(funky jazz music) - I'm Katharine Kay with Capital One's Commercial Banking team.

We're proud to provide financial services that help Ochsner pursue its mission to improve the health of our families, friends and neighbors.

- [Announcer] Acadian Ambulance is a proud supporter of WYES and Public Broadcasting.

Acadian Ambulance: knowing life matters.

(lively comical music) - [Announcer] What does it mean to be Louisiana True?

It means working together to build a stronger, healthier state.

We're the employees of Blue Cross.

Louisiana True since 1934.

(soft intriguing music) - [Narrator] In the 1950s and early 60s, heart and vascular surgery was primitive.

Still, in its infancy, a world of surgical techniques, medications and technological advances was still unknown yet to be discovered.

Young doctor John Ochsner was a pioneer setting off on a daring, challenging journey that would lead him to achieve historic milestones and surgical innovations.

- Today they always go to watch somebody do it.

They learn how to do it before they ever do it themselves.

We didn't have that nicety.

We had to do it ourselves.

We didn't have anybody to teach us.

It was a brand-new field.

Lord knows I took a lot of antacids in the early days the night before a lot of operations and I'd be scared to death before 'em.

I wasn't lookin' forward to it.

The nice, cold sweats getting ready to do the operation, but we had to do 'em and somebody had to start somewhere.

- Part of his pioneering effort was that he was able to do that.

How many people could do that?

How many people could lay in bed at night and think tomorrow somebody's life is gonna have be in my hands and I'm just gonna have to make it up as I go along and not get cold feet?

- To just picture that and think about that is just to me, mind-boggling.

How do you do that?

But he was the person who would do it and did it.

- That willingness to rise to that challenge is pretty extraordinary.

- [Narrator] Because he rose to the challenge and so often overcame it, he enhanced, extended and saved the lives of thousands of patients.

- Without Dr. Ochsner, I probably would not have lived past about the age of 30.

- If he hadn't existed, I wouldn't have a husband I don't think.

- Had it not been for Dr. John Ochsner, his team and the follow-up care that I've had at Ochsner, I sure wouldn't be here today.

- He rose above everything else and everyone else in the community and became nationally and internationally-known.

(soft intriguing music) (heartbeat thumping) - Johnny was born a star.

He was absolutely born a star.

The drive, the compassion, the talent.

- When I was in the first grade, the teacher would always get up and ask the students their name, then say where you were born.

I gave my name and I was basically honest.

I told, "I was born in Madison, Wisconsin."

But I hastened to add that my mom and daddy were there on their honeymoon.

The moral of the story is I'd rather be a bastard than a Yankee.

(chuckles) - [Narrator] Young Johnny was the second oldest of four siblings.

His sister Isabel, Sis, was the youngest.

Both describe a wonderful childhood with a mother, Isabel, who raised them and a strong disciplinarian for a father.

- Yes, he was a disciplinarian.

But believe me, we deserved everything we got.

He was always totally fair.

- That was an age as you know that children were whipped when they did somethin' bad.

But I can tell you, my dad had a fast belt.

- One time, Johnny was his usual little naughty self.

I'd say he was a little boy, had a mind of his own.

Daddy gave him a good spanking the night before.

I guess the belt was old.

But anyway, the belt broke.

Johnny took what was left of the belt, wore it to school the next day and told everybody how proud he was that daddy had broken the belt on his back.

Now can you imagine that nowadays?

(chuckles) - He insisted we have dinner every night together when he was in town.

But it was a little hard because we had to wait 'til he got home and that could vary from 6:00 to 10:00.

Consequently, it wasn't a happy time for us except when he got home at 6:00 which was very rare.

- [Narrator] Their dad, Alton Ochsner Senior, was just 31 when he was named chairman of the Department of Surgery at Tulane Medical School.

He was a medical care maverick, a rising star, unafraid of controversy.

In 1936, he was the first to identify a link between smoking and cancer.

- Since we know there is a cancer-producing agent in cigarette smoke, it's perfectly logical to assume with the unprecedented increase in the instance of cancer of the lung, which is increasing more than any other cancer in the body, was due to cigarette smoking.

- [Narrator] The medical community and Dr. Alton Ochsner's own professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Everts Graham fought him on that.

- I said, "Al, you got to get off this kick about smoking."

He said, "Your colleagues'll begin to think you're a kook."

- Really?

- Yeah and dad wrote him back.

He said he didn't care what his colleagues said, he knew he was right.

He said, "Dr. Graham, you better quit smoking yourself "or you're gonna get cancer in the lung."

Not long after he did, he wrote dad back again "I wish I'd listened to you."

- [Narrator] Of course, eventually Ochsner and the antismoking campaign stubbed out the views of those denying ill effects.

As overwhelming evidence linked tobacco to cancer, plus a series of other debilitating ailments.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr.

Lock Ochsner, Dr. John Ochsner's son, says his grandfather had the perfect personality for that decade's-long battle.

- My grandfather was someone who didn't compromise.

It's amazing some of those traits can be very good and sometimes they can be bad goin' up against all the other industries.

Only someone like that could do that.

- [Narrator] Just before Easter of 1941, a messenger delivered small pouches like this to five prominent doctors, planning to start a group practice clinic.

Each pouch containing 30 dimes.

30 pieces of silver.

A reference to Judas betraying Jesus.

Local doctors with solo practices were afraid the group practice clinic that Alton Ochsner and his four partners planned would create unfair competition.

- Only someone who is not afraid and can be kind of hardheaded think to go and start a clinic when there's no community support for it.

- The founders envisioned a clinic very similar to the Mayo Clinic that would be able to pool resources of physicians, so that they would have the knowledge of not one specialty, but all specialties and with that have the advantage of making a better diagnosis and making it with the least amount of expenditures of money.

- John's father was the man who decided early on that Ochsner was the first completely open, integrated hospital in the south and it was.

- [John] He said, "'Course this hospital "will be integrated from day one."

- [Narrator] Ochsner Clinic took over a surplus military building near the Huey P Long Bridge, now known as the Elmwood area.

That Ochsner Clinic, affectionately called Splinter Village because of the wooden floors, made important innovations in medical care.

- They had the first recovery room which then became an intensive care unit.

Then they formed the first family waiting room where the doctor came out to talk to the family after the operation.

Those are two things that every hospital in this country has.

- [Narrator] The towering figure of their father shaking up the medical community was undoubtedly a powerful influence on young Johnny and his siblings.

- They sat my brothers down one time and he said to them, "Now just because I am the surgeon "is no reason for you all to feel "that you have to follow in my footsteps; absolutely not.

- [Narrator] Then she says her dad made a comment that was more like a challenge.

- He said, "I don't think any of you could make it."

- We almost thought we had to be doctors.

We just thought we wanted to do what daddy did.

- [Narrator] All three boys became surgeons.

When they were in premed at medical school, Sis says dinner took on new dimensions.

- Sometimes we got bottles of organs at the table, so they could tell daddy what they had learned that day.

As the only girl, it was a little interesting to say the least.

- [Narrator] John went to college and medical school at Tulane.

In between stints in the Merchant Marines and the Air Force, he began his internship and residency at University Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he met and married his wife, Mary Lou.

- I found him a wonderful charming man, that somehow or other he had all this talent.

Whatever he did was always with a smile on his face and a twinkle.

- [Narrator] He completed his surgical training at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston under Dr. Michael DeBakey, who would become a world-famous heart surgeon.

Many years earlier, DeBakey trained under Dr. Alton Ochsner at Tulane.

- He was our babysitter, frequently.

In fact, he and his wife Diana spent their honeymoon in our house.

My mother and father went to Europe on a trip.

'Course I was referred to at that time as Mike.

- [Narrator] But at Baylor, John said fellow doctors gave him valuable advice that he followed faithfully.

Don't call him Mike and don't make excuses or talk back.

- One time he was chewin' on me and I kept sayin', "Yes sir, yes sir.

"No sir, no sir."

He grabbed me by the collar.

He said, "Can't you ever say anything "but yes sir or no sir?"

I said, "No sir."

(laughs) - [Narrator] In a time that John Ochsner described as the beginning of heart surgery, he worked with celebrated surgeon Denton Cooley and taught briefly at Baylor University before returning to New Orleans to work with his dad in 1961.

- I wrote with (mumbles) Denton's patients the first paper on infant heart surgery.

It was 300 babies under one year of age, so that was kinda the beginning of my career in cardiac surgery.

- [Narrator] When John Ochsner came home to New Orleans, he began training the next generation of physicians as a clinical professor at Tulane University School of Medicine and he faced a serious challenge at Ochsner Clinic.

- They really wanted somebody to get cardiac surgery going.

They had tried it and they had such a terrible mortality, they put a moratorium on it.

I'd hear rumors when I came in.

They said, "If that young guy thinks he's gonna come in, "start cardiac surgery again, he's nuts."

I had a hard time gettin' an anesthesiologist to put anybody asleep.

I had to get a team up.

- [Narrator] Dr. John, as colleagues began calling him, knew he had to transform the culture, the mindset.

He had to convert cynics into believers, so he said he chose his cases carefully.

- Make sure that we're gonna get through.

I know I did 68 consecutive cases without a death.

By that time when I got to about 50, everybody was perfectly happy with heart surgery at the time.

- He got the heart program going.

- [Narrator] In those early days, the state of the art was just in its infancy.

- The heart lung machine was really primitive.

We had no way to measure directly any of the body functions.

Today when we do a open-heart operation or operate on a child with congenital heart, we're monitoring every organ in the body simultaneously.

We get the results back simultaneously.

Back in the early 60s, we would get the results back for two or three days after the operation was over.

We just had to have a feel for what the patient looked like and what the blood looked like while we were operating on the patient.

- [Narrator] That meant there was too much risk to perform heart surgery on an adult.

- Originally if you operated on a man's heart, he would die in the early stages.

If you could leave him on nitro glycerine and let him rest, he'll live a couple more years.

It was malpractice to open up an adult.

Well these little poor blue babies were gonna die in a few days.

They were the first open-heart cases.

Open-heart surgery started with these little tiny infants.

- Pediatric operations are difficult, not only because the structures are all smaller and more fragile, it's usually due to having been born with a heart that wasn't quite right.

That often includes the connections of that heart to the child's body.

So instead of it being the anatomy that we would typically learn from a textbook and typically expect to find when doin' an operation, there's a myriad number of different variations.

Multiple arteries, missing arteries.

Multiple veins, missing veins.

- You can imagine if he's working on these couple of pound babies and how difficult that was.

- He'd always tell me that the children's hearts were just the size of a walnut.

- [Narrator] The challenge of saving a child with a lethal heart condition was almost overwhelming.

- At that time we didn't have mechanical respirators.

We used to have to sit there with a bag to try to get these babies to back after an operation.

We just have an intratracheal tube in 'em with a bag that you would blow the air, oxygen into the baby.

We'd do it all night.

We'd just take turns doin' it.

Sometime we stayed up all night long to keep a baby alive.

Today we can keep infants and even some of these little (mumbles) on the respirator for four and five months without any trouble.

We couldn't do that in those days, we didn't have any respirator.

- One nurse told me that she was coming on as the young nurse to work with him in the operating room.

It had been a child that day.

Things had not gone well because it was early and the nurse asked the older nurse, "Who's that in the hallway?

"Is that the father?"

'Cause the man was a little overcome with emotion.

They go, "No, that's the surgeon.

"That's John Ochsner."

It just shows the depth of emotion he had for his patients.

- It was almost every day I was operating on a child that I had a child the same age.

There was nothing more devastating than to lose a child that was your children's age and somebody you felt very close to because of you having children the same age.

It was a very difficult time because all our surgeries that we did were brand new.

We've never seen 'em before.

We didn't have anybody to teach us how to do it.

We had to do 'em.

Consequent as I said, the mortality rate in the early days was very high.

- If he lost a baby or a child, he could just cry.

He could just cry.

But what kept him going so well and I've tried to learn from him is you do make mistakes and you do have problems.

But he had a great ability to just keep going and try to advance medicine.

- [Narrator] Despite difficulties, colleagues and residency trained, say Dr. Ochsner had special talent, a gift for figuring out how to fix hearts to prevent early death and save lives.

- In pediatrics, he was amazing.

There are many kids that are still alive today (mumbles) kids they were at the time, that they can't even remember Dr. Johnny the surgeon.

They done quite well.

- [Narrator] Often the calls to save a baby came when he was at home asleep in bed.

- He'd get up in the middle of the night smiling because he was gonna have to do a baby.

He was gonna find you something new.

This baby was dying, he was gonna get out there real fast and save the life.

- That always feels good.

The mother and father are devastated 'til you come out to tell 'em what the results are.

You can come out and say little Jane's heart is fixed.

It'll be perfectly normal the rest of her life.

She's waitin', she wants you to never have to worry about 'em.

You just see a smile come over their face and it's a wonderful feeling for you too.

- [Narrator] Despite the challenges or maybe because of the challenges, Dr. Ochsner loved surgery.

He once told The Times-Picayune, "Surgery is an art as much as a science.

"You have to improvise almost every case "and that's were the fun of surgery comes in; "making something new that particular moment "that you've never seen before.

"It's like opening up a package.

"It's always a little different."

- What he loved about it is he did it very well.

He loves the game because he's a pro and he's one of the best.

He knew he was the best.

- I think he was born with a fabulous talent.

Number two: he had an amazing drive, an amazing energy.

He was just so smart.

He wasn't gonna let that talent go to waste.

- [Narrator] Dr. Micheal McFadden of the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Lung Transplant Institute trained in the 80s under Dr. John Ochsner and returned to work as a colleague in the 90s.

- He was bigger than life.

He would walk into a room, I kinda liked the twinkle in his eye and his confidence.

He just made everybody comfortable.

That's how he presented himself to the patients and John thought he was best heart surgeon in the world, we did too.

Some younger surgeons would come in to train and they would ask for gloves.

They were learning how to glove.

He said, "All the best surgeons wear a size eight."

Then one of the interns looked at him and said, "Dr. Ochsner, what size do you wear?"

He says, "Size eight."

(laughs) - [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner was named Chairman of the Department of Surgery in 1966.

In time with advances in medication and technology, he was doing open-heart surgery on older children and adults.

- The Ochsner Clinic was the place to have your heart surgery in the city.

It was the best.

- [Narrator] Then in January of 1970, Dr. Ochsner made history and headlines when he performed the first heart transplant operation in the Gulf South.

- That was such an exciting thing.

We all were interested in doing it.

I felt that we could do it, so we went to the dog lab, experimental lab and did 10 or 20 animal experiments in which we transplanted one heart from one animal to the other and they all seemed to do quite well.

I felt we were ready and able to do it.

- I can remember mom saying that my grandfather needed a heart transplant.

- [Narrator] This was Christine Templet's grandfather, William Taylor, at her parents' wedding.

When he was 52 after suffering two heart attacks, doctors told him he could not survive much longer without a heart transplant.

But only 150 transplants had been done in the entire world, none in Louisiana.

You could imagine he and his family had serious questions, troubling concerns.

Could he actually survive the operation?

Should he go through with it?

- My grandfather wanted the family to make the decision.

You have some family members thinking let's let nature take its course.

Isn't God's plan for the heart just to give out?

Then you have other family members saying let's go on and give this a try.

Let's see what happens if he does have more days to live.

They chose to go on through with the heart transplant.

- We had a donor in our own institution, took the heart and put it in the man.

It went quite well.

We had no problem with it.

It was such an exciting thing at that time.

I can remember I was leaving the hospital to go home to take a bath.

I saw all these people running in with cameras and all.

I said, "Where are y'all goin'?"

They said, "Somebody just did a heart transplant.

"We're gonna go interview the doctor."

I said, "That's good; see y'all later."

I just walked right out the door.

They didn't know that I was a doctor.

- [Narrator] It was a momentous event when Taylor was well enough to leave the hospital.

- When he came home, the whole family was at the house.

We'd all gathered to welcome him home because it was truly a miracle.

It was a medical breakthrough.

- Here was something pretty exciting and new.

To be able to do that, that really helped put New Orleans on a map, even though as far as technical skill, that was not one of his more challenging operations.

- [Narrator] Christine Templet says her grandfather did not return to work at Sears.

- [Christine] But once he did recover, he went back fishing.

He enjoyed fishing.

- We did not have any means to determine when a patient was rejecting a heart.

We had to go only by clinical parameters.

Most of those were whether the heart rate went up, the EKG changed a little bit or whether they ran a fever.

- [Narrator] William Taylor died four months after the operation.

- He actually died of an infection, not rejection but an infection in his brain.

He had a fungus in his brain.

Of course that was due to over-treating him for rejection, but we were strictly goin' by clinical parameters.

At that time, that was back in 1970.

I said, "We better quit this for a while.

This is purely experimental at this time until we have a better means to determine when they are rejecting it, also a better method of treating their rejection.

- But whenever you can get more days, and more opportunity to reconcile and to improve your life, then thankfully we have that opportunity.

He has Dr. Ochsner to thank for giving him more days of his life.

- [Narrator] In the operating room, Dr. Ochsner and his team were now opening more chests and fixing more defective hearts.

- Had I not had the surgery, I probably would've not lived beyond the age of 35 to 40 years old.

- [Narrator] Harry Crosby was just three years old when doctors discovered a problem with his heart in 1956.

At age 10, they diagnosed a defect requiring surgery.

- It was more or less symptoms of a hole in the heart.

- [Narrator] They waited until July of 1970 when he was 16 and his heart had matured to perform the surgery.

- Dr. John Ochsner told me the night before the surgery that it was gonna be a piece of cake.

Of course he was very very charming and reassuring.

- [Narrator] Instead of a hole in his heart, Crosby saus Dr. Ochsner discovered two pulmonary veins routed to the wrong side of the heart, so Ochsner and his team rerouted the veins and patched the side where they had been attached.

- About 30% of my blood was not being oxygenated.

It was just being recirculated within the heart itself.

- [Narrator] Crosby says Dr. Ochsner made it possible for him to have a life he could not have had without the surgery.

- It's allowed me to have a very normal wonderful life.

I met my beautiful bride Susan.

In 1977, we were married and had four wonderful children, six beautiful grandchildren with a seventh on the way right now.

- My problems started when I was about about three years old as a toddler in the late 1960s.

My mother told me over the years that I was a very sickly child, very skinny and always had a cold.

Always had an earache and I slept a lot more than most people my age.

After a barrage of tests, sure enough I had a heart defect.

- [Narrator] Rayne Carradine says she had a hole in the chamber of her heart, her right atrium.

Dr. Ochsner happened to be a family friend and wanted to wait until she was older to fix it.

- When I was a six year old in the early 70s, he performed open-heart surgery on me, closed up the hole with a small piece of plastic and lots of stitches.

I have a huge scar down the middle of my chest.

Back then it was much more invasive than it is now.

- [Narrator] Rayne Carradine says Dr. Ochsner extended her life.

- If I had not had this surgery initially, I probably wouldn't be alive right now.

I'm very grateful for what he did for me.

- [Narrator] In 1974, Dr. Ochsner successfully implanted a pacemaker in the youngest child ever, an 18 hour old newborn who weighed just nine pounds two ounces.

- Certainly has innovation his ability to do new things.

To look for better ways to take care of patients.

I think it's something that number one it's been ingrained in Ochsner since its founding, but John carried that on in his drive to do new things and different things.

- [Narrator] One violent predawn morning on Jefferson highway near Causeway in 1975, a shootout with a double-stabbing suspect left him dead and Jeff Zapata, then a 26 year old Jefferson Parish Deputy with a gunshot wound to the chest.

He was rushed to Ochsner Clinic in critical condition.

- I had received the last sacraments from the priest.

The man who came walkin' in the operating room was in fact Dr. John Ochsner.

He patted me on the arm and he said, "Don't worry, I got this."

- [Narrator] He says Dr. Ochsner later told him the bullet trimmed the aorta which came loose when he touched it.

It had to be reattached.

The bullet too close to the spine to remove.

In a follow up, Dr. Ochsner recommended counseling, something the Sheriff's Office did not offer back then.

- He offered to make arrangements to have me see someone which I thought was very generous of Dr. Ochsner.

- [Narrator] Patient care or bedside manner was something Dr. John Ochsner learned from his father and taught his students.

- When Dr. John would come into the room, he would approach the patient, talk to 'em a few words then walk over and touch their hand or hold their hand, pat 'em on the shoulder or do something physically to know that he's there.

He's gonna take care of 'em and we learned a lot from him.

- My grandfather was very focused on a patient, way before this present culture of patient satisfaction.

In his day, they weren't making the technological advances and saves that we were.

They were really almost like pastors.

A lot of what they did with a patient was consoling.

- [Narrator] Heart transplant programs at Ochsner and other hospitals had been put on hold in the early 70s until the Food and Drug Administration approved the antirejection drug Cyclosporine in 1983.

In the mid 80s, Dr. Ochsner restarted the transplant program here.

- I had a heart attack on the job.

- [Narrator] In the summer of 1986, Lee Newell of Laurel, Mississippi says doctors told him his heart was so weak he might not have long to live.

They sent him to Ochsner Clinic 2 1/2 hours away to see if he might be a candidate for a heart transplant.

- Ochsner told us that he would live eight months if he hadn't got a transplant.

- [Narrator] Lee's diagnosis, a viral infection causing his heart to deteriorate.

The Newells asked for a second opinion from a cardiologist at Forest General Hospital in Hattiesburg.

- He didn't see six months.

He said he wanna live six months.

So really we didn't have a choice.

- I was with him the day that they said he had to have a heart transplant and I told 'em to put him on the list.

- [Narrator] But the notion of putting someone else's heart into Lee Newell's chest was still such a foreign idea in the 1980s.

Still so hard for him and his wife to comprehend, they almost could not believe the call they got about two weeks later.

- The phone rung and said, "Mr. Newell, we got you a heart."

I said, "You got me a what?"

He said, "A heart."

I said, "Hold on just one minute; lemme call my wife."

I called her and she told me, "Hang the phone up."

- I say unplug every phone in the house.

Don't answer them people.

I said don't answer them people 'cause transplant?

Oh no.

We were thinkin' transplant was a bypass.

That's what I was thinkin'.

Nothin' went through my mind, a transplant.

- [Narrator] But someone at Ochsner called again to say a helicopter was on the way to fly them to the hospital on Jefferson Highway.

In surgery, Dr. Ochsner gave Lee Newell a heart from a 13 year old who died in Gainsville, Florida.

- Afterward it was like somebody from the dead done come alive because back then, you didn't hear transplants.

- Like a new soul had been born again.

- [Narrator] Newell turned 35 when he woke up the day after his surgery.

He says the new heart was like a birthday present.

- Oh it's a blessin' for me to be here with my family and everything 'cause I didn't know.

My children were five, 10 and 15 when I got sick.

I didn't know if I was gonna see them grow up.

You have children and I seen them and go to college and everything and they got married, got children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.

I'm just blessed.

God really done blessed me.

- [Narrator] As Dr. Ochsner and his surgical team performed more operations, they were innovating, advancing the science and art of surgery.

- We've been very lucky in the sense that we have pioneered in almost every aspect of surgery and medicine in the state and in the South.

Practically every cardiovascular procedure that's ever been done first, we did it.

Some first in the world.

Some first in the country.

All first in this area or state, including everything from congenital heart diseases to valve replacements to coronary artery bypass to transplants of the lung.

Transplants of the heart.

Transplants of the lung and heart.

- He and Noah Mills, when they were partners here, were two of the first adopters of using the artery from inside the chest; the left internal mammary artery, also called the left internal thoracic artery, to use that for bypass surgery.

That was a huge deal.

That remains to this day, the most effective treatment for blockage in the heart arteries.

It's better than any stint, better than any drug.

He was one of the first people in the world to advocate that and to do that routinely.

- [Narrator] In fact, Dr. Ochsner and Dr. Noah Mills wrote a book about coronary bypass surgery that promoted the use of the mammary artery.

- Before the surgeons started using the artery from inside the chest, a bypass would be done using all vein from the person's leg.

The vein just doesn't have the same durability that that artery does.

By using that artery survival significantly improves for patients with blockages in their heart arteries.

So literally by using that artery to bypass, Dr. John added years to people's lives that they wouldn't have had if they had had bypass by a surgeon who didn't use that artery.

- [Narrator] And Dr. John Ochsner did not limit himself to surgery on the heart.

- In his day, there wasn't the specialties that we have now and he did all the vascular surgeries.

All the organ transplants.

Kidney, liver, heart, did 'em all.

All the pediatric.

Lung, heart transplant, everything.

- He started the lung transplant program.

The entire transplant program here is first.

The liver transplant program at Ochsner is the largest liver transplant program in the United States right now.

It used to be UCLA.

They've overtaken them.

- [Narrator] Dr. McFadden says he witnessed Dr. Ochsner save a patient in his 40s from possible brain death during a coronary artery bypass operation.

The heart lung machine malfunctioned, sending air into the tube that should have been taking oxygen rich blood to the patient.

Instead the tube filled with air bubbles; that could cause catastrophic injury if the air reached the patient's brain.

- Dr. Ochsner very coolly said, "Stop the pump.

"Stop the pump.

"Put the patient's head down in a Trendelenburg position."

That means the head is lower than any part of the body.

- [Narrator] He says Dr. Ochsner removed the tube taking blood to the heart and cut open the aorta.

- When you could hear air coming out of the vessels.

(vocalizes) - He was able to reverse the flow in the heart lung machines so that it pushed all the bubbles.

Instead of pushing them into the patient, pushed them back to the heart lung machine and prevented what probably would have been a fatal complication.

- Then we just repaired the aorta after that.

That was in my first year of training when this happened.

I have to say it was the most memorable operation because it was new and it was wasn't written about.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner and fellow surgeon, Dr. Mills, wrote a paper about the emergency procedure.

McFadden says it is now on the written and oral exams for thoracic and cardiovascular surgery residents.

- When he was in the operating room, he could improvise and think of things.

Things could go wrong in the OR and he could think up things that my generation couldn't.

'Cause we'd been taught whereas he invented.

- [Narrator] At one point, Dr. Ochsner invited his daughter-in-law, Lori, a TV medical reporter at the time, to view an overnight heart transplant.

- Old heart goes out, the new heart comes in and all of a sudden they hook up the new heart, everything's good to go and it doesn't work.

It did not beat and we all had surgical masks on.

I'm the newbie.

I looked around the room and I see tears in the eyes of the different doctors because they don't know what's gonna happen.

John looked at me and he says, "Lori, go on home.

"I'm going to figure this out."

- I come in the next morning, there are people sobbing and the life's leaving; the heart won't turn on.

My dad just has this amazing touch, it's feel, it's smell.

It's just total engrossment in his heart.

He said, "This heart's good."

A lotta people left; he stayed with it and believes there was something wrong in the preservative.

He flushed it, flushed it and he got it goin'.

- Two hours later, he has the heart beating and the patient survives.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner said the greatest thrill is that moment when you see a heart that has been still start beating again.

- That's an amazing rush.

- [Narrator] Lock says he got a sense of that rush one day when he saved a friend of his whose heart suddenly stopped beating when they were golfing.

- I resuscitated him.

He was truly one of those rare cases where he was dead, brought him back; everything was great.

Everyone's happy and he's fine.

My dad goes, "Lock, isn't that the greatest feeling "in the world?"

(interviewer chuckling) I went, "Yeah," and I got it.

That's what he's been doin' his whole life; several times a day he got high.

That was really great.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner's reputation as a pioneering and celebrated teacher and surgeon fueled the growth of Ochsner.

- The clinic became well-known also because of him.

- John Ochsner became the face of the clinic, the face of cardiothoracic and heart surgery in the Gulf South.

- The patients he had from around the world just continued to make the Ochsner reputation and the Ochsner brand shine in far and distant lands.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner was also busy writing.

In addition to his book, he wrote more than 300 peer-reviewed publications about surgical procedures and innovations, sharing what he learned with the wider-medical community and adding to his international reputation.

- I met Dr. John Ochsner first time when I arrived to New Orleans for my fellowship in 1983.

But I knew the name before I read his book about coronary revitalization using a mammary artery.

- [Narrator] Professor Jan Pirk is Director of the Cardiac Center at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague.

He and a group of Czech medical students sought out Dr. Ochsner and came to New Orleans for surgical training in the early 80s when their country, then called Czechoslovakia, was controlled by the Soviet Union.

- He was excellent surgeon.

He taught me take care of each patient as a individual personality knowing that not only heart is at stake, but also the soul of the patient.

So this was very important for me because during the Communist regime, it was not like that.

- [Narrator] Professor Pirk says Dr. Ochsner visited his country twice and was awarded honorary membership in the Czechoslovakia Surgical Society.

- I built the biggest cardiac surgery department in Czechoslovakia and later in Czech Republic.

We have been doing up to 1,500 open-heart procedures with excellent results and we built this on the basis of knowledge from Dr. John.

- What really struck me was when the London reporters came to see him when Princess Di died.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner generated international attention when he said Princess Diana probably would not have died after that car crash in Paris if French medical workers had rushed her to the hospital right away.

- He came and said that they worked on her too long in the field because she woke up and said, "What happened?"

- [Narrator] She was still alive when they got her to the hospital an hour and 45 minutes after the crash.

If she lived that long, Dr. Ochsner said the torn pulmonary vein blamed for her death was probably only partially torn.

The book Death of a Princess: The Investigation, quotes Dr. Ochsner as saying, "It's pretty obvious with that lesion, "if you can get them in the hospital "on a heart-lung machine early enough, you can save them."

(soft piano music) Locally Dr. John Ochsner was active in Civic Affairs.

At one point serving as President of the World Trade Center with Ochsner Clinic involved in a forum of international business.

- At one time 12% of the patients coming to the clinic were from Central and South America.

- [Narrator] On a personal level.

- Papa, hi.

- Hi.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner adored his granddaughters.

He described his family as, "Our most precious jewel."

You could sense that in family pictures and in home videos when his granddaughters were much younger.

♪ Sometimes I wonder why ♪ ♪ I spend the lonely nights ♪ ♪ Just dreaming of a song ♪ ♪ The memories ♪ ♪ Are my memories ♪ ♪ And I am once again with you ♪ ♪ Though I dream (vocalizes) ♪ - Yay!

(wife applauding) (muffled crosstalk) - One of his greatest qualities: he had an amazing capability of making you feel like you're the only person in the room.

It could be a crowded party.

It could be a dinner with tons of people, he would make eye contact with you and do a little wink or maybe stick his tongue out a little bit.

You would just feel like you and him have that connection.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner enjoyed dancing, skiing, tennis and other activities.

- It was all about the camaraderie, to be with his friends.

- [Narrator] He had tons of friends from many walks of life.

- Johnny was the best sort of person in so many ways and set such a high standard for what a good friend can be.

- [Narrator] He also loved Mardi Gras, so he was thrilled when the Captain of Rex at the time went to him with a special offer.

- I said, "We have an interesting invitation for you.

"We would like you to be the King of the Carnival.

Of course he lit up like you plugged him into 220.

(vocalizes) Yes, I'd love to.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner's dad Alton was Rex in 1948.

Now in 1990, he too was King of Carnival.

- Hail Rex.

- Here, here.

- We're gonna have a good ride.

If anybody has more fun than we do, shame on 'em.

- [Narrator] His queen was Anne Charbonnet, the Rex Captain's daughter.

- Johnny was so personable.

He was really so easy to talk to and there was always a twinkle in his eye.

He was always so happy and just loved life that you just automatically felt at ease around him.

- [Narrator] It was one of those beautiful Mardi Gras days when the weather was postcard-perfect.

- The float pulls up and he's got the biggest grin.

I know I had the biggest grin as well.

You're just like there's my boyfriend for the day.

Okay, (mumbles) it's great.

- [Commentator] We wanna toast our queen.

She has to be the most gorgeous queen ever to reign on Carnival.

Here's to Anne.

- That's probably the most fun anybody can have.

When you're president of an organization, it's all work.

But when you're King of Mardi Gras, you don't do a damn thing.

They won't let you do anything.

You're King and they teach you how to be regal.

How to sit, what to do with your legs, what to do with your arm.

How to do the scepter.

- My feelings were hurt once because they said, "What was one of the most wonderful days of your life?"

I wanted him to say when my son was born or our first child or something.

But instead he said, "When I was King of the Carnival."

- [Lock] He was a very good representative for the city.

- [Narrator] Fellow surgeons also wanted him to represent them as a leader.

Dr. Ochsner was President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and President of the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery.

Plus he was Chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

The only person to ever hold all of those elective positions.

- That's a sign of respect that all these other surgeons had for what he had done.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner performed about 12,000 operations.

Three to five a day before he stopped doing surgery in 2004.

When he was 77, he became chairman emeritus of the Department of Surgery.

- He'd charge around, visit everybody, grab people's charts and look at 'em.

"How you doin' today?"

He'd grab their toe and shake it.

They just loved the fact that John Ochsner was checking on them.

- [Narrator] Marjory Harper is Director of Development for Philanthropy at Ochsner raising money for patient care, education, construction, equipment and research.

Dr. Ochsner said that's increasingly important as government provides a shrinking share of funding.

- [John] Because you don't advance unless you have research.

We were the first to do almost every heart procedure.

That's because we had the research facilities to practice those before we took 'em to the patient care.

- [Narrator] In addition to checking on patients, Dr. Ochsner met with potential donors, families, corporations and foundations to show how they could help.

- We would invite people to come and tour different areas whatever we felt their interest was.

He would come on the tour and just talk to them about everything they were doing.

- [Narrator] Among numerous accolades, Dr. Ochsner received the Michael E. DeBakey Award presented to the world's most outstanding surgeons for their significant contributions.

But the accolade that meant the most to him came from his father when he was asked if he could rank his children's generation of Ochsner's among the truly great surgeons.

- I say my children are much smarter than I and I mean it.

Because their mother was a very smart lady and they take after their mother.

I think my sons and particularly my son John is a much greater surgeon than I. I think he's one of the greatest surgeons I've ever seen.

(soft piano music) - "Dear dad, that comment you made about me "when I was a young surgeon meant the world to me "especially coming from you.

"I just celebrated my 90th birthday "and wanted to reflect on my life "and what your group practice has become.

"It's hard to believe that it's been 75 years "since you, your friends and esteemed colleagues "founded the Ochsner Clinic."

- [Narrator] In his emotionally moving letter to his dad produced by the Ochsner Creative Media Services team, Dr. Ochsner describes what that modest clinic the five founders started in 1942 has become.

Among the largest independent academic health systems in the nation.

The largest in Louisiana.

Owning, managing or affiliated with 30 hospitals.

More than 80 health centers and urgent care centers.

Employing more than 19,000 people.

Louisiana's largest employer with 1,200 physicians in more than 90 medical specialties and subspecialties.

Each year, Ochsner hosts more than 550 medical students and now trains medical students from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

- They go to Queensland for their basic sciences and they come over to us for the clinical.

- [Narrator] In the 1960s, Dr. John Ochsner was the pioneer, innovator and driving force who created the heart and vascular surgery program at Ochsner.

Late in his life, the John L. Ochsner Heart & Vascular Institute was named after him.

- It's something that I'm very proud of.

I couldn't have done it without Mary Lou.

Her love and faithful support is unbelievable in that she raised our children all by herself except maybe for a little bit.

But they've all turned out very well, we're very proud of all of 'em.

- He really enjoyed that.

He really wanted to be known for what he did in medicine and the advances he made.

That's what he really cared about.

- One of the things he did, he understood early on how important it was for cardiologists and cardiac surgeons to work collaboratively.

So often people work and just do their thing.

Cardiologist does this, a heart surgeon does that.

Dr. John, maybe it was an outgrowth of the fact that he operated on children and babies brought that same kinda collaborative concept into adult heart care, whether it was cardiology or cardiac surgery.

As a result, we chose to name the institute that includes surgeons as well as cardiologists after him 'cause he epitomized that group effort.

(soft piano music) - [Narrator] Due to complications from the flu, Dr. John Ochsner died July 6th, 2018.

He was 91.

Just months after he died, Ochsner Health System and Discovery Health Sciences Academy formed a partnership and went before the Jefferson Parish School Board with a request.

- I urge you to support the formation of the Dr. John Ochsner Discovery Health Sciences Academy.

- [Narrator] The School Board unanimously approved plans for the new kindergarten through eighth grade academy named after Dr. Ochsner that will focus on health sciences.

Ochsner Health System will build the school and Discovery Charter will run it.

Dr. John Ochsner also lives on through education in another way: all those surgeons he trained.

- People all over the world that learned to do heart operations the way Dr. John did 'em and have returned to their home states or in some cases their home countries and are fixin' people there.

That's the ripple effects that are huge.

- [Narrator] Dr. Ochsner lives on through innovations he made.

- He changed Madison.

He just changed the way surgery went and it was worldwide that his techniques were adopted.

- [Narrator] He lives on in a legacy of all those lives he saved and extended.

- I wouldn't be here.

I wouldn't be sittin' beside my wife 'cause he has told me I had from eight to six months to live.

- [Narrator] Thanks to Dr. Ochsner, Lee Newell can hold and enjoy his great-granddaughter.

Donna Newell says Dr. Ochsner gave her 32 more years with the man she loves.

How does she describe the impact of that?

- A miracle.

Blessed.

There's the impact and there's the finished product.

(chuckles) - If he hadn't performed surgery on my father with a congenital heart defect, we wouldn't be here.

- We wouldn't have the life we have now.

He wouldn't here.

We wouldn't have our children and grandchildren.

- [Narrator] Dr. John Ochsner lives on through an untold number of hearts he touched literally and figuratively.

- If John Ochsner had your heart in his hands, you knew that you had the best.

- I miss him walking in the door every night with a smile on his face having something funny to tell me.

- He's left the world better and I hope we can all say that at one time.

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