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C. Walton Lillehei, MD, PhD
- Vanderbilt University Press
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The Early Years 83 C. Walton Lillehei, MD, PhD (b. 1918) In 1954 you could have quizzed all of the physiologists, surgeons, and cardiologists who were working on this problem and you would have found 100 percent agreement that the one way not to oxygenate the blood was by bubbling. — On the development of the bubble oxygenator Interviewed May 4, 1998 My parents were both born and raised in Minnesota. My father graduated from dental school just about the time the United States entered World War I. He went from dental school straight into the army as a dental officer. He and my mother were married, virtually at the train station, and went to Fort Sam Houston in Texas where he was first in training. By the time I was born nine months later, my father was in France. I occasionally tell my Texas friends that I am really part Texan, since by all evidence that was where I was conceived. When my father returned from the war, he began practicing in Minneapolis and became quite successful. In 1926 when I was eight years old, we moved to a new community outside the city of Minneapolis that was called the Edina Country Club. It was on the edge of the prairie, really, but the developers had put in paved streets and sidewalks. My parents bought one of the lots and built our house there. However, in 1928 the Depression began, sales of lots declined, and very few homes were built during the next ten years. My brothers, our friends, and I had a lot of room for our outdoor activities, much like a huge farm. When we moved out there I was in the second grade. Our school had only two rooms, but it was very good. It had first through fourth grades in one room, and fifth through eighth in the other. Each row of desks was one grade. When I started, the second row was the second grade, but it was already filled. The teacher gave me a book and said, “See if you can read this.” I read it to her satisfaction so she said, “It looks like you can be in the third grade, so sit in the third row.” I gained half a year. When we entered high school I was promoted again, so I graduated from high school at age fifteen, almost sixteen. I entered the University of Minnesota before my sixteenth birthday. While you could enter medical school after two years of undergraduate work, three years were preferred, but I thought that if I needed another year I would rather it be at the end of my education, not the beginning. I spent two years in premed, managed to get into medical school, and also received my undergraduate degree after my second year in medical school. We were scheduled to finish medical school in 1942, but because the war began that year, our graduation was accelerated and part of our last year was turned into the first months of our internship . When I entered the army in June 1942, I had almost finished my internship. My best friend in medical school was John Lewis, and the two of us had signed up, two years before our graduation, for a commission in the Army Medical Corps. We 84 Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery were commissioned as first lieutenants and were sent to the West Point of the Medical Corps, Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. We were supposed to be there for an indoctrination course of six months, but it had been shortened to thirty days, which was ample. The instructors spent about half of their time complaining about the shortened course, but they taught us how to salute officers of higher rank, how to police up, pitch tents, and those sorts of things. There were nine hundred of us in that class. After graduation, I was assigned to go to Fort Devens just outside of Boston. My fiancée, Kaye Lindberg, who was a student nurse at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was then supposed to come to Boston where we planned to be married. However, as soon as I walked into the receiving room at Fort Devens on Monday morning to report for duty, everybody was rushing around packing boxes and shouting, because we were supposed to go overseas at 4:00 a.m. the next day. We had to put off the wedding until after the war. Early the next morning, we went...