it was crude and nowhere near as effective as it might be. So he invented his own device with a sausage-shaped inflatable segment that would not get misshapen and fail to open a blockage. A careful and thorough researcher, he experimented first on dogs and human cadavers and eventually on the legs of human patients. Seeking help in the design, Gruentzig reached out to MediTech and struck up a relationship with Abele. In 1975, Abele visited Gruentzig in Zurich and watched, intrigued, as the inventor made his devices by hand at his kitchen table. But what made Gruentzig so effective was his innate understanding of human nature and the power of collaboration. A confident physician, Gruentzig “was a phenomenal presenter and he knew how to present to a hostile audience,” Abele said.
“He was very understated, which was unusual for someone who is passionate about a cause.” Mostly, Gruentzig, instead of proclaiming that he knew all the answers, presented his findings in a way that attracted other great thinkers and innovators to him. It helped that early on, a number of the doctors who were interested in the technique were “non-establishment.” The idea of putting a balloon in an artery and expanding it strained credibility. How would it not damage the artery or loosen debris that would move downstream in the circulatory system and cause havoc? With careful experimentation and help from a chemist who showed him how to develop strong, efficient polymers, Gruentzig found answers before the questions were even asked. Abele became an adviser on strategy for introducing new
THE FORSEARCH THE W
hile collaboration has been the underpinning of John Abele’s professional career, perhaps the most stirring example of intellectual teamwork for Abele came not in a laboratory or boardroom but in the roiling, frigid waters off Kiska, an island in the Western Aleutian islands 1,500 miles from mainland Alaska. There, in August 2007, Abele stood on the deck of the Aquila, a 165-foot crab boat, which he had hired as the search vessel to fulfill a lifelong quest. The excitement at the prospect of discovery warded off the damp and cold. If this effort paid off, aided greatly by collaboration’s essential ally, serendipity, Abele would finally find out what happened to his father, whom he had last seen 65 years earlier. In May 1942, a 5-year-old John Abele and his two older brothers bid goodbye to their father, Mannert L. Abele, an Annapolis graduate and commander of
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the U.S.S. Grunion, a 311-foot submarine that was departing its Groton, Conn., base for a long and dangerous mission in the North Pacific. The mission was secret, so the Abeles had no idea where “Jim” Abele, as he was called, was heading. They would never see him again. Four months passed and a telegram arrived from the Navy stating that the senior Abele was missing, along with the Grunion’s 69-man crew. The Grunion’s fate remained unknown, a mystery that settled into Abele’s psyche like a wound that would never heal. As decades passed, the Navy’s official designation did not change: “Overdue, presumed lost.” But Abele and his brothers Brad and Bruce were not the types to give up. As cofounder of Boston Scientific, Abele was a billionaire with the resources to initiate a search. But even his riches wouldn’t have