Dr. Fred Anderson's career has been an exceptional one, combining major contributions in the fields of medicine and higher education in the state of Nevada. When Fred Anderson retired from the practice of medicine in 1983, he left behind a long list of awards and distinctions - not only in medicine, but in education and community service - that cannot readily be matched.
Fred Anderson was born in 1906 on a small ranch in Secret Pass, Elko County. The sophisticated, urbane and distinguished surgeon is a product of rural Nevada; he spent most of his boyhood and youth on ranches in Elko and White Pine counties and in the copper towns of Ruth and McGill, working variously as a cowboy, a soda jerk and as a laborer on the bull gang for the copper company.
He graduated from White Pine High School in 1923 without a clear commitment to any profession, but leaning toward civil engineering, influenced no doubt by the mining environment he lived in during his high school years. Anderson went to work for the Nevada Consolidated Copper Company at Ruth, deciding to work a year to earn money to enter the University of Nevada. A short time at hard manual labor cleared his mind of any thoughts about an engineering career, so he quit that job and went to work in the Ruth drugstore. There he became interested enough in pharmacy to enroll in an International Correspondence School course in that subject. He later took and passed the Nevada state examination in pharmacology and received a license to practice. His interest in pharmacy encouraged him to enroll at the University of Nevada in the premedical curriculum.
Anderson's descriptions of his four years at the University of Nevada present an interesting picture of a small state university, continually strapped for money, but blessed with a remarkable group of outstanding instructors, including Peter Frandsen, his idol and the man he calls the "ideal teacher." He graduated in 1928 and again found himself without funds to continue his career. Fortunately, a Rhodes scholarship made it possible for him to enter the medical program at Oxford in 1929. The Oxford experience had a profound influence on his later career, not only giving him contacts with a number of prominent British medical authorities, but broadening an early interest in literature, history, philosophy, and the arts. He completed his medical degree at Harvard, thus having the benefit of benefit of medical training from two of the world's great universities.
After completing a number of internships, Anderson returned to Nevada to establish his first practice in Carson City. It was a success from the beginning, but before he could get it firmly established, World War II broke out and he volunteered for service in the army. Anderson served from October 1941 until December 1945, first as a battalion surgeon in southern California, then as Chief of the General Surgery Section and Chief of the Vascular Surgery Section at the Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, and finally serving in the Pacific, ending his army career as Chief of Surgical Service at the 148th Surgical Field Hospital on Saipan.
After the war, Dr. Anderson returned to Nevada, establishing a practice in Reno, and within a few years he was established as one of the state's most respected surgeons. His comments about hospital facilities, surgical procedures and colleagues are quite candid.
Dr. Anderson was interested in the University of Nevada and its alumni association. Elected to the Board of Regents in 1956, he served for twenty-two years, four of these as chairman. His service corresponded to the period of the university's greatest growth, and he took a leading role in the development of many of the new programs and in the establishment of new buildings. His work in obtaining private funds for the university system was outstanding and brought millions of dollars to the university. His work as regent culminated in the development of the medical school - the School of Health Sciences. A medical school on the Reno campus would not have come into existence without the efforts of Fred Anderson. The title, "Father of the School of Medicine," given him by the school's first graduating class, is quite appropriate, as was the naming of the first building at the school, the Anderson Health Sciences Building.
In 1958 Anderson entered the Democratic primary for the office of United States Senator. Not willing to make the compromises so important in political races, he lost the contest by some 1,468 votes. Fred Anderson never allowed his primary interest in medicine to consume other interests in higher education, in the humanities, in community service, in the Washoe Indians and in travel, a fact which enhances this oral history as a research tool.