Life on the frontlines: Navy surgeon reflects on 20 years of service

Slowing down isn’t for Dr. John Bartlett. The modern-day Renaissance man has been engaged in some kind of project or another since age 11, when he got his first job driving a horse-powered haying machine. The youngster brought in $50 that summer to help buoy the family finances. It was just what you did back then; WWII was in full force and times were tough.

At his core, 88-year-old Bartlett has long been a helper, a creator and a bit of a family historian. These combined interests led him to a 20-year career as a Navy surgeon, followed by a so-called “retirement” during which he’s made his own airplane, crafted wood furniture and restored two model As, among other pursuits. But Bartlett’s laundry list of accomplishments circles back to one thing: family.

The Bigfork resident comes from a line of doers. His maternal grandfather was a pioneer who came to Montana from Colorado by covered wagon and eventually built up one of the state’s largest cattle ranches — the Flying D — now owned by CNN founder Ted Turner. His paternal grandfather was a military surgeon and his father, John “Jack” Bartlett also boasted an illustrious military career, flying 27 air bombing missions over Japan in his plane, the American Maid.

“He was a war hero and I always admired his service,” Bartlett said of his dad.

But it was Bartlett’s grandmother that steered him toward medicine, encouraging him to pursue a career in surgery.

“My grandmother always said, ‘I want you to be a surgeon’ — I always did what my grandmother said,” he recalled.

The day after Bartlett graduated high school in 1951, he joined the Navy and became a corpsman and operating room tech. During the Korean War, he served on the USS Consolation, the first Navy ship with a flight deck, and cared for the wounded at Inchon harbor. Taking care of the soldiers didn’t phase him much, apart from one incident where a transportation mission went terribly wrong. After the war was over, Marines were being transported by the boatload out of Inchon, which was known for its strong tidal flows.

“One landing boat came out, fully loaded with Marines, with all their gear, their rifles, their packs and everything and the current was coming out and they came out too fast and overturned,” Bartlett said. “They just sank. They brought all those drowned Marines on board … the decks were just covered with them, with people that were dead. It really, really made me very sad.”

That despairing loss of life reignited his drive to become a surgeon. Bartlett couldn’t fix the Marines in Inchon, but there were other men out there that he could repair. But first he needed to acquire the skills to do so.

He studied medicine at the University of Michigan and stayed in Ann Arbor to complete his residency and eventually assumed the role of associate professor of surgery. The GI Bill covered most of his schooling, but Bartlett filled in the gaps by selling his plasma and working in labs and in research.

“I like making people well, and the reason I chose surgery is I can fix somebody whereas in medicine you give pills and you just make them feel better,” he said. “I wanted to cure somebody if I could.”

His next stop was the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, where he got married and had four children. He also cared for patients like Jackie Cochran — the first woman to break the sound barrier. At the time, though Bartlett didn’t know it, he was working alongside an OR nurse named Evelyn who would become his second wife.

“Years later, after he lost his wife to cancer, he tried to find me and I had moved to Texas,” Evelyn said. “So he got a hold of the state nursing board. I don’t know whether to thank them or send them a nasty note — they gave him my address and phone number!”

And the two have been together ever since.

While settled in love, Bartlett wasn’t ready to bow out of the military just yet. He remained in the Navy Reserves, even after his children had grown up and gone off to college. He was still feeling the full effects of empty nest syndrome when Bartlett responded to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital for his two-weeks of service required of reservists each year. The admiral there took such a liking to him that he encouraged Bartlett to sign on for active duty — and it was an offer he couldn’t resist. Bartlett became the Chief of Surgery for Oak Knoll — a teaching hospital — where he also greatly enjoyed instructing the new residents. When the Persian Gulf War began in 1990, Bartlett was called to action once more, this time on USNS Mercy — a ship that made headlines recently when it was deployed to Los Angeles during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I did have the honor of taking care of the first pilot that got shot down over Baghdad,” Bartlett said. “When they did the prisoner exchange, they brought them all to the ship and we took care of them.”

After the war, he returned to education, teaching new crops of surgical residents and watching them blossom into talented medical professionals as the years went by. Eventually, he retired from the Navy as a captain with 20 total years of service under his belt.

“My greatest reward is seeing my residents grow up into mature, nice surgeons,” he said. “I enjoy teaching and I enjoy fixing things.”

His home is a testament to the latter passion — he built much of it himself, including a lot of the furniture — Oh, and the plane in the garage.

“I had two carpenter friends do all the rough work, and I did all the rest,” he said, glancing around the sitting area. “I laid all these floors, I built this table. I built that chest.”

He also built an exceptional life, one that his grandmother would be proud of. ■