Theodore Roosevelt High School Class of 1959 - Latest News

Please go to the following website to read the article written by Larry Dorr's brother in the Des Moines Register.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/life/2021/01/08/remembrance-pioneering-surgeon-iowa-native-helps-thousands-walk/6578623002/

See Larry's obituatary from the Los Angeles newspaper.

Dear Marilyn, Broule, Scotty, and Ron, I am full of reflection and still cannot believe he is gone. I am thinking about Larry as my friend but also about our years in medicine and particularly our experiences as Orthopedic surgeons. Larry was my Best Man and Orthopedic Surgery’s Best Man. He died the 28th of December after a prolonged, five-week hospitalization for aspiration pneumonia. He was a master surgeon in the field of knee and hip replacement surgery. His own inventions are implanted throughout the world in thousands of grateful patients. He had a fierce desire to maximize his God given talents, intellect and photographic memory. He appeared to acquire knowledge effortlessly and applied it with fearless courage, compassion, charity and love, In 1996 Larry developed an all volunteer organization, Operation Walk, and set out throughout disadvantaged countries of the world to perform hip and knee replacements free to all who found their way to his team. That team has grown. There are now twenty teams who have made over one hundred trips into twenty-five countries serving seventeen thousand patients. He pioneered the Master’s Live Surgery Seminars that for twenty years trained hundreds of Orthopedic Surgeons, both young residents and older men or women who sought to learn the very latest in surgical techniques. The Seminars were attended by surgeons from around the world and back woods of America. He gave everyone a place at the table. His work ethic, generosity, and loyalty to colleagues and friends was legendary. In his “spare” time Larry authored thousands of scientific publications, edited text books and published two historical fiction novels. I watched as he sprawled in my chair, in front of the T.V. in our Baja home, tap away at his ever present iPad. Completely focused on his latest project, paper, patient, or book he sat in the middle of the room while his life-long friends vacationed around him. For nearly sixty years he gathered with these same college friends and their wives; reliving their younger lives with laughter and song. On Iowa, on Forever More. We will miss his love, three piece suits, cigars, Panama hats, chauffeurs, and that credit card he offered to all. Little did I know what brilliance, ambition, will power, and work ethic lay with the heart and soul of my Best Man. With a sad but grateful heart for his presence in my life, Ports From Die Once, Live Forever: “God’s gift to man - the ability of one to heal another.” “Medicine is the greatest profession on Earth.” Lawrence Dorr, MD