Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to JBJS Ortho Corps. Listen as members of the Ortho community, residents, surgeons, educators, staff and patients share their stories about the experiences and people most important in their lives and the lessons they learned along the way. OrthoCorps is an audio archive inspired by StoryCorps and independently organized by the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: This is Mark Swankowski, still at the 20th Century Orthopedic association annual meeting here in Albuquerque and had a chance to speak with about 12 or 14 members about different aspects of the history of this organization. And I'm now with my friend and colleague Dr. Dick Haynes, who we served on the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery together for a decade and are quite good friends. And he's got some recollection about some of the key members. So maybe we'll just start out with our recently departed dear friend, Blair Filler.
[00:01:09] Speaker C: Blair Filler and Doty were probably as close of friends as my wife and I had for over four decades.
We had many, many adventures together. But Blair introduced me to the 20th century and took a several, several years before we actually became members. But one of my finest memories of the 20th century is Wednesday evening dinners before the meeting. These were all informal and for the first seven or eight years, or maybe 10, that I was a member of 20th Century, every Wednesday evening before the meeting, we had dinner with Blair and Dodie, with Tom Whitesides and his son, usually Edward. Edward, yeah. And Joe Barr. And those are some of my finest memories as I learned, as I learned about 20th century life and orthopedic surgery. Tom Whitesides was one of my idols as a resident and a young orthopedist. I believe that I had read everything he had ever written and took everything and it was so wonderful. Now he was, by that time, he was certainly, I think, in his 70s. But it was so wonderful sitting down at dinner and getting the bottom line of why he wrote this and what it meant in the long run and the long effectiveness.
Joe Barr was equal influence. As everybody remembers, his father invented disc surgery.
I'm not sure that was a positive or negative, but learning about practicing orthopedic surgery in Boston from an unbelievably accomplished practitioner is truly wonderful.
Blair I got to know.
Well, we knew them very early on, but at one time in life, he and Bob Harrelson were basically running the CPT committee At the same time I was running the Resource Based Relative Value Committee. Basically I was representing orthopaedics to cms and CPT would come up with some Language that it made it very difficult to present a payment structure to cms.
And so I vigorously complained to Blair about, you guys got to start paying attention to what your decisions mean.
Well, I was rewarded by being put on that committee and having another.
But so RVRVs and CPT were combined for life secondary to Blair.
Blair and Dodie. And Sherry and I had some unusual things we did together. One was going to the Mammoth Mountain Ski Racing Camp every December.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Ski racing.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: Ski racing.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: All right.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: And we went to that ski racing camp every December for I don't know how many years.
Doty and my ski career ended the same time. Blair and Cherry never gave up complaining about it.
Mine ended when as an old man, you can't. Your neck doesn't turn. Well, I'm trying to see my time on the gates and skied into the exit gate, landing on my head and dislocating my sternoclavicular joint with a brachial plexus palsy. And so I'm laying there and the ski patrol guy comes up and says, can I help you, sir? Do you have a problem? I said, yes, I've got a posterior dislocation of my sternoclavicular joint. Oh, yeah, sure you do. I said, what. What can I do for you? I said, you can go to the bar and find doctor and find Blair.
So Blair came out and he knew everybody up at Mammoth Mountain.
So he then spends the next several hours trying to reduce my sternoclavicular joint.
Long story. I decided because then I decided to quit skiing after that after seeing a neck X ray with pre parent pre quadriplegia with no space available for the court. At the same time, Doty could not get along without oxygen at the 8,000ft that their cabin was at. So we both quit. Blair, I don't think he ever gave up and saying, why don't you want to go skiing with me anymore? Same thing from my rapidly declining wife who had Alzheimer's.
The other thing that is listening to all the Blair stories. One of his fine functions was being a member of the Los Angeles Adventure Society.
It's the world travelers and the people that have explored was lost Andrews Explorers Club. And Blair was a member. And they had to present something periodically. I guess twice a year he had to make a present presentation about something they had done. So all the trips that are legendary, going down the river in China and climbing quick, all of those resulted in presentations to a. To the who's who of explorers in Southern California. I always thought that was absolutely spectacular. Blair is one of the finest individuals I've ever met in my life. I defined him as the definition of volunteerism.
We had when Doty was hit by their neighbor in Lamborghini and sustained a head injury at age 84, I believe. Comatose for six weeks.
We went to see. Just as she was transferred into the rehab hospital.
We decided to go over and see her and spent. Spent the day with Blair and their wonderful son who took care of both Dodie and Blair in their aging years.
Greg was wonderful. This was Dodie's first time in a shower in seven weeks. She didn't remember anything about it. One of the things that was. Was somewhat interesting about that she had a dramatic recovery. How she even survived that.
However, she had a tremendous hearing loss as a result.
And Blair was very. What a. They were a wonderful couple.
It turns out that I learned from that day Blair had never made a cup of coffee.
He had never. Dodie did everything. She planned all their trips. I had learned long before. We did a lot of traveling together.
I never called Blair to make the arrangements. I called Dodie because she was making all the decisions.
So as she's recovering from this, it was very interesting. I'd call her up, but she didn't exactly know how to use her hearing aids. And so whether she's got a monitor or I don't know. But the one that was particularly funny as a result of that, I sent Blair Keurig.
I get this call from him. He says, this is fantastic. I can make coffee.
That's Blair, the other person that has been a huge influence and a wonderful friend from 20th century. And our friendship did not start at 20th century, but Paul Derosa, who was one of my closest friends over the years. I had just gotten back from Korea about two weeks earlier.
In those days, you sat for the board. One. Part one and part two the same day. Two years out of your. Out of your training. And Paul and I, that's where I met Paul sitting for our board exams. We did both.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: We did.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: Did both pass. And I remember making a legendary statement.
I hope I'm never in the Palmer House again. I hope I passed.
Well, I passed. And how many years did we spend in the Palmer House together?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Decades.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: Well, I think I. I was an examiner because of Paul for 27 years, but Paul to me, and I was telling David Martin this made two of the most outstanding contributions to orthopedic surgery that I can remember.
One is when Mark and I got on the board and Paul was taking over. Prior to that, the board was.
It was. They they made decisions. They had no interest so seemingly in what orthopedists wanted. And one of the prior executive directors came to the board of counsel, who was on it and made the statement. The board has no interest in what you think.
Paul's major contribution was changing the board to the board of every orthopedist. And the complaints. If you didn't, if you didn't recall somebody to be an oral examiner, they'd call up and complaining that they didn't take a week out of their life to be in Chicago at 104 degrees or something. And the worst part of summer doing exams from seven to five a day. Paul made that transition. I do. I remember well, when, when a member got up at a meeting that he was speaking on behalf of the board of and just assaulted him about some action the board had taken.
Before Paul could respond, another member not involved with the board got up and defended the board and Paul. That was to me, the true example.
It is the every orthopedist board of orthopedic surgery. The second Paul example I love was I always thought that becoming an examiner was a close society. It was not clear how anybody did that.
And. And it seemed to be a club. You had to be invited by somebody's friend and you had to be from this place or that place. And I remember getting it. I remember talking to Paul and he said, oh, this is an open process. This is what you do. And I applied and now we're recruiting examiners still, even though Mark and I are long off the board. But it's an open process. Everybody's, if they're willing to put in the time and expertise they have, the process. I am totally indebted to Paul.
He put my name on the list to become, to be a member of the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery. And the first time I was turned down, and Paul calls me up and he said, well, the board decided you were too damn old and they didn't need any more pediatric orthopedic surgeons.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: And so I, you know, I just said, thanks, Paul. And so two years pass and I get a call from the ama. We want to nominate you for the board.
And I said, would you call Dr. Derosa? Well, I didn't realize he'd initiated the call. Would you call Dr. Derosa? I don't really want you to waste your nomination. So I am totally indebted to Paul Derosa for getting me involved with highlight of my life being on the board and being in an examiner. What a absolutely wonderful person and I sorely miss him on a personal basis. Thanks for the opportunity to make comments about 4 people I truly idolized.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I just would express my gratitude for your willingness to be interviewed, Dick. But just one more thing about Joe Barr that always sticks in my mind is that he was very keenly interested in the hospitality suite at this meeting and you had to have Mount Gay Rum. There was no other rum other than Mount Gay.
[00:12:52] Speaker C: Thank you for reminding me that the only rum that has ever been in my house since I got a 20th century is Mount Gay room. And it was hilarious when they if they didn't have it at wherever we were at and literally they'd go out and find it.
That story I do love.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah. What a wonderful group of individuals. And thanks for your recollections of Tom Whiteside and Blair Filler and Joe Barr and Paul DeRosa, Dick and enjoy the rest of the afternoon of this last day of the meeting. Thanks for doing it.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: Thanks for doing this, Mark. Yep, you bet.
