Many of you know that I’m the son of Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the Heimlich Maneuver in 1974. Today is Dad’s 90^th birthday.

Norman Vincent Peale once described my father as having saved more lives than any person alive today. It’s estimated that over 50,000 people have been saved using the Heimlich Maneuver. But there is more to Dad’s life than just that.

In 1940, when he was still an undergraduate at Cornell, Dad saved a train engineer who was trapped in a massive train wreck. The NY Times called him the “hero of the accident.”

When he was 24, Dad volunteered for extra hazardous duty with the Navy in 1945. Ironically, he joined the Navy because he liked being on the ocean but was sent to the Gobi Desert in China. He became the hero of a Chinese village by saving hundreds from blindness by discovering a cure for trachoma — a disease where eyelids turn inward and scratch the cornea — by mixing antibiotics with shaving cream and applying it to the eyes of those suffering from the disease. He returned to Inner Mongolia in 1988 where he was still remembered for his life-saving work during the war.

In 1950, Dad conceived of an operation to replace the esophagus so patients who previously could not swallow food could now eat normally. During the 1960s, he invented the Heimlich valve which saved thousands of lives in Vietnam and in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Dad invented the Heimlich MicroTrach in 1980, a device which gets oxygen into the lungs of patients with chronic breathing difficulties.

Dad continues to work, at age 90, on finding a cure for AIDS.  Considering his track record of life-saving achievements, he’s likely to achieve it.

Happy birthday, Dad.