Calming America: Memoir of Dr. Dennis S. O’Leary

By Dennis S. O’Leary MD and Margaret R. O’Leary MD

Pot Luck Spokesman?

The information void in the hours following the shooting of US President Ronald Reagan late Monday afternoon, March 30, 1981, spawned many false rumors and misinformation, which White House political adviser Lyn Nofziger understood threatened the credibility of the White House. He therefore took the podium before the 200 plus assembled press in Ross Hall to tell them that he would be bringing with him a credible physician to brief them once the president was out of surgery.

However, he didn’t have many options to draw from for that credible physician. At the hospital, the surgeons tending the three shooting victims had first-hand information about the afternoon’s events, but each surgeon knew only about his own injured patient. White House physician Dan Ruge meanwhile had been at the president’s side throughout the afternoon and was a possible candidate, but his White House association made his credibility suspect according to White House aides.

The job became the drafting of the most logical person to be spokesman. That would have been the seasoned physician CEO of the George Washington University Medical Center Ron Kaufman, but he was out of town. Next up was Dennis O’Leary, the physician dean for clinical affairs, as the preferred spokesman.

To the White House, O’Leary was a total unknown, but a review of his credentials would hardly have been reassuring. He had originally been recruited to George Washington University as a blood specialist. Reticent by nature, he had minimal public-relations and public-speaking experience, save two years as a member of his hometown high school debate team. He had no surgical or trauma training or experience.

But beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes. Kindly stated, O’Leary was probably the least bad choice to serve as White House/hospital spokesman to inform the world of the status of the wounded President Reagan, special agent Tim McCarthy, and press secretary Jim Brady. Yet, with a little bit of luck, it might all work out. And it did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663232922

Dennis S. O’Leary MD

Dennis S. O’Leary, MD, is president emeritus of The Joint Commission and former dean for clinical affairs and professor of medicine at George Washington University Medical Center. Today Dennis is a keen sports fan who also enjoys reading novels and doing jigsaw puzzles. Margaret R. O’Leary, MD, one of the first residency- trained and board-certified emergency physicians in the US, has combined emergency medicine and publishing careers for four decades. Today Margaret enjoys reading, writing, and gardening.

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Copyright 2022 Dennis S. O’Leary, MD, and Margaret R. O’Leary, MD.

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3309-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3387-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3292-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021924835

iUniverse rev. date: 9/16/2022

This book is dedicated to

Dr. Abraham Sophian (1885–1957)

and

Dr. Abraham Sophian Jr. (1915–1944)

He wears his life like a light cloak.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Prologue Notes

Chapter 1     Shaping the Persona

Chapter 1 Notes

Chapter 2     George WashingtonUniversity MedicalCenter: Early Leaderand Late Bloomer

Chapter 2 Notes

Chapter 3     Scaling the Ladderof Influence

Chapter 3 Notes

Chapter 4     A Dark and Stormy Day

Chapter 4 Notes

Chapter 5     President Reagan,Typical Patient

Chapter 5 Notes

Chapter 6     Aftermath

Chapter 6 Notes

Chapter 7     Adapting to a New Normal

Chapter 7 Notes

Chapter 8     Leadership Challenges

Chapter 8 Notes

Chapter 9     For Sale or Lease:Univ. Med. Ctr.

Chapter 9 Notes

Chapter 10   The Joint CommissionCourtship

Chapter 10 Notes

Chapter 11   Adieu and Bonjour

Chapter 11 Notes

Epilogue

Epilogue Notes

PREFACE

I never planned to write my memoir. My basic life philosophy is Dust to dust—that is, one is born, lives one’s life, and then dies generally forgotten. Thus, the idea of writing a memoir remained low on my priority list until I began to reflect on my life adventures and the times in which I have lived. It seemed, I realized, that my experiences, observations, and insights might be worth documenting for future generations interested in the histories of American presidents, academic medical centers, emergency medicine and trauma care, health care politics, and the interface between medicine and the media during the second half of the twentieth century.

Getting started was the easy part. Getting to the finish line was quite another story. Fortunately, my spouse Margaret is an established nonfiction author and we had written together professionally as a team during the previous four decades. So one day we sat down with a tape recorder and a box of cassettes and she started the painstaking process of extracting from me the details of my personal history. That effort basically gave us a scaffold on which to drape the stories, life experiences, and a continuous narrative from my ancestors through to the conclusion of my tenure in Washington, DC, in 1986. This effort was made possible by our collection over time of voluminous primary source materials, which we had somehow kept together—in no particular order—through our moves from Washington, DC, to Chicago and, finally, to Kansas City, where we now live. Organizing the primary source materials and integrating them, as appropriate, into the text was a laborious task, but after two years of hard work, we completed the manuscript and also produced the Dennis S. O’Leary Archive.

The centerpiece story in this book concerns the part I played as the main hospital spokesman during the thirteen-day hospitalization of US President Ronald Wilson Reagan at George Washington University Hospital following the shooting attempt on his life in Washington, DC, on March 30, 1981. This story is mostly told as a firsthand narrative interwoven with separate primary source materials researched and organized by Margaret. These materials include public transcripts of press briefings, media reports, letters from the public, testimonies, and excerpts from President Reagan’s diary. Together they provide immediacy, transparency, and historical perspective to the rapidly unfolding events of those thirteen days, which climaxed in President Reagan’s departure from our hospital in good condition and well on his way to a full recovery.

This book also tells the story of the George Washington University Medical Center’s evolution from its founding in Washington, DC, in 1825 by six Philadelphia- and Boston-trained doctors, to its standing in the 1960s as the last academic medical center in the US to forgo full-time academic faculty physicians and administrators, to 1981 as the leading academic medical center in Washington, DC, whose now full-time clinical and administrative staff successfully managed the monumental crisis thrust at them following the shooting of President Reagan and others at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

This book also details the elaboration of the medical center’s emergency and trauma-care capabilities from a rudimentary state in the 1960s to being the best in Washington, DC, in 1981. Margaret’s background as a residency-trained and board-certified emergency physician who learned emergency medicine and trauma during the early to mid-1980s at George Washington University Hospital, Georgetown University Hospital, and the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, was especially helpful in describing this latter evolution.

Finally, there is the story of my year as president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, which brought me into serious conflict with the District of Columbia City Council, my home institution of George Washington University, and the Medical Society membership. It all turned out well in the end but just barely.

One never knows whether one will have life opportunities to play vital roles in events such as those framed above and, if afforded such opportunities, whether one will comport oneself well. I was lucky to have had these opportunities but fortunate as well to have had ongoing life experiences that molded me into the person I eventually became. In some instances, I was in the right place at the right time and capitalized on the opportunity, while in others, I took chances and ran against the tide of my peer group. This continuous shaping of my persona—described through much of this memoir—transformed me from a painfully shy high school student to the confident public speaker I became.

In most cases, no test exists to determine whether the transformation was successful. As it turned out, I was tested repeatedly, but the biggest test of all happened when I suddenly found myself center stage as George Washington University Hospital spokesman and de facto White House spokesman following the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. To glean an understanding of what was expected of me, we open this book with a prologue describing the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan and the related events that led to my being thrust into the spokesman role.

This memoir, as well as the notes that further describe individuals mentioned in the text, describes only half my professional career. Beginning in 1986, I went on to serve twenty-one years as president of The Joint Commission, the predominant health-care accrediting body in the world. My experiences as spokesman during President Reagan’s hospitalization at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and as president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia were mild compared to the complex, roiling environment I encountered at the national and international health-care levels. That is a pretty good story too, but we are going to rest a little while before starting the second memoir.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to acknowledge Dr. Milton Corn, Mr. Craig DeAtley, Ms. Pia R. Duryea, Dr. Sol Edelstein, Ms. Tricia Gesner, Mr. Thomas Kohout, Ms. Andrea Matlak, Dr. Michael Rolnick, Dr. Robert Shesser, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, and Dr. Mark Smith, who helped us in the preparation of this book.

PROLOGUE

Moments after approximately 2:25 p.m. on Monday, March 30, 1981, US President Ronald Wilson Reagan¹ strode from the side door—the VIP entrance—of the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC, where he had just given a speech to union officials representing the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations. President Reagan smiled and waved to the small crowd gathered at the side door as reporters shouted, Mr. President! Mr. President! hoping he would answer their questions.

Suddenly at 2:27 p.m. there were rapid-fire staccato sounds—at least four and possibly six. According to witnesses, there was a fleeting expression of surprise—perhaps of pain—across the president’s face just before the Secret Service special agent in charge forcefully pushed the president forward into the presidential limousine and onto its backseat floor. A second Secret Service agent then pushed the special agent in charge into the limousine so that he landed on top of the president. The president remarked that he had felt a painful blow to his upper left back and thought he had broken a rib.²

1.jpg

US President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) a moment before he

was shot on Monday, March 30, 1981, outside the Washington

Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C. Photograph ID C1426-16, White

House Photographic Office: 1981–89 Collection in The Ronald

Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. Public domain.

As the limousine driver accelerated away from the hotel, President Reagan sat up on the edge of the backseat, stricken with pain in his left upper back and left chest. He then coughed up a small amount of bright red blood and wondered whether his presumed injured rib had also punctured his lung.³ On hearing about the blood, the limousine driver redirected the limousine from its White House destination to George Washington University Hospital, the closest hospital, about a mile southeast of the hotel. In 1981, the hospital filled the city block edged by Twenty-Third Street NW, Twenty-Second Street NW, Eye Street NW, and Washington Circle.⁴ The president’s limousine arrived at George Washington University Hospital emergency room entrance at 2:30:54 p.m., less than four minutes after the shooting.⁵

President Reagan climbed out of the limousine under his own power, walked about twenty feet through the emergency room’s three sets of double doors, and stopped at the entrance to the emergency room’s inner main clinical care area, where his knees buckled, and he started to slump. A nurse, a paramedic, and two Secret Service agents—the one who had traveled with the president in the limousine’s backseat and the limousine driver—supported the president by his arms and legs; carried him to the resuscitation area at the back of the emergency room, a distance of about fifty feet; and hoisted him onto the waiting stretcher. The president at once said clearly and strongly to the staff lining the stretcher that no matter how hard he tried to breathe, he felt that he was getting less and less air.³

During the shooting and the president’s transport to our hospital, Michael Mackie Mike Barch⁶ and I were attending a meeting on the twelfth floor of the H. B. Burns Memorial Building, located across the street from our hospital emergency room. At the time, I was dean for clinical affairs at George Washington University Medical Center and acting medical director for George Washington University Hospital, and Barch was the hospital administrator. At roughly 2:30 p.m., someone asked Barch to take a phone call in another room.

Barch quickly returned and announced, The president is in the emergency room. Let’s go. I immediately asked, Which president? because there were a lot of presidents in Washington, DC, and we did not normally meet them in our hospital emergency room. Barch replied, The president of the United States. That caught my attention. Barch, Dr. Neofytos Newt Theodore Tsangaris⁷ (acting chairman of the department of surgery, who was also at the meeting in the H. B. Burns Memorial Building) and I descended by the elevator to the first floor of the building, crossed Twenty-Second Street NW, passed the parked presidential limousine, and walked into the hospital through the emergency room’s three sets of double doors. I then threaded my way to the resuscitation area and bay 5A located at the back of the emergency room where I came upon the still fully-clothed President Reagan, lying on a stretcher with its back elevated and talking with two young men dressed in green surgical scrubs. I noted that the president had no facial pallor, but his expression was strained, which I attributed to his yet-undiagnosed ailment and his presence among strangers in a cramped and unfamiliar setting. I planted myself at the foot of the president’s stretcher at the entrance to bay 5A for the duration of the president’s stay in our emergency room and focused my attention on him and the hospital staff caring for him.

I initially thought the president had been in the emergency room for perhaps ten minutes before I first arrived, but I changed my mind when I realized that he was still fully dressed when I first saw him. Bays 5A and 5B were reserved for trauma and other patients in extremis, whose clothing was rapidly removed to allow access for staff to perform a physical examination and life-saving diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The staff would not have managed and did not manage President Reagan differently. I then surmised that I had arrived in bay 5A probably within two or three minutes of the president’s arrival there. When I first arrived, I knew nothing about the shootings at the hotel, the president’s condition in the limousine, his clinical status upon entering our emergency room, or what was wrong with him. However, I did know that his clinical care was under control by the staff and that he was going to do well, with any luck at all.

As I stood there, two large men, one on either side of me, identified themselves as Secret Service agents and expressed their strong desire to me to secure the area. So I pointed out the people who needed to leave. From a clinical perspective, I wanted to clear the area to provide ample room for our staff to care for the president. I remembered that poor traffic control during the attempted resuscitation of President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, in 1963 had interfered with his treatment. I didn’t want that to happen to President Reagan at our hospital, and it didn’t.

I did not at first recognize the two men in green surgical scrubs talking with the president near the head of the stretcher but soon learned they were Dr. William J. Bill O’Neill Jr.,⁸ a surgical intern, and Dr. Gordon Wesley Wes Price,⁹ a fourth-year surgical resident in our hospital’s surgical residency program. Our hospital trained more than 300 interns, residents, and fellows each year (with regular annual turnover) in the various specialty areas, so I knew many but not all of them. An intern is a medical school graduate who is serving his or her first period of graduate medical training—typically, a year—in a hospital, and a resident is a physician who has completed an internship and is serving two to five years of more advanced training in internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, or another specialty. Sometimes these individuals, as well as fellows (i.e., physicians who have completed an internship and a residency and are taking an educational postgraduate program to qualify for certification in an identifiable medical subspecialty) are called house staff or house officers.

I watched our staff completely undress the president, cover him with a white sheet, start multiple intravenous lines in his arms, and draw blood from his veins. I watched Wes Price listen with his stethoscope over the president’s chest and roll the president over right-side down to expose his left side, whence became visible a small and irregular centimeter-long slit about the diameter of a dime about five inches below the president’s left armpit. The slit appeared to be an entry point made by a penetrating object, because it was surrounded by a purplish circle of bruising, with a small amount of blood trickling out onto the president’s skin and the sheet on which he lay. I next observed our staff roll the president left-side down to expose his right side and backside to search for an exit wound. They found none. Price then examined the president’s abdomen.

Next, I observed Price open a prepackaged sterile thoracostomy tray to prepare to insert a chest tube through the president’s chest wall. Before Price could place the tube, however, two more young men in green surgical scrubs hurried into bay 5A. I soon learned they were fifth-year chief surgical resident Dr. David Reeder Dave Gens¹⁰ and fourth-year surgical resident Dr. Bradley Holmes Brad Bennett.¹¹ I watched Gens speak briefly with Price and then move off to the president’s right side at the head of the stretcher, where I lost track of what he and Bennett were doing.

Price again prepared to insert the chest tube but again stopped when Dr. Joseph Martin Joe Giordano,¹² director of our trauma team service, rushed into bay 5A. The time was probably around 2:40 p.m. I got out of Joe’s way to give him plenty of room to work. After speaking briefly with Price, Giordano donned surgical gloves, took hold of the chest tube, inserted it through the left side of the president’s now-anesthetized chest wall, and attached the chest tube to plastic tubing. A nurse then attached the free end of the plastic tubing to a Pleur-evac device¹³ that she had affixed to the railing somewhere on the left side of the president’s stretcher. By that time, three bags of blood had arrived to bay 5A and were together flowing wide open into the president’s bloodstream through three separate intravenous lines in his arms. In fact, someone was squeezing the bags of blood to increase the blood flow rate into the president’s intravenous lines.

After a few minutes, Joe Giordano began to examine the amount of blood collecting in the Pleur-evac device. Meanwhile, the director of our division of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, Dr. Benjamin Larry Ben Aaron,¹⁴ arrived in the emergency room. However, I did not see him, probably because a radiology technologist had appeared, pushing a portable x-ray machine that nearly ran me over. After taking an anteroposterior chest x-ray of the president, the radiology technologist left the emergency room to develop the x-ray film. Moments later, someone said the president’s chest x-ray had shown his left lung fully inflated, which was a good sign. I heard nothing mentioned about a radio-opaque object inside the president’s chest. Someone else nearby said the surgeons wanted the president moved to an operating room to stanch the bleeding in his chest, because the blood in the Pleur-evac device was adding up faster than was expected for a patient with a gunshot wound to the chest.¹⁵

When the surgeons began to move the president out of the emergency room’s inner main clinical care area toward the first-floor operating room suite at around 3:05 p.m., I felt my role in the event was over. I followed behind the president’s stretcher long enough to see him speak briefly to First Lady Nancy Reagan,¹⁶–¹⁷ who emerged from a small room along his route. He appeared to me to be in good spirits. I then peeled off from the throng and headed up the flight of stairs to my office in the executive office suite (George Washington University Hospital 2500 North). I was satisfied the president was in the hands of an experienced and capable surgical team. I felt the same way about White House press secretary James Scott Jim Brady¹⁸ and Secret Service agent Timothy Tim McCarthy,¹⁹ who also had sustained serious gunshot wounds at the Washington Hilton Hotel, had arrived at our emergency room shortly after the president’s arrival, and were now heading to operating rooms with their own experienced and capable surgical teams.

On entering the hospital’s executive office suite at about 3:10 p.m., I encountered Secret Service agents constructing a White House command post in our conference room. I was awestruck by the external communications systems that became operational within about fifteen minutes. Over the next forty-five minutes, more electronic equipment literally came out of the woodwork. The Secret Service agents completed their command center within an hour and were able to communicate with just about anyone anywhere in the world. The transformation of our executive office suite into the White House command center was maintained for the duration of the president’s hospitalization.

I next observed several White House aides congregated in a small office a short distance from mine. Initially, they stayed by themselves. Believing I had nothing else to do in regard to President Reagan, Tim McCarthy, and Jim Brady, I sat down at my desk to prepare for a previously scheduled 6:00 p.m. meeting at the nearby headquarters of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.

Soon I could see through my office windows that reporters were gathering on the edge of Washington Circle, near the entrance to our hospital emergency room. Our institutional policy was that reporters were not welcome inside our hospital if they were trying to obtain news on any of our patients. The policy was not in place because we were unfriendly. We were friendly as long as there was no patient in our hospital of interest to reporters. The basic problem was that we could not take care of our patients in the midst of a swarming media.

Yet it was cold and rainy outside, and we didn’t want reporters to be miserable while waiting for news to report, so we made arrangements to house them in lecture room 101 in Ross Hall, our medical school building, which was catty-corner to our hospital. They ambled over there, dried off, and ate food provided by George Washington University staff while waiting for news.

Meanwhile, I understood the importance of receiving frequent reports about the clinical status of the three wounded men during their surgeries. From experience, I knew my surgical colleagues had a habit of putting on their green surgical scrubs, going through the double doors into the operating room suite, and disappearing, not to be seen again until they had completed their procedures. I could not afford that approach that afternoon. For one thing, the White House aides in the office nearby to mine, needed to know how the president was doing, because they were concerned about the potential need to invoke the US Constitution’s Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1967 to establish the legal machinery for a president being replaced in event of disability. Since those of us in the executive office suite needed information on a fairly regular basis, I lined up a half dozen people in the operating room area who called me with regular clinical reports. In all fairness, my surgical colleagues did break scrub on a couple of occasions during the afternoon to provide personal reports to us as well.

Oddly, in the course of the afternoon, the executive office suite that had become the White House command center became unusually quiet, as all the patient care was taking place behind the operating room double doors. With free time on my hands, I joined others watching television in the conference room, where I observed what the media were broadcasting to the public. At that time, no one, to the best of my knowledge, was openly talking about briefing the media.

There was a great deal of confusion among television network anchors as to what actually had happened to the president after he exited the VIP entrance of the Washington Hilton Hotel. At first, all television network anchors and all reporters on the scene stated that a shooting had taken place and that the president had apparently bumped into his limousine but was unharmed.²⁰ Samuel Andrew Sam Donaldson Jr.,²¹ a reporter on the scene for the American Broadcasting Company, conveyed to Frank James Reynolds,²² the American Broadcasting Company news anchor on duty at the broadcasting station at the time, I heard the shots just to the right of me, but I did not see the president was hit.²⁰ A moment later, Reynolds reported that the president had been hit and that everything he had been saying about the president’s not being hit was now incorrect information.²⁰ Columbia Broadcasting System news anchor Dan Irvin Dan Rather Jr.²³ said, In the last few minutes, we have learned the president was struck, at least grazed, in the area of the chest. But the president is all right. He is all right—that is the number-one thing to emphasize.²⁰ As the afternoon wore on, I watched television newsroom anchors try to fill program time with information, which was often bad information.

Around 5:30 p.m., we in the executive office suite received word that the surgeons were closing the president’s chest and that the president was in good shape and soon would be moving to the adjacent recovery room. In addition, we received notification that Tim McCarthy had already been moved to the recovery room, where he was doing well, and that Jim Brady remained in surgery, with no end in sight to his procedure. I was concerned about Jim Brady but relieved that the president and Tim McCarthy seemed to have good chances of surviving their injuries and leaving our hospital in good condition.

After receiving information about the three wounded patients, the White House aides asked several senior medical center staff to join them to discuss the need for briefing the press across the street in Ross Hall and who might give that briefing. In many situations, the White House press secretary would have spoken for the president. In the present situation, however, White House press secretary Jim Brady was still in the operating room fighting for his life, and his recently-hired deputy press secretary, Larry Melvin Speakes,²⁴ was managing the press congregated at the White House.

Once we were in the small office, one of the White House officials—Franklyn Curran Lyn Nofziger²⁵—spoke. Nofziger had declined the White House press secretary position several months earlier because he said it was a job for a younger man. Instead, he had agreed to serve as assistant for political affairs in the Reagan administration. Nofziger told us that he had walked over to Ross Hall to check on the press in the later afternoon, only to learn that American Mutual Broadcasting System radio network reporter Ross Simpson²⁶ moments earlier had shared with his confreres the tantalizing news that the bullet that had entered the president’s chest had lodged only a quarter inch from his heart and that it had almost killed him; that the president was going to have a thoracotomy, which is nothing more than open-heart surgery; and that Jim Brady was dead. Simpson, it turned out, had obtained the misinformation by sneaking into the hospital behind the two Secret Service agents accompanying Sheila Patton²⁷ (Mrs. Reagan’s press secretary) and Sarah Jane Kemp Brady²⁸ (Jim Brady’s spouse) to a waiting room inside our hospital.

Nofziger learned that Simpson had spent two hours inside our hospital receiving all the updates on President Reagan and Jim Brady provided by unwitting doctors tasked with transmitting clinical information from the operating rooms to the two women. On finally identifying Simpson as a reporter, the Secret Service agents had ejected him from the hospital, whereupon he had promptly crossed the street to Ross Hall to share his misinformation with the assembled press corps, which had dutifully passed it on to their network anchors, who unquestioningly had told the nation and world that President Reagan was undergoing open-heart surgery and that Jim Brady had died. When reports of Brady’s assumed demise had circled back to neurosurgeon Dr. Arthur Irwin Art Kobrine²⁹—while he was still operating on Brady—he famously retorted, No one has told Mr. Brady or me that.

2.jpg

Franklyn Curran Lyn Nofziger (1924–2006), February 11, 1981. Photograph

ID C663-9, White House Photographic Office: 1981–89 Collection in The

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. Public domain.

Nofziger also told us that he had taken the podium in Ross Hall (6:06 p.m.²⁰ Eastern Standard Time) to tell the press corps that the president was in surgery and was expected to be there for a while longer, and that doctors had told Mrs. Reagan during the president’s surgery that the president’s condition was good and that he was stable. As the press corps in Ross Hall forwarded that information to their news anchors, one reporter asked Nofziger whether he was going to arrange a medical briefing for the press corps later that day, and Nofziger had replied, We will try to arrange one after the president is out of surgery and after we’ve talked to [the president’s doctors]. Yes, we will try to do that. He next added that he planned to move the briefings out of Ross Hall and back to the White House the following day, where they would be held from then on.³⁰

When a second reporter asked Nofziger the name of the president’s surgeon, Nofziger replied that he did not yet have his name. A third reporter asked, Lyn, did they give you a specific location of the bullet? How close to the heart did it come? Nofziger hedged, My preliminary reports were that it entered the left chest and clearly it did not—no, I can’t. It did not, obviously—there is no indication that it nicked the heart or anything like that. A fourth reporter then asked whether the president had been conscious when he went into surgery and whether he had said anything. Nofziger replied, "Oh yes. I have some stuff here. I’m glad you reminded me of that because I took some notes. As [the president] was going down the hall into surgery he winked at [Jim] Baker.³¹ He had earlier told Senator Paul Laxalt,³² who was there, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll make it.’ He told Mrs. Reagan, ‘Honey, I forgot to duck.’ And as they were wheeling him into surgery, the president saw [Ed] Meese³³ and [Jim] Baker and [Mike] Deaver³⁴ there and said, ‘Who’s minding the store?’ Nofziger concluded, That, literally, is all I have, and if you will excuse me, we will keep you informed as quickly as we know anything. With a parting dig at Ross Simpson, Nofziger added, We’re going to bring over a medical doctor." With that, he had ended the press briefing and returned to the George Washington University Hospital executive office suite.³¹

Given his late afternoon interaction with the press corps in Ross Hall, Nofziger told the group of White House aides and senior medical center staff huddled in the small office in the executive office suite that the press corps already had a lot of information and misinformation and would be asking a lot of questions, many of them technical and beyond a layman’s ability to answer. He believed a physician would have the best chance of answering reporters’ questions and straightening things out while also being credible to the public. Thus, Nofziger, given the circumstances facing the White House, strongly suggested to the group that the person to brief the press corps should be a physician with a lot of medical knowledge and little public relations experience, rather than a public relations official with a lot of public relations experience but little medical knowledge.

The White House aides and senior medical center staff then considered volunteering White House physician Dr. Daniel August Dan Ruge (pronounced Roog-ee),³⁵–³⁶ who also was in the small office, to brief the press corps in Ross Hall. I thought Ruge would be a good choice because he was the president’s personal physician, he was a surgeon by professional background, he was mature (sixty-four years old) and experienced, and he had been with the president during the shooting and throughout the entire afternoon, including in the operating room, so he knew everything that had happened from beginning to end. Nofziger countermanded that choice, however, because he believed Ruge’s White House position and close relationship to the president would diminish his credibility as a source of information to the press corps and the American public.

The White House aides and senior medical center staff next considered sending one or more of the operating surgeons to brief the press corps but nixed the idea because each surgeon would know only about his own patient, not all three patients. In addition, the White House aides feared that the three surgeons would likely be fatigued and emotionally spent while addressing the Washington, DC, press corps. They also needed to be available to their wounded patients.

In my opinion, the spokesman role most appropriately belonged to my boss, Dr. Ronald Paul Ron Kaufman,³⁷ vice president for medical affairs of George Washington University and executive dean of George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. However, Kaufman was attending a professional meeting in Colorado with Dr. Lawrence Thompson Tom Bowles,³⁸ his dean for academic affairs. The only two members of the senior medical center management team in Washington, DC, on that day were Stanley Philip Phil Birnbaum³⁹ and me. Phil Birnbaum was not a physician, but he was in charge of the George Washington University public relations staff, so there lingered the question as to whether he should brief the press corps, as noted above in Nofziger’s comment.

To settle things, Birnbaum and I called Ron Kaufman and Tom Bowles in Colorado to discuss the situation together, as we always did when making decisions of importance at our medical center. We arrived at a consensus that the spokesman role should go to the most senior clinical official (me) instead of the most senior public relations official (Birnbaum). I then returned to my office knowing, for a time, that if the White House aides nominated me as spokesman, I would serve.

At around 6:30 p.m. that evening, I called Ben Aaron, Newt Tsangaris, and Joe Giordano to ask them to come up to my office. I think they would have come up anyway, even if I hadn’t asked them. Just before they arrived, Lyn Nofziger came into my office, accompanied by Dan Ruge. Lyn said, Well now, who’s going to do this? He was speaking while looking toward the ceiling, but he was talking to me. He continued, Somebody needs to meet with the media and tell them what is going on. To anyone standing there, the process of finally selecting the spokesman would have appeared to be the most casual decision making in the world. Then Ruge, who was now sitting on my office sofa, said, Let O’Leary do it. And I said, Okay, I’ll do it.

Nofziger was a shrewd judge of people. Nevertheless, he took a chance with me, as I was unknown to the White House. His choice also says something about that particular situation and about crises in general. People work together during crises because they need to. Today I marvel at my thinking I could do a good job of being spokesman.

PROLOGUE NOTES

1President Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911–2004) was born in Tampico, Illinois. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1932) from Eureka College (Eureka, Illinois), where he majored in economics and sociology, played many sports well, and served as student body president. After graduation, he worked as a play-by-play radio announcer (1933–36) for the Chicago Cubs professional baseball team. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood, California, to act in motion pictures produced by Warner Brothers Studios. He later joined the Screen Actors Guild (1947–52, 1959–60) labor union (existed 1933–2012). In 1966, he ran as the Republican Party candidate for the office of California governor and successfully unseated two-term Democratic Governor Edmund Gerald Pat Brown (1905–96). In 1976, after serving for two consecutive terms (1967–75) as governor, he sought the Republican Party’s nomination for US president but lost to incumbent President Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (1913–2006), who had been serving as US president since 1974. Ford then lost in the general election to Jimmy Carter (born in 1924, served as president 1977–81). In 1980, Governor Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for US president and defeated incumbent President Carter in an electoral college vote landslide of 489 to 49.

2James M. Perry, Reagan Shot in the Chest on Washington Street, Undergoes Surgery, Wall Street Journal, March 31, 1981, 1, 20. James Perry (1927–2016) was born in Elmira, New York and grew up in Philadelphia. After serving in the US Marines during World War II, he earned his bachelor’s degree (1950) from Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut). After college, he reported for the Marine Corps publication Leatherneck Magazine, the Hartford Times, the Philadelphia Bulletin, and the National Observer. When the National Observer ended publication in 1977, he began working for the Wall Street Journal, where he eventually became an editor and the newspaper’s chief political correspondent. He retired in 1997.

3The words used in the description of the shooting are President Ronald Reagan’s own, as written in his diary in April 1981. See Ronald Reagan White House Diaries, Sunday, April 12, 1981, Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute, Simi Valley, California.

4In 2003, George Washington University razed George Washington University Hospital and built a new one across the street, to the west. Monte Reel, Old George Washington University Hospital Will Soon Be History, Washington Post, September 14, 2003.

5Marc Ambinder, Full Secret Service Transcript: The Moment Reagan Was Shot, Atlantic, March 11, 2011.

6Michael Mackie Barch was born in 1944 in Bethesda, Maryland. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisiana (Lafayette) and a master’s degree (health services administration) (1974) from George Washington University. He became administrator of George Washington University Hospital in 1978 and reported to Stanley Philip Birnbaum Jr., dean for administrative affairs at George Washington University Medical Center.

7Dr. Neofytos Theodore Tsangaris (1930–2009) was born in Florida. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1952) from Duke University and his doctor of medicine degree (1956) from George Washington University School of Medicine. After completing his general surgical residency at George Washington University Hospital (1961), he joined the full-time faculty of the department of surgery at George Washington University Medical Center (1963). In 1980, he became acting chairman of the department of surgery following the death of Dr. Paul Adkins.

8Dr. William J. O’Neill Jr. was born in 1950. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1972) from Tulane University (New Orleans, Louisiana) and his doctor of medicine degree (1980) from George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He served his general surgical residency (1980–86) at George Washington University Hospital.

9Dr. Wesley Price was born in Texas in 1949 and raised in North Carolina. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina and his doctor of medicine degree (1977) from Bowman-Gray School of Medicine (Winston-Salem, North Carolina). He served his general surgical residency (1977–82) at George Washington University Hospital.

10Dr. David Reeder Gens was born in Fresno, California, in 1945. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1968) from the University of Pennsylvania and his doctor of medicine degree (1976) from the University of Brussels Faculty of Medicine in Belgium. He served his general surgical residency (1976–81) at George Washington University Hospital.

11Dr. Bradley Holmes Bennett was born in 1951. He earned his doctor of medicine degree (1977) from Georgetown University School of Medicine and served his general surgical residency (1977–81) at George Washington University Hospital.

12Dr. Joseph Martin Giordano was born in New Jersey in 1941. He graduated from Xavier High School in New York City (1959) and earned his doctor of medicine degree (1967) from Jefferson Medical College. He next completed a transitional year internship at Hartford Hospital (1967–68) and then served a surgical residency at the District of Columbia General Hospital (1969) and George Washington University Hospital (1970–73). After performing basic science research at Walter Reed Army Hospital (1973–76), he joined the department of surgery at George Washington University Medical Center (1976).

13A Pleur-evac device is a disposable underwater-seal unit designed for containing drainage from the chest cavity delivered to it via a chest tube.

14Dr. Benjamin Larry Aaron was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1933. He earned his doctor of medicine degree (1957) from the University of Texas Medical School Galveston. He next completed his surgical internship and residency at the US Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, and his thoracic surgery fellowship at the US Naval Hospital in St. Albans, New York. He subsequently toured US naval hospitals in Guam and Portsmouth, Virginia, and spent two years at Bethesda Naval Hospital (Bethesda, Maryland) as a thoracic surgeon (1977–79) before retiring from the military (1979) to become an associate professor of surgery and director of the division of cardiothoracic surgery at George Washington University Medical Center.

15In 1977, one set of indications governing immediate thoracotomy following penetrating thoracic injury were (1) location of the entrance wound, (2) blood pressure on admission less than 90, (3) initial thoracostomy (chest tube) blood loss greater than eight hundred cubic centimeters (ccs), (4) radiographic evidence of retained hemothorax, and (5) clinical evidence of pericardial tamponade. R. Siemens, H. C. Polk Jr., L. A. Gray Jr., et al., Indications for Thoracotomy Following Penetrating Thoracic Injury, Journal of Trauma 17, no. 7 (July 1977): 493–500.

16Mrs. Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) was born as Anne Francis Robbins in Manhattan, New York City, in 1921. At age two, she went to live with a maternal aunt in Bethesda, Maryland, so that her now-divorced mother Edith Luckett Prescott Robbins (1888–1987) could pursue a stage acting career. In 1927, Edith met and subsequently married (1929) Chicago neurosurgeon Dr. Loyal Davis (1896–1982), who in 1931 adopted then nine-year-old Anne Robbins. Anne changed her name to Nancy Davis. After earning her bachelor’s degree (1943) from Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts), she moved to Hollywood to pursue a motion picture acting career (1949–62). She wed Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1952.

17Dr. Loyal Davis (1896–1982) was born in Galesburg, Illinois. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Knox College (Galesburg) and his doctor of medicine degree (1918) from Northwestern University School of Medicine (Chicago, Illinois). He next interned at Cook County Hospital (Chicago), practiced general medicine in Galesburg for two years, and then earned his master’s degree (1921) and his doctor of philosophy degree (neuroanatomy) (1923) from Northwestern University School of Medicine. He subsequently trained with prominent neurosurgeons in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston for a year before returning to Chicago (1925) to become the city’s first neurosurgeon. He chaired the department of surgery at Northwestern University Medical Center for thirty years.

18James Scott Brady (1940–2014) was born in Centralia, Illinois. After earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), he worked in Republican campaigns and administrations before becoming White House press secretary in the Reagan administration in January 1981.

19Timothy J. McCarthy was born in Chicago in 1951. After earning his bachelor’s degree (finance) from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), he joined the US Secret Service.

20Ann Hodges, Live Coverage of Shootings Hits United States with ‘Awful Impact,’ Houston Chronicle, March 31, 1981, 7.

21Samuel Andrew Donaldson Jr. was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1934. He attended Texas Western College of the University of Texas (originally a mining and metallurgy school, now the University of Texas at El Paso) before working at American Broadcasting Company (ABC) News (served 1967–2009). He is best known as the network’s White House correspondent (1977–89).

22Frank James Reynolds (1923–83) was born in East Chicago, Illinois. He attended Wabash College (Crawfordsville, Indiana) before becoming a staff sergeant in the US Army in 1942 during World War II. After the war, he began his broadcast career with WWCA-AM radio station in Gary, Indiana. In 1963, he joined the American Broadcasting Company affiliate in Chicago, moving to ABC News in Washington, DC, two years later. He is best known for coanchoring the American Broadcasting Company Evening News (1968–70, 1978–83).

23Dan Irvin Rather Jr. was born in 1931 in Wharton, Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree (1953) from Sam Houston State Teachers College (Huntsville) before working as a reporter at several organizations. In 1962, he joined Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) News in New York City and two years later became its White House correspondent. He anchored CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73), hosted 60 Minutes news program (1975–81), and bested broadcast journalist Roger Mudd (1928–2021) to replace Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) as anchorman of CBS Evening News (1981–2005).

24Larry Melvin Speakes (1929–2014) was born in Cleveland, Mississippi. He earned his bachelor’s degree (journalism) from the University of Mississippi (Oxford). After working at several Mississippi newspapers (1961–66), he became press secretary for Democratic US Senator James Eastland (1943–78) of Mississippi. He next worked as a vice president at Hill and Knowlton, a public relations firm in Washington, DC, until White House Press Secretary Jim Brady recruited him as his deputy in March 1981. He subsequently served as acting press secretary for President Reagan (1981–87).

25Franklyn Curran Lyn Nofziger (1924–2006) was born in Bakersfield, California. After earning his bachelor’s degree from San Jose State College (San Jose, California), he worked for sixteen years as a newspaper reporter and editor. He then served as Ronald Reagan’s press secretary during his campaign for California governor (1966) and afterward for two years as Governor Reagan’s director of communications. As noted in the text, Nofziger declined the White House press secretary position in January 1981 and instead accepted the position as assistant for political affairs in the Reagan administration. Nofziger was fifty-seven years old in 1981.

26Ross W. Simpson was born in Fern Creek, Kentucky, in 1942. After serving in the US Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, he became a cameraman and reporter (1965) at WDVM, the Columbia Broadcasting System affiliate in Washington, DC. He next worked (1979–97) at the Mutual Broadcasting System, an American commercial radio network in existence 1934–99.

27Sheila Burke Patton Tate was born in Washington, DC, in 1943. She earned her bachelor’s degree (journalism) from Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). She then worked in public relations before joining the Hill and Knowlton public relations company in Washington, DC, in 1977. She served as press secretary to Nancy Reagan from January 10, 1981 to January 16, 1985.

28Sarah Jane Kemp Brady (1942–2015) was born in Kirksville, Missouri, and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, as the daughter of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. She earned her bachelor’s degree (1964) from the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia). After teaching school for two years, she worked in Republican political organizations. She married James Scott Brady in 1973.

29Dr. Arthur Irwin Kobrine was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1964) from Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) and his doctor of medicine degree (1968) from Northwestern University School of Medicine (Chicago). After interning (1968–69) at the University of Michigan Hospitals (Ann Arbor), he completed his neurosurgical residency (1973) at Northwestern University Hospital and Walter Reed Army Hospital. In 1975, he joined the full-time faculty as an associate professor of neurosurgery in the department of neurosurgery at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. In 1979, he earned a doctor of philosophy degree (physiology) from George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

30Briefing for the Press by Lyn Nofziger, Ross Hall, George Washington University Hospital, Washington, D.C., March 30, 1981, 5:10 P.M. EST, Reagan Foundation and Institute, Simi Valley, California.

31James Addison Baker III was born in Houston, Texas, in 1930. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1952) from Princeton University and his juris doctor degree (1957) from the University of Texas (Austin). He next entered private law practice in Houston. During the 1970s, he rose through the ranks of the Republican Party to manage the presidential campaigns of Gerald Rudolph Ford (1976) and George Herbert Walker Bush (1980), each of whom opposed Ronald Reagan. Baker nevertheless won the job as White House chief of staff in President Reagan’s first-term administration (1981–85). He subsequently served as US secretary of the treasury (1985–88) during the Reagan administration.

32Paul Dominique Laxalt (1922–2018) was born in Reno, Nevada. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Santa Clara University (Santa Clara, California) and his juris doctor degree (1949) from the University of Denver (Denver, Colorado). He next served as governor of Nevada (1967–71) and then as a US senator from Nevada (1974–87). He was one of Ronald Reagan’s closest friends in politics, from the time both were first-term governors in neighboring states.

33Edwin Meese III was born in Oakland, California, in 1931. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1953) from Yale University and his juris doctor degree (1958) from the University of California Berkeley School of Law. He next served as district attorney of Alameda County (California). He subsequently became Governor Reagan’s chief of staff (1969–74), his chief of staff during his 1980 presidential campaign, and his manager of the transition period between the presidential election and the presidential inauguration (1980–81). He then served as counselor to the president (1981–85) and US attorney general (1985–88).

34Michael Keith Deaver (1938–2007) was born in Bakersfield, California. He earned his bachelor’s degree (political science) (1960) from San Jose State College (San Jose, California). He next worked for the California Republican Party and eventually joined the administrative staff of Governor Reagan in Sacramento, California, where he began his thirty-year career of working for the Reagans. He served as deputy chief of staff under James Baker (1981–85) in the Reagan administration.

35Dr. Daniel August Ruge (1917–2005) was born in Murdock, Nebraska. After completing one semester at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln), he transferred to North Central College (Naperville, Illinois), where he earned his bachelor’s degree (1939). He next earned a doctor of medicine degree and a doctor of philosophy degree (pharmacology) (1945) from Northwestern University School of Medicine before completing a neurosurgical residency at Northwestern University Hospital under Dr. Loyal Edward Davis (1896–1982), stepfather of Anne Francis Nancy Robbins Davis Reagan. He then joined his mentor in his private Chicago neurosurgery practice (1951). In 1976, Ruge became deputy director (1976–80) and then director (1980) of the national spinal cord injury office of the Veterans Administration in Washington, DC. Loyal Davis, on behalf of his daughter Mrs. Reagan approached Ruge about becoming White House physician in 1976, when Governor Ronald Reagan first ran for but lost the Republican Party’s nomination for US president. When Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination and the presidential election in 1980, Davis again asked Ruge to become White House physician. Ruge said he did not know the Reagans well and hadn’t seen them for seven or eight years and thought the position should be filled by a younger person, preferably someone in family practice or internal medicine. However, he accepted the job two days later, noting, [I] agreed to take the White House post shortly after the November [1980] election. … when I read all of those horrible things written about Mrs. Reagan. I’m somewhat of a Nancy Reagan fan. Physician Described Events at Hospital after Assassination Attempt, Arkansas Gazette, April 19, 1981, 17; and Sandy Rovner, Dr. Ruge Won’t Be Winding Down Yet, Miami Herald, January 12, 1981, 9.

36Dr. Daniel Ruge was an unusual pick for White House physician. At sixty-four years of age, he was the oldest White House physician ever to serve in the role. In addition, as a neurosurgeon, he lacked the generalist background or experience of an internist, emergency physician, or family practitioner. Furthermore, he was a civilian physician serving in a post usually occupied by an active-duty military medical officer. Physician Described Events at Hospital after Assassination Attempt, Arkansas Gazette, April 19, 1981, 17.

37Dr. Ronald Paul Kaufman (1929–2003) was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1951) from Trinity College (Hartford) and his doctor of medicine degree (1955) from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Philadelphia). He then completed his internal medicine residency at Hartford Hospital and afterward served there as assistant director of the department of medicine and director of medical education (1966–69). He next spent a short time at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine (Farmington, Connecticut) before becoming medical director of George Washington University Hospital on December 25, 1969 (succeeding Dr. Clayton Bernard Ethridge, who had retired in 1968). In 1975, he became acting and then permanent vice president for medical affairs at George Washington University and executive dean of George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He reported to Lloyd Elliott, president of George Washington University.

38Dr. Lawrence Thompson Bowles was born in Mineola, New York, in 1931. He earned his bachelor’s degree (1953) from Duke University and his doctor of medicine degree (1957) from Duke University School of Medicine. He subsequently worked for a year as assistant medical director for Project HOPE (the People-to-People Health Foundation) in Ceylon (1968–69) and then earned a doctor of education degree (1971) from New York University. H then directed the curricular and instruction section of the Association of American Medical Colleges (1972–73) in Washington, DC, while also obtaining a position as an assistant clinical professor of surgery (1970) at George Washington University Medical Center, He next became associate dean for curricular and student affairs (1973–75) and then dean for academic affairs (1975–88) at George Washington University Medical Center.

39Stanley Philip Birnbaum Jr. (1927–2017) was born in New Jersey. After joining the US Navy in 1945, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and a master’s degree (mechanical engineering) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York). He then worked at the Stanford Research Institute (Menlo Park, California). He retired from the US Navy (1967) and joined the George Washington University administration as a consultant in residence in provost Harold F. Bright’s office. He next served as associate dean for administrative affairs (1972–75) and then as dean for administrative affairs (1975–88) of George Washington University Medical Center.

CHAPTER 1

SHAPING THE PERSONA

I was born at Menorah Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, on January 28, 1938, as the first child of Emily Sophian (1913–95) and Theodore Ted Morgan O’Leary Sr. (1910–2001). I weighed eight and a half pounds. My mother was born in Manhattan, New York City, as the daughter of Dr. Abraham Sophian (1885–1957) and Mrs. Estelle Felix Sophian (1882–1970). My mother attended Notre Dame de Sion School (Kansas City, Missouri) (1918–30); Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts) (1930–33); the Sorbonne in Paris, France with the Smith College Junior Year Abroad program (1932–33); and the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, Missouri (1933–34). She then became assistant to the women’s page editor of the Kansas City Star (1934–35), where she met my father . Her one sibling was Abraham Sophian Jr. (1915–44), who was known to the family as Bud. My one sibling, Theodore Morgan Morgan O’Leary Jr., was born in Menorah Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, in 1941.

My father, Ted O’Leary, was the youngest of three sons of University of Kansas professor of English Raphael Dorman R. D. O’Leary (1866–1936) and Mathilde Henrichs O’Leary (1875–1958). My father earned his bachelor’s degree (English and journalism) (1932) from the University of Kansas, where he also played basketball (1928–32) under legendary coach Forrest Clare Phog Allen ¹ and earned recognition as an All-American basketball player. After serving two years (1932–34) as head coach for the George Washington University Colonials men’s basketball team in Washington, DC, he decided that coaching was not for him. He then returned to Kansas City in 1934 to become a general assignment reporter for the Kansas City Times, after which he met my mother who was working at the Kansas City Star. The Kansas City Times was the morning newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri; it was owned by the owners of the Kansas City Star, the afternoon newspaper. My parents eloped in 1935.

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Dennis S. O’Leary, about nine months of age, circa 1938. The

photo is in the private collection of Dennis S. O’Leary.

Two years after my birth, my parents moved with me into a modest-sized Tudor-style house on a wooded slope in what was then rural Shawnee Mission, Kansas, and which now is suburban Fairway, Kansas, located about seven miles south of Kansas City. Grandfather and Grandmother Sophian (i.e., Dr. Abraham Sophian and Mrs. Estelle Felix Sophian) purchased the house for my parents. I grew up there, and I live there today. Grandfather and Grandmother Sophian’s own house, which they built in the early 1930s, was the mansion still at 6315 Wenonga Road in what is now Mission Hills, Kansas. The two houses are about a mile apart.

During World War II, my father served stateside as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy, during which time he became a champion handball player who ranked third in the nation (1944). After the war, he left the Kansas City Times to become editor of Profitable Hobbies, a magazine for inventors and entrepreneurs. In 1956, he became Midwest special correspondent for Sports Illustrated magazine, to which he contributed stories for the next twenty-five years. His most widely remembered byline was The Last Time around with Stan (October 7, 1963), which he based on his travels with baseball Hall-of-Famer Stanley Frank Stan Musial ² during his final visits to all of the National League city ballparks in 1963.

From 1934 to 1988, my father also contributed book reviews with his byline to the Saturday afternoon section of the Kansas City Star. Each week, he would drive to the Kansas City Star building, scoop up an armload of new books submitted for review by book publishers, carry them home, peruse them, select one to review for the week, write a book review, and submit it to the Kansas City Star for publication. Reviewing books fresh from the presses made him feel that he was doing something in the way of pioneering. ³ Occasionally, my mother contributed a book review that bore her byline.

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Childhood home of Dennis S. O’Leary, Fairway, Kansas. Photo circa

1960. The photo is in the private collection of Dennis S. O’Leary.

My mother never discarded any books my father brought home, thereby continuing a tradition that originated with Grandfather and Grandmother O’Leary in their home in Lawrence, Kansas. When the bookcases lining the rooms of our house in Shawnee Mission eventually filled up, my mother stacked the books on the floor. Over the decades, the piles slowly grew outward and upward and eventually filled the rooms, hallways and stairways of our house. When a pile fell over, she restacked the books so we could still move through the house. Soon there were thousands of volumes in our house. My father once constructed among the books in one room a winding lane that led to an outside door, to induce the exit of a raccoon that had gnawed its way into the house. ³ My mother also did not throw away the New Yorker, Look, Life, Sports Illustrated, and other magazines that were delivered to our house. Instead, she stacked them neatly in cabinets throughout our house.

My parents enjoyed the company of friends, many of whom, such as Kansas City painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton, ⁴ earned their living in the arts. From time to time, my parents would entertain their friends at our home, and their parties would often run through the whole night. ⁵ During my parents’ parties, I would sometimes take a sip of beer. My brother and I thought that was how everyone lived. We always felt well cared for.

Sometimes my brother and I played basketball, baseball, and football with the boys next door: Erich Reiner, who was two years older than I, and Carl Reiner, who was my age. When the weather was good, my father would hit baseballs for us to catch in the Reiner’s’ large side yard, which was more than a football field in length. Sometimes my father would shoot baskets with us at our