The Sidebar

As I reported last week, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews published corrections to their reviews of my father's forthcoming autobiography being published in a few weeks by Prometheus Books, Heimlich's Maneuvers.

The updated reviews rightly credited the eminent Romanian surgeon, the late Dr. Dan Gavriliu, with inventing a surgical procedure that for decades my father falsely (and shamelessly) claimed to have invented.

Since then I've gotten two more published corrections -- and the book hasn't even been published yet!

Barrett Brunsman (source)

My first score was in Heimlich’s Maneuvers: Autobiography of Cincinnati doctor acknowledges controversy, a January 21st Cincinnati Business Courier feature by staff reporter Barrett Brunsman.

Before getting to that, let me give big ups to Brunsman for his recent article about Queen City attorney Christopher Finney's departure from his own law firm.

"(An) arch-conservative legal activist who has a history of working on anti-gay rights causes," Finney has been my father's attorney for at least a decade.

Per a must-read 2006 Cincinnati CityBeat story by Kevin Osborne about a fanny-slapping freak-out that made Finney the literal butt of ensuing jokes, he also co-owned a real estate business with my brother Phil called Three Centurions:

The company apparently is named after a term coined by millionaire evangelist Bill Gothard, whom (Phil) Heimlich admires.

Back to Brunsman's story about my father's long-delayed memoir, here's a screenshot from the original article:


But per this lengthy correction I obtained from the Voice of America re: reporter Adam Phillips's error-ridden 2009 story, Dr. Henry Heimlich, Medical Innovator:

After I sent him the VOA correction, Brunsman promptly e-mailed me a thank-you and informed me he'd changed "credited with saving the lives of thousands of wounded American soldiers" to:

I replied:

I'd suggest that "hundreds of" is more accurate and informative to readers. Your opinion?

No answer. No further update.

Hundreds of lives, thousands of lives? Like whatever, dude.

Psst, Barrett, if you're reading this, you probably did the right thing by not contradicting my father's claim.

Last year, after the Biz Courier published a story by staff reporter James Ritchie that included critical information about my father, the article was disappeared and editor Rob Daumeyer refused to discuss it.

That's too bad, because I wanted to ask him if someone at Deaconess Associations, the $350 million health care corporation that owns the Heimlich Institute, had pulled his choke chain.

I got another correction from an unexpected venue, a new website called HenryHeimlich.com, apparently set up to promote Heimlich's Maneuvers.

Here's a screen shot last week from my father's bio page on the site:


To quote Borat -- NOT!

Melinda Zemper (source)

So I sent the correct information (which I'd obtained from a New York State agency) to Melinda Zemper, press agent for the Heimlich Institute and Deaconess, and a board member of the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting.

Here's the resulting fix on the page as of today:



To anyone else writing about my father's career, if you need a fact-checker, per Chris Montez's groovy, improbable 1966 hit version of the classic song written by the great Tony Hatch, here's my invitation: