Home Tour: Surgeon and inventor 'grew up here'

Dad would have loved this story.

Its about a 120-year-old brick house in Northside, a one-room wide, modest but nice place where on its third floor and out in its garage a young man began inventing things that would later save more than 20 million lives my fathers included.

Its not the sort of house youd expect to connect with a cardiovascular surgeon named Thomas Fogarty, a man so important that in November he was awarded the Presidential National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the White House. Fogarty is an inventor and entrepreneur who has developed many medical devices used in heart surgeries.

And, oh yeah, heput a pig valve in my dads heart at Stanford University Medical Center in the mid-1970s that extended his life by 25 years.

I shared this story with the couple who have lived for 12 years in the Fogarty House Michael Griffith and Nicola Mason and in turn, they shared a few Fogarty stories and their passion for the hallowed place they and their daughter call home.

A lot of effort went into having floors refinished, a kitchen created, wallpaper removed and paint and polyurethane applied, but the end result is the goal they set.

Its got quirks and its got history, Mason said. Its also got craftsmanship you cant find in new construction.

The couple lived in Baton Rouge, La., when Griffith was offered jobs in Cincinnati and North Carolina. He interviewed here in February 2002.

Griffith, an English professor at the University of Cincinnati, and Mason, managing editor of The Cincinnati Review, zeroed in on Northside during their initial house hunt. The 2-story Fogarty House, which was built by the doctors family in 1895 around the corner from the Andrew Jergens mansion, was an obvious contender.

A lot of houses we looked at didnt have the woodwork exposed. It had all been painted over, Griffith said. I was looking for original woodwork and door frames.

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Home Tour: Surgeon and inventor 'grew up here'