In Memoriam: Dr. Rory Childers, 1931-2014

Dear Readers,

Dr. Rory Childers was a pillar of the Cardiology Faculty at the University of Chicago for 50 years. He died on August 27th, 2014 after a cardiac arrest while on vacation. 

Rory was classic Irish and classic “U of C”. After completing his degrees where he grew up in Ireland, and spending time training in cardiology at Mass General, he directed two of the first cardiac catheterization laboratories in Dublin. He came to Chicago in 1963 as a cardiology fellow, joined the faculty, and quickly rose to full professor. Rory lived in Hyde Park near the hospital and continued to come to work every day, contributing as much as ever. He was famous in the area as a proud Irish-Chicagoan, the son of the fourth President of Ireland, the once physician to Irish writer Brendan Brehan, and a regular participant in the annual “Bloomsday” event in Chicago where he would read passages from “Ulysses” in his Irish brogue.

Rory was a world expert in electrocardiography, the basis of cardiac electrophysiology. He published widely on the power of the EKG and was involved early in the development of computerized EKG interpretations, something that is mostly now taken for granted. 

I had the pleasure of working closely with Rory for six years after I joined the cardiology faculty at the University of Chicago in 2002. Our offices were along the same hallway, where he added color to everyone’s day. At the time, Rory had been at U of C for longer than I had been alive, but was still over-reading every EKG that was performed at the medical center. After I lobbied to help over-read EKGs just one day per week to be more involved in the Heart Station, he reluctantly agreed. 

Dr. Childers was a master of the Heart Station, and he had high standards for both the collection and interpretation of the tracings. He was adamantly opposed to the performance of EKGs by staff that were not specifically dedicated to the task, and had a rubber stamp on his desk that he used to stamp poor-quality acquisitions to denote that the tracing was uninterpretable. In addition, he did not hesitate at times to point out my deficiencies as an electrocardiographer, coming to my office once with disapproval, puzzled that I missed an example of limb lead reversal. However, he was also the only person who could come to my office to estimate the age of my antique EKG machine based on the absence of augmented limb leads. 

Rory exemplified a life dedicated to medicine, with a passion for electrocardiography, a determination to spend one’s senior years contributing, and a refusal to coast. I will miss Rory, and we are all going to miss his generation.

A memorial service will be held for Dr. Rory Childers on November 13 at
1 p.m. on the University of Chicago campus at Rockefeller Chapel.