“Awesome, I was in awe when I first started working here,” said Yolanda Richmond when asked what the BSD environment was like on her first day in February 1970. She was impressed seeing doctors in white coats, bowties, and dressed well. Now all the doctors wear scrubs or look like casually dressed college students.
Richmond had just begun working for Samuel Refetoff, MD, Frederick H. Rawson Professor in the Department of Medicine. She interviewed to be his secretary, and fifty-two years later she is still in this role. Richmond admits when she first started working for Dr. Refetoff, she didn’t know medical terminology which led to several blank spaces in her dictation. Luckily, he was patient and a great teacher, which helped Yolanda quickly learn his voice and dictate proficiently.
Yes, dictate. Each doctor had their own secretary who would transcribe doctor/patient notes. If Dr. Refetoff needed a patient file, Richmond would walk down to the basement of Billings, pull the patient chart, and bring it back upstairs.
“Technology has made things easier,” she said. She recalls using a typewriter for everything and ensuring she had several tubes of white out on hand, so the first Mac computer release was game changing for her and her colleagues. Richmond also remembers the headache of fax machines--back then, if she needed to send or retrieve a fax, she walked to International House to use the nearest machine.
“It never crossed my mind [that I would be working here so long]. Day to day, I enjoy what I do, and I enjoy the people I work with,” she said. Richmond has met many international fellows over five decades and has maintained friendships over the years. She even remembers a young Dean Polonsky as a fellow on Dr. Refetoff’s Endocrinology Training Grant!
Richmond said that over the years she has seen more outreach from the university to build relationships with its surrounding community, and cites the opening of a Level 1 trauma center as a huge step in the right direction. She hopes to see more opportunities for qualified Black applicants to have long and fulfilling careers in office and administrative jobs like she has.
When asked what keeps her here at the BSD, she says, “Working with Dr. Refetoff. He’s a sweet, patient person. He’s my boss, and I know that, and we’re friends. He’s part of my family. We made a pact that we’ll retire together.”
