Veteran Gerard reflects on gift of life
He wants to honor others after transplant
WEST BEND - One day last week, Dick Gerard picked up his clarinet and briefly played some notes.
It was nothing special, unless you consider that just before Memorial Day, Gerard, 65, underwent lung transplant surgery.
Gerard, who enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 1969 after graduating James Madison High School in Milwaukee and played in military bands for 42 years, wants to practice again.
And he yearns to resume his volunteer service at military funerals, where he helps fold the American flag and then dips down to one knee and presents it to the next of kin.
Since 2005, he has folded and presented flags at some 600 funerals.
This Independence Day, the Fourth of July, is a special one for Gerard. He may still be homebound and recovering from surgery, but he can reflect on his good fortune and his new start.
“The doctors never said anything about what my life expectancy would have been without the transplant,” Gerard said. “But I look at it as a gift of life. Somebody had to die in order for me to extend my life. It’s a blessing for me. It’s a blessing for the family, even though they lost
their loved one, part of their loved one is still continuing on.”
“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to meet the family if they wish, so that I can personally thank them,” he said.
Gerard had pulmonary fibrosis, scarring of the lung tissue. He doesn’t know how he got it, but he can chart his slow and steady deterioration over seven years, from good health to needing six liters of oxygen daily.
“I could tell when I was running out of breath,” said Gerard, who worked 34 years at West Bend’s wastewater treatment plant. “My color was not a good flesh tone color. I started to look old. I would look in the mirror and see my dad.”
Gerard wasn’t the first in his family to have the ailment. His older brother, Michael, also had a lung transplant.
“It is something that sometimes runs in families but it’s not very common,” said George Haasler, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin.
In such cases, although the exact causes aren’t often known, Haasler said it could be “something related to their own genetic makeup or something with their immunology.”
Gerard was put on the transplant list in January. And then he waited.
He was even poised to share his story earlier with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Around noon on the day of the scheduled interview, May 25, Gerard received a call from Froedtert Hospital. A donor had been found and the transplant was going to take place within hours.
Gerard and his wife, Holly, made their way to the hospital, calling friends, family, a prayer circle and the Journal Sentinel.
By 4:30 p.m., he was fully prepped for surgery, a double lung transplant.
“The surgery took around 7 1/2 hours,” said Haasler, who led the surgical team. “It is truly a group effort and typically two to three surgeons are involved, One surgeon goes to procure the lung. In this case, it was at another hospital where the donor’s lungs were and in the meantime, it is a carefully coordinated pattern getting our patient ready and getting him set for the transplant.”
“And when the donor lungs arrive, the three of us will place the new lung in the patient,” Haasler said. “Those are things that require a group effort.”
Haasler said 12 to 14 lung transplants are done annually at Froedtert.
“It definitely takes a village to do this, but it also takes a village for the patients to support each other and really make for a community,” he said. “In the entire world, there have been fewer lung transplants than the population of Wauwatosa. It’s still an evolving
science and a very special procedure.”
“Transplants continue to be a growing science with increasing success,” he added. “It is still limited nationwide by limitations of not having sufficient donors for all the patients that are waiting. People need to believe that transplant is a potentially great option for their families and for the greater family of humanity.”
For Gerard, the transplant has brought a sense of freedom. The oxygen tanks are gone.
Gerard, who retired in 2011 as a first sergeant from the Wisconsin Army National Guard, belongs to American Legion Post 36 in West Bend. One of his duties is to serve as part of the West Bend Honor Guard.
“I really want to get back into it,” he said. “In order to do it, I have to get down on one knee and present the flag. I don’t have that strength yet.”
But in the near future, he will be back with the honor guard.
“To honor those who went before me,” he said, explaining his desire to volunteer at funerals.
“I mean, with the red, white and blue blood that flows through my veins I feel very strongly about serving this country, whether it be as a band member or cook or foot soldier who actually gets fired at and fires back. We all serve. And if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be under the stars and stripes now. To those who did it before me, I have to honor them, thank them.”