Katrin DeBakey interviewed by Donald A. B. Lindberg, March 30, 2010, in Houston, Texas

Lindberg: Thanks very much for taking the time to grant us this interview. As you know, we're
developing the history of your husband and along with that, to some extent, the history of
cardiovascular surgery in the US, because he was pretty central to that. So we have a lot of
material that he's granted about the development of surgery, the development of the medical
center, things that are medically interesting, I guess I would say, but he did many exciting things,
of course, outside as well. Did you make some of these trips to Europe?

DeBakey: Yes, very much so. For many years I did all the trips with him, and I learned a lot. I
went also to the lecture which he gave then over in China or so, and so I listened to it and had
many questions of course, because I'm not an MD and so not a surgeon and so he explained that
and mostly somewhere in a restaurant or a hotel, he drew things up on a napkin to show me and
explain it to me.

- Lindberg: What was the China trip like?

DeBakey: When we were on a longer trip there [China], I went to see the pharmacies, which are
highly interesting. They have cherry stems and they have all kind of those things which we know
and which we don't know of.

Lindberg: Yeah, Mary liked that, too, the pharmacy.

DeBakey: Yeah, and then I just got a pretty good idea, and my husband was a little bit kidding,
but on the other hand he was very understandable because his parents had in Lake Charles a
pharmacy where he helped as a child, so he has interest on that as well. He did see the
acupuncture done to put the--like anesthesia, and he wouldn't believe it. He would talk with the
patient, and he found that really outrageous, and the operation was then done and very simple, all
that. When he went 15 years later there [China] he said, "So you still doing the [acupuncture]
anesthesia?" And they were, "No, we are now doing the Western medicine, so we do anesthesia
now."

Lindberg: Yeah, I've heard him tell that tale. It's almost too bad, isn't it?

DeBakey: Yeah, when my husband was sick we consulted with a German doctor who is very
firm in Chinese medicine, and he worked with my husband during the last three years, and he
told us that he goes to China to teach the Chinese people Chinese medicine back because they
lost it and changed it into Western medicine. But they are interested to learn it back.
Lindberg: So do you have an interest in comparative and alternative medicine?

DeBakey: Yes, I do.

Lindberg: What do you think?
DeBakey: Well, I think it's a wonderful thing and why not healing with the most simple things,
just God gave it all, the herbs they're growing in Europe on the side of the street. [In German]
that means so many natural -- all those things, and one can use it.

If you have a broken leg, you'd just rather go to the MD and have that done, or if you have a
massive heart disease you have to have it done, but you can start with the children to eat better,
to walk better, to love your neighbor, and I mean that. That has to be really done, and then the
people will already feel better and that is not homeopathic or preventive medicine, but it just
belongs together, the whole universe belongs together, the herbs and the food and the drinking
and the enjoying life and partner and friends, that all goes together.

Lindberg: Yeah, I know that you have your own point of view, and I'm glad that you express it
that way. Could you tell us what Dr. DeBakey, what Michael was most proud of in all of the
things he did? He did so many wonderful things. Got many awards and so forth. Was there
anything really special for him?

DeBakey: In the professional life, I think just to stay healthy brain-wise and body-wise, so that
he could do this, what he loved most on earth, to do surgery, to help the people who need it and
to make them -- it's a big thrill for a doctor and for my husband as well to see a sick child who
has not long to live with a hole in the heart or so, and then to fix it, and get a letter 10, 20 years
later that the child got married and has children and that was always a big thrill for my husband.
But he always followed-up his patients. I mean, I just worked together with a doctor in Belgique
on the preventive medicine and he said that is an interest -- he's an MD -- and it's an interesting
one. I just saw a patient who showed me a letter that Dr. DeBakey sent to this doctor that the
patient got operated when she was four years old, and when the operation was done and she was
back in Belgique, my husband would call and write a letter that he showed me to the doctor to
say please inform me what is -- and how is the patient doing. So he would follow-up and this is
just a wonderful thing. That's why there's so much great paper -- he could follow-up the patient
the longest of all the doctors; and I like very much that he is not [only] brilliant with his brain
and his hand, he had this big heart for the people. He was a really true genius surgeon doctor.

Lindberg: So your answer what was he most proud of was individual successes with individual
patients?

DeBakey: Yeah, to help them.

Lindberg: That's very interesting. So there were a lot of patients to remember?
DeBakey: Yes. What was it, 60,000?

Lindberg: Some outrageously big number, yeah. Remarkable accomplishments.
DeBakey: Yes.

Lindberg: So why did he stay so healthy so long? That was your good care?
DeBakey: Well, yes, maybe so, altogether he was happy, and I think happiness is something
good, good for everybody, you know, when the heart can jump and the soul and everything goes
together, and we had good food, simple food, and simple is good. I learned over the years how to
eat and how to be with your body. It's a present by God. It's that temple given, and one should
put good things in there, and treat it regardingly, and also I think he had good genes.

Lindberg: Oh, he must have, surely, yes.

DeBakey: Then God has his plans.

Lindberg: Sure.

DeBakey: And he [God] wanted him a long time and did everything--just shortly when he was in
an interview that was like maybe a year or two before he died, he said, "Well, it's just a kind of--
there's still so much to do. There's actually very little time in a life." Even so, he got nearly [to]
100.

Lindberg: Yeah, isn't that amazing.

DeBakey: If your brain is working there is always something you can do, and he had so much
more to do. He was much interested in developing the VAD much more.

Lindberg: VAD is a ventricular assist device?

DeBakey: Yes, V-A-D.

Lindberg: Yes. It seemed to me that's what he was most keen on.

DeBakey: Yes, well, there was the latest of them. He worked very hard and long already on it.
Lindberg: So will that work be continued? |

DeBakey: I hope so. In Europe it is very successful, and I think they will do here, with Dr.
Frazier, Dr. Noon--and maybe at the college station [?].

Lindberg: How did you and Dr. DeBakey meet?

DeBakey: We met at a dinner party, which was given by Frank Sinatra for an actor who turned
80, Jack Benny. So I really wasn't kind of invited. I just had a friend--we were with lots of
friends in Mexico, and they find out Jack Benny's birthday and so they were invited, and because
we travelled together, we all went over there. So I met my husband and we got on very well
there, just had much in common, and it was something one cannot really describe. It just clicked.

Lindberg: Just clicked.

DeBakey: Yeah.
Lindberg: But he went away with your telephone number, huh?
DeBakey: Oh, yes.

Lindberg: Good.

DeBakey: So one day he called and he said, "Well, you know, I think I can visit you because ’'m
around the corner." I said, wow, where, where are you? And he said, "In Iran." And I thought to
myself while I was gone, I was in between, in England, has something been renamed in
Germany, what is called Iran? Because this is not European standard to come from Iran but he
thought he was already near in Europe there, and that is on that side of the Atlantic, and that is
around the corner all for him. That was the way he travelled and the way he saw the world and
life. But he had this actually rather long trip from Iran, which he thought was around the corner
on the map: He came, and IJ picked him up from the airport and I had only on my car three gears
and a dog on my lap, and I drove the most the car gave, and I think he was never so frightened in
his life than on that trip. I brought him safe there.

Lindberg: Well, you both like fast driving.

DeBakey: Yeah, but he beat me on that. He had a very heavy right foot.

Lindberg: What kind of a car did he like best?

DeBakey: Well, he got presents because everybody of his friends and where he operated--like
King Leopold, and so they knew that he was in favor of cars, and so they gave him--it didn't
mean much to him. Just, you know, put the foot up and go, but then the police got him several
times, but he charmed the police out you know, when they saw that he was Dr. DeBakey and that
he had this wonderful Maserati or Ferrari, so they all--the police and he were playing on the car.
Then they let him go. I wasn't that lucky, so I couldn't have that right foot--

Lindberg: You had to obey the speed limits, huh?

DeBakey: Yeah, kind of. If they got me, they got me. They wouldn't let me be kind and like my
husband to let go.

Lindberg: So you and Michael have a nice daughter, Olga.
DeBakey: Yes.

Lindberg: Whom I've met and she's now through college.
DeBakey: Yes.

Lindberg: She's out in the world. Is she making you happy?
DeBakey: Yes, she did study biology and finished that, and then she did art therapy because she
moved over for art therapy which she also thought was a good one for her, and that is where she
will be blossoming in. She finished up there, too.

Lindberg: Well, it's nice that her father didn't sort of oblige her to go into medicine, because
sometimes that doesn't do a favor to a child.

DeBakey: She was already asked by friends and relatives at a young age--you know how people
are--wow, you're Olga DeBakey. You're the daughter. Aren't you going to become like your
father? And she would say with four years "No, no, I'm not going to become a repairman."

Lindberg: He didn't teach her to say that did he?

DeBakey: No, she just figured that out, and I thought it was a rather young age to figure that out.
She painted the operating room. My husband was very proud. She was like nine or ten, and it's
absolutely on the dot right, so the people who threw the blotter cloth and heart lung machine and
the patient and everything -- yeah, he liked it a lot, and he took it immediately to the office and
had it there on the wall.

Lindberg: Oh, sure. I haven't seen that. That's wonderful. That's a very good job. Was Mike good
at sketching things himself?

DeBakey: Yes. He liked very much painting, and he always painted and did lots of--in the love
letter to me, he made a lot of paintings and drawings and--yeah, not paintings, drawings.

Lindberg: That's interesting, because this is the year of celebrating Charles Darwin, 100 years
after the publication of his great work, and he was a really very fine draftsman and most of the
so-called biologists or naturalists of today took it for granted that they would have learned how
to do sketching accurately and attractively.

DeBakey: He did many things. He did--what do you call that with the needle where you can
make needle points, kind of very-- ,

Lindberg: Crocheting?

DeBakey: Tatting. He learned that, yeah. His mother was a seamstress, and I think he was
interested--he was interested in everything that's going on. So his mother showed him how to
sew, how to make tatting, and all kinds of things in that way with the hands, and he saw it, he
learned it, and he was best at it.

Lindberg: Surgeons like tactile stuff.

DeBakey: Or a car. The father wanted to keep the two boys quiet, his brother Ernest and my
husband, and when they were 14, he thought--they wanted so badly a car so he bought two, three
cars, used ones, and he put it in the garden, and he said, "Well, you know, here's your car. Fix it
and then you have a car." They were completely demolished, and in no time they had it all put
together, and-it was running and going, and the father didn't like it too much because now they
were--

Lindberg: Now they succeeded.

DeBakey: --not an age to drive by the law. So they made it working.

Lindberg: That's a good challenge. So that was a good father.

DeBakey: Yes.

Lindberg: Michael was a tremendously strong supporter of the National Library of Medicine.
DeBakey: Yes.

Lindberg: We, of course, are computerizing sort of the knowledge of the world in a way. But I
don't think he got to be a computer user personally, did he?

DeBakey: Well, I got him very interested when he was sick. I mean he had all the people, why
would he waste time?

Lindberg: Yeah, sure.

DeBakey: He did not go too much in the theater because he was there, and he knew how it works
and that was it for him, so it was always the same either a love story or there was a criminal or
something like that, so it wasn't anything challenging for him. And so this was the same with the
computer. If he had people who can do it, why would he look for something or write a letter or
anything. But in the end when he was kind of not that very healthy after the operation. I mean he
was healthy but not so kind of doing 100 percent what he did before.

Lindberg: An enormously trying procedure.

DeBakey: Yeah, so I got him interested in the computer. I thought that would be good for him.
So I said why don't you look up the Porsche because he was always interested in cars. So that hit
it. So we worked on it to find Porsche, where a Porsche and what model Porsche and all that. The
next thing was after he got it all going on the computer, he got with his driver, off to the Porsche
place and bought one even though he was partly in the wheelchair, but we had it all arranged,
and he drove the Porsche even in this condition.

Lindberg: Wow.
DeBakey: So it was the combination of the computer--
Lindberg: And enthusiasm. Well, that's wonderful. One of our purposes in talking with you and

assembling the materials that you've given us of Mike's--I know that he was interested in good,
young people coming into medicine and surgery and the health professions. And there are other
interviews that he allowed me to do at the National Library of Medicine over the last 10 or 12, 15
years I suppose, and it was with that in mind--do you have something that you would say that
would help young people to understand ideally the accomplishments and the thrill and the
pleasure that he got out of medicine?

DeBakey: Well, I think what he really believed in is “work harder,” and that's because he worked
really hard, and that is what people should know. And I think if they are lazy, forget about it.
They really have to be beyond. That's a philosophy about life. For my husband it wasn't teatime
and cake and having a good time and making a little money on surgery, which he gave right
away back away to help other people with. It was like 18 hours, endless hours. If it was 24 hours
a week, he would do that, because that was his life. One has to see what is one's life. Is it the

_ teatime and the vacation and less work and more money? Well, he was the opposite from it, and
so if you really want to be--and help people in whatever field, then you have to be committed
and very honest and question yourself. Can I and will I do that? So I think this is like what young
people should ask themselves. There are some lazy people, and they don't want to. Then they
shouldn't do it, and that is good then. Otherwise, that would be crippling.

Lindberg: I think he would very much approve of the way you stated that message. There was
something that's in conflict, though, in the stories about him. I mean my own experience with
him was--which goes back to '62, I think--was that he was just very, very kind, very thoughtful,
very wise. I mean everything was perfect the professional relationship as far as I could tell. But
the history and the stories are of “Iron Mike,” meaning that if you were training with Dr.
DeBakey, a lot is expected of you and he may come down on you and be hard. But at the same
time, the stories of his thoughtfulness to patients--so is that accurate? Was he both of those
things?

DeBakey: Yes, of course, and I wouldn't call it iron. I mean it's just like solid. Solid, that is what
he wanted all the way, in whatever he wanted all the way, that's what he aimed of. If he wanted
to have crawfish, he wouldn't settle for crawfish out of the ditch. No, they had to come from
Louisiana, and so he had them flown in. I mean he just was--it had to be perfect. It had to be all
perfect, and that's just a crawfish. So, the same thing with his work. It's just like if he commits
himself for doing an operation, then he just does it. If you want to call it iron, I don't think so. I
think it's just that was his expectation towards himself. He expected that to do.

Lindberg: And the people on his team, though?

DeBakey: Well, there were probably people who said things like that in a joke probably. A little
joke always has something truthful in it. They mean just like he doesn't let go. I mean he just
goes after the operation until the patient is good, and when the patient is out, he is going after the
patient to see how he's doing and every year. So he was totally committed to whatever he would
do. And he had many fields where he was committed. When he played golf, he played golf, and
he was good at it. I think his brother beat him, and that's what stopped him. He couldn't lose.

Lindberg: I didn't know he ever played golf. It clears the picture.

DeBakey: Maybe that was anyway the idea. Maybe he couldn't lose. That's why he was so
perfect, and he had to win over everything. Well, everybody does their way, but I loved the way
my husband did it. He was also committed totally to our marriage. It's in the same direction. You
wouldn’t call him the Iron Michael because he's committed to the marriage.

Lindberg: No.

DeBakey: But I don't know. They had maybe other expectations. They didn't want to work all
those hours and come back and stay with the patient, and remember the name of the relatives and
all that what he wanted them to do; he made them do knots in the matchbox, so that they can
really do -- there was no punishment, but when you see about how under what circumstances
they had to make the knots when they do a bypass, so good training. I mean the people who have
_ been trained there are very intelligent or not, but what they have learned that is something special
and they're special through that.

Lindberg: I think that everyone who got through or careered with Dr. DeBakey is proud of it.