William DeVries was born December 19, 1943, in
Brooklyn Navy Yard. His father, Henry DeVries, was a
Dutch immigrant who died in combat on the
destroyer in 1944 during the
Battle of Hollandia, where he had enrolled as a naval surgeon. When his father died William was only six months old. He was raised by his grandmother and his mother who was a member of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until he was five. After his mother remarried, the family was enlarged by eight more children and they all moved to
Ogden, Utah, where he attended
Ben Lomond High School and where he was an athlete being on the
basketball and track teams. During his childhood DeVries became an
Eagle Scout. Because the family was meeting financial difficulties, William had to work throughout his high school years to help out. He also won the
Utah state finals in
high jumping and thanks to his sport abilities he went to the
University of Utah on a
track scholarship. During college he was part of the
Sigma Chi fraternity. He graduated in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in
molecular and
Genetic biology. Later on he went to medical school also at the University of Utah and received his M.D. degree in 1970. By the time he had finished with school, he had already built a family. He married his first wife, Ane Karen, It was thanks to one of the jobs that he was involved in surgery. He assisted doctor
Willem Johan Kolff during his work and during night he was paid to watch over the animals in the lab. In 1969 after some advice from doctor
Keith Reemtsma, he decided to leave
Salt Lake City and to start his residency in another hospital. That is also the year in which doctor
Denton Cooley attempted his first artificial heart transplant in a patient, in
Houston. Doctor Cooley's work would be an inspiration for doctor DeVries, who would later succeed in the transplant of the TAH. After he left Utah, he attended a series of job interviews. The first one was at the
Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston. The day of the interview, on his way to the hospital, he witnessed a person being stabbed by another man, and helped the victim until he was carried to the emergency room. This episode was probably one of the reasons why he decided not to start his residency in Boston. The second interview he attended was at the
Johns Hopkins hospital, but eventually he opted for a residency at the
Duke University in
North Carolina. At the end of his nine years surgical training, he headed back to Salt Lake City. ==The artificial heart==