Recording – 07-20-2023 10:24:27

00:02 Hi, this is Mark Swiontkowski here in Minneapolis, and I'm here with my colleague, my partner, Dr. Joel Boyd, who is the head team physician for the Minnesota Wild and former team physician for the Minnesota Vikings, a nationally and internationally known sports surgeon. And Dr. Boyd did his fellowship with an icon in the field of sports medicine, Dr. Pete Fowler, who sadly recently passed away. And I thought it would be a good opportunity to ask Dr. Boyd a little bit about his memories of Dr. Fowler. So I've got a couple of questions that I'm going to ask him, and then he's going to, I'm sure, flesh out some of the memories in between because there's already smiles occurring on the face. Dr. Fowler, a most memorable character. So, Dr. Boyd, let me start out with. What was it that attracted you to Dr. Fowler's fellowship?

01:10 So, like most fourth years, I was touring a couple of places in the United States for fellowship. I had gone out to LA and Carlin and Job and thought that that might be a landing spot. We had a first year foot and ankle doctor, Ian Alexander, surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.

01:31 You were a resident of Cleveland Clinic?

01:32 I was a resident at the Cleveland Clinic. At the time. I was chief. Well, fourth year in his and on his service. And he introduced me to the idea. He said, you know, you should think about doing your fellowship with Dr. Fowler in London, Ontario, because he was from Canada. And I said, okay. I said, that's interesting. Well, then I brought it up to my mentor at the Cleveland Clinic, John Berkfeld And John was also very good friends with Pete. And at the time, that was a time when we were debating quite a bit about bone, tendon bone autographs for ACL reconstructions versus hamstring autographs. And for those who aren't of the vintage that I am, you know, and those who are, remember what kind of battles took place at the podiums over hamstrings versus btbs. Ultimately, they ended up being close to the same. But Pete was a. Was a hamstring user and Berkville was a BTB user.

02:35 Oh, my.

02:36 And so I was very conflicted heading into my fellowship. But Pete, yeah, he was. He was a very good guardian of the Canadian way and spoke his mind whenever it came up.

02:55 So you went up for an interview?

02:57 I did.

02:57 What was that like?

02:58 Well, the interview itself was another interesting day. So I went to see Pete and obviously he and Berkfeld had talked a bit. So I sat in his office and he said. So he says, yeah. He goes, you know, I saw that you had gone to Buckdale University, which I didn't even know he knew where that was. And I said, yes, I did. He said, you played football there? He said. I said, yes. He goes, well, I think I know just about everything about you. Let's go talk to the football coach. So we trekked over to the athletic facilities, and the coach of the Western Mustangs was there, and we started talking, and he said to me, he says, oh, so Pete tells me you're a running back at Bucknell University. I said, yes, I was. He says, oh. He says, what offense did you run? I said, well, we ran a Delaware wing tee. He said that we run a version of that here, but we have one extra guy in Canadian football. And I said, oh. He said, well, he. Then he started with a couple of plays. He drew out some. Some circles and X's. And he says, okay, so how would you run this play? And so I told him how we run the play. And then he said, how'd you run this play? And the next thing I know, he breaks out. Film. And we're watching film and Pete leaves. He doesn't even stay. He just leaves. And so at the end of the day, he says to me, well, you know, I'd like to. I'd like to, you know, we need a running backs coach this year. He goes, how do you like to be our running backs coach? I said, well, I'm here to do my fellowship in sports. And he says, he goes, oh, don't worry about Pete. I'll take care of him. So I spent the first three or four months of my fellowship doing coaching running backs at the University of Western Ontario, which wasn't all bad. We ended up winning the national championship of Canada in the Vanier cup, which was great. Everything was good until Berkfeld called one day and he was looking for me. And he says, I'd like to speak to Dr. Boyd. And Dr. Fowler secretary said, there's no Dr. Boyd here. And he said, no, there's a Dr. Boyd there. He's doing his fellowship. She said, no, pretty sure there's no Dr. Boyd here. And he said, well, you know, you'd recognize him. You know, he's a. He's a black guy. And she goes, oh, you mean Coach Boyd. And I thought Berkfeld just was. She said, he was going to come through the phone. At that point, you have Pete Fowler call me. So, yes, that was my recruiting trip to London, Ontario.

05:29 Well, ultimately, you successfully completed the fellowship.

05:32 I did, I did. Since I complete. Complete the fellowship and being with Pete, I mean, I think most people would say that, you know, he's no nonsense guy, but a very innovative, thoughtful surgeon and clinician. He, you know, if things made sense to him, he would certainly fight for it. And he did things the old way. Osteotomies with osteotomes. No saws, which you still do today.

06:02 I just witnessed you doing that.

06:03 Yes, yes, I still do osteotomies with osteotomes.

06:07 Yeah. Probably better for bone healing anyway. So what was it like working with him on a day to day basis?

06:13 So it was. Pete was great. You know, he was a very much down to earth person. Now, having said that, Pete intertwined a lot of that with some very colorful language. And he's pretty well known for that. As a matter of fact, when my fellowship partner and I left, we actually started the Fowler Fellows and we printed out T shirts that said, no one's Fowler than Pete. And that was because Pete would somehow manage to use the F word almost consistently. And it rolled off his tongue so easily that patients, like, didn't even think about it. It just kind of came out. And, you know, I'll tell another anecdote There's a woman whose husband was a physician and their daughter had had an ACL reconstruction done elsewhere, and they had a little complication. It got stiff. So they came to see Pete about her knee stiffness. And Pete was in the athletic training area and he loved being there. And he hated actually going to the clinic. He'd rather be over in the athletic facility. And so she was, he was late, without question. And he initially sent me to go see the patient to get started. And the nurses wouldn't even let me go in the room because this physician's wife was irate that he was late. And so eventually Pete comes into clinic and says, you know, what's, what's happening? And they, the nurses run up, so you have to go see her right now. She's been here for like an hour and she's upset that you're late and the whole bit. And so Pete just says, okay, fine. He goes, you know, gives, takes the chart and he goes in the room. He leaves the door open and he says to her, he says, I'm Pete Fowler. And at that moment, she just went off. She said, Dr. Fowler, I've been waiting for you for an hour. He's like, where have you been? And she's going on and on and.

08:21 On and on and on and on.

08:23 And so finally she takes a breath and Pete takes the chart and he slams it on the bed and he Goes, he says. He says to her, you know, well, what do you think I've been doing? He goes, I wasn't shooting fucking pool. So she goes, well, no. And he goes, all right, then what's wrong with her? And then it's on to the next thing. It's amazing. It's like, okay, we can't do that in the States. I don't think that's going to happen. But it was just that easy for him to just interject some of those colorful. That colorful language. But he was very smooth that way.

09:04 Yeah. And in some regards, it was part of his endearing. It endeared him to patients and colleagues, and he was an extraordinary individual. So what would you say are his contributions to the field of sports medicine?

09:21 Oh, man, there are lots, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you know, certainly around the knee and certainly continuing the legacy of J.C. kennedy, who was his mentor. For. He and Rich Hawkins both were. Pete Fowler and rich Hawkins were J.C. kennedy's first fellows. And Pete, who stayed in London. Most people know that Rich went to Colorado or the Stedman Hawkins Clinic in Vail. And Pete would, you know, he did a lot of his fellows and his research. He did a lot of research, did, you know, sort of brought. Started with the lad, which was a ligament augmentation device, and ultimately did a lot of work on that and realized that, okay, it wasn't the panacea of what we wanted it to be, but continued to do hamstring reconstructions and was very successful at it. Osteotomies. Big osteotomy guy in multiple plane osteotomies. And when I trained with him, no one was really talking about triple varus knee, except for in Cincinnati. Yeah, Frank was doing it, but Pete had already had an osteotomy to fix it and how you fix it. So we were doing those kinds of osteotomies that I think were done hardly anywhere. So he had a very everyday approach to athletes. The athletes all loved him. And we'd see players from the NHL who were Canadian that would, you know, fly miles, thousands of miles to see him. And he. He took the time and enjoyed being around them. And so I would say that he was extremely practical in that way. So his contribution, you know, was about patient care. It was also in the area of knee ligament surgery, as well as osteotomies, that kind of thing. He wasn't much about total joints. He called them fake. Fake joints. He didn't want to have a fake joint, and he never did. He had an osteotomy but he refused to get a fake joint, so he would call them fake joints. And so people knew that was not his thing.

11:52 Yeah. A wonderful, wonderful man. And I think his legacy is carried out through his former fellows, people like you. And there were probably several other people who were in academic medicine that. That did his fellowship.

12:06 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There were. There were lots. You know, I mean, like you said, I mean, Ned Amendola. I mean, he knew his fellowship, but he was a resident there and came back to be on staff there. You know, Mike Stewart down at Mail. I mean, we. There's a plethora of docs that. That had a chance to go through. Al Good. Good is kind of the. Kind of, you know, overseeing the Fowler Clinic at this point and in charge. And he does a great job. A lot of things he does reminds me of Pete, but he's, you know, he's doing a good job maintaining his legacy.

12:44 Yeah, that's great. I got one last question for you, Dr. Boyd. How do you think Pete would want to be remembered?

12:53 I think Pete would want to be. I mean, probably a couple ways. One would be. One would be, he was a good fucking surgeon. Yeah.

13:10 Yeah.

13:11 And a family guy that he loved. He loved athletics and sports, and I think University of Minute of University of Western Ontario football was just his. Just his baby. It was. It was great. The year that I was there, and we were able to win the national championship. I mean, I think that meant a lot to him, and he enjoyed that. So. But yeah, I think those would be three things that. How he would like to be remembered.

13:44 Good surgeon, family man, and a good medical director for a very successful athletic program.

13:53 Right, right.

13:53 Well, that's great. Well, Dr. Boyd, thank you very much for sharing these recollections, and it's my hope that many will listen to these through the years, and perhaps we can get others who knew Pete well to record their oral history so they'll be available for people who want to know about him down the road. So thanks very much. I know you got a busy surgery schedule, and thanks for letting me chat with you in between cases.

14:18 Yep. No, not a problem. That was enjoyable. Thank you, Mark.

14:21 Okay.