Simon & Schuster: A Conversation with Susan Whitman Helfgot Part 3

Q. How did you feel when viewing the “Boston Med” documentary for the first time?

A. I was sitting next to Jim Maki and Bo Pomahac and other friends from the Brigham and we watched it together. They were finally able to meet Joseph, in a way. They never knew him in life. Film is a powerful medium. Terence Wrong, the show’s producer, and his crew, captured the final images of my husband three weeks before his death. Many new organ donors have come forward because of the show. I am deeply grateful.

Q. You didn’t meet Dr. Pomahac until after your husband’s death, and yet you discovered that their backgrounds are similar. Can you elaborate?

A. Bo Pomahac came to Boston from the Czech Republic two days after graduating from medical school. He had very little money and no job. Through hard work and talent, he made his way through Boston’s closed medical community to the point where he led a team of three dozen medical professionals through one of the most difficult surgeries ever performed.

My husband grew up dirt power on the Lower East Side of New York, and after a successful career as a university professor, he managed to fight his way into Hollywood, where he built a leading movie research company that now has offices on two continents.

Q. The decision to donate Joseph’s face was one you made with all of his children. How do they feel about the choice today?

A. We are all proud that our family was able to help Jim Maki, but the resulting publicity has been difficult for them.

Q&A with Simon & Schuster

Danielle Lynn, Senior Publicist

Susan Whitman-Helfgot
http://thematchstory.com/
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http://twitter.com/thematchstory
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The Match: A Brief Description

Joseph Helfgot, the son of Holocaust survivors, worked his way from a Lower East Side tenement to create a successful Hollywood research company. But his heart was failing. After months of waiting for a heart transplant, he died during the operation.

Hours after his death, his wife Susan was asked a shocking question: would she donate her husband's face to a total stranger?

The stranger was James Maki, the adopted son of parents who spent part of World War II in an internment camp for Japanese Americans. Rebelling against his stern father, a professor, by enlisting to serve in Vietnam, he returned home a broken man, addicted to drugs. One night he fell facedown onto the electrified third rail of a Boston subway track.

A young Czech surgeon who was determined to make a better life on the other side of the Iron Curtain was on call when the ambulance brought Maki to the hospital. Although Dr. Bohdan Pomahac gave him little chance of survival, Maki battled back. He was sober and grateful for a second chance, but he became a recluse, a man without a face. His only hope was a controversial face transplant, and Dr. Pomahac made it happen.

In The Match, Susan Whitman Helfgot captures decades of drama and history, taking us from Warsaw to Japan, from New York to Hollywood. Through wars and immigration, poverty and persecution, from a medieval cadaver dissection to a stunning seventeen-hour face transplant, she weaves together the story of people forever intertwined—a triumphant legacy of hope.

Susan Whitman Helfgot

Author, The Match

http://thematchstory.com/
http://www.facebook.com/thematchstory
http://twitter.com/thematchstory
http://www.youtube.com/swhelfgot