The Lillehei family on vacation

After a sound night's sleep, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei awoke at the usual hour, about 6 a.m. He had breakfast and read the morning paper.

Atoms were in the news that March of 1954. Albert Einstein, whose genius had unlocked the secrets of matter, had just celebrated his 75th birthday. The federal government was enthusiastically funding development of nuclear-power plants, which promised electricity in unlimited quantity, at discount prices.

But the biggest headlines evoked horror, not hope. President Eisenhower had announced he was prepared to meet ``Communist aggression'' in Russia and China with ``massive instant retaliation.'' The Cold War had the world in its grip. And a terrifying new weapon was on the scene.

All month, stories had been leaking out of Washington about the secret testing of a U.S. hydrogen bomb whose destructive power dwarfed anything before it. Detonated on March 1 on a Pacific island, the weapon left a canyon-size crater and unleashed a fireball nearly 4 miles in diameter. ``It looked to me like a diseased brain up in the sky,'' said one observer. Eighty-two nautical miles away, snow-white ash drifted on the crew of the regrettably named Lucky Dragon, a Japanese tuna boat, causing radiation burns. ``Some of the Lucky Dragon catch had to be pulled off the market and buried as likely to cause tumors if eaten,'' the Associated Press reported.

The irony could not have escaped Walt Lillehei.

When he thought about it, which was infrequently now, he wondered if radiation had been a factor in saving his life. Nearly four years after Owen Wangensteen's surgery and subsequent x-ray therapy, there was no sign that Lillehei's lymphatic cancer had recurred. He felt and looked great — the only sign now of his operation was a scar on his neck. He did not have cataracts, one of radiation's possible side effects. He was full of energy, an impassioned surgeon of 35 who rarely put in less than a 12-hour day.

On March 26, Lillehei finished his morning paper, bid his wife and three young children good-bye, and drove his Buick convertible to Minneapolis' University Hospital. He changed into scrubs and went into the Main O.R., a suite of three operating rooms. It was a few minutes past 7. Lillehei did a quick hernia repair on one patient, then excised a piece of tumorous cheekbone from another.

Over in the wing called Variety Club Heart Hospital, a nurse had awakened 1-year-old Gregory Glidden.

She scrubbed the baby's chest with an antibacterial solution and dressed him in a fresh gown, but she could not give him breakfast, not even a sip of water; for surgery, he had to be pure. A doctor gave the boy penicillin and a sedative, and Gregory, recently awakened, became drowsy again. An orderly appeared. He had been instructed to speak softly to Gregory about the little trip he would be taking — that he would travel safe in his crib, with his favorite toys and stuffed animals.

Shortly before 7:30, Gregory was wheeled across an enclosed bridge into University Hospital.

In Room II, the anesthesiologists were waiting.

A parent was about to support his child's life while surgeons opened the child's heart and attempted to repair a deadly defect. The world's first open-heart cross-circulation surgery was about to begin.

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