Life After 50 column on air at wmkvfm.org on Internet

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Added: Mon. Dec 05, 2011 10:17pm
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ALICE HORNBAKER SHOW

ON AIR WMKV 89.3 FM

WMKFM.ORG

12-12-11

As promised last week this week I would like to repeat the second of my two annual and most favorite Christmas stories of my life.

On Dec. 5 I told you about a Christmas in 1937 during The Great Depression and a mother’s love of her three little girls.

Today’s story took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, near Christmas in 1955.

As an Ohioan, I never knew what real cold was until I visited Minneapolis in the winter. But my husband and I ignored the cold. We flew there in a desperate attempt to save the life of our first born son.

A famous surgeon, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, agreed to experimental heart (back then) surgery to be performed on his youngest patient ever. My son was five months old. He was to close the hole between the two ventricles of the baby’s heart.

We went into a panic when the Mayo Hospital on the University of Minnesota campus suddenly announced to us that to do this operation

The next day they needed fresh blood and it had to be drawn and be on hand within 24 hours of the surgery. They could not use plasma.

We were strangers in the city. We knew no one to call to our aid in this beautiful cold city. Near panic, we were told to go to the still open Newman Club on campus, run by the Catholic Church. We practically ran there.

We needed blood donors, lots of them. The priest sent us back to our downtown hotel so he could try to seek out donors, although most on campus had left for the holidays.

In our downtown hotel room we couldn’t even speak, we were so scared. A few hours later our phone rang and the priest said we should not worry. They had donors. Many, many donors. He invited us to come over to the campus and see for ourselves.

We took a cab back to the campus to see a long line of possible donors inside and outside the medical center. So many in fact they soon announced they had enough blood, thanked them and told they could go home.

Who was in that long line? The kind priest, many of his colleagues, a lot of nuns in habits, students, faculty and our loyal cab driver who kept his cab available to us whenever we needed him.

That next day, in a more than five hour operation, Dr. Lillehei came out of the operating room wearing a big smile. He said he’d never seen a kid who so much wanted to live, even though an infant. The operation was a complete success, his heart completely mended. Chris was perfect now but he would have to remain in the hospital for a few more weeks.

How could we thank all those blood donors, these strangers, who gave up one of their holidays to help save a child’s life? The priest told us to light a candle in church and pray for them all, which we did.

My husband went home and back to work but I stayed on to daily check on my baby recovering in his very own private little glass enclosed room.

Then one day Dr. Lillehei told me to go home, take a break. They’d call when it was time to take Chris home. Early in January he did.

But what a Christmas present Chris, my husband and I got that year of 1955. What kindness and generosity there was in among so many strangers in that cold but heart-warming city of Minneapolis. They gave up their blood on a moment’s notice so that my precious son could have a healthy new life.

And what a wonderful way to begin a New Year.

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If you would like to reach me my email address is: ajhornbaker@yahoo.com or leave a message for me at the Cincinnati WMKV studios 782- 2427.