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| Dr. Larry Dorr ’63 travels the world performing knee and hip replacements. |
A national leader in joint replacement surgery, Dr. Larry Dorr ’63 publishes six to 10 scientific articles each year, lectures internationally, and has a clientele that includes Ernest Borgnine and “Phantom’s” Michael Crawford. But it’s talk of Operation Walk, a medical mission Dorr established in 1995, that really excites this Los Angeles-based orthopaedist.
Through Operation Walk, Dorr recruits operating crews that travel to underdeveloped countries to perform knee and hip replacements and train medical workers to do the operations themselves.
Most recently, Operation Walk performed 64 joint replacements during 3 1/2 days in Cuba (the team included Dorr’s former roommate, Dr. Robert J. Porter ’63). Using donated implants, Dorr’s team has traveled to Nepal, China, and India. Next they’ll head to the Philippines and Nicaragua.
When Dorr’s not traveling on medical missions, he directs The Bone and Joint Institute at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He’s performed more than 4,000 hip and knee replacements in the past decade alone, and was named one of the best hip and knee surgeons in the reference book Best Doctors in America.
“My dad was a Methodist minister who always wanted to be a missionary,” says Dorr. “Because he had tuberculosis as a child, he never got to fulfill that dream. This is a tribute to my dad.”
Though separated from Cornell by thousands of miles, Dorr makes an effort to keep in touch with friends and coaches (he was a member of the 1961 conference champion football team). He’s twice played host to the women’s tennis team in California.
“I have a picture of the Chapel hanging in my office,” says Dorr. “The intimacy of Cornell really encouraged me to be the best that I could be. That’s something that’s stuck with me all these years.”
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