Pope Webb Oden, M. D., Bienville Parish, Louisiana Submitted by Mike Miller ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ ************************************************ Pope Webb Oden, M. D. The professional reputation of Doctor Oden of Shreveport is based upon his fifteen years of working experience in that city. For some years he was engaged in general practice, but his work is now limited to the field in which he is a specialist of rank and authority, diseases of the ear, nose and throat. Doctor Oden was a specialist in the Medical Corps during a portion of the World war. He was born at Sparta, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, in 1886, son of Walter Pope and Annie Greer (Webb) Oden. His father was born in Talledega County, Alabama, in 1857, and was brought by his mother to Louisiana in 1867, the family settling at Arcadia, in Bienville Parish. Walter Pope for several years was deputy in the office of clerk of court of that parish, living at that time in old Sparta, then the parish seat. He became a man of prominence in that parish, and served at one time as president of the parish school board. Since 1908 his home has been at Shreveport, where he is engaged in the real estate business, Annie Greer Webb is a daughter of Dr. Isaac P. Webb, who was a well-known pioneer of Bienville Parish. Dr. Pope Webb Oden attended public schools and the Arcadia Male and Female College at Arcadia. In 1910 he graduated with the M. D. degree from the University of Nashville, Tennessee. It is of interest to note that just thirty years before, his maternal grandfather graduated from the same educational institution. During his undergraduate work at Nashville Doctor Oden spent portions of the years from 1906 to 1910 at Shreveport, serving as an interne and in other professional capacities in the Charity Hospital and the Schumpert Memorial Sanitarium. After graduating in 1910 he continued his affiliation with the latter institution as house surgeon and member of the staff until 1913, and at the same time was engaged in general practice. Doctor Oden in May, 1915, entered the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital at New York, where he pursued post-graduate work and subsequently was made house surgeon of that institution. In January, 1918, he entered the Army Medical Corps, and on February 22, 1918, was sent to Kelley Field, Texas, as otolaryngologist assigned to duty in the Signal Corps of the aviation section with the rank of lieutenant. In that capacity he served at the base hospital at Fort Sam Houston until his honorable discharge on December 6, 1918. Doctor Oden on being released from army duties returned to Shreveport, and has since carried on his work as a specialist of the ear, nose and throat. He is a member of the Louisiana State, the Southern, and the American Medical associations. Doctor Oden has some interesting avocations and diversions. He owns a beautiful country home on the Mansfield road, south of Shreveport, while north of the city he has a large plantation of more than 4,000 acres. Besides the production of cotton he is extensively interested in the breeding of live stock, and has some fine herds of Hereford and Jersey cattle and Hampshire hogs. His suburban estate of 615 acres on the Mansfield road has been transformed into a model stock farm, and its owner has become known as one of the leading stock breeders of Northern Louisiana, and has done much towards improving the grade of the live stock of this section. Doctor Oden married Miss Pearl Dillon. Their children are Eleanor, William Dillon and Pope Webb, Jr. Doctor and Mrs. Oden are active factors in the social life of Shreveport, and their hospitable home is made the center of much social activity. A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 143-144. , by Henry E. Chambers. Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.