Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published Aug. 20, 2003

The interconnections of Jerry Lewis

This column is about interconnections. It began as I was watching an interview with Jerry Lewis. We are getting close to Labor Day which means the MDA Telethon that he introduced many years ago. Was it 1966? Before then we knew him as a comedian, but we saw another Jerry as he became immersed in working to bring hope to those suffering from the crippling effects of muscular dystrophy and related diseases. As he devoted more and more of his life to raising money for research and making life easier for the families and patients hit by this devastating condition, we continued to laugh at him but we also cried with him.

It has been amazing to see him bounce back from one illness after another, double-bypass surgery, prostate cancer, spinal meningitis and pneumonia. But before all those life-threatening scares he said, "I never had a day without pain since March 20, 1965." Known for the falls which always brought laughs, on that day, when he fell, a piece of spine chipped and had it been another 15th or 16th of an inch closer he would have been paralyzed. The constant pain from this injury led to an addiction to Percodan which brought on nerve damage and pulmonary fibrosis. Because of the steroid he must take to control these conditions, his weight ballooned.

Then he explained the pain is now under control. A battery pack was surgically implanted in his back and he controls the amount of stimulation by a hand-held programmer. After 40 years of chronic pain, this small device developed by Minneapolis-based Medtronics has banished pain.

When Lewis said Medtronics, another interconnection opened for me. In 1997 the National Federation of Press Women held their annual conference in St. Paul, MN and one of the behind-the-scenes tours offered was a visit to Medtronic Corporate Center. This was the first time the company had ever hosted a media group.

Our morning was filled with informative talks by doctors and patients who were using some of the devices telling us how their lives had changed. There were displays of the many stents and other cardiovascular and neurological products the company has developed. Time passed quickly and at noon we were escorted to the guest dining room for lunch.

William "Bill" George, the chairman and CEO of Medtronics, was our host and following the meal he explained the mission of Medtronics as "we will direct our growth in areas where we display maximum strength and ability." They are dedicated to restoring patients to full life through medical innovation. In 1992 the company implemented a strategy to focus on the unmet needs of the medical community, on medical conditions where physicians had no effective solutions for their patients' needs.

Their corporate headquarters are in Minneapolis but research centers, education centers, manufacturing locations as well as sales offices are found worldwide. Today, it is the world's leading medical technology company specializing in implantable and invasive therapies. All this began in 1949 in the garage of one of the co-founders. Earl Bakken, a graduate student in engineering at the University of Minnesota, and his brother-in-law, Parker Hermundslie, called their small operation Medtronics, combining 'medicine' and 'electronics.' They repaired echocardiogram machines and other electric medical equipment. In 1961 the company moved out of the garage.

Earl Bakken wrote Medtronic's mission statement in 1960 and not a word has changed. Now retired Bakken (as of 1997) continues to meet with every new employee (over 13,000). They are given a medallion inscribed with the mission statement. As we listened to Bill George telling us about the company, there was no doubt he was following in the founder's footsteps.

There was one more interconnection recently when a story in USA Today did a cover story on the state of corporate ethics. They interviewed William George, now former CEO of Medtronics and described by the reporter as an outspoken critic of corporate greed. He was just as forthright as he had been with our group in 1997 as he warned, "It threatens the very fabric of our system." He recalled a meeting with Tyco's former CEO in 1998. Today that CEO Dennis Kozlowski and two others have been charged with looting $600 million from Tyco. George said the meeting and discussion centered around a possible acquisition.

I think of Bill George as a straight-as-an-arrow guy and he reinforced that impression with his next words. He said, "In our brief meeting, Kozlowski bragged that having his headquarters in Bermuda enabled Tyco to avoid paying U.S. taxes." George added that when he left the office he put his hand on his wallet and held on tight and said to his colleague, "Cancel further talks with Tyco."

But back to Jerry Lewis and his kids. They are hoping people will put their hands on their wallets and open them wide to help in the fight against MD.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.