In passing

Clarence Dennis, heart surgery pioneer, 96

Dr. Clarence Dennis, who performed the first open-heart surgery that included the use of a heart-lung machine, which he helped develop, has died. He was 96.

Dennis died July 11 at Lyngblomsten Care Center in St. Paul, Minn., said his wife, Mary Dennis.

The idea of a machine that could keep blood flowing to prevent damage while a patient’s heart was stopped to make repairs “seemed very enchanting,” Clarence Dennis said last year.

In April 1951, the idea became reality when Dennis operated on a 6-year-old girl. She died within hours, but the heart-lung machine had done its job, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, another pioneering surgeon who observed the operation at the University of Minnesota, once recalled.

“He was really a Renaissance person. The heart was at that time the Holy Grail – no one thought anyone could operate on it,” said Dr. Michael Zenilman, chairman of the surgery department at Downstate Medical Center. “Dr. Dennis and others had the nerve and audacity to go into that area.”

Dennis – who operated with a heart-lung device he built in a machine shop – had begun researching the concept in the late 1930s at the University of Minnesota, which was the birthplace of heart surgery and a hub of academic surgery in the 1940s and ‘50s, Zenilman said.

On June 30, 1955, Dennis became the second doctor in the United States to perform successful open-heart surgery – meaning the patient survived the surgery – with the aid of a mechanical pump oxygenator, or heart-lung machine.

Paul Duke, veteran newsman, PBS host, 78

Washington

Paul Duke, whose storytelling skills and journalistic evenhandedness set the tone for the venerable public television show “Washington Week in Review,” has died of leukemia, his former employer WETA-TV said Tuesday. He was 78.

Duke died Monday at his home.

He was already a political news veteran – having worked for the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and NBC – in 1974 when he began his two-decade stint as the show’s moderator.

Now called “Washington Week,” the Friday night program featuring journalists discussing the week’s news is the Public Broadcasting Service’s longest running news program.

Michael Gibson, orchestrator, 60

Dover, N.J.

Michael Gibson, a trombone player known for brassy orchestrations of Broadway musicals such as “Grease” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” died July 15 of lung cancer, according to his wife, Ellen. He was 60.

He had been nominated for two Tony awards, for best orchestration of “Steel Pier” (1997) and the recent revival of “Cabaret.”

Gibson worked as a studio musician in New York before orchestrating “Grease” in 1972. He also did the platinum album of the film’s soundtrack in 1978.

He worked for more than 20 years with the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, including their “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1995) and several revivals of their “Cabaret.”

Glynn Ross, Seattle Opera founding director, 90

Seattle

Glynn Ross, Seattle Opera’s founding director, died Thursday morning from complications of a stroke. He was 90.

Ross died at his home in Tucson, Ariz., with his wife, Gio, by his side, daughter Melanie Ross said Friday.

Ross served in the Army during World War II and was stationed in Naples, Italy, where he met Gio Solimene, whom he’d later marry. After the war he remained in the city and was stage director at the Teatro San Carlo. He was the first American to direct in a major Italian opera house, according to a biography prepared by Seattle Opera.

Ross returned to the United States, where between 1948 and 1962 he staged productions for the Los Angeles Opera Theater, San Francisco Opera, Fort Worth Opera, New Orleans Opera Association, Northwest Grand Opera Association in Seattle and the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

In 1963, he founded Seattle Opera and served as its first general director – there have only been two. In 1970 he helped organize OPERA America, the professional organization for American opera companies, and in 1972 he started the Pacific Northwest Ballet, which Seattle Opera initially administered.

In 1983, Ross became general director of Arizona Opera.

Alain Bombard, crossed ocean in dinghy, 80

Toulon, France

Dr. Alain Bombard, who crossed the Atlantic in a dinghy to prove that shipwrecked sailors could survive off the sea’s bounty, died Tuesday in southern France, hospital officials said. He was 80.

The cause of death was not immediately known. Bombard was admitted to a military hospital in Toulon nearly a month ago.

The biologist and medical doctor specialized in the study of survival at sea. In 1952, he completed a 65-day solo voyage across the Atlantic on a single-sail inflatable raft, which he named The Heretic, to prove that it was possible to live off fresh-caught, uncooked fish. He also demonstrated it was possible to drink seawater when limited to occasional sips.

Born Oct. 27, 1924, Bombard attended medical school in Paris and began researching the subject of survival at sea early in his career.

In his 50s, he entered politics, beginning with regional positions. He briefly held the No. 2 post at the Environment Ministry in 1981 and served as a European parliamentarian from 1981 to 1994, according to Who’s Who in France.

Bombard’s citations included France’s prestigious Legion of Honor.

Compiled from wire reports