Times Picayune, LA
May 5 2005

Aspiring surgeon knew the way to his dreams
Tulane standout was on eve of graduating

By Keith O’Brien
Staff writer

John Berberian was close — so close — to finishing a long, hard
journey that began at the Tulane University School of Medicine four
years ago.

His course work was done. Graduation was just three weeks away. And
his departure, even closer. Berberian, 29, was two days away from
leaving New Orleans. He had a neurosurgery residency awaiting him at
Georgetown University. And while his time in New Orleans had been
great, it was over. He told the school to mail him his diploma. As
always, he had dreamed up bigger and better plans. He was going to
Italy with his family.

And then, in a freakishly cruel caprice of fate, Berberian’s life
was snuffed out, his body and bicycle mangled by an 18-wheeler as he
pedaled along St. Claude Avenue last Thursday afternoon.

On Wednesday, friends and family buried the young man in Fresno,
Calif., and began packing for a trip to New Orleans rather than
Italy. Richard Berberian, John’s father, said Wednesday that he and
his wife, Barbara, will attend a May 19 memorial service Tulane has
scheduled in Berberian’s honor as well as the May 21 graduation
ceremony their son planned to skip. The grieving father wants to
meet the classmates who loved his son so much and be there to hear
him called doctor.

“His spirit,” he said, “will be graduating.”

Berberian was riding his bicycle west on St. Claude when the 18-wheeler
traveling in the same direction veered right onto Elysian Fields
Avenue, cutting him off, police said.

Berberian died at the scene. His father forswore vengeful thoughts
and instead expressed pity for the driver, who was not charged.

On the day he died Berberian was coming from the Navy office on Poland
Avenue, freshly promoted from ensign to lieutenant by the service
that had financed his medical education in exchange for a four-year
hitch upon its completion. In quiet testimony to that milestone — and
to Berberian’s humility about his many accomplishments — a friend,
Dr. Lori Summers, found three photos in the dead man’s pockets when
she retrieved his clothing from the coroner’s office Wednesday.

They documented the oath he had taken at his naval commissioning: a big
moment, one that comes with graduation, but that he had never mentioned
to Summers, even though she, too, is in the Navy. It was classic
“Johnny B,” his friends agreed, the mark of a humble and unassuming
man who in many ways was still just a kid who grew up on a California
citrus farm, even as he spun wild stories or crafted grand theories.

“I remember,” classmate Ron Shatzmiller recalled Wednesday, “that
I really wanted to be friends with him. Because when we went out to
parties with the class — when we were first-year students — he was
the most entertaining, the most well-spoken.”

Berberian was smart. He had three degrees from Stanford University:
a bachelor’s and two master’s, one of them in political science. He
juggled dreams, Shatzmiller said, of becoming, at times, an astronaut,
a CIA agent and even president. According to Summers, he was “the
best medical student I ever had.”

But it wasn’t until July 2003, when Berberian began a surgery rotation
and met Summers, that he finally stopped juggling dreams and decided
he wanted to become a neurosurgeon. It’s one of the most challenging
and competitive medical specialties. Tulane, for example, accepts
only one neurosurgery resident a year, Dr. Miguel Melgar said. But
Melgar thought Berberian was perfect for the job.

“He told me, ‘This is what I want to do,’ ” recalled Melgar, a skull
base and cerebral vascular surgeon at Tulane and the training director
at Charity Hospital. “I said, ‘Listen. You’re from California. You
guys have a nice lifestyle. Remember, you’ve got to be a commando
here. You can probably do something less demanding.’ .
. He said, ‘No, Dr. Melgar. This is what I want to do.’ ” .

Focused, Berberian was soon outpacing some first- and second-year
residents, Melgar and Summers said. He worked with patients suffering
from brain tumors, aneurysms and trauma injuries, and he did so well
treating them that Melgar said he would have given Tulane’s sole
neurosurgery residency spot to Berberian if he had asked for it.

Instead Berberian decided he wanted to go somewhere new. He matched
at Georgetown University in the winter, traveled to Armenia, where
his ancestors had once lived, and returned last month for his final
weeks in New Orleans.

It was nice, Shatzmiller said Wednesday, to finally just hang out
with his friend with no worries about school weighing on them, to
listen to his stories and laugh at his theories: on everything from
whom his friends should date to the logistics of commuting to med
school from a house on the beach. Now it is his classmates who are
telling stories about him.

“The thing that kills us,” Shatzmiller said, “is that he was the best
of us.”