Reginald Knight, November 3, 2022 (video)
Item
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Title
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Reginald Knight, November 3, 2022 (video)
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interviewee
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Reginald Knight
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interviewer
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Evan Moats
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Date
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2022-11-03
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Subject
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Medical School
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Psychiatry
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Veterans
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Description
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Dr. Knight was born in the Bronx in the early 1950s, but his family soon moved out to rural Suffolk County, Long Island. After leaving home to attend college in central New York he went on to become an orthopedic and spinal surgeon. His career has taken him across much of the country, and he is currently Senior Vice President and Chief Integration Officer at Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown, New York. Dr. Knight grew up and began his education during the height of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam war. This fact is part of his recollections on other career paths within healthcare he had considered.
I interviewed Dr. Knight in Cooperstown, New York at the classroom building of the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Our first attempt at an audio interview was unsuccessful due to some technical difficulties. This video recording is from that same day. As a result, there is one instance in which he references our previous conversation. However, on no occasion is it necessary to know the content of our first meeting in order to understand this interview. Dr. Knight speaks with a light New York accent, and it should not pose a problem to viewers of the video recording. For the recording Dr. Knight asked that I address him as Reg for the sake of comfortability.
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Transcription
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RK = Reginald Knight
EM = Evan Moats
[START OF TRACK 1, 0:00]
EM:
This is Evan Moats interviewing Dr. Reginald Knight on November 3rd, 2022 for the Cooperstown Graduate Program's Research and Fieldwork Course. Recorded at the campus building of the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Reg, I know that you went into surgery and then administration, were there any other specialties you considered along the way in medical school?
RK:
Yes, obviously I said before about pediatrics, but for a while I was thinking about psychiatry to be honest. [I] actually did a rotation at the VA in Syracuse where I got to interact with several Vietnam vets at the time, and in doing the interactive circle type of conversations. I think that that still kind of did me well because it allowed me to communicate and recognize that there were people that had mental health issues that didn't need to be deemed unsalvageable [so I liked that].
EM:
Did any of that inform the work that you did in Oneonta with the Code Blue Program?
RK:
Well yes, because a lot of those men in particular had military experience. It was several generations later, they weren't Vietnam vets. Some of them [were] coming back from Afghanistan or Iraq, but they were again, people who had seen things and done things that most of us would never want to do or see and were living with the ramifications of that. Once you get involved with those kinds of people you recognize that they could be your brother or your sister and they just need a second chance.
EM:
Well, thank you very much for your time today and I appreciate it.
RK:
My pleasure, [Evan].
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Coverage
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Long Island, New York
Fly Creek, New York
1950s-2022
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Creator
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Evan Moats
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Publisher
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Cooperstown Graduate Program, State University of New York at Oneonta
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Rights
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Cooperstown Graduate Association, Cooperstown, NY
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Format
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Image/JPG
430x3024
Video/MP4
477MB
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Language
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en-US
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Type
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Image
Sound
Moving Image
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Identifier
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22-011b
