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June 11, 2020 - Jim Fetzer
10:31
Judyth transitions from Gainesville to New Orleans (Part 1 of 6)
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This is Jim Fetzer from James Fetzer News with my special guest, Judith Barry Baker.
Judith, questions have arisen about how you wound up in New Orleans.
Can you tell us a bit about how that happened?
Well, maybe I'll start with my friend Kathy Santee.
Kathy and I were taking medical courses for pre-med, like anatomy and physiology and comparative anatomy, things like that.
Kathy recently sent me an email saying, you know, thank you for helping me write up my application to medical schools to help me get in.
And I'm really glad she wrote that because it showed that we were working together and that I was taking pre-med courses because none of that shows up on my official record.
I mean, I have a D in chemistry in my official record and so on.
My official record is a mess and it's nothing like what I was really doing.
Kathy did remember, and she did earlier send an email confirming, she said, when I first contacted her again about a year ago, we finally found each other.
And she wrote back and said, what happened to you?
Why didn't you become a doctor?
You told me you were going to go to Tulane.
You know?
So I do have Kathy as a witness.
And you were fellow students and classmates at the University of Florida in Gainesville in the year 1962-63?
That's right.
62 and 63.
Taking pre-med courses together.
And she knows I went to Tulane and she doesn't understand why I never became a doctor.
Send that on right away to my editors, Ed Haslam and others, because I couldn't find... I had only told a couple of people that I was going to Tulane, because Oxnard told me, look, you know, don't tell anybody we're going to slip you in like this, you know, into medical school, you know, keep it... let's keep it to ourselves, because I would be coming in two years early.
But I did tell Kathy, because she was a very close friend of mine, but I lost track of her, because Kathy got married and I didn't know her, you know, her other name.
But Kathy said he did become a fine doctor.
So she became a doctor and everything.
Now, Judith, tell me this.
When was the very first time you heard from Alton Ochsner?
Well, that's not quite the way it is.
We'd had a relationship with Ochsner for years.
I first met Alton Ochsner way back in Florida when I was still in high school at the opening of the Watson Clinic, which is over near Sun City.
And one of my Mrs. Georgia Watkins with the American Cancer Society took me over there.
I had a bunch of fish that had cancer and he met me for the first time.
He met me again, though, in 1961 when he came to personally inspect my work, my cancer research work.
We have newspaper records that Dr. Moore was there and also two Nobel Prize winners actually inspected, one of those actually came over and inspected my work at Manatee High School.
And they confirmed that I had given lung cancer to mice faster than ever had been done.
Then they closed it down.
They said it was too dangerous.
They closed it down and said they would never let high school students do this kind of thing again, you know, possible.
So you're telling me that because of advanced research you were doing already as a high school student, you were having contact with some of the leading figures in the area of cancer research, including the president of the American Cancer Society.
Yes, well, Dr. Deal, for example, is the vice president for research for the American Cancer Society.
And he's all over the newspaper articles.
He also saw my work personally at Amenity High School.
I had crashed a conference in order to meet them because I couldn't get in as a high school student to this important conference that was being held in St.
Petersburg.
And I literally crashed it, and the police were going to pull me out.
Dr. Deal and a Nobel Prize winner, a wonderful man, Sir Robert Robinson.
I stopped them and allowed me to stay, and then they got to know me.
But I literally had to crash my way in to meet these important people, and I did it.
You know, I did it.
So, they got to know more about me.
Then they called Ochsner, who was their friend.
Dr. Diehl, Dr. Moore, and Dr. Ochsner always worked together in their anti-smoking campaign because they were trying to stop people from smoking.
So they had appeared and testified together in various court cases.
They knew each other very well.
So we're talking about the trio, the three musketeers, okay?
And they did a lot of things together.
So when I say I knew Dr. Moore, that means I know Dr. Ochsner and I know Dr. Diehl, and I have Dr. Diehl's business card and everything.
He's the head of the research, so he's the one who can set up anything he wants for me, and he did.
Dr. Deal is also very famous for helping lots of young people get into research.
It was one of his real goals in life.
Now, when was the idea of your coming to New Orleans first broached?
Well, what happened is that I had an incident happen.
I ended up in the hospital.
I missed an important interview.
I was supposed to be doing summer work.
And it didn't come through.
I was hoping it would be at the University of Chicago or somewhere.
It didn't come through.
Previously, the year before, I had done summer work at the University of Florida.
This time I wanted to get more under my belt, you know.
And I called Senator Smathers because I missed that appointment and said, can I get in at the University of Miami?
And he said, sure.
But well, actually he didn't, his secretary did, but she called, she apparently called someone else and they ended up calling Ochsner.
And Ochsner called me and said, instead, would you like to go to New Orleans?
And I said, well, tell me more about it.
You know, I was so thrilled because it's the first time he ever made a call to me personally.
And, uh, you know, so, and I hadn't heard from him for, this is 1963.
I hadn't seen him since 1961.
But although I sent him reports and all kinds of things, you know, so what happened anyway is that he said, well, look, we have a nice steady woman here.
You know, her name is Dr. Mary Sherman.
She needs someone.
She's impressed with the kind of blood cementation research you're doing.
With Tagged Cancerous Human Cells.
That's what I was doing at University of Florida.
I said, we'd like you to come.
And if you come, I'll get you into Tulane two years ahead of time.
You know, you can skip two years and go straight into medical school in the fall.
So I did tell Kathy, I said, Kathy, I've got a great deal.
I'm going to be able to go to Tulane Medical School in the fall.
I'm going to say goodbye.
I'm going to miss all you guys so much.
Well, imagine when I Forced to come back.
I didn't contact any of my old friends in medical school.
I was told not to touch any of them.
She never saw me again, even though I actually returned and attended the university after I was forced back to Florida.
And yes, Oxnard induced me there, and I have Kathy Sanzi to prove that I was going to Tulane.
Why would I in the world would I go to Tulane all the way there unless I had an invitation?
Well, I quite agree.
I quite agree.
Now, Ochsner never sent you a letter, however.
He did this by telephone?
Yes.
And on top of that, he was out of town when I got there.
I said it was two weeks early.
So nobody was expecting me.
And that's how I got in all the trouble I did, because apparently somebody sent somebody to help.
Lee was sent, because I get lost going around the corner.
It's a complexion I have.
They're laughing at me here because I'm staying with some friends here right now, and I have to go down the stairs, and there are four doors, and I can't figure out which one's mine when I get to the bottom of the stairs, and I've been here three days, you know?
This is terrible.
So Judith, tell me this.
Do you think then, in retrospect, that your meeting with Lee was not merely coincidental?
I do now.
It took a lot of hindsight because he never mentioned it that way.
It seemed completely natural.
But then again, he's a double agent and he could do stuff like that.
He knew how to act and how to put on an act.
And of course, once you met, things went from there.
He helped you get around town.
You were in the YMCA.
I was at the YM.
And what's very, very interesting is anybody could have come and met me and all that, but this man was different.
He looks at me and he says, "You remind me of, you know, you sort of resemble my wife." And here you can speak Russian And of course, when we went to Dave Ferry's party, all those homosexuals there and all the funny things going on and some of the bad talk about Kennedy.
I was really worried.
So I said, please, you know, you've got to help me here.
And he said, what can I do?
I said, how can you convince me that you guys are all on the good side?
For all I know, maybe you're a bad guy, too.
I mean, you came back.
You were in Russia.
Maybe you're just as bad there.
Maybe you want to kill Kennedy, too.
You know, they were the town is full of bad news.
Judith, just to squeeze in one final comment, how did you physically get from Gainesville to New Orleans?
All the anti-Castro people just seemed to hate Kennedy's guts, and they freely were talking about bad things about Kennedy.
Then you had all these Catholics who said, Kennedy's a good guy, he's our Catholic in the White House, that kind of thing.
So the city was all divided.
Judith, just to squeeze in one final comment, how did you physically get from Gainesville to New Orleans?
Were you sent a ticket?
Yes, I would send a ticket, and this ticket came to me by courier from Tallahassee, Florida.
And we actually passed through Tallahassee and that's where I had to change buses too.
But I kept that ticket all these years because it was sent to me.
It was a prepaid ticket.
I didn't have enough money left myself to purchase that ticket.
They were relatively expensive back then compared to now.
Judith, I want to thank you for addressing this question.
There are so many issues that have arisen, but it seems to me that your explanations are quite convincing.
I appreciate it greatly.
And special thanks to Kathy Sandy.
Yeah, that's Kathy Sandy.
Dr. Sandy has been practicing medicine for now for over 40 years, and she's helped many people.
And she's a very wonderful doctor, like she just came from the Honduras.
Thank you, Judith.
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