Big-Hearted Tribute

His is the story of a humble physician who practiced personalized patient care in an age that placed a premium on express medical treatment.

He made house calls, spent hours at bedsides talking with patients and their families, waived his fees for those who couldn’t afford them and even gave some patients a ride to the hospital if they didn’t have a way.

John Negley Goodwin was also a fine cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon at Glendale Memorial Hospital and co-founder of the heart center there.

Many said his Nov. 4 funeral was befitting a dignitary, with some 1,400 people crammed into St. Bede the Venerable Catholic Church in La Canada Flintridge to mourn his sudden death at the age of 56.

At the hospital, Goodwin knew nearly everyone by his first name, from gardeners to administrators to medical staff. Those who knew him responded in droves when they heard about his Oct. 30 death in Orlando, Fla., where he had been attending a medical conference. He suffered a fatal irregular heart rhythm while exercising in the hotel gym.

The outpouring of mourners at his funeral “speaks volumes,” said Glendale Memorial nurse Kathy Sugar, who worked for 20 years with Goodwin. “I’ve never seen anybody so loved and respected,” she said, as she brushed tears from her face. “He was one of a kind.”

Three months after his death, those touched by Dr. John Goodwin are responding again with two events, appropriately during National Heart Month, that will help perpetuate his legacy. A hospital-sponsored dinner Saturday at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena and a “Whopper of a Luau” on Feb. 12, sponsored by the owners of a local Burger King, will raise funds for an endowment in the physician’s name.

“He was the kind that touched,” said Larry Cimmarusti, 50, who, along with his brother Ralph, is organizing the luau. The brothers credit Goodwin, who performed heart surgery on their parents, with saving the parents’ lives.

“When my mom had surgery, he called us every 15 minutes from the surgery room to tell us what was going on,” Larry Cimmarusti said. “You know what comfort level that [gave us]? We were overwhelmed.” Goodwin’s compassion and hard work ethic were infectious, said the nurses with whom he worked. He wouldn’t think twice about helping a nurse turn a patient or fetch blood from downstairs, which they said was unheard of for a surgeon of his stature. And he never missed a chance to ask them about their families, they said.

Clutching a laminated picture of a smiling Goodwin in his surgical scrubs that she and other hospital staff members wear on chains around their necks, nurse Armida Schneir vowed: “I will forever wear this picture of him.”

The Los Angeles County-USC-trained physician, however, had less compassion for health insurance companies.

“I’d hear him on the phone. He would say, ‘You can’t do that. That’s not good for the patient,’ ” recalled Dr. Santo Polito, medical director of the Glendale Heart Center and a longtime friend of Goodwin. “He was a real patient advocate. He was tenacious. And he would win.”

But Goodwin’s unwavering dedication to patient care was not without personal sacrifice. His family said he survived on four hours of sleep. He rose early, made rounds, caught morning Mass every day without fail, performed surgery, made house calls and made more rounds.

He generally arrived home around 10 at night and, even before he could take a bite of his dinner, his wife, Janet, said, he would call a list of patients at their homes to check on them.

Goodwin was a loving father, his family said, but his wife of 32 years shouldered much of the rearing of their four children, now ages 20 through 31, and household duties.

“How do you get mad at a guy who’s out saving humanity?” said Janet Goodwin, who lives in La Canada with their daughter Kate and son Daniel, a USC Medical School student. “By taking care of everything on the home front, I felt in some way I was a significant part of what he was doing.”

She and her family, together with the Glendale Memorial Foundation, the fund-raising arm of the nonprofit Glendale Memorial Hospital, have established an endowment in John Goodwin’s name. It will fund scholarships for health care professionals at Glendale Memorial who wish to further their education and who exemplify the late Dr. Goodwin’s “spirit of caring and compassion and the highest quality of medical care.”

So far, the fund has brought in several donations, according to the family, and they are coming in checks large and small.

One recent check for $10 came from Margaret Hunt, a former patient of Goodwin’s who turns 91 on Friday.

“I thought he was very compassionate, kind and understanding, much more than I thought a doctor would be,” said the retired cashier who lives in a mobile home in Sunland. “I wasn’t really anyone special, so I thought it was nice of him to be kind and to treat me as though I were somebody. He seemed to care about me as if I were worth $50,000 or $100,000.

“His idea was more to help people,” she said. “I think he really loved his work.”

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The “Angels of the Heart” benefit dinner in honor of Dr. John Goodwin will begin at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel, 11401 S. Oak Knoll Ave., Pasadena. Tickets are $200.

The “Whopper of a Luau,” complete with hula dancers, fire jugglers and ukulele music in a tent erected on Central Avenue near San Fernando Road (between Burger King and Glendale Memorial Hospital), will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 12.

Half of the Burger King’s receipts that day will be donated to the endowment.

For more information on either event, call (818) 502-2375.