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Via an item about AHG's annual convention this week in Anderson, Indiana, today through Saturday

Per my June 12 item, I filed a handful of complaints with government and private organizations against the Cincinnati-based American Heritage Girls, a self-described "Christ-centered" alternative to the Girl Scouts of America.

My gripe?

In association with Cincinnati's Heimlich Heroes first aid training program, AHG is apparently teaching thousands of girls around the country to perform abdominal thrusts (the Heimlich maneuver) to revive unconscious choking victims.

The treatment is reportedly is not approved by the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association and apparently has never been researched.

In other words, Heimlich Heroes and AHG are apparently circulating an experimental medical treatment.

Why?

Dunno. I've sent multiple courteous inquiries to both organizations, but I've never gotten an answer to that question.

What happens if someone gets hurt as a result?

Dunno. Ask their attorneys.

But here's something I do know.

Follow the Heimlich Institute's activities and you're likely to turn up unexpected, often-newsworthy information.

For example, Heimlich's Maneuver's, my father's autobiography published last year by Prometheus Books, has a chapter called "Anti-Semitism" that includes:

(Our community experienced) prejudice that was common in the 1930s. Specifically, prejudice against Jews. In school, Jewish children were sidelined. The principal read Christian prayers during assembly. And in December, many school activities were given a Christmas theme. (We Jews quietly resisted, however. When the class sang Christmas carols, we substituted the name “Moses” for Christ and “Chanukah” for Christmas.)

When I was in my young teens, my mother asked if I would prefer to use a middle name other than Judah. I believe she was attempting to protect me from the harm that might have come from having a Jewish-sounding name. In those days, Jews were denied work and acceptance into college simply because of their faith. I followed my mother’s advice when I was in high school and changed my middle name to “Jay.” (About twenty years ago, I went back to my original name. Today I proudly call myself Henry Judah Heimlich.)

...(It) was rare when I spent time with non-Jews and was not made to feel self-conscious about my religion.

And via Four questions with Dr. Henry Heimlich by staff reporter Barrett Brunsman, Cincinnati Business Courier, February 11, 2014:

BB: Your book notes that you encountered anti-Semitism in college and during your career. Was it significant that the Cincinnati hospital was Jewish?

HJH: It was significant in that Jewish doctors were not taken into non-Jewish hospitals in those days. That's the only place I could possibly be -- in a Jewish hospital. Those days are gone forever, I'm pleased to say.

Discrimination against Jews may have diminished in the medical profession, but it's proudly practiced by the Heimlich Institute's partner organization -- yes -- the American Heritage Girls.

Based on their "statement of faith," any woman who doesn't fit this description is barred from holding leadership positions in the organization.

source

Dedication page of Heimlich's Maneuvers

That means my mother -- daughter of dance studio mogul Moses Teichman, better known as Arthur Murray -- and my aunt Cele would not have been permitted to lead an AHG troop.

source

Same goes for my sisters Elisabeth Heimlich of Cincinnati and Janet Heimlich of Austin, TX, who edited Heimlich's Maneuvers and authored a nonfiction book about religious extremism and founded a related nonprofit intended to prevent kids from being harmed by religious kooks.

But wait, there's more.

Arguably the most prestigious public recognition my father ever received was being awarded the Albert Lasker Award in 1984.

Via the Lasker website:

The Lasker Awards are among the most respected science prizes in the world. Since 1945, the Awards Program has recognized the contributions of scientists, physicians, and public servants who have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of human disease. Lasker Awards often presage future recognition by the Nobel committee, so they have become popularly known as "America's Nobels." Eighty-six Lasker laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 44 in the last three decades.

Via Heimlich's Maneuvers:

Many people ask me how I came up with (the Heimlich maneuver)...I invented it just as I have all my other techniques and devices -- that is, through scientific research.

Via AHG's website, here's their approach to science:



Who's the knucklehead responsible for the Heimlich Institute's decision to partner with an organization that wouldn't permit members of Dr. Heimlich's own family to hold positions of authority and whose approach to science is based on the book of Genesis?

Dunno. Ask them.

Terri Huntington (who runs Heimlich Heroes) and my father at a book-signing event last year for his memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers

FYI, I provided Terri Huntington of Heimlich Heroes and AHG founder/executive director Patti Garibay with the opportunity to comment for this item.

I haven't receive a reply from either, but if they or another representative of their organizations wish to submit a response, they can click here to e-mail me.

Part I, January 21, 2014: Publishers Weekly and Kirkus get it wrong, then update their reviews of my father's memoir to credit Dr. Dan Gavriliu

Part II, February 6, 2014: Bucharest journalist Miruna Munteanu calls out Prometheus Books for my father "trying to steal credit" for an innovative operation invented by respected Romanian surgeon

In my father's recently-published memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers, he rightly credits the late Romanian surgeon Dan Gavriliu with inventing an esophagus replacement operation known as the Reversed Gastric Tube.

Since my father got tarred and feathered on the front page of the March 16, 2003 Cincinnati Enquirer for his decades of falsely claiming to have invented the procedure --  for an example, see the video clip at the end of this item -- presumably he realized he'd be playing with fire if he tried to get away with that in his book.

Via the 2003 Enquirer expose:





But check out the weasel version my father dishes up in his book.

He admits that he didn't invent the procedure, but still claims name credit and has the chutzpah to put his own name ahead of Dr. Gavriliu's!

Anyway, for some reason pre-publication reviews of the book credited my father with inventing the procedure.

Per part I of this series, last month I got published corrections from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews that resulted in updated reviews giving inventor's credit to Dr. Gavriliu.

A few days ago I scored a Romanian hat trick.

source

Here's the review published last month by the American Library Association's Booklist:


From the updated review arranged by Booklist Senior Editor Donna Seaman:


Here's a 1999 video clip in which my father tells a studio audience -- which includes my mother (the late Jane Heimlich, his sister Cele Rosenthal, and my sisters, Janet and Elisabeth Heimlich -- that he invented the RGT operation.

My mother, Jane Heimlich (source)

From Jane Murray Heimlich's new memoir recalls life with famous father and husband by Lauren Bishop, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 25, 2010:

Based on this - and knowing my mother - I assumed her book, entitled Out of Step, would also fail to disclose what really went on in her life, first growing up as the daughter of dance studio moguls Arthur and Kathryn Murray, then being married to my father for about six decades.

To put it mildly, I'm not big on sweeping dirt under rugs. And, per the Enquirer story, I didn't appreciate being rendered invisible, so I was in no hurry to read her book.

Well, I just picked up a copy and it turns out that my assumption that she'd skirt some awful truths was mostly correct.

However, she did include a revelation that wasn't reported by the Enquirer or, to my knowledge, by anyone else.

Before getting to that, the book does mention me in passing a couple of times. There's also a childhood photo of yours truly, so I wasn't completely disappeared.

But my brother and my sisters got exactly the same treatment. We're all sort of bit players who turn up very occasionally, usually as part of an anecdote or a supposed life lesson.  

To her credit, she cops to being an absentee mother:


This mid-1970s episode is what interested me:

Thomas J. Schippers, 1930-1977 (source)

From OperaArts.com: 

Thomas Schippers was an American conductor who in an all too brief career was highly-regarded for his work in opera...(In 1970, he) took up a full time position with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Regrettably, soon after building the orchestra's international reputation and recording with them, he died of lung cancer at the early age of 47...A good looking, reportedly gay man, rumours of intimate associations with Gian Carlo Menotti, mathemetician (sic) Sean Clarke and Leonard Bernstein ran throughout his all too short career....

More via WOSU-FM, Columbus, Ohio:

Schippers (sic) gifts as a musician were indisputable. Added to the mix, he was devastatingly handsome. Thomas Schippers was one of those people attractive to any gender or sexual preference. He was part of the Samuel Barber-Gian Carlo Menotti menage. The chilly and autocratic Rudolf Bing, director the Metropolitan Opera, was rumored to be besotted with Schippers.

In the mid-1970s when I was living in Cincinnati, my father, a lifelong opera devotee, was utterly besotted with Schippers, who had everything my father wanted: physical beauty, talent, and, above all, fame.

Interestingly, both Schippers and my father had humble beginnings, both married heiresses that enabled them to enter high society, and both attracted admirers of both genders.

My father (circa 1965?)

According to my mother, the relationship went further:


The story's no surprise to me.

At the time I was about 21. My father introduced me to The Golden Girl without giving me any indication that she was his lover. She tried to ingratiate herself with me, offering me free rock concert tickets she got through her job as Schippers' assistant.

It didn't take me long to figure out what my 55 year-old father was doing with the much younger hot blonde.

Plus the relationship included a perk: access to "Tommy."

The soul of indiscretion, my father flagrantly squired her around town and took her calls at our home. As a result, their "secret" blew up pretty quickly.

The blonde then skipped town, my father went back to the comfort and security of Arthur Murray's money, and "Tommy" dropped dead.

As to the nature of the relationships between my father, Schippers, and The Golden Girl, my mother teasingly calls it a "ménage," but leaves the reader to fill in the rest.

My father at an April 25, 2010 book signing party for my mother's book (source)