Other articles by Carla Mcclain:

Months-long measles scare is fading Warned pharmacy still sells hormones Cops, firefighters advised to get shots for measles Phoenix pair fund cancer-research chair Patient advocacy growing as a business Pima gets $50K in state funds for measles control Lleva fama a familia a TV en rol de su hijo New cases of measles spur new shot clinic Fame follows family with child's TV role New case of measles is the 11th in county

General
A1 Communications
Cable Techs Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION

He is a man in love with the art of healing, and with the wider world around him.

Though it may be time to give up one of those loves, the good doctor will never abandon the other.

Just a few months shy of his 90th birthday, Tucson heart specialist Dr. Brendan Phibbs — whose passion all these years has been caring for the underserved — has finally hung up his stethoscope.

The day he did, at the end of June, he very likely was the oldest practicing cardiologist in the country.

Though a 65-year medical career may be winding down, Phibbs' astonishing life force, high energy, good health and big heart will never allow him to stop working for a better world out there.

"Brendan is a very unusual guy, and his contributions have been tremendous," said fellow cardiologist Dr. Gordon Ewy, director of the University of Arizona's Sarver Heart Center, who has worked with Phibbs for 35 years. "This is quite a talented man. A Renaissance man, really."

Renowned heart doctor, award-winning book author, revered teacher, liberator of the Nazi death camps, war veteran, hardy outdoorsman, proud liberal, defender of the common man, beloved father — these are just some of the titles that describe the so-far nine decades of a life well-lived.

One of the founding physicians of the UA College of Medicine, Phibbs happily moved to the South Side in 1974 to help get the new Kino Community Hospital up and going, to replace the old county hospital for the poor.

There he stayed for the rest of his medical career, despite the political turmoil that often engulfed the poorly funded and sometimes badly run Kino.

"It's the most fun I've ever had — I love it. I love relating to the patients, I enjoy working with bright young people," said Phibbs, who has given his home phone number to his Kino patients in case they ever need him now.

"Doing diagnostic cardiology is like doing Sherlock Holmes — one of my all-time favorite characters. Imagine being paid for that," he said. "I do hate leaving it, the hands-on care of patients. There is a real sense of mourning for me. It is painful.''

Explaining why he passed up more lucrative jobs at more prestigious hospitals to soldier on at Kino, treating patients who often couldn't pay, Phibbs will say only, "I'm a hard-core liberal New Deal Democrat" — one of his favorite phrases.

Don't get him started on what that really means. He came of age during the Great Depression. He remembers like yesterday the hunger marches, the little playmates who had no food, the families evicted on snowy nights. He sees signs of a return to that kind of thing now, in a country where he sees the rich get steadily richer, the poor always poorer, while the middle class shrinks. There is fire in his belly over this.

But just as intense an impact on his life was his decision to enlist in the Army the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. That yanked him from medical school and sent him to the front lines to fight the Germans, as combat surgeon for the 12th Armored Division.

Unlike most of us, Phibbs well knows the state of constant fear that is hot combat, which he endured for nearly four years. And he saw the indescribable in the Nazi death camps when his division entered as liberators.

"There were a lot of dead people, the emaciated corpses laying in the slushy mud, with their huge eyes and skeletal faces," he said. "And the mob of hundreds still living, standing there, holding each other up. They would touch you, the touch was like a feather … just bones and skin."

He recalls the terrible stink of these places, where the prisoners lived in mud huts, which the Germans doused with gasoline and torched, burning the people alive as the American soldiers arrived.

"They wanted to hide their crimes," said Phibbs, who is fluent in German and has learned "workable" Spanish.

"It tells you the depth humanity can sink to, and you spend the rest of your life trying to do something about it."

It was during his first failed attempt at retirement, shortly after his first wife died — when he was but 68 — that Phibbs wrote a book about his war experiences, titled "Our War for the World."

Winner of the PEN West Award and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the book is still reviewed and revered today in online dispatches:

"If you have to buy a World War II memoir, this is one of the top five I've ever read … one of the most gripping and fascinating memoirs you will ever come across," reads one.

"There are moments that will make the strongest wince, and be glad they were not a rifleman. War is a nasty and awful thing and you see it here," writes another.

"One of the best books I have ever read, on any subject," says a third.

Launching his medical career at the war's end, Phibbs started out in Casper, Wyo., to be near his beloved northern Rocky Mountains.

Almost immediately, he began revolutionizing the medical world by designing a system to screen for and treat the strep bacteria that caused rheumatic fever, one of the terrible childhood scourges of the early 20th century. It was a totally effective program that caught on worldwide and finally defeated this infection and the heart-disease epidemics it caused.

Phibbs also is credited with winning a workers' compensation law for Wyoming's stricken factory and mine workers and, once in Tucson, with developing the technology of electrocardiography, then using it to get heart-attack victims back on their feet. Along the way, he wrote the "bible" for advanced cardiology, titled "Advanced ECG — Boards and Beyond."

Yet when you ask him about the top medical achievements in the Tucson area, he skips his own accomplishments. Instead, he names three things — the Arizona Cancer Center, heart transplant surgeon Dr. Jack Copeland, and his friend Ewy's new chest-compression-only CPR technique — "Nobel Prize territory," as he puts it.

Naming Phibbs as one of his heroes, Copeland said: "Most important is the durability of the man and his great intellect. Seldom do we see someone of his age who is contributing to patient care on a par with much, much younger colleagues.

"He is a great man. I salute him for his lifetime of excellent clinical care of thousands of patients."

Retired, maybe. But you won't catch Brendan Phibbs chasing balls around a golf course or sunning by the pool. Right now, he's writing a book on economics gone bad in the United States, teaching UA medical students, giving speeches for veteran and Holocaust groups, working to become a Democratic precinct committeeman, designing an effective plan to medically control violent sex offenders, and fighting the practice of paid medical experts in malpractice cases. Oh, and he's going fishing in Colorado soon.

"Right now, my wife's a little frantic, trying to make sure I stay busy," he laughed.

"She's afraid I might un-retire again."