R EED O. D INGMAN S OCIETY - Department of Surgery - University ...

A N H OMAGE T O M Y F RIEND — JOHN E DWARD O’CONNOR
On November 16, 2002 in North
Vietnam, an enduring friendship came to
an abrupt and mournful end. The place
was Hoa Binh –
“Peace” in
English – a
struggling,
dusty little
city located
43 miles west
of Hanoi.
The main
thoroughfare
bisecting the
bustling, but poor metropolis is daily
filled with the cacophony of the blaring
trumpets of lorries, incessant beeps of
mopeds and honking of automobile
horns. Just off this street, at the bottom
of a slight incline is a squat, sprawling
hospital complex of vintage French
architecture. Peeling beige paint and airy
buildings speak of another, and perhaps,
better time. The Vietnamese had long
repaired the craters and the hole blown
through the roof of the main building by
US Air Force bombing during the
Vietnamese-American war. John
O’Connor and I had come to this City of
Peace on a medical mission, and it was
here in this spare, old hospital – the same
room where we had operated on palates
just 12 hours earlier – he lay dying.
It had all started, 30 years before and
8,000 miles away in the quintessential
university town of Ann Arbor. We were
fellow residents in plastic surgery at the
University of Michigan. It was a unique
class–Bruce Novark, an oral surgeon,
John, a dentist and otolaryngologist, and
myself, a general surgeon – all board
certified. We would be guided, for two
years, by a notable troika of teachers –
each a perfect compliment to the other
two: the cerebral and perfectionist Bob
Oneal; the meticulous and methodical
Bill Grabb whose encyclopedic knowledge
of plastic surgery was downright
intimidating; and the chief – an
innovator, pragmatist and super-surgeon,
the imperturbable Reed O. Dingman. To
hold together that disparate sextet of
personalities was the supremely efficient
and erudite Lauralee Lutz, a.k.a. L-3,
who carried the rather insufficient title of
“Secretary”, but whom we residents knew
was the “de facto Chief”. Those were
heady times, and more than anyone, we
could attribute our fine spirit of
camaraderie and cooperativeness to that
tall, effervescent Nebraskan, John
O’Connor. I can say, without fear of
contradiction, that we had the finest
plastic surgery group anywhere.
John and I bonded despite our
considerable differences. How many
residents with a family, at the end of a
long day, would come by the operating
room to find out how things were going
and give a hand in an incontinuity
resection of a
left forehead melanoma,
parotidectomy and
radical neck dissection –
or drop by at the end of
the day and help finish a
hip disarticulation and
thigh flap? John
O’Connor would. We
covered each other’s cases
and freely shared our
expertise. Politics never
intruded on our
conversations, but we
knew and respected each
other’s sentiments. John
hovered to the right of the center, I was
firmly implanted to the left, but over that
chasm we found a bridge of common
interests and mutual affection. I had
profound respect for his breadth of
knowledge, his intellectual curiosity, and
his intellectual honesty.
John was one of those rare individuals
6 R E E D O . D I N G M A N S O C I E T Y
a person meets, maybe, once or twice in a
lifetime – a sui generis. Where do you find
a guy whom you have to fight to pay the
bill every time you go to a restaurant? We
were in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1985
and John told me about this exciting
restaurant located on an old plantation.
By that time, I had up given up squabbling
with him over who would pay and stated
flatly: “ John, it is my turn to pay and I
am not going unless we have that clear!”
Thinking he had conceded, we went to the
restaurant that evening. Never sure that
he hadn’t again outwitted me, I
surreptitiously handed the maitre d’ my
credit card and told him: “That big fellow
there with the toothpick stuck between his
teeth is going to try to pay the bill, but
just tell him it’s been taken care of.” The
maitre d’ sympathetically responded: “ I
am sorry, sir, but that big fellow came in
this afternoon and paid.”
Left to right, Bottom row: Reed Dingman & Bill Grabb
Top Row: Jim Norris, Bruce Novark & John O’Connor
John could be devastatingly
outspoken. His frankness was never
motivated by viciousness – just honesty.
Once he walked in the operating room
while I was in the middle of a procedure,
looked over my shoulder and asked: “ Jim,
what are you doing?” and as I proceeded
to show him – he proclaimed, with the