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"In 1976, when I was twenty-eight years old,
I was asked to join the Department of Anatomy at
Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.
In addition to conducting my NIH-funded brain research,
my job was to teach medical students Gross Anatomy.
This was particularly challenging since: I am not
a physician; my doctoral degree was in Psychology;
and I had never actually taken a course in Gross
Anatomy. In the hope that I wouldn’t embarrass
myself, my colleagues gave me a head-start by providing
me with: a cadaver; a scalpel; and a dissection
manual.
To my everlasting gratitude, they also gave me Dick
Heller. Dick was seventy. He had just retired from
a distinguished career as a surgical practitioner
and educator. And he was getting bored. His volunteer
job was to teach me Anatomy. He did that splendidly.
And then he taught me so much more.
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“Dr.
Richard Heller"
Oil on Canvas
by Ron Clavier |
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| Among other distinctions,
Dick had served in the United Stated surgical corps during
the Second World War. His fate brought him to the Italian
battlefields, where he tended to wounded soldiers in a
real-life M.A.S.H. facility. His muse brought him to those
same settings for another purpose – to be enthralled
by Italian sculpture. He promised himself that he would
return one day to learn more. At the age of sixty-five,
he did return to Italy, where he learned the lost-wax
technique for creating bronze sculpture, a passion he
pursued for the rest of his life. During
long hours in the dissection lab, over endless coffees
and lunches, and in the comfort of our families, Dick
showed me how to balance family and career. He encouraged
me to pursue my oil painting and taught me not just
how to look at art, but how to see it. He demonstrated
passion and social contribution. And he never lost the
child-like curiosity and idealism that I have tried
to emulate in my own life. Despite the 42-year age difference,
we were friends. |
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Once, when I was struggling with a portrait of a
woman in my studio, I called Dick for help. I told
him that I had executed all of the subject’s
features perfectly, and yet, it was not “her”.
Dick told me what was missing was the woman’s
spirit. He then told me to stand in front of the
canvas, close my eyes, and paint what I knew, not
what I saw. As a hard-nosed scientist, this was
difficult to accept; but I did it. And it worked!
In that moment, I came into
contact with my own spirituality. This was perhaps
Dick’s greatest gift to me. He died at the
age of ninety-four; but he will live forever in
my heart.
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“Mobius"
by Dick Heller |
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