Two Years Of Normal Life With New Heart

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 6

Two Years Of Normal Life With New Heart

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) INDIANAPOLIS, August 23. “I think it’s still a beautiful thing,” Mr Louis B. Russell, jun., said softly as he entered his third year of life with another man’s heart.

The 45-year-old Indianapolis schoolteacher, the world’s longest-living heart recipient, received the heart of a 17-year-old shooting victim on August 24, 1968, at the medical college of Virginia Hop pital, in Richmond. Dr David Hume, chairman of the hospital’s surgery department, said that the surgeons had set the period of two years as critical. They report that it has been more than a year since his body last tried to reject the trans planted heart. Mr Russell is critical of recent statements by Miss Jill Blaiberg, whose father. Dr Philip Blaiberg, was once the world’s longest-surviving heart-transplant recipient. Miss Blaiberg said in Johannesburg, last week that she thought heart transplants were “not worth while” and that her father underwent a “complete personality change” and lived a “life of hell” until his death on August 17, 1969, nearly two years after he had received the new heart.

Mr Russell said Miss Blaiberg’s remarks were “highly detrimental to the heart programme, in that there is enough doubt already. There are people that have been grasping for straws. When they read a statement like that, it tends to make them give UO,” he said. His wife, Thelma, said the transplant “hasn’t changed his personality any, and he’s able to enjoy life more. It hasn’t been a hardship to us at all.” During the last two years, Mr Russell has taught industrial crafts to junior high school pupils, although his

classroom schedule is interrupted frequently to speak throughout Indiana and nearby states. He is also a skilled woodworker and does most of the repair jobs around his house.

MR P. G. DOHERTY

A former commanding officer of the 2nd Hauraki Regiment, Mr Percy George Do. herty, who served on Gallipoli with the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, died in Tauranga last week. He was 80. Mr Doherty was born in Ashburton of pioneer parents In World War I he served with the main body of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles throughout the Gallipoli campaign. After leaving Gallipoli he served in Palestine, where he won the Military Cross. When he returned to New Zealand he took up farming in Methven. In 1932 he went to Tauranga and in 1938 was instrumental in founding J Squadron of the Legion of Frontiersmen. Later he was awarded the. Pioneer Axe, the highest award in the legion. Before World War II Mr Doherty served as an officer with the National Military Reserve in Tauranga. When the N.M.R. was mobilised as' the 2nd Hauraki Regiment, Mr Doherty, then a major: was at first second-in-com-mand and later officer commanding the regiment. Mr Doherty was president of the Tauranga Gallipoli Association, and commanded the Legion of Frontiersmen on several occasions. He later became patron of the Gallipoli Association. Mr Doherty is survived by his wife, a daughter and a | son.