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Barney B. Clark papers, 1910-1984

Overview of the Collection

Collector
Clark, Una Loy Clark
Title
Barney B. Clark papers
Dates
1910-1984 (inclusive)
Quantity
12 linear feet
Collection Number
MS 0670
Summary
The Barney B. Clark papers (1910-1984) provide information on the development of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, the implantation of this heart into a human being, and on Barney Bailey Clark, the first authorized recipient of this artificial heart. The bulk of the collection consists of materials related to the writing of a story about Barney Clark and the artificial heart by Earl and Miriam Selby. Also included are materials collected by Una Loy Clark, Barney Clark's wife, including a history told from the perspective of the family, memorabilia, scrapbooks, and correspondence written to Barney Clark during his convalescence at the University of Utah Medical Center, as well as posthumous plaques and awards.
Repository
University of Utah Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library
University of Utah
295 South 1500 East
Salt Lake City, UT
84112-0860

Telephone: 8015818863
special@library.utah.edu
Access Restrictions

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.

Languages
English
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Historical Note

Dr. Barney Bailey Clark was an extremely courageous person who underwent an unprecedented procedure. That act of determination thrust him into the scientific spotlight, and into the hearts of millions of people around the world. For 112 days, he survived on an artificial heart developed by Dr. Willem Kolff. His own heart had been deteriorating for years due to a disease known as idiopathic cardiomyopathy. And even though the procedure was not a complete success (because he never made it home from the hospital), his bravery and suffering provided the medical community with valuable scientific information.

Barney Bailey Clark was born in Provo, Utah, on 21 January 1921 to Moroni Jensen Clark and Ethel Bailey Clark. He was their only child. His father was a traveling salesman for Calumet Baking Powder; so, he lived with his grandmother until her death in 1926. After that he traveled with his parents for a while, but moved back to Provo with his mother when school started. Barney graduated from high school and joined the National Guard. Then in March of 1941, the National Guard was federalized to become part of the regular United States Army. He helped to run the first aid station with the medics, and about a year later he put in to be a pilot in the Air Corps. But when he was unable to become a pilot, he joined the bombardier training course where he excelled.

The war ended in 1945, and Barney's last mission was actually executed after the war had ended. This was due to the orders of radio silence. They just hadn't know about the truce until it was too late. But at least, Barney could now go home to his family.

Barney graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in pre-med. Afterward, he tried to get into the Medical School at the University of Utah, but he was turned down. It was then that his best friend, Wes Brown, convinced him to move to Seattle, and go to school to become a dentist. After he graduated, he went to work in the office of Homer Lockett until he could afford to open his own office.

In June of 1954 he was informed by his physician that he had contracted a case of hepatitis. Unknown to him, this was to be the first in a long line of illnesses that would plague is life from time to time. Due to his smoking habit, he eventually contracted emphysema (May 1978); and then there was the idiopathic cardiomyopathy which deteriorated the muscle in his heart.

In 1980, Dr. Clark was referred to Dr. Jeffery Anderson for treatment. Dr. Anderson tried to manage his condition medically. The treatment included administration of digoxin, furosemide with potassium supplementation, warfarin, captopril, prednisone, azathioprine, and a trial of the investigational new inotropic drug amrinone. Unfortunately, all of these drugs proved unsuccessful in preventing further cardiac decomposition.

Dr. Clark was first introduced to the artificial heart in 1982 when he went to visit the animal research barn, and he went home to Seattle to decide on the surgery with his family. But Una Loy knew right from the start that he was going to do it. Although he did want to help advance the medical research, what he really wanted was a much better quality of life than he had been experiencing the last few years. He truly believed that this artificial heart would give that to him; and it probably would have, if he hadn't been suffering from so many other problems. He was admitted to the University of Utah Medical Center for the transplant at the end of November in 1982. He signed the consent form, required by the Institutional Review Board (twice), and then due to complications, he went into surgery earlier than expected.

Even though the operation was successful, they had a lot of problems at the start. First, he developed an air leak in his lung that had to be corrected surgically. Then, he suffered from seizures of an undetermined nature. Next, there was also a broken valve on the left ventricle of the artificial heart that had to be repaired. And finally, due to the necessary anticoagulant, he suffered from terrible nose bleeds which also had to be fixed surgically.

Even though preparations were made for him to go home at the end of April, he never made it. He suffered from aspiration pneumonia in early March which sent him back into the ICU, and he never left it again.

On March 21st, Dr. Clark suffered from reduced renal function that induced a high fever. And on March 23rd, he suffered from multiple organ system failure that caused a circulatory collapse which killed him at 10:02 that night. It wasn't the artificial heart that killed him, it was everything else that was going wrong with him at that time.

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Content Description

The Barney B. Clark papers (1910-1984) provide information on the development of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, the implantation of this heart into a human being, and on Barney Bailey Clark, the first authorized recipient of this artificial heart. The bulk of the collection consists of materials related to the writing of a story about Barney Clark and the artificial heart by Earl and Miriam Selby. Between October 1980 and April 1984, Reader's Digest decided to publish a story about the artificial heart and Dr. Barney B. Clark. The authors commissioned to this task were Earl and Miriam Selby. However, before they were finished, the management at the magazine decided to scrap the project. The materials were then given to Dr. Clark's widow, Una Loy. The bulk of the material is comprised of interviews preformed by the Selby's to gather information for their story. The collection also contains several rough drafts of the Selby's manuscript, personal and professional correspondence, medical charts, information about the development and use of the artificial heart, newspaper and magazine articles about the artificial heart, and a personal account of the events by Dr. Clark's family.

The collection has been divided into five sections. The first section contains personal material. Box 1 starts with an account of what happened to Dr. Barney B. Clark during the artificial heart transplant. This account is told from the family's perspective and was arranged by Una Loy Clark and Susan J. Quall. This account is followed by a speech given by Mrs. Clark about Peggy Miller, the social worker who helped Dr. and Mrs. Clark during the transplant procedure. This is followed by some of the certificates awarded to Dr. Clark, four scrapbooks prepared by Mrs. Clark after the death of her husband, and information about Dr. Clark's fortieth high school reunion. Boxes 2 through 4 contain correspondence written to Dr. Clark during his convalescence at the University of Utah Medical Center. This correspondence is arranged alphabetically by the last name of the person or the organization responsible for writing the letter.

Section two begins in Box 5, and contains Dr. Clark's medical charts in chronological order, papers about the artificial heart, Dr. Clark's Psychological evaluation after the operation, some of the media coverage that this historical case produced, press releases about the artificial heart, copies of photographs taken at the hospital and the animal research barn (the original photographs are located in the Special Collections Photo Section), and a schedule of all the surgeries that were planed for on the day Dr. Clark received his new heart.

Section three, "Interview Transcripts," begins in box 7 and continues thru to box 19. Typically, it contains the transcripts from the audio cassette tapes of some of the interviews with the Selbys. In many instances we also have a copy of a resume of the person interviewed. If we have that resume, it will be located in the first folder of the transcript of that person. This section of the collection is arranged in alphabetical order by the last name. However, not all of the audio cassette tapes were transcribed. In fact, there are sixty-nine tapes without a transcription. The interviews contain discrepencies. Some parts of the interviews were omitted by the Selbys when they were transcribed. Also, the interview section numbers were designated by the Selbys and are not always consecutive. For instance, the sections could have been accidently misnumbered. The Selbys did attempt to correct this mistake, and we have helped them. And finally, when they did the interviews with Mrs. Clark, the interviews were done in two groups. The second group was used to clarify certain points discussed in the first group, and even though the Selbys started the section numbering over again, the processor of this collection continued the numbering where group one left off in order to avoid confusion. The second group begins in section forty-five.

The forth section of the collection, "Rough Drafts," contains the two most complete, drafts of the Selby's manuscript, some past drafts of Dr. Kolff's contribution to that manuscript, background information that Earl and Miriam Selby used to write their draft, an epilogue to the unfinished manuscript, and two entirely different drafts written by the Selbys. When looking through the two most complete drafts of Dr. Clark's story, note that Draft A and Draft B are terms used to distinguish between them. Draft A refers to the earliest draft in the collection, while Draft B refers to the most recent one.

The final section of the collection can be found in boxes 22 and 23. These are oversized boxes that contain many of the plaques and awards granted to Dr. Clark. It should be noted that most of these awards were given to him posthumously; and thus, they were received by his wife.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Use Agreement and Reproduction Request forms.

Preferred Citation

Collection Name, Collection Number, Box Number, Folder Number. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Organized in five series: I. Personal Material; II. Artificial Heart Transplant Information; III. Interview Transcripts; IV. Rough Drafts; V. Awards and Plaques.

Acquisition Information

Gift of Una Loy Clark Farrer in 1994. Materials related to the writing of the story about Barney Clark given by Earl and Miriam Selby to Una Loy Clark Farrer.

Separated Materials

Photographs and audio-visual materials were placed in the Multimedia Division of Special Collections (P0624 and A0363).

Processing Note

Processed by Debra Penman in 1990s.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Artificial kidney
  • Congestive heart failure
  • Heart, Artificial--Utah--History--Sources
  • Heart, Mechanical--Utah--History--Sources
  • Myocardium--Diseases

Personal Names

  • Clark, Barney B., 1921-1983
  • DeBakey, Michael E. (Michael Ellis), 1908-
  • DeVries, William C.
  • Jarvik, Robert
  • Kolff, Willem J., 1912

Corporate Names

  • University of Utah--History
  • University of Utah. Institute for Biomedical Engineering
  • University of Utah. Medical Center
  • University of Utah. Review of Research with Human Subjects Committee
  • Utah Artificial Heart Team

Form or Genre Terms

  • Articles
  • Correspondence
  • Drafts (documents)
  • Histories
  • Memorabilia
  • Oral histories
  • Press releases
  • Scrapbooks

Finding aid prepared by Debra Penman
1990 (last modified: 2019)

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