CORALVILLE — Of the many people who came to pay tribute Sunday to the late Dr. Ignacio Ponseti, perhaps the youngest exemplified his lasting legacies the best.
“He fixed my feet,” said 4-year-old Logan Maloney of Palatine, Ill., pointing to his shoes before last night’s celebration of life at the Coralville Marriott.
Logan’s mother, Kerry Maloney, 47, found Ponseti on the Internet after an ultrasound showed that Logan would be born with severe bilateral clubfoot, a crippling deformity that can leave patients disabled for life.
Ponseti, who died Oct. 18 at the age of 95, was best known for developing a low-cost, non-surgical treatment for clubfoot.
The University of Iowa orthopedics professor retired in 1984 but returned to work in 1986. He was working just days before his death.
Ponseti treated Logan, and numerous other patients during his tenure, with a series of casts that corrected the deformity without surgery.
“We knew we had found Logan’s angel,” Logan’s grandmother, Willi Murphy, said of Ponseti. “What a gentle giant the doctor was, with him and with every other child he helped.”
More than 400 people from as far away as Thailand filled a hotel ballroom to remember Ponseti, who is survived by his wife, Helena Percas-Ponseti of Iowa City, and a son, William Ponseti of Novato, Calif. He was preceded in death by a daughter.
Not only was Ponseti a “consummate physician,” said Joseph Buckwalter, head of the UI’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery, but a scholar of the arts and more.
Colleagues, friends and family illuminated those other areas of Ponseti’s life during the memorial service.
UI Professor of Orthopedic Surgery Reginald Cooper said that upon Cooper’s appointment as chair of the orthopedics department, Ponseti had only one request.
“Let me care for my babies, teach and research and never involve me in administrative duties ,” he said, to laughs from the # crowd.
Born on the Spanish island of Menorca, Ponseti refined his dexterity working under his father, a watchmaker.
He graduated from medical school in Barcelona and worked as a medic during the Spanish Civil War.
A Loyalist, Ponseti escaped to France when Gen. Francisco Franco won the war. He moved to Mexico, where he worked as a doctor before coming to Iowa City.
His son recalled a trip to Spain with his father in 1993. Riding in a cab, Ponseti saw the driver’s name and remarked that he had operated on a colonel with the same last name during the war.
“You must be Dr. Ponseti,” the cabdriver said, identifying himself as the son of the colonel, who was executed by Franco’s regime after the war.
Ponseti’s wife recounted the many hikes the two took, during which Ponseti always brought a book with plant names.
The book was more for her than her husband, who had it memorized, she said.
Paul Etre, orthopedics administrator for UI Hospitals and Clinics, said Ponseti developed a new interest later in life, as Etre exposed him to pop music.
Among his favorites was “The Impossible Dream,” a song Etre said was personified by Ponseti.
Stuart Weinstein, the Ignacio V. Ponseti Chair of Orthopedic Surgery, said Ponseti was respected as a teacher and admired for his demeanor with patients.
“I knew from the beginning I wanted to be like him,” he said. “His legacy is his # humanity.”
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