– Mary Ellen Sieben, OR Director. Operation Walk Los Angeles
One of the many things I loved about Dr. Dorr was his leadership. He had many ideas about patient care, surgical techniques, pain control, implant design and giving back. Then he built a team whom he helped guide to implement these ideas and have them come to fruition.
He had the utmost respect for other healthcare professionals- true, you had to earn it, but once you had it, you had the autonomy to do your job, which let him do his job. He was the type of leader you absolutely wanted to do your best for and everyone on the team strived for that. I think you can see this in his patient outcomes, the number of excellent surgeons he sent out into the world, and the creation of Operation Walk.
Though his passing is so very sad, I know in my heart that he is so proud of all the strong team leaders he mentored to carry on a seek improvement in joint replacement – and we will!
Dr. Richard “Dickey” Jones was a football letterman for the Florida Gators and was Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated with Alpha Omega Alpha distinction from the University of Florida College of Medicine. Following residency at Parkland and UT Southwestern Dallas Texas, Dr. Jones did a fellowship in joint reconstruction at Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, England and acted as Chief of Orthopedic Surgery for the U.S. Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He served as Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Dallas V. A. Hospital for 35 years.
Dr. Lawrence Dorr invited me to join the April 2019 mission to Havana, Cuba, my first with Operation Walk. Not knowing what to expect at the initial meeting, I was introduced to the entire team, nearly 60 strong, many who had known and worked with each other several times prior.