Danny Kirk: 35-year career gave cardiac patients back their lives

For people who have had heart attacks, stents implanted or bypass surgery, cardiac rehabilitation is intended to get them exercising again while learning how to live a healthy lifestyle.

For Marshall Browning Hospital, its the program that Danny Kirk fathered. "When the journey began in 1978 we didn't even have a heart monitor," remembers Kirk, who was the guest of a retirement reception Tuesday honoring his 35-year career at the hospital.

"All we had was an Electrodyne defibrillator," Kirk said.

That was only a generation or two past an era when people believed that resuscitating a patient was against God's will.

Now, there's a synergy between the cardiology staff at Marshall Browning Hospital that gives heart patients back their lives every day. Kirk had a lot to do with that, and the mentoring he leaves behind ensures that the work will go on.

Kirk will tell you his mission was elegantly simple. "I tried to be there." And, he was--time and time again. "I can't say no."

His work began as a registered nurse and Kirk said as he and wife Janet--who retired seven years ago as one of District 300's most dedicated educators ever--planned their life together he could imagine being at the hospital only "a year or two." But, there's an identifiable caring at Du Quoin's home-grown hospital that turned a "year or two" into eight. "I got into the culture of Marshall Browning Hospital," Kirk smiles.Then one day Director of Nurses Jo Vercellino said the hospital's surgical supervisor was going on vacation and she asked Kirk to "learn all you can" in the next few days. He did. Vercellino helped Kirk find his higher calling as infectious control director and finally as cardiac rehabilitation director. Back then, hospitals had what is now known as the deadly MRSA bacterial infection and either "didn't talk about it or called it something else back then."

He found ways to track the infections down and defend against them. "I was honored to be part of that," he said.

Kirk advised the hospital in October 2012 he would step down to part time status as his wife and in October of 2013 decided to fully retire.

He and wife Janet are members of the A-wa-we-go camping club and have been on a mission trip to Africa. But, his commitment to the hospital and people of Du Quoin runs deep, "If they (the hospital) called I would be here."

"The best of this career has always been the staff," he said, "and to have good outcomes." He adds, "I have always found, too, that if you are around kind and compassionate people they will reach out to you."

In retiring, he simply comments, "It's time." There is a new generation of caregivers that will hold dear the work of Danny Kirk while finding new and better ways to give patients their lives back. Kirk got all of them from here to there.