Dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, 1993 December 14

Hunter arrived as Dean February, 1953; was 40 years old; had to work with an impossible budget; recieved a low salary; reported to the President of the University; was moved by the degree of growth and quality of the University; saw that there was a lot to be accomplished. There was a faculty of about 50-60 people and 76 students; almost all male; almost all white; from a wide geographic distribution. Hunter worked to break down the negative attitude of potential faculty recruits who saw U.Va. as poor, small, restricted, and provincial; agitated some because he did not want to build buildings, but build people; had a small lab in McKim and a grant during his first 7-10 years; worked on the chemical mechanism of penicillin on different states of organisms and antibacterial activities in other places and its effects in water, plants, and foreign bodies. Hunter's interests declined in the lab, and he became more excited by teaching. He focused on NIH, AAMC, international affairs, and ethics. This took him outside the University and has been attributed to putting the School of Medicine on the map. Hunter also had difficulties in the early years regarding racism and his “color blindness,” the Rose Garden affair (Medicare), and a speech he gave to a national gathering of pharmacologists blasting McCarthy.