IBARS Beginning - "A Chance Encounter"
By William A Sullivan III
Dr. John S. Najarian M.D.
During the Summer of 1966, when Dr. John Najarian left California to assume his new position as Chairman of The Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota, there was a small "Special Projects" fundraising effort already working under the quiet direction of Dr. Owen Wangensteen.
Dr. William C. Bernstein, a world renown Colon and Rectal Surgeon, was forced to end his professional career prematurely due to a "progressive muscular atrophy". There was nothing wrong with his mind however, and he threw himself into philanthropy. *
[* As an aside, and the subject of a future IBARS vignette, during the Second World War Dr. Bernstein was assigned as a Medical Officer to the "Ultra Secret Manhattan Project" located in Oak Ridge, TN. We know today, Oak Ridge was the site for the development of the Atomic Bomb which ultimately ended the Second World War.]
As luck would have it, Dr. and Mrs. Bernstein returned to Minnesota at the war's end and moved into a fashionable apartment located at 740 East Mississippi River Boulevard in St. Paul.
One of their neighbors was a charismatic Jewish woman, Mrs. Ruth Lipschultz, who regularly held a gathering of the Twin Cities "Best and The Brightest" during her Sunday morning Bagel Club. The Bagel Club offered an unparalleled opportunity to advance community interest: Business, Higher Education, Politics, Religion and Social Justice forward.
Dr. Bernstein recognized the need, but wanted the skills of a "bright, young, able - bodied person to implement his plans to better fund the Dept. of Surgery.
This grand idea lay fallow within the University structure until the Spring of 1983, when Dr. Richard Simmons, the number #2 in the Dept. ran into Dr. Albert Sullivan, a Surgeon and Dean of Student Affairs in the Medical School in the Surgery Locker Room one morning.
Dr. Simmons shared Dr. Najarian's frustration with the University bureaucracy saying: "he wanted his own fundraiser but had no idea where to find one". Dr. Sullivan responded his son "was a very good fundraiser working for the American Heart Association."
William Sullivan III