A Time for All Things: The Life of Michael E. DeBakey
Chapter One: Lake Charles
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life,
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
i) September 23, 1996
KLM Flight 287 rolled to a seamless stop on the tarmac, and settled on its wheels under the translucent Moscow sky. A contingent of American heart surgeons and support staff blinked and stretched. Their leader was famous for dozing off as soon as the wheels were up on any flight of length, and more than one of his retinue had mimicked that feat on this last leg of their journey from Houston via Amsterdam.
This was not the first sojourn to Russia for their Chief – that had been back in 1958, when the country had another name and quite another polity. Many other visits had followed, accompanied by accolades and fetes, mostly with a Cold War political undertone he neither shared nor acknowledged. By nature he was fond of reflecting on change and history, and he did not miss the significance of returning to this place, the both of them now so different, in a position to alter the life path of a man who, himself, was responsible for much of this country’s metamorphosis.
The President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, was suffering from congestive heart failure and severe coronary artery disease. The situation was grave; he was not expected to live without open-heart surgery – coronary bypass – but it was not clear that he could survive the procedure itself. The leading Russian heart surgeons and cardiologists had asked this Houston team to come to Moscow to assess the risks and provide recommendations as to how to proceed. In the geopolitically-charged climate of the immediate post-Cold War period, bringing in a coterie of Americans as consultants on the medical care of the most powerful man in Russia provoked all manner of responses on both sides of the Atlantic. The world’s major news organizations focused on the story, covering every aspect. This fuss was of little consequence to the team from Texas, however. They were there to do a job, and their very presence in the Russian capital was as much of a validation as any that they were the most qualified group in the world for the task.
Skilled and experienced as the American team was, there were no illusions among any as to the main reason for their being summoned to this distant place for such a desperate endeavor. That was the aged, somewhat stooped, but still-imposing figure to whom they all deferred instinctively. As the rolling stairway approached the plane, his prominent gray brow furrowed and his dark brown eyes took in the familiar scene through thick spectacles. Those eyes had witnessed more than 60,000 surgical operations, and he was widely regarded as not only the father of modern cardiovascular surgery but also the greatest surgeon of the twentieth century.
If time and change were on his mind that morning, Dr. Michael Ellis DeBakey might well have wondered at how far he had come from the small southwest Louisiana town of Lake Charles, where he had been born 88 years before.
ii) Mise en scene
Lake Charles is a brackish basin on the Calcasieu River, 30 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico and 200 miles west of New Orleans. The lake is about 5 feet deep in most places and a little more than a mile across. Located at the southern end of western Louisiana’s longleaf pine belt, it sits in a place of tropical heat and humidity, surrounded by the fertile, marshy savannahs and abundant woodland that such a climate fosters. Lake Charles is said to be named for an early settler to the region, Charles Sallier, who emigrated from southern Europe in the early 1800s. By similar tradition, the Calcasieu River derived its name from that of a local Attakapas Native American chieftain who is otherwise lost to history. His name passed through a distinctly French transliteration, Quelqueshue, before taking its present form. The Gallic version is occasionally encountered yet today.1
The Lake Charles region was not clearly included in the massive Louisiana Purchase – the extent and borders of which were barely defined, or even comprehended at the time - but after the War of 1812 the ultimate destiny of the area was inevitable.
In 1840 Imperial Calcasieu Parish was created, encompassing the Lake Charles vicinity and beyond. A few years later, the parish seat was established on a patch of partially-occupied land at the eastern shore of the lake. That small community took the name of its neighboring body of water in 1867 and became incorporated as the town of Lake Charles. 2
After the Civil War, Lake Charles’ numerous forests helped the fledgling timber industry expand substantially, matching the demand for construction materials needed for the rebuilding and growth of the nation. Timber was the dominant industry of the region into the twentieth century.
The 1910 United States census noted 11,449 residents in Lake Charles, Louisiana, nearly double that of the prior accounting a decade before.3 By all reports the expanding community had evolved by this time from a swampy prairie town into a recognizable small modern city. Along with the growth of the populace, commerce flourished, and educational and cultural institutions emerged and thrived. The proud and determined townsfolk even shrugged off an enormous fire that destroyed the old city center in April, 1910.4 With newfound wisdom they – like the similarly-afflicted citizens of Chicago and San Francisco earlier - took the opportunity to replace the destroyed downtown wooden structures with more permanent ones of brick, stone and concrete. Overall, as the new century took root things were looking decidedly up for the largest city in Southwest Louisiana.
Four of the newcomers helping to swell the ranks of that 1910 Lake Charles census were 25-year-old Shiker DeBakey, his 23-year-old wife Raheeja, and their young sons, Michael, aged 2, and an infant, Ernest. The young family lived in a small house attached to their clothing and dry goods store at 1004 Railroad Avenue, in the city’s Second Ward.
ii) Battle Row
Shiker Dabaghi was born on May 25, 1885 in the town of Jdeidet Marjeyoun, in what was then the Ottoman Turkish province of Syria – now southeastern Lebanon. The Dabaghi family had long been prominent in this town and in nearby Hasbaya, as they remain today. Members of the ancient Maronite Christian church – whose adherents have inhabited the Mt. Lebanon region since the ninth century - the Dabaghis were known for their success in business and the professions of medicine and law. Shiker was one of seven sons of Markes George Dabaghi and his wife, Tana Zarb. Four of the brothers would immigrate to the United States by 1920. Shiker was the first.5
Shiker initially visited America as a child.6 Fascinated by the vast, prosperous country he encountered, the young boy resolved to return there permanently when his age would permit it. Treatment of the Maronites by the Turkish government was unpredictable and often harsh - the bloody Mount Lebanon Civil War, which featured numerous instances of massacres of Maronites, had raged just 25 years before Shiker’s birth - and there can be little doubt that this threat also motivated him, along with many others, to emigrate. While still a teenager he left his family in Marjeyoun behind and, accompanied by his cousin Abraham Dabaghi, returned to the United States for good in 1901, departing
from Beyreuth (Beirut) on February 14 and reaching New York on March 15.7 Upon arriving in America, Shiker Anglicized his last name to the phonetic spelling “Debakey,” as did most of the immigrants who
shared it.* He stayed for a time in New York City after arriving, then went on to the Midwest – Ohio and Iowa, according to family tradition. He supported himself by working at various jobs, often peddling. Later he became a traveling dry goods wholesaler. In any setting, though, sales turned out to be a vocation that suited him well.
On one of these travelling sales circuits, Shiker came across the town of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The growing community, which aggressively trumpeted itself nationwide as a place of opportunity, appealed to him and many others as a spot to settle and begin to build a livelihood and family. There were a number of French-speaking people in Calcasieu Parish, and, like many others from Lebanon, Shiker was fluent in that language.* This gave him an occasional edge as a salesman, and in forming new friendships with some of the locals. On top of that, he could not have missed the fact that a considerable community of immigrants from his homeland existed in Lake Charles.
At this time there were pockets of Lebanese immigrants throughout the United States, especially in Iowa, Tennessee and Oklahoma. In these communities those who were already established were sometimes of great help to the newcomers.8
When Shiker arrived in Louisiana he was directed toward a successful Lebanese shopkeeper in a nearby town who, it was known, was willing to give new arrivals from the old country goods to sell on consignment, from which they could earn a subsistence wage. Thus Shiker began in Lake Charles by peddling borrowed goods. On the strength of his affability, honesty, and hard work, however, it was not long before he began to make a name for himself in town.9
Shortly after coming to Lake Charles, Shiker was introduced to another native of Jdeidet Marjeyoun, young Raheeja Zorba.
Raheeja , who had been born on December 25, 1887, had immigrated to the United States earlier
*The capital “B” in DeBakey occurs sporadically but appears in documents by 1910.
and at an even younger age than Shiker, arriving at Ellis Island on August 7, 1898.10 The following year her mother Helen, then age sixty, immigrated to the United States as well, joining her daughter in the Midwest. The meeting of Shiker and Raheeja, which may have been arranged by family and friends, occurred in Oklahoma.
Sometime, probably in 1907, the young couple from the same small Middle Eastern village - who had travelled 6,000 miles to find each other - were married. They moved into the house and store at 1004 Railroad Avenue in 1909. Helen came to Louisiana with her daughter and lived with the family.11
By all accounts, the neighborhood around Railroad Avenue in Lake Charles, Louisiana in the early part of the twentieth century was a colorful one. There was a Southern Pacific Railway depot about five blocks west of the DeBakey store.12 The tracks ran through the center of the dirt street, and the sidewalks were planks.
For decades Lake Charles’ most notorious quarter – known as “Battle Row” - was located here.13 In its heyday, dozens of saloons, legal brothels and gambling houses thrived. The area had started to simmer down considerably in the first years of the new century, though. By the time the DeBakey family moved into the neighborhood much – though not all - of the Wild West nature of the district had been tamed.
The Railroad Avenue community in 1909 was a vibrant one even without the fading vice. There were scores of legitimate shops and storefronts, well established and thriving: grocery stores, dry goods markets, cafes and restaurants.
The neighborhood had a decidedly Mediterranean flavor, with a few immigrant families from Syria and more from Italy.14 Many of the shops had attached single-family dwellings, either behind the street-level businesses or above, with porches overlooking the thoroughfare. The DeBakey business and abode at 1004 Railroad Avenue was a duplex structure, not more than five years old. It is likely that the family lived in one half of 1004 while their shop occupied the other.15
This store was Shiker DeBakey’s first foray into independent business in America, after the better part of a decade of peddling and travelling sales work. He had saved money over the years while establishing his reputation in Lake Charles, and this frugality helped push him towards success. Although Shiker had had limited formal education back in Lebanon, he possessed an innate intelligence that meshed well with his other attributes. He worked long hours, regularly rising before dawn and toiling late into the evening. He never took vacations. He read material of all kinds in an effort to broaden his knowledge. He kept meticulous records and paid great attention to detail. All these qualities would later be prominent in his successful children.
Shiker and Raheeja DeBakey would eventually have six of these: four daughters and two sons. Michael came first, on September 7, 1908.*
iii) Beginnings
In later life, Michael DeBakey and his siblings would remember childhood in Lake Charles as pleasant and relatively uneventful. Their father could be a strict disciplinarian, holding his children to his
*Michael was called “Michel” interchangeably in childhood, and throughout life by some family and friends (he was confirmed in church as “Michel” in April, 1925). This version of the Biblical name is common amongst Lebanese Maronites, borrowed from the French. Middle names are not in general use in Arab cultures and it is not clear that Michael was initially provided one by his parents. Multiple sources from his childhood recorded his middle initial as “S,” which would be in keeping with the Arab convention of employing the father’s first name to this purpose when necessary. In later documentation the initial “E” appears, along with the middle name Ellis – a family name; the first examples of this are from the mid-1920s. If Michael had a government birth certificate, it may well have been destroyed in the 1910 Lake Charles fire, which consumed the courthouse and many of its records. Louisiana did not require birth certificates until 1918.16
own work ethic and drive for perfection, once they had grown old enough to understand them. Shiker kept his solid resolve wrapped in the proverbial velvet glove, though, and in these later recollections, the DeBakey children consistently related that they never had cause to doubt his affection.17
Raheeja offered a softer contrast. Her father Mousa (Moses) had been a priest in the Maronite Church, and her family had a long history in the clergy. Not surprisingly, then, she was more religious than her husband, and inculcated in the children her own concept of charity and consideration for the well-being of others as the basis not just for spirituality, but an approach to everyday life:
The impression we drew was that Christ was trying to teach the people God’s word – to love each other and be kind to each other, to help each other. We didn’t understand why, but philosophically, you see, this is the Golden Rule. As you grow older, you understand this better.18
Balanced between these defining characteristics of his parents, Michael eventually internalized them both. As he grew and matured, his own personality began to emerge as an offset amalgam of his father’s driving perfectionism and his mother’s overarching compassion.
Shiker and Raheeja DeBakey, circa 1910. Courtesy Katrin DeBakey.
Early events helped shape the future Michael DeBakey in ways only appreciated in hindsight. Perhaps his earliest waking memory, from pre-school days, was of sitting in front of his mother as she sewed. Raheeja was highly skilled in the many different facets of this art, and sometimes taught the neighborhood girls while she sewed for her family. As often as he could, Michael sat cross-legged on the floor, staring transfixed as she worked:
I couldn’t have been much more than 4 or 5. I was always asking questions, and bothering her, but she was very patient with me…she’d get me a crochet needle and show me how to crochet. I caught on very quickly and I was crocheting…I loved to do things with my hands.19
In this way, a very young Michael learned how to sew by hand, literally at the feet of his mother. Before long, he acquired the ability to knit and crochet. Then he mastered the difficult technique of tatting, working with the bobbin to create homemade lace. After the family acquired a sewing machine Michael became skilled on that, too, and prided himself on the straight lines he could produce. Perhaps most remarkably, given his young age, he kept at it. By the time he was ten years old, Michael was cutting patterns and sewing some of his own clothes.
Michael DeBakey at about age 2, circa 1910. Courtesy Katrin DeBakey.
There were other early hints of a far-off future, and an intense, innate curiosity. When his son was a renowned surgeon decades later, Shiker liked to relate a very different story from the preschool years.
One morning, father and eldest son took the family’s horse-drawn buggy to the surrounding countryside to hunt quail. Shiker set up a small camp by the buggy and went off to bag his game, leaving his young son at a safe distance from the shooting. He soon returned with a handful of dead birds, which the sheepish but intrigued Michael examined carefully as his father returned to the hunt. Soon Shiker was back with another crop of quail, but he stopped in his tracks when he encountered Michael with blood on his hands, along with a hunting knife and stunned expression. Shiker initially thought that Michael must have cut himself, but a quick examination revealed that that was not the case:
Finally, he made me confess that I had cut open one of the birds, and he saw where I had cut it open. He said, “Well, why did you do this, what were you trying to do?” And I said, “I was trying to find out how they fly.”20
Before Shiker’s business success provided enough wherewithal to buy a motor car, the same single-horse, canopied buggy carried the growing family around the town and parish.
On Sundays, this meant to church and beyond. There were, of course, no Maronite services in Lake Charles, but the DeBakeys felt that the Episcopal liturgy and ceremonies had significant similarities to their own, so they attended that denomination’s Church of the Good Shepherd.
In the morning, Shiker read to the family from the Bible as they sat at the breakfast table. After the brief buggy ride to church, the children attended Sunday school while their parents worshipped with the main congregation. Afterward they frequently made charitable deliveries to poorer, usually black neighborhoods or the Baptist orphanage, which was a short ride from the church. Every weekend Raheeja gathered bundles of clothes and baked goods for this purpose. On one memorable occasion Michael lost his favorite cap this way, but he learned a more important lesson from his mother:
I said, “Why did you give away my cap? That’s my favorite cap and I liked it so much.” And she said, “It was getting old. Besides, you have some other caps and some new ones.” I said, “But I don’t like any of those. I liked the other one.” She said, “You must try and understand that these
people are badly in need of help and they need some clothes and I gave this to them because they need it. And you don’t. Maybe you liked it, but you don’t need it.”21
Once these altruistic endeavors were complete, the family often spent the rest of the day in the country, or at one of the nearby lakes or rivers, bringing bread in a picnic basket and collecting fish and crabs to boil. They would return home in the evening, contented, laughing and chatting, listening to the rhythmic clatter of the horse’s hoofs on the road as the sun settled over the bayous beyond town.22
In 1914 the DeBakeys moved to a larger building on the next block, at 1114 Railroad Avenue.23 They would live there for the next eight years, and maintain a business in the space for many years afterward.
Almost as soon as he had any money at all, Shiker began investing in property. 24 In October, 1914 he obtained a permit for a new $3000 building, which most likely became 1112 Railroad Avenue, a property constructed that year next to their own shop and home. He rented this out as a drug store for the next two decades, and it would be the site of a defining moment for Michael.25
In the meantime, the DeBakey family continued to grow. After Michael, the other children arrived in measured succession. Ernest was born on February 17, 1910. The first daughter, Goldie, arrived on February 12, 1912. Three more girls followed: Selena, on September 20, 1913; Selma on December 3, 1915; and the youngest child, Lois, who was born on July 6, 1920.
Once the older children had grown enough to perform tasks about the house, the rhythmic rituals of weekday home life for the DeBakeys began to crystallize.
The adults in the home spoke both French and Arabic, but English was the primary language in the DeBakey household. Occasional French phrases crept into conversation (and Michael picked up some of these) but his father was especially proud of his United States citizenship and wanted to Americanize himself and his family as much as possible.26
The last to bed in the evening, Shiker was also the first to rise before dawn, usually by 4 o’clock. He used this solitary, silent time to read and to review his work plans, for that day and beyond. An hour or so later Raheeja and the children would appear. Michael was usually the first of the young ones about. Chores were the initial order of business. Michael’s primary tasks in the morning were to collect firewood
for the stove and fireplace and to grind coffee beans for his mother to roast in the pre-dawn twilight. Sometimes he helped his mother with the cooking. The family ate breakfast together, then the school-aged children - who had already made their beds and cleaned their rooms – polished up their homework and headed to classes on foot.27
Lake Charles had one high school at the time, and six grammar schools - four for whites and, in that segregated era, two for blacks. These were city schools and spread through the wards. During their time on Railroad Avenue the children attended the First Ward School, also called Goosport School after the neighborhood in which it was located.
In some of the grammar school classes two grades were taught in a single room, by the same teacher: one grade was instructed while the other sat performing rote work or reading silently. Then the teacher shifted her attention to the other group and the roles of the classes were reversed. This awkward back-and-forth continued throughout the day. This was the case for Michael’s fifth grade class.28
By the time he had reached this point, Michael was well ahead of most of his classmates in their academic endeavors. Sometimes he would correct the blackboard work of his teachers, especially in mathematics. Anything less than a perfect score on any test was an aberration, not to mention a likely source of censure from his father (Shiker did not reward excellence – he expected it – but he did scorn and sometimes punish anything less, especially if he thought it derived from laziness or lack of effort). About the only instances of less-than-perfect marks for Michael appeared under the category of deportment, where he sometimes struggled. Usually this was a function of boredom, but he eventually found a better outlet than disruption.
Michael’s fifth grade class happened to be the junior one in the two-class room and, with his own work completed, he naturally began peeking in on the other class’s lecture. Before long the teacher, Miss Inez Schindler, noticed this. In the manner of excellent educators immemorial, she recognized that her top student was intellectually beyond his assigned work and bored. She asked Michael if he wanted to take a test that would allow him to skip the grade and move straight into sixth. He responded with enthusiasm, and recorded a perfect score.29
iv) Boyhood
Despite his academic success, young Michael DeBakey was not a socially awkward bookworm. Like his father, he made friends easily. One close playmate was Morys “Pee Wee” Hines, who was about a year younger than Michael and lived around the corner.30 Michael and Pee Wee, along with Ernest and other neighborhood boys, ran around and played sports such as football and baseball in the sandlots near Railroad Avenue. They went to the movies every few weeks. They also liked to hunt and fish. Sometimes the boys went on camping trips and slept under mosquito netting, fishing during the day.31
When Michael was about ten years old, his father bought him a more serious weapon: a 22 caliber rifle. In Shiker’s eyes his eldest child’s academic performance merited the indulgence. Not long afterward Ernest asked for one, too, and - being an exceptional student himself - was similarly rewarded. Soon the brothers were out hunting small game – mostly ducks - in the fields around Lake Charles. They also laid traps for the small animal pests – squirrels, rabbits, frogs, even non-venomous snakes – that infiltrated their property, and Michael continued his explorations into amateur biology by dissecting what they caught. He had no qualms or misgivings in childhood about killing these animals. As he later said, everyone did it, and shooting was fun. Hitting your mark was even more fun.32
Shiker DeBakey loved the region – its people, its physical features and, especially, its food. Although the food of his native land is justifiably renowned on its own merits, Shiker took to the Cajun and Creole dishes of his adopted home like a local. In turn, Raheeja became skilled in these cooking styles, as well. A love of this food suffused their children, too, especially Michael, who favored it his whole life.33
As the oldest, Michael was looked up to by all his siblings, and charged with a special responsibility by his parents as well. He was expected to lead, and not always just by example. Mostly he found this an annoyance, as he was frequently blamed for the minor transgressions of his brothers and sisters. This particularly applied to Ernest who, although sharing a special bond with his older brother, did not feel obligated to obey him. When Shiker came to his eldest son about this sibling misbehavior he had little tolerance for Michael’s excuses: If Ernest or the girls didn’t obey his orders or entreaties, Michael wasn’t trying hard enough. When the younger children were punished for their actions, Michael was, too.
On some occasions the eldest son champed at this bit. Although he was developing self-discipline, that did not mean Michael always accepted punishment well from exterior sources. In one such instance he felt the bite of parental correction too harsh, and decided to run away. He had no plan, except to walk east on the railroad towards New Orleans. Michael didn’t make it far before darkness and hunger brought on irresistible second thoughts, of course, and he was soon back home.34
Even Michael would conclude that some of the discipline wrought on him was justifiable, though. In addition to the various outdoor activities he indulged in as a typical American boy of the early twentieth century, Michael also enjoyed reading - more than any of those other pastimes. Once he could read proficiently it didn’t take him long to devour all the books in the house. His introduction to the local library was transformational: Michael checked out the maximum number of books allowed every day and could be seen trundling home every afternoon, arms barely containing all his borrowed volumes.
This worthy habit was, of course, encouraged by his parents, but on some occasions it led Michael into harm’s way. Before leaving for work on one summer morning, Shiker had assigned his eldest the task of washing some windows in the house. When he returned unexpectedly in the middle of the day he found Michael lounging on his bed, reading one of his many library books. The windows had not been addressed, and there was hell to pay. Shiker got his “special strap” and applied it to his son with conviction. There was no injury – except to pride – but the pain was real enough. Shiker then told a crying Michael, “Go wash your face now and go get to those windows and wash’em.” It wasn’t a lesson that would need repeating. 35
As long as it did not interfere with specifically-assigned tasks or bedtime, though, Michael’s love of books was welcomed by his parents. They encouraged this in their other children, as well. When his sisters were old enough to read, all the children could sometimes be seen together, reading on the porch.36
On one trip to the library, Michael spotted a sizable set of volumes that he quickly realized was something almost inconceivably marvelous. The books seemed to cover every topic imaginable. To his disappointment, however, he was informed by the librarian that they could not be checked out. At the evening meal he remarked on this and when asked the title of the wonderful work he replied, “Encyclopedia Britannica.”
Shiker bought a set for the family straightaway.
When Michael was about ten his father considered that he was old enough to start helping in the business. He began with simple tasks – making deliveries, sweeping the floors and general tidying up. This was on weekends, as well as some weekdays during the school year before and after classes.37 By this point Shiker’s own pharmacy and dry goods businesses were thriving, but he was also receiving income from some of the properties he owned. Tragic circumstances associated with one of these rental properties would leave a deep impression on young Michael DeBakey.
In 1914 Shiker had put up a brick building at 1112 Railroad Avenue, next to his own dry goods store. Over the years he rented this out, usually as a drug store.38 In 1916, a travelling pharmaceutical salesman named C.W. Outhwaite took the space. He placed an experienced druggist named John F. Conrad in charge of the shop.39
Conrad was a middle-aged bachelor who mostly kept to himself. In the back of the building there was a room that he used as an apartment, complete with a bed, bathroom and stove. Young Michael, living next door, helped in the Outhwaite Drug Store as well, doing similar chores to those he performed at his father’s place. Michael and Conrad got along well. The older man was reserved but friendly, and offered to show Michael how to mix ingredients to make calomel powder and other medications. He also taught him how to read prescriptions, make pills, and perform other apothecary duties of the era. These tasks were far more interesting to a ten-year-old than sweeping floors, of course. Michael became very fond of the kind pharmacist who answered his many questions so patiently. But John Conrad was harboring a secret: he was an alcoholic.
Michael never saw him drunk. He never saw him drinking. He only found out about this aspect of his friend from conversations between his parents; given Michael’s age at the time he may not have understood what it all was about in any case. His mother Raheeja was kind to Conrad. She was kind to everyone, but Conrad was easy to like: affable and pleasant, if somewhat introverted. She brought soup to him in his little back room and helped keep the space tidy. Shiker, however, had great difficulty tolerating individuals who succumbed to what he perceived as the moral weaknesses of alcohol or tobacco. One of Shiker’s brothers was an alcoholic and had not had much success in life, and this may have helped to shape this perception. Raheeja did not share his view, and this was one of the few sources of disagreement, if not necessarily friction, in their lives. She would point out that the Bible, and Christ in particular, did not condemn these activities. What difference did it make to Shiker if Conrad, or anyone else, for that matter, took a drink or smoke, as long as no one else was hurt by it? Shiker grumbled that
such people were “lazy and no good.”*40
In the late summer of 1918 Conrad began having health problems. What these might have been – or if they were a euphemism for his alcoholism - is not known, but Conrad asked another druggist to help with the pharmacy until he could recover. Early on the morning of Monday, September 9, while he
* The DeBakeys did keep whiskey in the house, but this was only to camouflage the taste of castor oil for the children. The effect was incomplete with Michael, who could not stand the smell of whiskey throughout his life due to its powerful mental connection to that childhood supplement.41
was sweeping the floor, Michael heard a loud noise in the back room. He ran to the door and looked in. Conrad lay sprawled across his little bed, right arm extended. A .38 revolver was on the floor next to him, smoke still swirling from the barrel. Blood flowed freely from a hole in his temple.42
In tears, Michael called his father. The coroner came and made the obvious ruling. Michael remembered crying at Conrad’s funeral the next day.
It was Michael DeBakey’s first experience with death, and it left him unsettled for months, if not longer.*
v) Odyssey
In due course, the DeBakeys replaced their well-travelled buggy with that soon-to-be-ubiquitous technological advance called the automobile. The family’s first car was probably a Ford, and, despite its early appearance on the roads of Calcasieu Parish, any fond memories of it were eclipsed by the next example. This was a majestic mobile emblem of Shiker’s business success, a gigantic Cole V8.43
Around this time Shiker established the DeBakey Real Estate Company, and, in 1920, built 1110 Railroad Avenue. This was a duplex one-story brick structure emblazoned with the family name on the façade.44 It would serve the area as a grocery store, restaurant and furniture store in the years to come. At this point, with 1114, 1112 and now 1110 Railroad Avenue in his ledger, Shiker owned most of the block, and had plans for more. The February 23, 1920 edition of the Lake Charles American Press trumpeted more news:
*Fifty-four years later, DeBakey said he could still see the image of the dead Conrad: “…it’s indelibly imprinted in my mind. I can still visualize him lying on this bed with his arm out…”45
A modern picture and vaudeville theatre will be built on Railroad Avenue near Boulevard. When completed the building will cost about $25,000. The theatre will consist of a parquet and balcony which can seat 800 persons. Mr. DeBakey says the theatre will cater to both white and colored patronage.46
The theatre was completed in the fall of 1920.
Flush with his conspicuous success, Shiker decided to return to his home country of Lebanon for a visit in 1921.
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire with the end of the First World War, Lebanon had come under control of France via a League of Nations mandate. The area had seen significant chaos and destruction in the war, but was probably as stable and safe for the family to visit as it was likely to be. Shiker decided that they would see France, Egypt, and Italy in addition to Lebanon, and that he would even bring their big Cole 8 car with them. They would be gone for six months.47
Shiker gathered the family together for the requisite passport picture. In this, the only known photograph to depict the entire family, Shiker appears poised and proud, seven-month-old Lois perched calmly on his lap with arms crossed. Except for a pensive Michael, the other children appear amused. Raheeja alone looks somewhat glum, as well she might with the specter of international travel with an infant and five other children in the offing.
DeBakey family passport application photo, March, 1921.Left to right: Shiker, Goldie, Lois, Selena, Michael, Raheeja, Selma, Ernest. Courtesy Michael M. DeBakey.
Shiker arranged for a renter to run the 1114 Railroad Avenue store, and sold him the inventory. On April 1st, 1921, they were off.
Twelve-year-old Michael kept a diary of the epic trip, recorded in a small ledger book in pencil.
We left Lake Charles at 11:10PM, Friday, April 1, 1921. We arrived in New Orleans 6:50AM.
We got on the steamship “Missouri” 2:30PM. We ate supper 7:30PM. After supper we went to see them put our car on the ship. It was about 8:25PM. They had a hard time because it was so big. 48
Michael dutifully recorded the details of the Atlantic crossing, although the majority of the trip was uneventful. Multiple diary entries read, “The day passed and nothing happened interesting,” but there were some mildly intriguing incidents to punctuate the boredom. On one day he examined the boat’s engine, and the technically-minded young man pronounced it a 3-cylinder. On another he saw two stowaways caught and remarked that the captain locked them up and put them on bread and water rations.49
The Missouri crossed the Atlantic by way of Cuba and the Canary Islands. The family disembarked at Le Havre on Sunday, May 1st.* It had taken them exactly a month to get to France from Lake Charles.50
After two days of exploring the old port city, the family boarded the southbound train. Michael observed a single horse struggling to pull their Cole V8 up from the wharf to the station. Shiker had originally planned to drive the car through France but authorities instructed him that this would entail duties. He was not willing to pay these fees, and instead had it shipped ahead. The train, destined for Marseilles, stopped for only an hour in Paris, where any limited sight-seeing the family may have enjoyed was spoiled by rain.51
The DeBakeys spent nine days in Marseilles, touring the parks, zoo and the famous basilica Notre-Dame de la Garde. Michael sent a letter to the American Press that was published. In this he revealed that, “The funny thing of the people here is that 90 per cent of their drinking is wine.” After this, they journeyed to Beirut via Alexandria, Egypt, and Jaffa, Palestine.* 52
From Beirut the DeBakeys travelled overland some 100 kilometers to Jdeidit Marjeyoun. They spent the next three and-a-half months in Shiker and Raheeja’s hometown. The foresight to bring their automobile along paid dividends at this point, as they were able to drive to Damascus and other locations to sightsee with relative convenience. For the most part these driving trips were not suited to the younger children, but Michael was old enough to be well-behaved and appreciate what he was seeing. Alongside his parents he sat wide-eyed, trying to take it all in:
It expanded my whole understanding…I met all kinds of different people, and people who spoke different languages and dressed differently and behaved differently.53
One of the different languages he encountered was, of course, Arabic. Michael made an effort to learn the language while his family was in Lebanon, memorizing the alphabet and learning some basics of grammar. After the family returned to Louisiana a hopeful Shiker even offered to pay for correspondence courses so that Michael could continue the endeavor, but his more practical-minded son decided it was not worth the effort, thinking that such knowledge would only rarely be put to use. On a host of later occasions DeBakey would be reminded how wrong that assessment was, and once lamented, “that shows you the ignorance of a child.”54
Michael continued writing letters to the newspaper as well as his old teacher, Mrs. Schindler (which were also published). In August, he wrote:
I want you to put these jokes in the paper. When we were in the custom house a man asked us “Were you in America?” We said, “Yes.” He said, “In what part, Brazil or New York?” (S.A. or N.A.). We told him New York. He says, “Did you see my brother in Buenos Aires?” We told him no. That shows of what use is geography.
The country here is growing little by little, but it is very tiresome for women. Ever since I’ve left the U.S. I haven’t seen nothing like the stars and stripes. 55
Michael celebrated his thirteenth birthday in Lebanon on September 7, 1921. Ten days later, he and the family began the long journey back to Louisiana. On the return trip, the DeBakeys had a bit more time for the City of Light, as duly reported in the American-Press:
We spent two days in Paris. We took an automobile and drove around the city. Paris is a very pretty city. All the buildings are even. It is not like some cities, one building high and the next one low.
While we were in Paris there was a big fire. Two stores burned. Each store took a block, so it was a real big fire. They haven’t a very good fire department here. 56
After arriving in New York the family took an overnight train to Washington, D.C., the first of what would be many trips to the nation’s capital for Michael over the decades to come:
We arrived in Washington, D.C. 7:20 A.M. I saw the Capitol. I saw the White House and I saw where the Senate meets. I saw where Abe Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre and I saw where he died across the street. Washington D.C. is the cleanest city I have seen in all my travels. I saw Washington’s Monument…Washington D.C. is a very beautiful place.57
The family reached New Orleans by train on Friday, October 28, heading home to Lake Charles the next day. They had been gone exactly six months.
The DeBakeys’ overseas trip had an immense impact on their eldest son. Besides exposing him to a vast variety of different cultures, languages, topography, flora, fauna and everything else he would never have experienced in Southwest Louisiana, this tremendous experience ignited in Michael an abiding love of travel. When he had the means and position to indulge this passion, years later and almost exclusively in a professional capacity, he did so fully. Decades afterward, DeBakey pointed to this trip as one of the most important events of his youth.
vi) Broad Street
The half-year hiatus might have blunted the head start Michael had gotten in his education with the skipping of a grade (he was back in seventh grade, where he had been in the spring) but he had no trouble returning to focus in the classroom once he returned. Michael made the honor roll consistently, which required at least an 85 percent in all subjects, plus what must have been a challenging 90 percent in deportment.58
Michael had always been a prodigious reader, but sometimes he had gotten involved in juvenile novels like the Rover Boys series, which were popular for decades.59 Now, as he moved into the high school years, an appreciation of the English language as a medium of pure artistic expression began to emerge.
Around this time Michael first read Thomas Gray’s great poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Originally published in 1751, this powerful work, with its profound reflections on the meaning of life and death, was enormously popular in the nineteenth century. That renown has waned somewhat over the years, but quotes and references from the poem remain in common use: the phrase “far from the madding crowd,” also the name of Thomas Hardy’s famous novel, is taken from the Elegy. So is “paths of glory,” echoed in the title of Stanley Kubrick’s classic anti-war film, and the expression “kindred spirit.” As an attestation of the poem’s fame in the nineteenth century, when Abraham Lincoln was asked to provide a biography of his early life for publication in the presidential election campaign of 1860, he replied, “It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Gray’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’”60
The beauty of expression and depth of meaning of Gray’s Elegy appealed to Michael in a way that nothing he had ever encountered before in literature or any other artistic medium had or, arguably, ever would. The magnificent cadence of its classical iambic pentameter, the melancholy but hopeful text, Gray’s seemingly effortless selection of just the right words overwhelmed him. This, then, was what was meant when people talked of “genius.”
From this point on Michael paid special attention to language. He paid attention to how he used it himself, setting his standards unforgivingly high. He paid attention to how it was used by others, too, employing the same lofty criteria. He frequently found fault in both sources.
Early on, the very brilliance of Gray’s Elegy created a quandary for him. It seemed to have leapt from the poet’s pen onto the page fully formed, not so much a work of art as a revelation. Despite his appreciation - and even affection - for the poem, he knew he could never match that ideal; for him it was a challenge to write well at all, at the start: “I’d sit sometimes for HOURS on the first paragraph, scratching and changing and going back.” 61 To approach the level of artistry of the Elegy seemed hopeless, and the evidence of Gray’s effortless composition weighed heavily.
Everything changed, though, when Michael encountered a book at the Lake Charles library that did not merely contain the Elegy – as many compendiums did - but was about it. This was most likely Reginald Heber Holbrook’s Gray's Elegy, with Literary and Grammatical Explanations and Comments, and Suggestions as to How it Should be Taught.62 It was an admiring paean to the poem, but more importantly it was also a handbook for teachers. As a result, Holbrook’s book contained in-depth analysis, including a discussion of Thomas Gray’s process of composing the Elegy. As he read it, to Michael’s surprise, he learned that this great work of literature had not simply leapt from Gray’s mind into immortality as he had thought. The poet had had to work at it – for years, even - crafting the language, shaping the verse, navigating into blind alleys and out until the final result was the timeless gem of English literature. 63
The fact that the Elegy was not a revelation to Gray was, itself, a revelation to Michael DeBakey. If anything he now harbored a greater respect for the poet, and especially for the work he had mustered to compose his magnum opus. The underlying message, too, was clear, and resonated outside of poetry
and even art: outstanding achievements were the result of outstanding efforts. In many ways, this simple but vital philosophical construct became the cornerstone of DeBakey’s persona. The measure of his lifelong adherence to it – tested in the crucible of his father’s perfectionism - begins, by all odds, at this point.
In 1923 the DeBakeys moved again, this time from their familiar neighborhood on Railroad Avenue to a much more spacious residence at 1005 Broad Street, in the most affluent community in Lake Charles. Much later DeBakey recalled the house in detail and with affection:
There was a big wide porch all the way around the house, with a swing on the side and the front. A large lawn in front of it. It was really a three-story house: two stories and a big attic. There were a total of six bedrooms upstairs. I even had my own bedroom. I remember I was the
envy of a lot of boys around because I had an electric fan on the ceiling with three speeds. I’d sleep all night on low speed in the summer time.64
The DeBakey home at 1005 Broad Street, Lake Charles. Courtesy Katrin DeBakey.
With eight people in the household, the task of homemaking was a full-time one for Raheeja. Absorbed in his increasingly-successful business enterprises, Shiker needed help around the property as well. He was an avid gardener, but had little time to pursue this interest. The DeBakeys hired an African-American couple as servants, and provided them with a small house in the back yard. The man worked for Shiker, mainly in the garden, and his wife helped Raheeja. She mainly assisted with the laundry and cleaning, since Raheeja liked to handle the cooking herself. This couple stayed with the DeBakeys for years.65
Much later DeBakey asserted that he did not observe any racial prejudice while growing up in Lake Charles, directed against his family or against African-Americans. He was careful to stress that he himself had never felt any discrimination based on his ethnicity. To the extent that this was a function of his youth and relative incapacity for characterizing human behavior is a matter for speculation; after all, there were two “colored” ward schools separate from the white ones he attended. By his own report it was only later, in New Orleans, that DeBakey first noticed and recognized racism directed against hospitalized African-Americans, and was both offended and repulsed.66
There were only three houses on their block, and the lot was large, with 150 feet of street frontage, 200 feet deep. With the luxury of this sizable property, Shiker set up his gardens: flowers in the front and side yards, vegetables in the back. The vegetable garden was about 100 by 125 feet across. Michael and Ernest were set to work here, as well, and their father’s attention to detail found another outlet. The rows had to be straight, and so he made the boys lay them out with a string pulled taut. The DeBakeys raised a wide variety of crops in the vegetable garden: corn, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, okra, radishes and more.67 They planted seeds of squash and cucumber which they had brought back from Lebanon. This garden became a year-round affair, and provided fresh vegetables for their own and their neighbors’ tables in every season. Michael found the work appealing: he continued gardening whenever he could throughout his life. Ernest considered it a chore, and observed that once he was done with his father’s garden he’d never set foot in another!68
In those days, competitive gardening was considered a wholesome thing for teenaged boys. With his emerging drive to be the best, just about anything competitive was sure to pique Michael’s interest. The DeBakey boys entered a tri-parish contest, headquartered at the local bank. Prizes were awarded for garden layout, for particular crops, and for the most money deposited into special accounts set up at the bank. The money could come from sales of crops or odd jobs done about town that benefitted the civic interest. With his string-straight rows Michael was a shoo-in for the layout prize, and he also collected blue ribbons for his corn and tomatoes. On top of that, he also raised the most money, depositing $61.20 in proceeds. These efforts earned him a $30 silver Elgin pocket watch from a local jeweler, $10 in cash from the bank, and a bushel of apples (his winning specimens were put on display at the bank). Despite Ernest’s misgivings about the whole enterprise, he took home third place, good enough for a $10 watch and a pair of skates. The winners even made the paper in a story entitled, “Michael DeBakey Gets Capital Prize in Garden Contest.”69
Ernest, Michael, and Shiker DeBakey in the vegetable garden at the Broad Street home, circa 1922. Courtesy Katrin DeBakey.
Shiker indulged the technical as well as agrarian interests of his eldest son, which were so much like his own. He bought Michael a build-it-yourself crystal radio kit, and they both were delighted when the completed set actually began to emit sounds. 70
On a grander scale, Shiker purchased for his boys a used and frankly broken-down Studebaker, of about 1910 vintage. He expected them to tinker with it, as they did, but was probably surprised when they actually got the thing to run.
This took some doing, and required the purchase of a few parts. Michael predictably found some books on the subject at the library, and familiarized himself with the mechanics of the car in detail.
I used to work in the backyard with it. Take it down. Clean it. Take the parts out. Clean it and gasoline it and oil it well. Put the parts back. Finally, I learned a lot about the way the motor operated, and I could fix it myself. I’d go down and buy certain parts and fix it.71
Michael was particularly fascinated by the sleeve valve, a design found in engines of the first part of the twentieth century. In this type of mechanism metal sleeves sit within the cylinder. As the piston moves, ports in the sliding sleeves line up with holes in the walls of the cylinder at specific times during the engine’s cycle to expel combustion gases and draw in air. Michael read about the valve and internalized the information. A decade later, he would recall and apply it in a very different set of circumstances on the wards of New Orleans’ Charity Hospital.
The boys found that, with a few minor adjustments to the engine, they could significantly improve the old car’s performance. In this time before government-administered driving licenses, the DeBakey boys could be seen cruising through Lake Charles in their “hopped up” car or, as likely, racing the other local boys on a makeshift track they had set up in the country. This whole episode was the beginning of Michael’s lifelong fascination with fast cars and driving.72
The tools the boys used to work on their pet project belonged, of course, to their father. He kept them in a backyard shed he had built. Naturally each tool had its allotted space on the wall or bench. There was even a mounted drawing indicating where each tool or other object belonged. Woe to the son who borrowed a tool without returning it to its rightful spot, properly cleaned: “He’d raise hell if he came in looking for a tool and it wasn’t in the right place.”73
These tools also were brought to bear in the construction of various small wood furniture items - coffee tables, flower stands, etc. - which Michael and Ernest also took pleasure in sketching out, designing and then building during these years. The drawing part of these activities held a special charm for Michael – he was unusually skilled with the pen and pencil.74
Not every pastime had such tangible and useful results. Somewhat uncharacteristically, in the mid-twenties the straight-laced Shiker had opened a billiards parlor at 1108 Railroad Avenue, alongside his other properties75 He also set up a pool table in the house on Broad Street. Naturally the boys were enthralled by this amusement, and they developed considerable skill on it. Years later Michael would allow that Ernest was the better player: “He played it quite intensely, and I used to play just for the fun of it.”76
Michael displayed an early aptitude, if not exactly a gift, for music. With considerable encouragement from his father, he took lessons on the violin in his grammar school days, and learned to read music and pick out tunes on the family piano. Later, in high school, he wanted to switch to the saxophone so he could play in the school band (his old friend Pee Wee Hines played in this band, as well). Shiker was initially reluctant, but finally was convinced when his son agreed to continue with the violin, too. Michael played both these instruments in the school orchestra.77 He kept playing the saxophone in bands up into college, until the time constraints applied by his many other activities left no opportunity.78
Raheeja’s mother Helen, who had always had a special affection for her eldest grandson, passed away on October 22, 1924 at the age of 78 and was buried in Lake Charles at the Graceland Cemetery.79
Many years later, when he had achieved great success and his intellect was celebrated in a multitude of circles, it was a common occurrence for casual acquaintances or those who knew him only by repute to assume that the erudite Michael DeBakey was not athletic. Although there may have been some truth to this in his later years, there is abundant evidence that this was not the case in his youth. Michael continued playing the usual neighborhood sports he had enjoyed with the Railroad Avenue neighborhood boys on an interscholastic level in grade school, high school, and beyond.
When he was still at First Ward School, in sixth grade, Michael ran for the track team and placed first in the city in the 50-yard-dash and the broad jump.80 On the high school track team he ran the 100-yard dash. He was too small to play football, but Michael did play guard on the Lake Charles High School Wildcats basketball team. In those days this position was primarily defensive, and in later reminiscences DeBakey allowed that it was his competitive tenacity, rather than any innate talent, that benefitted him in the back court. He also observed that he probably led the league in fouls.81
In the 1920s, though, baseball was by far the most popular sport in America. Probably every capable lad in the country played it in one form or another. In the late winter of 1921, just before the DeBakeys left on their trans-Atlantic journey, the already-legendary Babe Ruth himself passed through Lake Charles. In those days, major leaguers would often go on barnstorming trips through the country in the off-season, drumming up interest and collecting appearance fees. On March 16, 1921, Ruth and fellow Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby squared off at the head of their respective squads, the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals. Ruth’s Yankee team also boasted future trivia-question answer Wally Pipp, the first baseman that fell ill one day in 1925 and was replaced by a journeyman named Lou Gehrig – who then did not miss a game for the next thirteen years. The exhibition drew thousands to the Athletic Park across from the Southern Pacific depot on Railroad Avenue, and it is possible that the DeBakey family was among the throng (Ruth did not disappoint, swatting a mammoth home run in the fourth inning of the Yankees’ win).82
Smitten by the national pastime as much as the next teenage boy, Michael became catcher on the Wildcats’ high school baseball team. It was not a position of glamour. Although he was supposed to wear a catcher’s mask, he often neglected this safety measure and then the game became as much a threat as a sport. On one occasion, a near-calamity almost permanently altered the course of his life.
While he was playing catcher without a mask on, one of the batters tipped a pitched fastball, which continued on its slightly-altered course and struck the unprepared Michael in his right eye. The resulting injury caused the eye to swell and close, and left him blind on this side for several days. There was real fear on the part of the physicians involved that he might lose his eye. They gave Michael a patch to wear. After a few tense days he recovered sight, although he later noted that his vision never fully recovered in that eye. He also blamed the injury for vision changes that required him to wear glasses later. He also understandably lost his prior enthusiasm for baseball.83
Michael had been good in mathematics since his first introduction to the subject, and high school was no different. As his capacities grew and his talents matured, his father took note and soon recognized that the young man now could be put to work in the more intellectual facets of the family business, beyond deliveries and sweeping floors. Shiker owned texts on accounting that he had bought for himself and studied, and he now gave these to Michael to read, so that he could try his hand at keeping the books. He was pleased and proud in his father’s trust in him for such an important task, but Michael was soon to learn that this was another scenario in which he would fall short in the endless pursuit of perfection:
If I made a mistake in addition he would really give me hell about it. Just no excuse for it. All I had to do was check it. “If I could find the error in addition or subtraction - something like that - you could have done it, too.” Well, that taught me without my realizing it at the time. And I became, myself, insistent upon being accurate about everything. 84
As the DeBakey children came up through the Lake Charles schools behind Michael, they propagated the family’s reputation of scholarship. None could quite match the eldest brother’s performance, of course - he had led the way and remained the standard-bearer - but the siblings’ talent was recognized. Ernest excelled in his own right and established a separate reputation as a scholar. Selma and the youngest, Lois, were the best students among the four daughters, regularly appearing among the honor rolls of their schools. Their teachers must have wondered if there was any end to the string of bright DeBakey children.85
In later years DeBakey would be asked on many occasions what had motivated him to pursue a career in medicine. Before he became used to the question he expressed a particular uncertainty, but on at least one occasion identified the catalyst he would later recite consistently:
It’s hard for me to say. I don’t know really. I’ve thought about this…it’s hard to assess all the factors, you see, that influenced you. I was, I’m sure, influenced by my relationships with the doctors in the community whom I got to know because of my father’s drugstore and the fact that we served them. And I used to run errands for them. They got to be friends with my father and I’d see them and, somehow, the work they did appealed to me. 86
These physicians may well have provided the stimulus, but whatever the motivation, by the time Michael was preparing for the next step in his education beyond Lake Charles High School he was determined to become a doctor.
With his excellent academic record, the opportunities for collegiate study were plentiful for Michael DeBakey. Some of his teachers suggested he consider applying to the famous northeastern schools: in their opinion his chances for admission were good. Michael’s parents, however, were reluctant to see him travel that far away at such a young age: he would not turn eighteen until the start of his freshman year. They thought he should stay closer to home - for college, at least. After that, if he really did want to go to medical school he could look further afield. Even then, there was a perfectly reasonable – indeed, in some ways ideal – alternative that answered all these bells and more, and was just a few hours’ drive away.87
The origins of Tulane University can be traced to 1834, when seven young physicians in New Orleans founded the Medical College of Louisiana. In 1847 the state legislature created the University of Louisiana and absorbed the little Medical College as its Department of Medicine. Initially the only other subject taught was Law, but shortly thereafter other academic divisions began to arise.88
The university closed during the Civil War, and reopened to hard times in the difficult period of Reconstruction. Its long-term viability was in question due to financial concerns, but salvation came in the form of the wealthy New Orleans businessman-turned-philanthropist named Paul Tulane. He established a trust and donated large tracks of land in the city for educational purposes. Rather than create a new institution, the trust’s leaders opted to support the existing University of Louisiana, which was renamed Tulane University of Louisiana in 1884.
Over the ensuing years the university grew both in size and in the scope of its academic endeavors. In 1885 the graduate school opened, and the following year saw the founding of H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, named in memory of the daughter of philanthropist Josephine Louise Newcomb. This became the first coordinate women’s college in an American university.89
By the time young Michael DeBakey was considering his next steps after Lake Charles High School, Tulane was firmly established as one of, if not the premier university in the South. It also had a medical school, equally highly regarded. On any real reflection, the choice was easy. The principal of Lake Charles High School wrote a glowing letter of recommendation to Tulane for his gifted student, and this was shortly answered by one of acceptance.90
There were a few celebrations and ceremonies for Michael to attend before closing out his childhood in Lake Charles and heading for college. On May 22, 1926 his high school orchestra, 42 pieces strong, performed a rather lengthy program at the Central School auditorium to signal the end of the school year. In the middle of the concert Michael played a special saxophone number with eleven other players. If the review from the paper was accurate, the show was very well received, “though the audience was small.” 91
The following week the orchestra was also on the bill as the eighty-eight members of the 1926 graduating class were honored in the 31st annual Lake Charles High School commencement.* Pee Wee Hines and Michael joined forces on the saxophone for a rendition of a whimsical number called “Laf–N-Sax.”92 Afterwards Michael gave one of the two valedictory speeches; his was entitled “Carrying the Wildcat Spirit through Life.” The text was mostly taken from a published collection of commencement addresses, tailored to the occasion by Michael.93 Due to his many future achievements, however, the otherwise formulaic remarks seem almost prescient:
“No matter how young we may be both in years and experience, we yet have a goal toward which we have long ago set our feet; we have an ambition toward the gratification of which all our energies have for years been directed. With that supreme ideal ever-preeminent in our minds we step out upon the mountain of the world’s progress, determined to climb for that and only that as long as we may live. And
we shall surmount every obstacle if we carry with us that same wild cat spirit that has many times brought our school to victory out of the very jaws of defeat by fighting until the last whistle blew.
Ignore the obstacles and they are already half overcome. Longfellow says:
‘We have not wings, we cannot soar,
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.’ *
‘Oh, pause not then - nor falter
For fate is in your hand,
Climb over, onward, upward,
To where your feet would stand.
The rocks are rough and rugged,
But victory is sublime,
Step bravely, boldly forward,
And climb, and climb, and climb!’” *94
After the applause and some further benedictions the diplomas were handed out and high school was over. A new chapter in Michael’s life was about to begin, in a city he barely knew, among people he didn’t know at all.
A few weeks later Shiker DeBakey drove his firstborn child to college. As father and son loaded into the Cole for the drive to New Orleans, Michael was undoubtedly regarding his future with excitement and trepidation, as would any eighteen-year-old headed away from home for the first time. At the end of their road lay an alluring mystery. The Big Easy, with its glamour and history - at the same time frenetic Jazz Age metropolis and silky antebellum memoir – must have seemed a daunting if not necessarily inhospitable host. With the exception of a few extraordinary periods, however, Michael would call this city home for the next 22 years.