John A. Waldhausen

NEW HAMPSHIRE John Anton Waldhausen, born Hans Anton Waldhausen to Maximillian Heinrich and Agnes Albertina Stettner Waldhausen on May 22, 1929, died on May 15, 2012. Born in New York City as an American citizen to German parents, he grew up in war torn Germany and returned to the United States nearly penniless in 1947. He benefited from the great kindness of Monsignor Werner, a U.S. Army Chaplain whom he met in Germany and who secured for him a train ticket to Montana and a scholarship to the College of Great Falls. He attended medical school at St. Louis University and did his surgical training at Johns Hopkins under Dr. Alfred Blalock, at the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Jonathan Rhoads, and at Indiana University under Dr. Harris Shumacker. During this time he spent two years at the National Institute of Health working at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. While at Johns Hopkins, he met Marian Rodney Trescher who became his beloved wife of 54 years and who preceded him in death on February, 14 of this year. Following the completion of his surgical training, he joined the faculty at Indiana as a cardiac surgeon and while there developed the subclavian flap angioplasty that for many years became the standard treatment for Coarctation of the Aorta. His procedure lowered the mortality of the disease from nearly 60% to 3%. He then moved to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and at the request of C. Everett Koop developed CHOP's congenital heart program. In 1969, he became the founding Chairman of Surgery at the newly created Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where he led the department for 25 years. From 1972-73 he also served as interim Provost and Dean of the School of Medicine. Dr. Waldhausen made significant contributions to the medical field including over 275 articles, book chapters and books and helped push the frontiers in congenital heart surgery as well as artificial organs with the artificial heart and ventricular assist devises. He was a member of numerous organizations including the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. He served as the first vice-president of the American Surgical Association, the president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Society of Clinical Surgery, and the Thoracic Surgery Directors Association. He served as the editor of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery from 1995-2000 and also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery. He directed the General and Cardiac Surgery training programs at Penn State for many years and was a mentor to countless faculty, residents, and students during his tenure. Many of his faculty went on to be department chairs and leaders in their surgical fields. Dr. Waldhausen's work was an inseparable part of him and his family. Providing unwavering support and enthusiasm was his wife Marian. They were completely devoted to each other. They were a team that revealed itself to all who met them: independent but each at the other's side in everything. They had three sons and instilled their strengths in them by example. His enduring love of reading, history, music and the outdoors as a way to involve his family will forever be a part of us. In his later years he became involved in civic concerns and was active in the Squam Lakes Association and the Squam Lakes Conservation Society in New Hampshire. Dad's respite was at the farm in New Hampshire, where the family would gather each summer. He will be deeply missed by those left behind. He is survived by his sons and their wives John H.T. and Julie, Robert R., and A. Gordon S. and Sherry Waldhausen and his grandchildren, Tessa Mosley, Liesl, Cole, Neil and Henry Waldhausen. Memorial services will be held at St Patrick's Cathedral, 212 State St., Harrisburg, on Saturday, June 23, at 10:30 a.m. in the morning. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to The Bethesda Mission in Harrisburg (www.bethesdamission.org), or the Squam Lakes Conservation Society, Holderness, N.H. (www.squamlakes.com).