Dear Family,I am sitting here in my study looking at the wall full of pictures from the past with memories of past events, mementos of adventure and accomplishment. There are pictures of my Dad, my great teacher and mentor, Dr. Robert Linton with whom I was associated with for several years. You see the two of us together during surgery. There is a picture of my Dad in his first Model T Ford making house calls. There is a small picture of me as a missionary in Austria standing in front of the old Linz Gemeinde in 1957. There is a picture of Dr. Nathan Smith, founder of Dartmouth and Yale Medical schools and the surgeon who operated on Joseph Smith's leg as a seven year old boy.
Well with memories swirling lately, I get a call from Dr. Hardy Hendren who was a great and famous surgeon at the MGH and Professor of Surgery and the Boston Children's Hospital. When I was a Resident in General Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital on the Pediatric surgical service, Hardy Hendren (his knick name among the house staff was "Hardly Human", mine was "Big Daddy") invited me to accompany him and his scrub n nurse, to operate in Malawi, Africa and we were done there for a month and those adventures were unbelievable. He was a great surgeon and I learned a lot from him.
Well he called and mentioned that he was invited to give a talk at the prestigious Brookline Country Club in Boston and he decided to present a power point slide show of our surgical safari to Africa in 1966. He flashed a picture of the three of us, pointed to my pictured and said, "This was my Chief Resident, Roy Wirthlin. He is a devout Mormon and has led a productive life." He then flashed the next slide which was a picture of our 2010 family Christmas card that I wrote about previously. There was a gasp and stunned silence. He said the group was impressed. He told me about a MGH surgical reunion in Boston in September that I believe we will try to attend. They still remember us there.
The next big Family event is a Family Home Evening with the entire Utah gang on Sunday. There will be dinner, a lesson and just a good old time.
Mit Liebe, Dad and Opa
3 comments:
That is a great story Dad! That will be a fun trip back to MA
You leave a lasting impression on everyone you meet and are remembered everywhere you go.
Dr. Hardy Hendren spent eight hours in the operating room, operating on my chest and placing the organs back where they should have been before the surgery.
I loved watching the residents trail behind Dr. Hendren. One would have believed the line of residents would never end. The nurses were great also, when they heard Dr. Hendren was coming everyone straightened up.
For the rest of my life I will always feel blessed for having Dr Hendren as my surgeon. He will never be forgotten.
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