Marshall: Why don't you tell me about your formative years: where you were born and anything that may have happened during that time to get you interested in either psychology or theology?

Dr. Fort: I was born on the east Coast in Passaic, New Jersey. My family lived there until I was about five years old. It was during kindergarten or right after kindergarten that we moved to Long Island. I grew up in Patchogue on Long Island which is about 30 miles out from New York City on the south shore. It is kind of a nice area on the water. I grew up on the water through all of those years. I graduated from high school there and then lived there for another year. I think my parents lived there for another year until the summer of my sophomore year in college. Then they moved back to New Jersey. Most of my formative years were spent there.

M: Were you on any boats back then?

F: You bet. Not any big boats. We had little boats with outboard motors on them and so forth so we did a lot of fishing, swimming, clamming, crabbing, and all kinds of things. The ocean was one step away. There was a beach area and then the bay was in between there so we spent time both on the bay and in the ocean, I would say.

M: So you finished high school there and then you went to college. Where did you go?

F: I went to Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. I have to admit that I was a terrible student in high school. In fact, I can't even claim that I graduated from high school.

M: Oh, really?

F: In New York State, they have what they call a Regent's Diploma, which is what the college bound kids would get. I think I graduated with a regular diploma. In order to get your Regent's Diploma they had standard tests for all of the courses for all of the high schools there. If you took Physics or whatever, you took the standard exam at the end of the semester and it was scored and sent to the State. It would then come back and they would indicate whether they agreed with the score that was given by the home teacher. I think I had two in my senior year that I saw come back. I am not sure if I ever got my Regent's Diploma. I don't think I did. Anyway I was a lousy student.

M: Really. I find that hard to believe.

F: I don't know why. I just didn't have any interest in it. Every once in awhile I would hit a course that would really turn me on and I would do real well. I took chemistry and really enjoyed the professor and I aced it all the way through. If I had a teacher that didn't turn me on too much, then I really didn't work too much in that class. So I took two years of Algebra I or two semesters of it, whatever that was. I think I took two semesters of Latin I, until I finally realized that Algebra and Latin were not really my thing.

But, I am paying a price for it right now because I am taking an Electronics course to get ready for my boating and there is Algebra all through electricity. I wish I had paid a lot more attention back in high school.

M: Well, you got your regular diploma.

F: I got my regular diploma and I was a bad student. I just played football in my last year of high school. Before that I was working. I was a very industrious kid and worked almost full time while I wasn't in school. We were in split sessions of school as the area was growing so much. I would only be in school for about half of the day. I worked full time at JC Penney's. I was basically the head stock person and was in charge of the entire stock for the store.

M: Did you do that for several years?

F: I did that for probably about three years until I hit my senior year. I decided my senior year I was going to have some fun so I already had bought my car and so forth. I quit and played sports all through my senior year.

M: You played football? What position did you play?

F: I played defensive halfback and was fortunate enough coming in as a senior to be able to make the starting team at that position only. That is a great position to play because nobody blocks you so you are free to run up and make all of the tackles. Anyway, I enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun.

M: What kind of car did you buy?

F: I bought a '41 Ford, black Ford sedan. Great car. I unfortunately left it at home when I went to college and my brother was driving it; It threw a rod and we had to junk the car. Wish I had that car today.

M: I'm sure. It sounds like a classic.

F: You were asking about the ministry with me.

M: Yea.

F: Probably a real significant event in my life was actually the life of my grandfather who was a Methodist Minister. Now that I am out west, every once in a while I will admit that I come from the east coast, but not very often. What I will often tell people is my roots are really in the Midwest. My grandfather was a Methodist minister throughout this area right after or probably around the turn of the century.

M: In southwest Kansas?

F: Not southwest Kansas, but he was in Kansas and he had the church in Salina for a period of time. In fact, it is kind of fun to go back to these old churches where he was, to go in and look at their historical room. Most churches will have one, or at least have documents and so forth. I see his picture there and the fact that he was really there for several years. He had churches in Iowa and Kansas. He was a very well known preacher. He would be invited out to the Chitaquas that were all through this area at that time of history and so he would be one of the main speakers there. He had about ten canned speeches, which he would give to different Chitaquas throughout that area and was very well known.

M: What was his name?

F: His name was Dr. George Courtlandt Fort. He was called then to the largest church in my home conference. So after being in the Midwest here for a good part of his ministry, he then went to the Hanson Place Church in New York and served that church for a few years. Then, gradually as he got closer to retirement, went into different churches. He was in Jamaica, Flushing, and then one of the places where he had a stint of ministry was in Patchogue.where I grew up. That was my hometown and so he was there for several years. I remember him being there because he was extremely well known throughout the conference. As soon as anybody knew my name was Fort, they identified me with him immediately. I kind of grew up with people patting me on the head, telling me I was going to grow up like my grandfather. In a lot of ways, the thought of the ministry was with me very early. I am not sure it was ever my idea. I think by the time I got old enough to really begin thinking about it, I realized it was probably not a good idea.

M: You did study toward it.

F: Absolutely. I went to Springfield College for four years where I took a Liberal Arts course. I took all of the course work I needed basically to go to the Seminary. I then went from there out to Iliff School of Theology in Denver. In college, I had some very liberal religion professors. Dr. Fred Bratton was one of my favorite college professors who wrote some books on the legacy of the liberal spirit.

M: Really?

F: Another person was the chaplain of Springfield College, who happened to be an Iliff graduate, and who was also quite liberal in his theology. They were formative even before I went to the seminary.

M: So they helped shape your theological ideas?

F: A little bit, or at least kind of headed me towards a more liberal theological seminary.

Anyway I got married right after college. Sandy was also a student who went through college the same years as I did. So we went out west from the East Coast which was a big step. People, relatives and so forth were talking about Indians, cowboys and all of the dangers of moving out west: out west to Denver. But we did it despite them and went out to Iliff for three years. Iliff, at that point, was a small but extremely liberal seminary.

M: But extremely well known.

F: It has gotten more conservative. So I am not sure what its reputation is now. I think it is probably still seen as liberal. I think it has come a little closer to the middle. They had their philosophy of religion professor and their New Testament and Old Testament professors were all very liberal and, of course, the ethics professor. This was a time when civil rights were booming. Ministers were going down south and marching in Selma and places. This was in the early 60's. I was in the seminary between 1961 and 1964. I graduated in 1964. It was through that period of seminary that I made the decision that I did not want to go into the pastoral ministry and took a lot of courses by the professor of psychology, basically pastoral psychology, at Iliff -- Charles Stewart. He had written several books and then I also worked as Chaplain in my last year at Denver General Hospital. I took a lot of the pastoral training and those kinds of things. I took one summer of pastoral training back on the East Coast and did my training at the Danvers State Hospital right north of Boston. That was quite an experience. I decided to go on the furthest back ward. This was a classic old State Hospital on top of the hill with the spires, right out of a Frankenstein movie.

M: This would have been in '63 or '64?

F: This would have been in '63 or it may have been the summer of '62. But the hospital would go back in tiers and the further back you would get in the tiers of the hospital is where the sicker, more regressed patients were. My first experience was mostly with the this type of patients unit.

M: Interesting.

F: That was my first exposure to mental health work per say.

M: I see

F: Denver General was a good experience. I spent a lot of time on the psych unit. As a matter of fact people who have worked in the agency for awhile remember Dr. George Scott who joined us in his waning years as a psychiatrist. He just filled in for us for probably a year. I worked with George Scott when he was a lot younger working on that unit along with a couple of other specialists. I had a real good experience with that.

M: What was it that drew your interest into pastoral counseling and then into mental health?

F: I think was gravitating towards psychology. When I finished seminary, had I been able to afford it, I would have gone directly to grad school. But our first child had just been born. I didn't have a lot of money and there really didn't seem to be a way to do it immediately so I took one year and went back to my home conference and accepted a church in New Haven, Connecticut, right where Yale is.

M: What year was this?

F: This was in '65. I graduated in '64 so between '64 and '65 I was there.

M: Okay your first child had just been born in '64. What was your degree from Iliff?

F: Iliff, at the time, awarded a Bachelor's in Divinity. Now it has changed to a Master's in Divinity.

M: Same course work then?

F: Basically they kind of offered the opportunity to change it to a Master's Degree. It is three years beyond your bachelor's degree so you ought to get a master's. Anyway, it is now changed to a Master's in Divinity.

M: So you took a church back in your home conference for about a year.

F: Right. This was a church that was right on the fringe of a Black neighborhood and this was in the civil rights days. The first thing that the staff church committee did was call me in and said that they had done a survey of the Black people in the neighborhood. Theydiscovered that they do not want to belong to our church so we don't want you wasting our time trying to bring those people into the church.

F: I had just come out of a very liberal seminary, both from a theological and an ethical standpoint, so that didn't settle very well with me. So anyway, I was involved just locally in some civil rights activities right in the area. Some regional marches.

M: What did they tell you?

F: They weren’t happy. That may have been a small factor, but it was a very small factor in terms of my moving away into psychology. Because probably within a few months of the time that I was there, I was already applying for graduate schools and was fortunate enough to get accepted into Utah in their program. I was also fortunate enough to get some scholarships and so forth there. By the way, from college on I was a good student.

One of the things that was crucial to me was that I played football. The reason that was important was that I had a football coach (an assistant football coach) who happened to be a Springfield College graduate. He just took a lot of interest in me. Basically he knew I had ability, but I didn't have the grades obviously to get into any college. My grades were pathetic so he talked Springfield College into giving me a series of tests to see whether in fact there may be some native ability. I took the tests and that must have shown something because they accepted me on provisional terms. Once I got to college, I did great. I was on the Dean's List most of the time.

M: What was his name?

F: His name was Frank Turner. He counteracted the guidance counselor I had who had told me to "forget about it -- college isn't in your future. Look into construction." The guidance counselor was correct in terms of my grades.

Anyway, that is going back in time there. I was basically in my church, but in about three months had applied to graduate school and got accepted. I was lucky enough to get some scholarship help and so we could afford to go back. At the end of that year, after serving that church for just a year, in the fall of '65, I went back to graduate school and zipped through both my master's and Ph.D. I was very motivated to get out of school. Our second child was born in that process about the second year we were there. By the summer of '67, I had my Master's degree. By the summer of '69, I had my Ph.D.

M: In clinical psychology.

F: Right. I then headed to Penn State. I got several job offers in community mental health centers and so forth. The job at Penn State was appealing to me for a number of reasons. There were 12 Ph.D.'s on staff within this psychology department. Big setting, 35,000 students and so. It was just a very progressive group of people, an exciting group of people. I was young, didn't know a lot, so I figured I would get real good supervision. It was a good experience. I stayed there for two years and then I decided to take a sabbatical year. I went to Florida for the first time to Gainsville, the University of Florida, and did a one year post doc in community mental health. I was thinking that I would go back to Penn State. Basically, they gave me a year off to do this. Since it was at the University of Florida, there were a lot of people working in the counselor center, mental health division. I was supposed to get good experience there and bring it back to Penn State and apply some of those community mental health principles to the college environment.

Never did that. I decided after having spent a lot of years in college environments, it was about time to wean myself away from those environments and to go into a real community. I began looking at Florida. A job came available at the Mental Health Center in Palm Beach County. This was a fairly new, exciting mental health center. It had all kinds of federal funding and was one of the most influential centers within the mental health area nationally. This center was able to get all kinds of grant matches and so forth. It was an exciting place to be. Pretty much for a number of years, that Center could call their own shots in regards to what we wanted to do. These were in the glory days of community mental health. In the early 60's, Kennedy had just started the movement. We were getting now to the later 60's, but dollars were still flowing in. The Center had the regular staffing grant to get it going, had a growth grant, and later on it had a disaster grant.

F: Anyway they were on the rollercoaster ride on the way up. After I was there for awhile, they were on the rollercoaster ride on the way down. But these were very exciting years and we did a number of different things. I started basically as a psychologist on one of the teams. I became kind of a senior psychologist even though there really was no chief psychologist. I did most of the hiring of psychologists within that setting. I became a team leader for a period of time and then I became a director of what they called Preventive Services. We don't know anything about Preventative Services today because nobody funds that now. At that time, we had such good funding that we had three psychologists that were only in the school systems and consulted with all of the entire Palm Beach County school district. It was huge. It was a county that probably today has several million people in it and at that time maybe half that number. There were a lot of people there and the school districts were huge. We had people all through the school systems. We had people doing all kinds of different things within the preventive area. I became the director of that and that was during the growth years. It was a very exciting place to be. During the decline years, that was a very bad place to be.

M: Because that is where they cut the funding first?

F: Exactly right. We were the softest with regard to bringing in funds for the Center. When times got tough, my staff started getting cut. I stayed there for four years and the last year decided that I would begin to look around. It was partly work and it was also partly the school systems in Florida which were not good for my kids. Throughout Palm Beach County, you couldn't find a good public school.

I missed two kids there somewhere. While I was at Penn State, we had two more kids born and so we had four kids and couldn't afford to put them in private school. We had to go to a public school, so we decided we were going to look elsewhere. We looked across the county and low and behold the place that I had always driven through, but had never wanted to stop, was Kansas. This was the place we ended up. I took a job first of all in the Four County Mental Health Center in Independence, Kansas. This was actually in part working for that mental health center and in part working for a federal mental health center called SeKan. Four County was part of that. There were actually one, two, three, four mental health centers as part of SeKan. This was only for federal purposes; they didn't cooperate with each other in any other way except to receive funds.

F: SeKan was also in its dying days. I became the director of program evaluation. That was another thing I did in West Palm Beach. I directed the program evaluation component for a period of time until we hired a full time person to do that.

M: Was that in Kansas, director of program evaluations for SeKan or for Four Corners Mental Health?

F: For SeKan. They still had to satisfy the Feds that they were doing things.

F: Sekan. They actually wanted me to take over that almost defunct organization prior to my leaving. I was there only about a year and a half. The position came open here and I was hired in Garden City by Bud Lester.

M: What position was that?

F: I became program director. This was in 1977 or about. I was program director and up until 1983.

M: Program Director of what?

F: That was a good question.

M: In 1977 you were hired as Program Director of the Area Mental Health Center.

F: Right. As the program director, basically I was in charge of all of the programs, all of the program development issues and so forth. It was kind of like an operations director. More and more it became that and so I think Bud got less and less involved in going around to the offices and seeing what was happening. Basically I was taking care of all of the program operations, day to day issues and so forth. I did that between '77 and '83. In 1983, Bud was fired and the Board asked me to step up to the Executive Director position.

M: And here you are.

F: Just a couple of things have changed in that period of time. The budget, I think my first year, had just broken a million dollars in 1984. I think we just broke the million dollar mark. Obviously we are right now 6 million and growing. Obviously a lot of things have changed and grown here through the years. We were basically outpatient then. We did have little day treatment operations kind of going in Dodge City and Garden City, but those were afterthoughts. We were at the beginning of the State beginning to put some grant funds into long term mentally ill and then obviously mental health reform. Programs took off by leaps and bounds. We have grown more than six fold since I started. Probably we had maybe 40 or 50 staff. Now we are at 110 to 120 staff people so a significant kind of growth took place within this time.

M: Do you see that as maybe a major accomplishment? What are some of the things that have really excited you in those 17 years of being Executive Director.

F: I suppose the fact that we have been able to grow as quickly as we have, to be able to stay on task with expectations of the State and so forth. The fact that we have been able to meet the expectations of mental health reform every year, which I don't think any other Center has done within western Kansas. I think the fact that we have been a relatively problem free organization. I don't think that I have handed a lot of problems to the Board that we have (knock, knock) not had a lot of legal entanglements through the years. A couple, but not nearly what I hear other places going through. The fact that we have pretty good moral within the Center and I think a lot of our employees still consider this a good place to work and a good organization to be in. I think to be able to maintain a positive flavor to these things throughout some tremendous growth years and putting those kinds of programs in place would probably be foremost.

M: I realize I haven't asked you much about your family, your children.

F: I have four kids and my oldest son has his Ph.D. in Biology/Toxicology and Environmental Toxicology. He is an Environmental Toxicologist, aquatic toxicology. He does all kinds of research. He is on faculty at Oklahoma State. Also he works for a consulting firm in town and travels the country and actually the world now. He goes all over the place and does extremely well.

F: I have two daughters in Kansas City who are both physical therapists. They both have their degrees from KU Med School in physical therapy. Both are working for St. Luke's Hospital out in the Kansas City area. My youngest daughter is a speech pathologist. She has her Master's Degree from Arizona and she is working for Good Samaritan Hospital in a little town in Washington State just out of Seattle.

I am very proud of them, they all have at least a Master's degree and are doing extremely well. They are all married with kids. I have ten grandkids. As I say, I am real proud of them.

M: Have you bought your boat yet?

F: I haven't bought my boat and I have lost it in the last two weeks in the stock market, but it will come back.

M: Okay, thank you very much.

F: Thank you.