Valentine Heart Real Gift of Life

--Richard Reinhardt, a 46-year-old postal carrier from Pine Plains, N.Y., received an appropriate Valentine’s Day gift--a new heart. Reinhardt was in satisfactory condition after the Valentine’s Day heart transplant surgery with a donor heart rushed 1,400 miles at the speed of sound while cradled in an Air Force navigator’s lap. Reinhardt was reported near death in Hartford (Conn.) Hospital after six weeks of waiting for a donor organ when the near-perfect match heart was located in Oklahoma. Reinhardt’s doctors placed a call to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, N.H., when they realized the donor heart at Presbyterian Hospital in Oklahoma City was too far away to be flown by commercial jet within the critical four-hour time limit a heart can survive outside the body, Hartford Hospital spokesman James Battaglio said. The Air Force immediately dispatched two jets to Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, Okla., and the pilots waited while a medical team removed the donor heart. With Capt. David R. Lefforge piloting one jet and the heart in an insulated cooler on the lap of navigator Capt. Steven J. Bruger, the jets caught a 100-m.p.h. tail wind and flew to Connecticut in time for the operation. Air Force spokeswoman Stefanie Doner said the trip from hospital to hospital took exactly one minute less than the four-hour limit.

--John Denver’s after-hours performance led to the mayor of Georgetown, Colo., getting a warning for serving liquor at her restaurant-bar after closing time. The town’s board of selectmen, of which Mayor Ann MacConnell is a member, issued a warning to her after the town marshal cited The Ram bar for remaining open at 2:10 a.m., which violated a state law requiring bars to close by 2 a.m. Denver was in Georgetown to star in a made-for-TV movie.

--A Nashville psychologist has set out to put the Music City on a diet, hoping to take enough pounds off hips and waistlines to win the city a spot in the “Guinness Book of World Records.” Martin Katahn, director of the Vanderbilt University Weight Management Program, said: “We’re going to melt a million pounds in the next 12 weeks. It’s going to be a communitywide effort.” Residents can drop by 21 Nashville-area “weigh-in” stations to participate. The expected 30,000 participants will rotate three weeks on the diet, three weeks off, and back on again up to a total of 12 weeks. Katahn’s “Rotation Diet” weight-loss program includes varying degrees of exercise and calorie intake, on a menu that includes low-fat dairy products, lean meats and vegetables.