PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

In many ways, I owe my life to Earl Bakken?

Say what?

Who is Earl Bakken?

He is the medical device innovator who co-founded Medtronic, one of the major companies in the industry and the maker of the combination pacemaker/defibrillator that I had implanted several years after my “episode,” my word for a phrase I don’t much like – “heart attack.”

Bakken, 94, died over the weekend. Here’s the way Wall Street Journal editorial writers commemorated his passing:

“America’s affluent generation of millennial socialists don’t realize it, but they are living off the prosperity created by earlier generations of capitalists. One of them was Earl E. Bakken, who died last week at age 94 having invented the first wearable, battery-powered pacemaker. He also co-founded Medtronic, the giant medical-device company.

“Earl Bakken’s business life is an American classic. Born in Minnesota, he took to electrical tinkering at an early age after seeing the movie ‘Frankenstein.’ He wrote in his autobiography that he was fascinated, not with the horror, but with the spark of electricity that brought the monster back to life.

“He and a brother-in-law founded Medtronic in 1949 out of a garage. He worked with local hospitals, and in 1957 a surgeon asked Bakken to create a pacemaker for the heart that wouldn’t depend on the hospital’s electric power. That was the spark for what later became an implantable pacemaker that has improved and saved countless lives.

“Medtronic grew into a star of American innovation with a market capitalization of some $121 billion. Based in Minneapolis, it makes cardiac stents and monitors, surgical tools, neurological shunts, drug infusion systems and much more. Bakken retired as chairman in 1989.”

When it came time for a pacemaker/defibrillator device to be implanted in me, I was told by my cardiologist in Salem that I had three options for a maker of the device – Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St. Jude.

I didn’t care which company because all had positive reputations, so my cardiologist chose Medtronic for me. My device worked for several years until, for some reason, it didn’t. I didn’t blame Medtronic for the failure because the implanted device had worked for several years.  And, if you think about it for a moment, such devices represent a critical step forward in treating ealth care issue.  Devices can be put inside the body and report back that everything is working?

Then, for me, good news emerged — I didn’t need the device anymore anyway.  So, it was extracted.

Back to the Wall Street Journal: “In our frenetic celebrity culture, the lives of people not in politics or entertainment often aren’t duly recognized. That’s especially true of entrepreneurs who built the foundations of America’s postwar economic success and global competitiveness. They benefited from what was then a better American education system and sometimes the GI bill after World War II (as Bakken did).

“But they also prospered in a free-market system that offered ready access to capital and rewarded innovation and success. Too many Americans see Medtronic today only as a large corporation, rather than as a success born of ingenuity and hard work. As we recall Bakken’s contributions, we need to promote policies and a larger culture that nurture this spirit of innovation and capitalist incentive.”

I, for one, am thankful for the “innovation and capitalist incentive” illustrated by Bakken. We should acknowledge him on his passing.