06/13/2023
In Dr. Fair’s family, you basically had two choices: you could either become a doctor or a Methodist Minister. Dr. Fair would undertake both vocations, yes, he became an accomplished physician, however, he saw his practice of medicine as a ministry.
In 1933, at the age of 18, Edwin Fair and a friend hitchhiked from Heavener, Oklahoma to Oklahoma City, and then to Norman to enroll in the University of Oklahoma, where they enrolled in pre-medical courses. In 1936, he entered the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine.
Dr. Fair served a two-year Internship at OU Medical Center. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, he and most of his classmates applied for commissions in the armed forces. He was turned down, however, due to having a chronic orthopedic illness in his hips.
After graduation from Medical School, Dr. Fair expected to go back to Heavener to assist his father in his medical practice. With one year of surgical training, he could do most of the surgery required for family practice.
The American Board of Surgery, however, required 3 years of surgical training, so he began to consider where he could do the next two years of his surgical fellowship. Dr. Fair applied to the Mayo Clinic, which was considered the best medical center in the world. He was accepted and became only the third graduate of the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine to be accepted at Mayo, and he was the first to be granted a surgical fellowship.
In his 3 years of surgical training at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Fair specialized in Thoracic Surgery, an up-and-coming specialty. During his third year at Mayo, Dr. Fair passed the written examination of the American Board of Surgery. He signed on for a fourth year serving as an assistant to the surgical staff, running two operating rooms 4 days a week.
It was during his 4th year at Mayo that he and his wife, Christine, decided to return to Oklahoma City where he would establish a surgical practice with an emphasis in thoracic surgery. At that time, there were no trained thoracic surgeons in the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. There was one in Dallas and one in Ft. Worth.
His private practice grew beyond his expectations and began to become physically taxing. He began to have increasingly severe backaches and it became more difficult to stand for the several hours that most thoracic surgical procedures required.
After thorough medical workups to determine the cause of the backaches, Dr. Fair was diagnosed with Paget’s Disease, a disease that changed the bony structure of the vertebra in the spine, a disease that could end up in paralysis. This caused him to reconsider his future as a thoracic surgeon, he knew he could not do thoracic surgery indefinitely or until retirement age.
With his increasing physical limitations, Dr. Fair decided on a medical specialty in which he could sit rather than stand, and should he eventually be confined to a wheelchair, he could
continue to practice. He chose to enter the study of Psychiatry.
Because he had received the very best surgical training at the Mayo Clinic, he also desired the very best psychiatric training available and he was accepted to a 3-year residency program at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas on July 1, 1955.
During his second year in the Menninger School of Psychiatry, four prominent men and community leaders from Ponca City, Oklahoma, one of which was a doctor and medical school classmate, called Dr. Fair to propose his opening a child guidance clinic upon graduation.
At that time, he was intending to return to Oklahoma City to open a private practice, and he was not really interested in their offer, however, he decided to accept the invitation to visit Ponca City.
Dr. Fair was surprisingly impressed by our small city of Ponca City; impressed with the school system, community support of mental health services, and the educational level of the citizenry, as that was during the heydays of Conoco’s research and development program, and to quote one Conoco physicist, “this was a time at Conoco where scientists with “Ph.D.’s were a dime a dozen.”
Upon his return to Menninger’s, Dr. Fair asked the Director, Dr. Karl Menninger, what a child guidance clinic was. Dr. Menninger stated that he thought there were only 2 or 3 child guidance clinics in the United States. Nonetheless, the final year of his residency was spent under the supervision of the Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and this was pivotal in his decision to accept the offer to start a child guidance clinic in Ponca City.
In February of 1958, Dr. Fair was hired as director of the Kay Guidance Clinic which opened its doors on July 1, 1958. He would devote 26 hours weekly to developing the guidance clinic and the remainder of his time to his private practice.
The Kay Guidance Clinic grew and prospered. In his own words, Dr. Fair says this: “The growth and development of this guidance program came about because we were in the right community at the right time and had widespread support of educators, the legal profession, the medical profession, the clergy, and leaders of the business and professional community. We were able to attract capable professional people who took pride in the growth of our program.”
In 1970, Kay Guidance Clinic became Bi-State Mental Health Foundation and served six counties, Kay, Noble, Grant, Osage, Pawnee, and Payne, as well as Cowley County in Kansas.
On May 22, 1989, the Bi-State board of directors honored Dr. Fair by changing the name of the clinic to Edwin Fair Community Mental Health Center. As part of this celebration, Henry Bellmon, then Governor of Oklahoma proclaimed May 22, 1989, “Dr. Edwin Fair Day.”
