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Mark Armstrong Figure 1 is the John Binion Professor of General Internal Medicine and chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC). He has held these positions since 1993. Dr. Armstrong was born in Cull-man, Alabama, and grew up in Scottsboro, Alabama. He went to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennes-see, on an academic scholarship and lettered on the basketball team all 4 years. After graduating cum laude in 1968, he went to the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, finishing in 1972. His internship in internal medicine was at the Dallas Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital, and his 2-year medical residency was at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and Parkland Memorial Hospital. After completion of the residency in June 1975, he came to BUMC to practice general internal medicine, and he has been here ever since.
Figure 1
Dr. Mark Armstrong during the interview.
Through the years, Dr. Armstrong has been a major teacher of the internal medicine residents, and that led to his professorship of general internal medicine and to the chiefship of the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Armstrong has a large practice in medicine. He has also been very active in the American College of Physicians on both national and state levels. He is married to the former Nancy Stover, also a general internist, and they are the proud parents of two brilliant daughters. Dr. Armstrong is a wonderful guy, a splendid internist, and a devoted family man. It was a pleasure speaking with him for 2½ hours.
William Clifford Roberts, MD (hereafter, Roberts): Dr. Armstrong, I appreciate your willingness to talk to me and therefore to the readers of BUMC Proceedings. Could we start by your talking about your upbringing, your parents, and your siblings?
William Mark Armstrong, MD (hereafter, Armstrong): Thank you for asking me to do this. I was born in Cullman, Alabama, a small town in northeastern Alabama that was my mother's hometown, but lived there for only about 6 months. We then moved from Cullman to Scottsboro, Alabama, my father's hometown, and lived there until I went to college Figure 2. It is in very rural Alabama near the Tennessee and Georgia lines,...