{"id":22624,"date":"2025-04-17T19:04:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T01:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/meet-veryl-rosenbaum-the-woman-behind-a-pacemaker-inventor\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:15:30","slug":"meet-veryl-rosenbaum-the-woman-behind-a-pacemaker-inventor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/meet-veryl-rosenbaum-the-woman-behind-a-pacemaker-inventor\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Veryl Rosenbaum: The woman behind a pacemaker inventor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Veryl
Veryl Rosenbaum. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Veryl Rosenbaum, a lively resident at Vista Grande in Cortez, was kind enough to share parts of her colorful story, though what follows barely scratches the surface of her adventurous life.<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum was born 89 years ago in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. At 12, Rosenbaum and her family packed their things and moved to Detroit. A few months later, her dad died of a heart attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe, my mom, my sister \u2013 we all got jobs, or else we\u2019d have to move into an apartment, which was a bad thing at the time,\u201d Rosenbaum said, laughing.<\/p>\n

She remembered getting a job as a short-order cook, and how, thanks to all the hard work, \u201cwe didn\u2019t have to live in an apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years passed, and she married a doctor and joined a circle of doctor friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d talk patients and pills, it was so boring,\u201d she said. \u201cThe wives were so bored.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, in her defense, she \u201cwas only 17 when we married, and he was 24. We were little children who knew nothing about marriage,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

So they divorced, and eventually she met the great love of her life, Jean Rosenbaum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t remember the years, it\u2019s been so long,\u201d Rosenbaum said. \u201cJean had divorced his wife also, and we fell in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said they were friends first, which is the soundest foundation on which to build a relationship because \u201cromance can turn so quickly from love to hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut friends work it out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum remembered how she first heard of Jean, in a newspaper article about his lifesaving invention.<\/p>\n

At the time, Jean was a 24-year-old student and hospital intern at Wayne State University in Detroit when he was inspired to develop the external pacemaker, which electronically helps a person\u2019s heart maintain a steady beat.<\/p>\n

A news release spoke of his distress \u201cat the sight of people dying,\u201d which was, in part, his inspiration for inventing it.<\/p>\n

But the seed was planted many years before that, when Jean was a child and watched the movie Frankenstein<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cInspired by this, Rosenbaum wondered if a small jolt of electric current could be mechanically produced to stimulate a damaged heart to cause it to beat regularly, thus reviving a patient,\u201d according to a story called \u201cMedicine in the Movies<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the pacemaker\u2019s success, though, people picked on Jean.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was called a ghoul by his own professors because carried that machine around,\u201d Rosenbaum said. \u201cThey made fun of him. He knew it worked, though, and it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

After tinkering with the prototype for some time, \u201cJean and a colleague had the opportunity to try it out on a dying patient one evening while the rest of the staff was away,\u201d a news release said.<\/p>\n

The patient \u201ccame back to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOvernight, he changed the world,\u201d Rosenbaum said. \u201cImagine opening the door to electronic medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it was that news story where Rosenbaum first learned of Jean.<\/p>\n

She said that he never accepted any money for the device he discovered in 1951 that, over the years, has saved millions of lives.<\/p>\n

The original machine was handmade out of wood, leather, plastic and metal parts. It\u2019s now on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe children were playing with the machine, so I encouraged him to put it in the Smithsonian. It\u2019s not a toy,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n

Jean\u2019s pacemaker is used externally; the implanted one was developed a few years later, in 1960.<\/p>\n

Not long after Jean\u2019s pacemaker was invented, to demonstrate what it could do, Rosenbaum put on her videographer hat and made short film called Frankenstein and the Pacemaker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI edited it, but it had no \u2018umph,\u2019 and it\u2019s got to have that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s got to grab you.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Jean wrote a letter to Mel Brooks that started, \u201cFrom one Jew to another, I have not made a dime on the pacemaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the note that followed, Jean asked Brooks for footage from his 1974 comedic horror film Young Frankenstein<\/em> to use in the educational video.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe (Brooks) gave us pictures and music from Young Frankenstein<\/em>. What a man, what a sweetheart,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The pacemaker wasn\u2019t Jean\u2019s only contribution \u2013 he was a writer, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wrote together,\u201d said Rosenbaum.<\/p>\n

They wrote stories on practical psychology, with books titled Conquering Loneliness<\/em>, How to be Friends with Yourself & Your Family<\/em> and Love in a Dying World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican publishers would send us all over the country, we had a great time traveling together. We had the time of our life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

One time, Rosenbaum had just finished a radio interview and she met Shirley Temple, who was on after her.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was the same sweetheart we saw in the movies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum said that she wrote Stepparenting, <\/em>but put Jean\u2019s name on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I wrote it, people were just started getting to get divorced,\u201d she said of the 1977 book. \u201cWhen you walk into family as a stepparent, you\u2019re immediately hated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book, then, helps stepparents navigate an otherwise difficult, uncomfortable situation.<\/p>\n

A New York Times Bestseller <\/em>published in 1972, Is Your Volkswagen a Sex Symbol?<\/em> got Jean on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson not one, but three times.<\/p>\n

\"The
The cover of the bestselling book, Is Your Volkswagen a Sex Symbol? (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s about revealing yourself through how you live. But we said, let\u2019s make it hilarious,\u201d said Rosenbaum.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s preface starts, \u201cWhat deep psychological forces cause us to select the kind of car we have, the pets we treasure, the house we love, and our very manners and ways of doing things?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour habits, indeed, tell all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The preface concludes there, and leads into Chapter 1: \u201cIs More Horsepower Really More Happiness?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum herself was a psychoanalyst, an author, a professional watercolorist.<\/p>\n

She also worked with the Medical Missionary Sisters at the Natural Childbirth College in Santa Fe and as a blackjack dealer for 27 years at the Sky Ute Casino Resort in Ignacio.<\/p>\n

She said she\u2019s \u201cblessed with gifts,\u201d as in psychic gifts, that allow her to do things like dream analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have bright blue eyes, they\u2019re sparkling,\u201d she said, gazing into mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMen never liked me looking into their eyes. They said I could see right through them,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum underscored her gratitude for having spent the first 12 years of her life in Canada, where they \u201ctreat boys and girls the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great foundation of total self-confidence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

From the start, she had instilled in her the idea that \u201cwomen weren\u2019t any less than men, like they were in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Rosenbaum became a psychoanalyst, which focuses on healing through the unconscious, she first recalled how she \u201cloved\u201d the role, and said she started seeing teens \u201cwhen I was close to one myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, \u201cthere weren\u2019t many women psychoanalysts at the time. But I had a good reputation, and confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take her long to realize \u201cthat Freud was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s European, and Europeans don\u2019t know a thing about Americans,\u201d she said of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said I was having hostile dreams \u2013 well, yeah, we\u2019re hostile people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While Freud \u201copened the door\u201d to psychoanalysis, Rosenbaum holds that Carl Jung \u201cis the man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jung proposed the idea of the collective unconscious, in which there\u2019s a shared, universal unconscious among us all. He cites things like archetypes as proof.<\/p>\n

It was this practice that initially turned her and Jean on to Durango \u2013 a patient invited them out and showed them around.<\/p>\n

She and Jean raised their kids there and lived there until he died in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got cancer of the throat, it was painful,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a time with cancer, when you know you\u2019re going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe night before, he was in a coma and asked me to bring him all the love poems he wrote for me. I was reading them, crying. And he turned to me and asked what\u2019s wrong,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had green eyes again \u2013 eyes get all dark during cancer \u2013 and he looked like he was 30 again. When I remember him, I see that face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum is now living at Vista Grande Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Cortez. She\u2019s still painting watercolors and conducting dream analyses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born with joy of life,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a story when you think about it, but not when you\u2019re living it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jean
Jean (right) and Marc Rosenbaum, his son. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018It\u2019s quite a story when you think about it, but not when you\u2019re living it\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77788,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22624\/revisions\/77788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22624"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}