Most of you probably know that House Organ began publishing shortly after
Vanderbilt Medical Center moved to campus in 1925. Canby Robinson, who at that
time was serving as dean of the School of Medicine, director of the hospital,
and Chancellor of the University, and Governor of Tennessee, had decided that a
publication to cover the news of the day would be a good idea—and so on April 1, 1925, the first edition of House Organ, then called Newes
Organ of the House of the Vanderbilt Medical Department &etc, was published under the editorship of William Woolsley, who bragged in his
typical windbag fashion that he had learned the newspapering trade from
Benjamin Franklin.
In those early days the publication had no photographs and consisted of narrow
columns of dense type, and included articles such as “Employees Complain About Lack of Conestoga Wagon Parking,” “Beloved Staff Member Eaten by Rapacious Wolves on Campus Outskirts,” and “Physician Sells Honey from his Own Bees.”
The editor’s column, “Observing the Wheels Which Are Spinning Round,” was also popular with readers.
During the Great Depression, tight budgets forced some cutbacks, including a
reduction in the number of copies printed. To make sure that staff and faculty
would hear about the events covered, Robinson would stand up in the cafeteria,
which was in the basement of what is now Medical Center North, and read each
issue out loud.
Later, during World War II, Newes Organ of the House of the Vanderbilt Medical
Department &etc was responsible for the sale of tens of thousands of dollars worth of War
Bonds, and then-editor Webley Webster personally planted a Victory Garden where
the Round Wing now stands, and then, after the war, wrote a column in which he
appeared to take personal credit for the defeat of Hitler.
It was shortly after this that the name of the publication was shortened to
Newes Organ of the House, or, as it was popularly known, NOOTH, or, as some “wags” had it, the NOOTHpaper.
During the 1950s, NOOTH was briefly delivered to its stands by a young truck
driver named Elvis Presley, who, legend has it, read a feature story about a
VMC physician who volunteered time at a prison—headlined “Jailhouse Doc”—and thought that, with modification, that title could make a good name for a
song.
The year 1964 was a watershed year for the publication, as its name was
shortened again, this time to the familiar House Organ, and photographs became
a regular part of the magazine. This immediately led to the first Pet Photo
Contest, which proved so popular that, tragically, editor Weebil Weemsbacher
was buried under a 17-foot pile of cat and dog photographs and suffocated.
The year 1969 saw the name of the publication shortened again, this time to HO,
but after two issues, for reasons lost to history, it was lengthened again,
back to House Organ. One of the most popular stories from the early 1970s was
about how a faculty member, Earl Sutherland, was the top winner on that era’s hit reality show, Who Wants to Win a Nobel Prize?
It was also around this time that the editor’s column was rechristened “Watching the Wheels,” and, in 1974 when Paul McCartney came to Nashville to record some songs, he
became taken with the phrase. Unable to work it into a song himself, he
suggested it to his longtime collaborator John Lennon, who eventually used it
as the title to one of his last hits.
In the early 1980s, House Organ won its first Pulitzer Prize as Mike Cline
published a series of hard-hitting stories exposing the fact that employees
felt that $5 a year for parking up to 40 feet away from the door of the
building was a rip-off.
The ‘80s and ‘90s were a time of a great building boom at the Medical Center, which was chronicled in depth by
House Organ, and which led to a series of editors, including Weeb Webb, Weyman
Wanker, and Wesley Walter Walker being killed in a series of freak construction
accidents.
And, in this millennium, I have sought to add to the class and dignity of the
publication by beginning the popular “Send in a Xerox of Your Butt” contest, which proved to be one of the most popular in the publications almost
300-year history until copyright lawyers from Xerox forced us to rename it the “Send in a Photocopy of Your Butt” contest.
But whether in its early days, covering the western expansion of the Medical
Center, or in the middle of the roaring American Century when the Medical
Center was in its heady salad days, or to the present, when we regularly use
hidden cameras to cover faculty parties for blackmail purposes, House Organ has
stood the test of time as the place Medical Center employees come to read the
facts of the day.
