Laguna Council’s Gentry Recovering After Bypass

After an emergency operation that had city officials fearing the worst, Councilman Robert F. Gentry was in stable condition Tuesday night recovering from quadruple bypass heart surgery.

“He’s going to do just fine,” Dennis Amick, Gentry’s companion, said when the councilman came out of surgery after 8:30 p.m. “There really is a God. I love it, I’m so excited.” Doctors said Gentry could go home on Monday, Amick said.

Gentry was admitted to UCI Medical Center on Tuesday morning for an angiogram, but tests revealed “so much blockage” that they couldn’t perform the procedure and scheduled immediate surgery instead, Amick said.

“They didn’t want to wait till tomorrow,” said Amick, who lives with Gentry. “The doctor said to me: ‘This is the kind of heart that someone’s just walking down the street and has a massive heart attack and it’s over.’ ”

Laguna Beach Mayor Lida Lenney, who has served on the council with Gentry for six years, offered to go to Gentry’s home on Tuesday along with City Clerk Verna L. Rollinger to await word with Amick on the outcome of the surgery. But Amick said he was too emotionally drained.

“I can tell you how devastated I feel by what has happened to Bob, how personally touched I am,” she said. “He makes that kind of emotional difference in the community. He’s a dear friend, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I’ve been talking to people, and it’s amazing how many people are feeling the same way I am.”

Amick, a registered nurse, said doctors were also concerned about whether the three-term mayor could survive the surgery because “there was so much disease there.”

The doctor’s “exact words were: ‘The bypass is the easy part. What I’m worried about is getting the heart restarted when we’re done.’ ”

Amick said the 54-year-old Gentry has a family history of heart disease and that his father died of a heart attack at the age of 48. A brother died of a stroke in his 20s, Amick said.

Amick said Gentry had a minor heart attack in 1986 and that he has watched his diet and exercised regularly since. About three weeks ago, Amick said, Gentry began having chest pains when exercising and walking his dog.

Initial tests appeared normal, Amick said, but later tests revealed blocked arteries.

Before the surgery Tuesday, Amick said, Gentry asked him to leave the hospital and return home to call everyone with whom Gentry had scheduled appointments.

“He laid in the (intensive-care unit) bed with his calendar,” Amick said. “I’ve canceled everything for the next three weeks.”

The doctor “doesn’t want him to do anything for four to six weeks, but you know Bob,” Amick said.

Gentry was scheduled to testify in Washington today on behalf of a coalition of local governments that are asking for an extension of the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling in the area, said Lenney, who will now attend in his place.

Gentry, who was first elected to the City Council in 1982, has been an advocate not only of environmental protection but also of gay rights. The only openly gay elected official in Orange County, he led Laguna Beach’s efforts in becoming the first city in Orange County to pass a “domestic partnership ordinance” granting gay and lesbian couples some of the same rights enjoyed by husbands and wives.

Laguna Beach is also the only city in Orange County with a law prohibiting discrimination based upon sexual orientation, another achievement with which Lenney credits Gentry.

“It’s not just the personal emotional support, it’s the leadership qualities Bob has shown that have helped us to make decisions that wouldn’t be possible any other way,” she said. “The man is incredibly courageous and has taken a very courageous stand with regard to these issues.”