Washington Watch for July 20

• By GERARD SHIELDS
• Advocate Washington bureau
• Published: Jul 20, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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As much as anybody, U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany understood the life and times of Dr. Michael DeBakey.

The Lafayette Republican’s life has an uncanny parallel to the legendary heart surgeon. Debakey, who died on July 11, was a native of Lake Charles, a city near Boustany’s roots in Lafayette.

Like DeBakey, Boustany is a retired cardiovascular surgeon. And the two shared another commonality in being descendants of Lebanese immigrants.

“He and my grandfather knew each other growing up and became good friends,” Boustany said.

Over his 70 years in medicine, DeBakey is credited with changing the face of cardiac surgery in the world, saving thousands of patients.

He performed the first  successful heart bypass operation and, as a Tulane University medical student in 1932, created the “roller pump,” a heart-lung machine that made the delicate procedure more common.

Debakey, who died at 99, performed an estimated 60,000 operations, and was  called to aid everyone from the Duke of Windsor to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

In April, President Bush awarded DeBakey the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Bush recounted DeBakey’s years of growing up in Lake Charles, where his parents would load up the family car with clothes and food every Sunday to take to the orphanage on the outskirts of town.

“He learned the power of compassion at an early age,” Bush said. “And Michael DeBakey has been giving to the world ever since.”

Those attending the event laughed when Bush told the story of how a young DeBakey became angry when librarians would not let him check out the great new book he discovered — the Encyclopedia Brittanica. His father eventually bought him a set.

“Michael read every word of every article in every volume,” Bush said.

When studying medicine at LSU, Boustany remembers learning about DeBakey, who became the Tiger Woods of the surgical world.