This article was published today by Phil Garber, Managing Editor at the Observer-Tribune and can be viewed in its original format on the Observer-Tribune Website.
Posted: Monday, January 23, 2012 10:32 am | Updated: 4:58 pm, Mon Jan 23, 2012.
By PHIL GARBER, Managing Editor | 0 comments
MENDHAM – When Dr. Larry Weinstein arrived at the Sancheti Hospital in Pune, India, he found a surging crowd of more than 500 poor people with varying degrees of deformities, from severely cleft palates to grossly enlarged mouths.
Weinstein who lives in Mendham is a surgeon at Weinstein Plastic Surgery Center with offices in Chester and Summit. He was on his 21st mission of mercy to India to perform free plastic surgeries for everyone from babies to adults. But while the trip was a success, it was bittersweet because it was the first time that Weinstein had not been with his mentor and founder of the project, Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet.
Dicksheet, who lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., died on Nov. 14, 2011. Dicksheet started going to India and offering the free surgeries in 1968. Through the years, he conducted nearly 70,000 surgeries. The Indian surgeon had won international recognition for his work and had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.
Weinstein met Dicksheet at Kings County Medical Center, where Weinstein completed his residency and Dicksheet was then an instructor.
According to Weinstein, despite his serious health issues, Dicksheet, 81, was prepared to travel again to India before he died.
Weinstein was in India from Jan. 4-15 with a team that included Dr. Barry Citron of Livingston and two nurses, Amanda Hayes of Bedminister and, Courtney Enman of Long Valley.
It was Citron’s second mission and a first for Hayes and Enman.
Enman is a nurse in the operating room at Hackettstown Community Medical Center and has known Weinstein for 10 years. Hayes works with a home care agency and helps with surgeries at Weinstein’s offices.
