46-year search ends with a thank-you

The patient, 52-year-old Fonda Bryant, had spent years looking for him.

"I'm ecstatic," said Bryant, a resident of Charlotte, N. C., who talked to Pomerantz by phone. "He saved my life, and I have never forgotten it."

In 1966, Bryant was a very sick 6-year-old girl, living with a single mother in Gastonia, N.C. She was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition that was threatening her health. Bryant said she was fortunate to get the diagnosis because African Americans were rarely screened for cardiac problems back then. Her grandmother died of an undetected congenital heart defect.

"For them to see it and do something about it, that was rare," she said. "There was still racism back then."

The doctors in Gastonia sent her to Duke University in Durham, N.C., and that's how she met Pomerantz, who performed open-heart surgery on Bryant to repair a hole between her heart's chambers. Bryant is now a mother and grandmother and works as a mortgage-service specialist. She's also very healthy.

"My heart has never given me any problems," she said.

Pomerantz said he was surprised to get the call from a patient he operated on 46 years ago.

"It's a nice feeling to know that someone you operated on a long time ago is thankful, healthy and happy," he said.

Bryant's heart problem can now be handled with a catheterization procedure, he said. But back in the 1960s, open-heart surgery was the treatment.

"The first open-heart surgery was only in 1953 and you know, this was only 10 or so years later," Pomerantz said. "Now everything is so much simpler, sort of a routine. But in those days it was a lot bigger to do. It was the first generation of doing these things ... it was challenging and enjoyable to see people do well."

Bryant says she'd been doing Internet searches for Pomerantz for years, but she was spelling his name incorrectly, with an 'ance' on the end. One day she was watching a television show and an expert had the name Pomerantz. A light went off. She found a Dr. Marvin Pomerantz on a University of Denver website and was delighted to see that between 1959 and 1967 he was at Duke University, where he completed his general surgery and thoracic surgery residency training.

Pomerantz, who earned his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1959, went on to join the cardiothoracic surgery faculty at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver. He served as president of the Western Thoracic Surgical Association in 1993 and was chairman of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery.

Bryant contacted the school, and found out Pomerantz had recently retired to Tucson.

On Thursday, the two connected by telephone, and Bryant has since sent Pomerantz pictures of herself and her family.

"I am having a hard time containing myself," she said. "For me to go through that at such a young age, I always wanted to thank him."

Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at sinnes@azstarnet.com or 573-4134