Mortimer Buckley, MGH cardiac surgery chief
The famous found their way to Dr. Mortimer J. Buckley, who repaired their ailing hearts.
He replaced an aortic valve for actor John Wayne in 1978. Four years later Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, underwent a bypass operation. Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics president, took his place on Dr. Buckley's operating table for a bypass operation in 1993. And while Dr. Buckley was deeply committed to all his patients, he was most fulfilled by surgery he performed on those whose names did not generate headlines.
"He would tell you that the most treasured ones were when he would operate on young babies and give them a future," said his son, Tim of Wayne, Pa. "It's one thing to operate on a famous person, but to give a newborn a chance at a future was a wonderful feeling."
Dr. Buckley, who was chief of cardiac surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital for nearly 30 years and helped create the facility's residency program in that specialty, died in his Osterville home Nov. 24 of multiple myeloma. He was 75 and previously had lived in Winchester.
"I think he viewed himself, rightly so, as a really superb clinician and a great teacher," said Dr. W. Gerald Austen, surgeon in chief emeritus at Mass. General and a longtime friend. "The young people who he trained were terribly important to him, and they admired him greatly."
During Dr. Buckley's tenure at the hospital, cardiac surgery underwent a significant evolutionary phase as a specialty, colleagues said. They say he was as respected for his devotion to patients as he was to the attention he lavished on aspiring surgeons.
"Mort was one of the true pioneers of cardiac surgery," said Dr. Cary W. Akins, a cardiac surgeon at Mass. General and a colleague for many years. "He was a superb clinical surgeon and he had a greater devotion to teaching than anybody I have ever seen. He would stand across from residents every day, all day, for 30 years.
"He was a tough disciplinarian and he demanded a lot, but he trained some of the greatest cardiac surgeons in the country."
Along the way, colleagues said, Dr. Buckley made cardiac surgery safer by helping to refine the clinical use of the intra-aortic balloon pump, which increases blood flow to the heart while decreasing the organ's workload. He also helped develop ways to correct congenital heart defects in children.
He grew up in Worcester, the son of Irish immigrants from near Killarney, and graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and from Boston University School of Medicine.
"When he went off to BU medical school, he had such a passion for it. Medicine was his calling," his son said. "For him, you could save lives or help people live their lives, and he chose to do a bit of both. He loved it when the new residents came in so he could pass on what he had learned. He was the type of guy who wanted to build better surgeons than he was - that was his goal."
For many years, Dr. Buckley was a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He formerly served as president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, according to MGH and his family, and had received the American Heart Association's Paul Dudley White Award, named for the pioneering cardiologist who was born in Roxbury and treated Dwight D. Eisenhower in the mid-1950s when the president suffered a heart attack.
Dr. Buckley, who also was named a distinguished alumnus of Boston University School of Medicine, served as chief of cardiac surgery at Mass. General from 1970 to 1998.
"People describe him as a masterful surgeon, and he certainly was that, but even more he was a masterful teacher - to his students and his children as well," his son said. "He never missed a time to be with us. He was an incredible person that way to spend so much time at the hospital, touching souls there, but he was always there for his family as well."
Away from the operating room, Dr. Buckley's milieu of choice was a sailboat on the ocean waves.
"He loved to sail, loved to be out on the water," his son said. "When you couldn't see land, I guess that's the one time you can relax a little when you're a surgeon - you can't be called in to the hospital."
In addition to his son, Dr. Buckley leaves his wife of 45 years, Marilyn (Scully); three daughters, Dr. Kathleen Buckley of Weston, Deirdre Buckley Clark of Hamilton, and Kara of Concord; seven grandsons; and three granddaughters.
A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. today in Christ the King Church in Mashpee. Burial will be private. 