Medical & Science:
Life Flight marked its 10th anniversary in 1986.
This story ran in the Houston Post on Nov. 2, 1986. Story excerpts are reprinted below.
Dr. Red Duke, the driving force in launching Life Flight a decade ago, admits, “I didn’t have the foggiest notion what I was doing.”
But in the past 10 years, 27,500 patients have been whisked aboard Life Flight helicopters, making it the busiest hospital-based air ambulance service in the nation.
“It’s getting to be so common now it’s a way of life,” Duke said about Life Flight, which is scheduled to mark its 10th anniversary today with a party in Hermann Park for more than a thousand former patients.
James Henry Duke Jr. is well-known for his downhome, folksy medical advice featured on Channel 13 news and syndicated to 69 television stations in 30 states.
But 10 years ago, the surgeon got Life Flight off the ground and continues to be its medical director. Duke’s plan for using helicopters as ambulances soared as a way to cut the time required to transport critically injured or ill patients to Hermann Hospital. Or as Duke said in a recent interview: “We get along little dogie.”
Life Flight has become such a part of Houston that scenes of a helicopter crew rushing an accident victim to the hospital are a staple of local TV news. In fact, people often misuse the copyrighted name, as in, “He was Life Flighted to Hermann Hospital.”
Duke, sitting in his cluttered office and listening to country-western music, smiles about the way Life Flight has eased into people’s vocabulary. “Life Flighted” doesn’t bother him, but he readily admits he’s a stickler about grammar.
“I raise hell with people all the time,” said Duke, still smiling.
“Doctors do it all the time. ‘He had a bleed.’ That’s making a verb into a noun … Now, when I speak, I speak one way, and I write another way.”
Duke, who turns 58 later this month, says grammar is just one of his “obsessivecompulsive traits.”
Another of his passions is wildlife preservation.
He’s president of three wildlife groups and founded the Texas Bighorn Society.
Professionally, he is a trauma surgeon. He was the doctor who cared for the two Houston policemen seriously shot last week and performed the four-hour operation on one of the officers.
He also was a resident at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas the day President Kennedy was assassinated. He is credited with saving the life of then-Gov. John Connally, who was riding in the car with Kennedy.
After growing up on a small Central Texas ranch, Duke graduated from Texas A&M and the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary before earning his medical degree at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and working as a medical missionary in Afghanistan.
Asked how an Aggie ended up working for UT in Houston, Duke doesn’t skip a beat: “I’m a missionary.”
But he quickly points out he doesn’t want to see an article about himself. He agreed to an interview to discuss Life Flight and, more important, the prevention of injuries.
The No. 1 cause of death for people under the age of 44 is injury. And most injuries occur in traffic accidents. In 1983, 353,000 potential years of life were lost because of injury - more than from heart disease, cancer and infection put together, Duke said.
National studies estimate that 40 to 70 percent of deaths caused by car wrecks are preventable if people are taken to an adequate hospital quickly enough.
Thirty percent of auto accident deaths occur in the first half-hour because of mortal wounds. But early treatment during the next hour could save many lives.
“If you get injured right down here on Main Street, you got a good chance of getting to Ben Taub (by ambulance), and you’re all right,” Duke explained. “You get injured out between Livingston and Nacogdoches, you’re in deep trouble if somebody doesn’t get you out of the mess.”
The ambulance crews who first arrive at a scene are “the great unsung heroes of our time,” Duke said. “Get out there, identify the problem, and call for help.”
When Life Flight first started, Duke believed most of its activity would be outside Houston’s city limits. “It actually is, but I really didn’t believe there would be any need whatsoever in the city limits of Houston. I don’t drive in traffic. I refuse to drive in traffic. I will not drive in traffic,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe it. It turns out something like 30 percent of our flights are to the scene, and half of those are within the city limits.”
When Life Flight began a decade ago, it was only the third such program in the country. Now, it includes five helicopters and an airplane for long- distance travel.
The “birds,” as Duke frequently calls the helicopters, take off with a pilot, a doctor and a flight nurse and serve a 150-mile radius. Three of the copters operate from Hermann, while the other two are stationed in Galveston and Beaumont.
“People say, ‘Red, how do we call Life Flight?’ And my answer is: Don’t. Call the fire department (for an ambulance) or get to a hospital and let them decide if you need to ride the bird. Most people don’t need it.”
Only a small percentage of injuries or illnesses demand Life Flight and the quick attention of a trauma center. But if Life Flight is called with an emergency by the appropriate medical, law enforcement or safety personnel, “we hook ‘em, weather permitting,” Duke said.
When Duke first joined the then-fledgling University of Texas Medical School at Houston in 1972, one of his first functions was to develop a trauma center at adjoining Hermann Hospital.
“There was a lovely emergency room, but there wasn’t anything going on with it much,” Duke recalled. “I didn’t have the foggiest notion how we could develop a trauma center in a private hospital.”
In addition, Hermann sits next door to Harris County’s Ben Taub Hospital, “a great trauma hospital,” he continued.
“I thought they were talking like they had been smoking high-grade pot or something,” Duke said about those early faculty conversations.
But the following year, the hospital built the John S. Dunn Helistop with money donated by the late businessman and former officer of the Hermann Hospital Estate board of trustees.
“I’ll never forget the day they dedicated it. I thought, ‘What in the world? How can I use this?’ “Duke said.
The hospital had no helicopters, and even an Army helicopter pilot refused to use the landing pad — opting instead to land in the parking lot.
Meanwhile, Duke heard that people living in the Cypress Creek area north of FM 1960 willingly donated money to buy an ambulance, because in the early 1970s they were far from any major hospital.
“I became impressed with the fact they had done that on their own. But still, when somebody was in real trouble, they couldn’t get to the medical center. We really needed something, and we really began to scratch around to find something,” Duke said.
By 1976, a meeting in Denver got Life Flight moving.
Whitey Martin, a deputy chief with the Houston Fire Department, attended a conference in Denver and heard about Flight for Life, an air ambulance service primarily used to get injured people out of the mountains.
Martin told Duke about Flight for Life because the two men had been working together in training emergency medical technicians and paramedics.
“We thought: ‘Let’s check it out.’ ”
Duke had to give a talk in Loma Linda, Calif., and looked over the small air ambulance program there. Then he went to Denver to examine Flight for Life.
Duke returned to Houston and floated the idea to Hermann officials, who quickly approved it. The first helicopter arrived on June 15, 1976.
“I had six weeks to train flight nurses, and I didn’t even know what a flight nurse was,” Duke quipped.
The program also didn’t have a name. Duke said there was a radio quiz, and someone working at nearby Methodist Hospital won $500 for coming up with Life Flight.
“On Aug. 1, we went into business. And our only communication was a red telephone on the triage desk,” he continued. “The first day we made three flights. We were kind of pleased with that and made 45 flights the first month, and it just started growing.”
Duke said he personally laid much of the groundwork with surrounding hospitals and the Harris County Medical Society to help launch the program.
Life Flight has served as the prototype for nearly 40 other medical centers that have permission to use the same name. About 150 air ambulance programs operate in the country.
And when asked what makes him most proud of Life Flight, he says: “There’s a lot of people walking around who wouldn’t otherwise be walking around.”