Bob Clouse had a new heart. But it was his mask that took associate editor Rodney Clapp aback.
“I was very conscious of the fact that the fellow I was going out to lunch with was wearing a mask,” Rodney said after his first encounter with a heart-transplant recipient. So is everyone else who meets this 56-year-old professor with a 35-year-old heart. “Someday when I’m feeling particularly frisky,” said a bemused Clouse, “I’m going to wear this going into a bank.”
Rodney later spent two-and-a-half days with Bob and his wife, Bonnidell, in their hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana, to hear firsthand the events surrounding Bob’s transplant, to discuss the medical and theological questions needing to be answered—and to watch on videotape the surgery itself. Rod also accompanied Bob to an Indianapolis hospital, where the latter underwent tests monitoring his new heart’s progress.
“Bob spent much of that morning just lying still on a bed,” recalls Rodney, who was able to talk with a number of doctors and nurses about Clouse’s surgery. “Fortunately for me, he kept right on answering my questions.”
Such inactivity is not typical, however, for the man who teaches a full load of classes at Indiana State University.
“You only have to be with Bob a little while to see how alive he is,” says Rodney. “Consequently, it really doesn’t take long to forget about the mask.”
HAROLD B. SMITH, Managing Editor
