LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Dr. Dean Echols

I thoroughly enjoyed the biographical summary of my dear friend, Dean Echols. I took care of his grandchildren during my tenure in the Ochsner Department of Pediatrics, and his daughter's account of his management of television in his household may be one that you haven't heard. (It's rather hilarious, I believe.)

When television was growing in popularity, and all of their friends had TV sets in the living room, Dean's daughters told me that he refused to have such a monstrosity in his home! He said that such entertainment would interfere with normal family conversation. (He was right about this, of course, as he was about so many things.)

However, the girls' school required that its students watch the nominating conventions of the two parties, which were being televised for the first time in 1953. So Dean reluctantly allowed them to have a TV installed in the attic. But he insisted that it was to be used only for school work and then abandoned.

One day, he had a case cancelled, and arrived home very early and unexpectedly. He found the two girls in the attic watching one of the popular after school programs. One of the girls told me that he didn't utter a word. He simply went outside the house, picked up a brick from the sidewalk, returned to the attic, and threw the brick into the set. She said there was a terrifically noisy implosion! He turned on his heels, and went downstairs without saying a word.

Dr. Jim Fruthaler

P.S. You may also know that Dean Echols was a devoted fly fisherman. Many times he drove across the Huey Long Bridge and fished in a nearby pond on the West Bank during his lunch hour.