Bill for Medical College in Shreveport Approved by House in 57-43 Vote

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The Shreveport Times
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127th Year—Vol. 94—No. 186 Times Radio KWKH—Dial 1130 Shreveport, La., Tuesday, June 1, 1965 Telephone 424-0373 Ten Cents
Bill for Medical College
In Shreveport Approved
By House in 57-43 Vote
Measure
Now Goes
To Senate
By BILL LYNCH
Times Legislative Correspondent
BATON ROUGE — The
House, overcoming an ap-peal
to sectionalism, passed
57 to 43 a bill to establish
a medical college in Shreve-port.
The bill was steered through
the House by Rep. J. Bennett
Johnston Jr. of Caddo Parish and
sent to the Senate for considera-tion.
A move by Rep. Robert Mun-son
of Rapides Parish to add his
name as a coauthor apparently
tipped the scales in favor of the
measure which , will lay the
groundwork for an institution at
Confederate Memorial Medical
Center several years from now.
Munson is a floor leader for
the administration which has
thrown its influence behind the
proposal.
Nonetheless debate on the
measure was long and brought a
surprising amount of opposition
in view of administration sup-port.
NO APPROPRIATION
No appropriation was included
in the bill and a continuing sur-vey
and planning for the school
will be conducted by the city
and state medical societies.
A delegation of Shreveporters
—about a hundred strong — ap-peared
before the House Appro-
Related, Story, Page 2-A
priation Committee earlier to
help push it to a narrow 6-5 fa-vorable
vote there.
Rep. Lawrence Gibbs of
Ouachita Parish, who is seeking
establishment of the medical
school in Monroe, provided the
most opposition to the bill.
Gibbs urged lawmakers to de-lay
action on the measare for a
year so more consideraton could
be given to his area.
"I think it should go in Mon-roe,"
Gibbs said. "I'll take my
chances under the bond issue
when I set in the governor's of-fice."
Rep. Jess McLain of St. Tam-many
Parish asked, "didn't we
just give Shreveport two junior
colleges, one a branch of LSU
and one a branch of Southern?
Don't you think that's enough for
this administration to give to a
Republican parish?"
Proponents of the bill, how-ever,
urged the lawmakers to
forget sectionalism and support
the bill on its merits.
Johnston told the House that
the state medical society and
LSU Medical School officials rec-ognize
the need of the school and
believe Shreveport would be the
best place to locate it because of
Confederate Memorial Medical
Center.
Supporters warned that pros-pective
medical students who
were now qualified to enter the
LSU Medical School could not do
so because the school could not
increase its capacity.
"You simply cannot expand
Tulane and LSU medical
schools." Johnston said. "This is
going to get much more acute in
the future."
He reminded the House that
Confederate Memorial Medical
Center is a 1.000-bed hospital and
has the facilities to support a
medical school.
The bill originally was au-thored
by Johnston and Reps.
Frank Fulco and Algie Brown of
Caddo. Besides Munson, those
adding their names as coauthors
were Morley Hudson and Taylor
O'Hearn of Caddo, Ford Stinson
of Bossier. Parey Branton of
Webster, John Garrett of Clai-borne.
Ray Tarver of Natchi-toches.
Joe Cooper of DeSoto.
Bert Adams of Vernon. S. M.
Morgan of Red River and Ashton
Collier of Winn.