*Part 2*

That night all hell broke loose. I went into heart failure, my heart rate shot up to 200 beats per minute, and I was rushed to my local hospital. I was there a week while they tried to get me stabilized; in the meantime, my pediatrician was working the phones, relaying information about me to the Hopkins doctors. They were telling him that I needed to get there as soon as possible.

Dad picked me up at the hospital and drove home to pick up momma, and we immediately left for Baltimore. Remember this occurred in 1967; I-95 hadn’t been completed yet. After driving all day they needed a break, so they stopped at a hotel in Petersburg, Virginia.

They had been asleep about an hour when Momma got up to check on me. She happened to glance out the window and it was snowing as hard as she had ever seen it snow. She woke daddy up, and we were back in the car and moving within a few minutes.

Cars were stuck in the snow all along the roadway, and daddy was stopping every fifteen minutes to wipe the windshield off with an old rag. When they passed through Washington he actually thought about putting me and momma on a train to Baltimore and catching up to us later. It’s a good thing he didn’t, because he found out later that the snow was so bad that the railroad shut down their trains for the night.

Three families were expected by the Children’s Medical Center that day, but we were the only ones who made it. The doctors examined me and then asked my parents for permission to do a Catherization. After the Catherization, the head Cardiologist came out to talk to my parents.

“He is down to hours,” he said. “We need to operate right now.” He added that my odds of surviving the operation were 50-50 but without it I had no chance. My parents had about five minutes to discuss it before they had to decide to risk the surgery or just let me slip away.

I was taken into the operating room at 10:30 that night, and the operation ended about three in the morning. My folks didn’t leave the hospital until they saw me afterwards, so it was almost daybreak when they went to a boardinghouse about a block away.

I have to admit that I begged the organizing committee for a few extra moments to speak to you today, almost to the point of embarrassing myself. Because that surgery took place on the night of February 17, 1967 - almost 43 years ago. My parents are just ordinary people; but that night they turned into a Heart Mom and a Heart Dad just like you. And I’m here today because they have always been willing to ask one more question, explore one more option, and go one more mile.