in great financial strait,
that he not be left in the cold. We had
significant controversy in that the state had come up with this plan to certify
every veterinarian that dealt with pesticides, insecticides, disinfectants,
etc. and each clinic would also have to be licensed in order to do this. This led to a meeting with the WVMA Executive
Board and some representatives of the DNR, and some representatives of AG Trade
and Consumer Protection. I accepted the
challenge, took the bit in my teeth, took the bull by the horns, and went to
that meeting with a real good mad going.
I stood up and announced that I thought it was just another hidden tax,
and what they were really looking for was a way to raise revenue so they could
hire some more government employees.
They
surprised me by readily admitting that that was precisely what they wanted to
do. I had told them that I would
personally fight such an effort on their part until the last veterinarian
fell. I think surprised them that I
would be quite impassioned about something they viewed as being rather
simple. Anyway, we did eventually get
that resolved to have an open-book exam, and no fee, and everybody came away
feeling like they had won.
But that’s an
example of some of the things that can happen to you that are really beyond
your control if you didn’t have a state association. As an individual, you wouldn’t be able to
impact that sort of rule-making power, and they would just force it on you. As an association, we have some opportunity
to try and turn some of those things aside or end them totally.
Annual meeting
The
highlight of everybody’s term as president, is the annual meeting. During my term, we had the first annual
meeting that was held at the Embassy Suites in Green Bay. It was chance for those fellas from the north
side of the state to finally have something in their neck of the woods. I thought there was a real good turnout. It was good; the facilities there were
great. We had a few meetings prior to
that time outside of Milwaukee. But most of them had been held down at the
Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee in the middle of the winter, usually the last day or
two of January. I always liked to go to
the Pfister in January and watch it snow.
But I think the fall meetings have worked out rather well and,
apparently, many of the members like having the fall meeting better.
Editor’s note: In preparing for this book, I contacted
each living past-president sending a copy of their recorded interview and asked
if they wanted to add to their transcript?
Dr. Hilleman wrote back with the following comments:
“As I eluded
to in the interview the most significant events of my presidency related to the
retirement of long time executive secretary Dr. Bill O’Rourke. The executive board was faced with a wide
array of decisions. We needed to decide
what were the qualifications for this position, how and where to interview, did
we need a part-time or full-time person.
We needed to find a location for the WVMA
office: did this office need to be in Madison or would some other location
serve just as well. The membership
seemed to want more visibility and a bigger footprint in the state but we
didn’t want to impact the budget to the extent that the dues structure would
retard membership growth. We wanted to
improve without getting “too big for our boots.”
Another
challenge for my term as president was to put together the annual convention
and meeting. It was a big task for our
new Executive Director, Leslie Grendahl.
That was a first time experience for Leslie and me, without Dr,
O’Rourke’s years of experience to guide us.
The
convention came off without any significant problems. I finally felt comfortable that the WVMA was
positioned to continue to move forward.”
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