Recording - 08-19-2023 13:25:58

00:01 This is Mark Swiontkowski coming to you from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we're at the last day of the 20th Century Orthopedic association, and we are recording some oral histories of key members of the association, remembering some folks who are no longer with us. And it's my great pleasure to speak with Dr. Bob Hensinger from Ann Arbor, former chair of the department. He got out on an early release program for good behavior, and he's going to be chatting with us and educating you on who Paul derosa was. Take it away, Bob.

00:37 Thanks, Mark. It's really a pleasure to talk about Paul. He's such a good friend and he contributed so much to our field, both orthopedics in general and pediatric orthopedics in the specific. And so it's nice to remember he, as I said, he grew up in Angola, Indiana, which is a small city just south of the Michigan border. And he used to say that he then went to college at a small, secular, a small religious school in Indiana called Notre Dame. He loved Notre Dame. He played football for them. And his letter, his number of his jersey was 60. And what I saw last time, actually, the last time I saw him there, on their way up north, they had a cottage in Michigan.

01:27 Right.

01:27 And his license plate was North Carolina. Indeed. 60.

01:33 Yeah.

01:34 So he had great loyalty to the university and he was a continuing contributor.

01:40 The only thing is, Marianne might have been a bigger fan of Notre Dame football. I learned as a USC graduate to not mess with Marianne. And I had to send them money almost every year for over a decade. But go on. That's true, very true.

01:54 She still is a football fanatic. When he finished medical school, he took a residency in orthopedics again at the University of Indianapolis, Indiana in Indianapolis. And there he was under the tutelage of Georges Garceau, was another giant in our business at that time. And George was. Had a particular interest in Pietro or Pities, and encouraged George or Paul to go to London for a year studying under George Lloyd Roberts, who was a great pediatric orthopedist.

02:37 Hospital for Sick Kids, right?

02:39 Sick London, Yeah, Sick Kids London, yeah. And that was wonderful. He really enjoyed the event. And of course, it was a whole different look at our business from a British perspective. So when he came back, he devoted the rest of his career to pediatric orthopedics. He stayed on the faculty of Indiana and gradually moved through the ranks to be a co professor and subsequently chairman of the department. Now about 1990, he became interested in American Board of Orthopedic Surgery. And he was on the board of directors. He became more and more involved. About 1995, he took over the helm of being the executive director of AB West. And it was interesting too, because it was really different or depart for clinical care. But his contributions were huge.

03:44 I mean.

03:47 His whole experience at the ABOS was bringing a lot of change to credentialing. He wrote a book about the. After he finished as, about the history of the ABOs and what's called 75 years of doing the Right Thing.

04:12 Yeah, yeah.

04:13 And that was his mantra. Do the right thing.

04:17 Yeah, just do the right thing.

04:20 And he did. He was subsequently involved in a great deal of committees, national committees that dealt with resident education, physician education, acgme, and was chairman of a number of boards. And so that was another facet of this. And then he was also in orthopedics. He was president of the aoa.

04:49 Right.

04:50 And that was his talk, actually, was professionalism.

04:54 That's right.

04:54 When he was president.

04:55 Yeah.

04:56 And then he was the president of the Pediatric Orthopedic Society in North America and the Mid American Orthopedic Society and a lot of other organizations. He was always the leader. Whatever society was in, he was leading for the front. It was good. It was a very good thing and a very good experience. I first met him, he says, about 1983, I think 84. And I said to him, who are you? I don't remember that, but he claims that's what I said. Who are you? He was a prodigious golfer, a great member of this society, and both he and Marianne attended regularly. His golfing prowess was renowned and he had a drive that was farther than ever.

05:54 Feel free to say it. There's no censoring here.

05:59 There's a consequence. We call it the fucking gorilla, Just FG for short, which I think he liked that too.

06:06 Oh, he did. He always signed his emails that way. Fg.

06:12 At a social standpoint, we had a great group of academic pediatric artists, Neil Green being one, myself, Tom Renshaw.

06:25 Was Colin part of that?

06:26 Oh, yeah. Colin Mosley.

06:28 Yeah.

06:30 And we would. And we all played golf, as did our wives. And so we primarily went to golf courses all over England, Scotland, wherever. Usually try to tie it with a meeting, Dublin meeting in Edinburgh. But then we'd have these great golf experiences. So we did that as well in this country.

06:51 Yeah.

06:52 And then we just did a lot of touring. We toured Italy, we toured France. Neil and Colin spoke French.

07:00 Oh, right. That's right.

07:01 So that was always, always fun. And we would. Went to Bordeaux to taste In France, we largely just tasted the wine and walked around waiting for lunch. So that was the pediatric mafia. And then we would have great memories, great pictures we saw of the things we. It was always fun, very laid back. Went to Switzerland.

07:29 Yeah, you can speak French there too well. Paul was always willing to do anything that would provide in advance to resident education or fellow education or the whole process of making certification easier for the average orthopedist that wasn't in academics. He was a real advocate of understanding the perspective of the practicing orthopedist and trying to mold the certification process as best possible towards the needs of a busy practitioner. And through the whole maintenance of certification startup. He really was always on the lookout for making it a way to confirm to the public that an individual was safe and effective while understanding the demands on their care. But he was, as you mentioned, a very balanced individual with the golf. And as editor of jbjs, I asked him to write up his. One of his other areas of his life that was important to him and that's chocolate making. So his dad had a candy store and made chocolate and Paul every October would spend better part of three to four weeks making all manner of chocolates. I'm assuming you were on the recipient list. It's a very exclusive list to get a pound of Paul's chocolates right about Thanksgiving time. But just the. The passion with which he pursued that and teaching everybody about the quality of the chocolate and how you could tell if it's impure wax and all that. And the setup that he and Marianne had is just tremendous. So an incredibly balanced individual. Any last thoughts about your friend? We miss him dearly.

09:30 Sure. Really left us far too early.

09:35 Yeah, absolutely.

09:39 He was. Marianne were retired. He had a lot of children and a lot of grandchildren and he enjoyed them all.

09:46 Yes.

09:47 And he spent a lot of time with him and they had a. He had a place for years. He had a place in Colorado in Keystone. And the whole family would need to ski and. And the same thing with his place. So he's very much a family person, family oriented person. His grandfather was made chocolate in Italy.

10:10 Oh that. That. Yeah. Yeah.

10:13 That was the be. I don't know how far back, but just what you say stand at a chocolate company here. Good.

10:28 We miss him.

10:29 Yeah.

10:30 A great contributor to this organization and I want to thank you for reminiscing with me a bit about our dear departed friend. And our thoughts and prayers are with Marianne as she continues to adjust. I know the pediatric mafia, particularly the women are looking after her, so.

10:46 Oh, yeah, we talk to her often. Leslie, too. Leslie Green.

10:52 Great.

10:53 Barbara. It's free.

10:57 Yeah. Wonderful memory. So thanks very much and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

11:02 Thank you.