Colleagues, patients and the public are recalling the perseverance, skill, and even humor of transplant pioneer and former Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery chair Norman E. Shumway, who died of complications from cancer at his Palo Alto home on Feb. 10, one day after his 83rd birthday.

“He was the Pied Piper who set the mood, set the tone that really has become the culture in our operating room and I believe throughout the Medical Center,” said Robert Robbins, a former Shumway trainee who went on to become the current chair. “Despite his enormous presence, he was a humble person who made all of us feel at ease, helped us do our best work, even when he had difficult things to talk to us about. I’ll miss just being able to talk with him.”

Shumway, the Frances and Charles Field Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery, emeritus, retired in 1993. In 1968 he had performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States. The patient, a 54-year-old steelworker, lived for 14 days. Despite disappointing early results nationally, Shumway and colleagues persisted in research and in the operating room.

William Brody, currently president of Johns Hopkins University and a former Shumway trainee, commented:

“He persevered and I give him credit for it because a lot of people would have stopped. He was a brilliant man. He was a contrarian. He didn’t like the limelight. And probably the most remarkable thing was the amount of responsibility he gave young people, and the results proved him right. . . . The things I’ve learned from him I’ve carried forward in life: like don’t read what’s in the journals because you only learn what’s not possible.”

At Stanford some 1,240 heart transplants have been performed in the past 38 years. Shumway also helped develop a combined heart/lung transplant and contributed significantly to treatment of congenital heart problems in children, as well as valve problems and aneurysms in adults.

Shumway is survived by his former wife, Mary Lou, of Palo Alto; four children — Sara, Lisa, Amy and Michael; and two grandchildren. The family requests that any memorial donations be made to the Stanford University Heart Transplant Patient Care Fund, in care of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, 300 Pasteur Drive, Falk Building, Stanford, CA 94304-5407.

For a selection of remembrances, see: http://news-service.stanford.edu/
news/2006/february15/med-memories-021506.html
and http://mednews.stanford.edu/shumway/guestbook/