The life and career of South Australian of the Year and renowned craniofacial surgeon Professor David David

FOR more than four decades, Professor David David has been putting smiles on people’s faces.

World-renowned craniofacial surgeon Professor David David. Picture: Matt Turner

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AS he pores through old photos of severely disfigured young children, Professor David David allows himself a smile.

It is a smile that brings back fond memories. A smile of pride and satisfaction.

For it is thanks to South Australia’s world-renowned craniofacial surgeon that the children in these photos – and thousands of others – have the opportunity to smile themselves.

A pioneer in his field, Prof David, 76, has dedicated most of his life to working with people – many from some of the poorest parts of the world – suffering serious craniofacial deformities.

Their stories and physical pain – clefts, tumours, trauma, growth disorders – are harrowing, often unbelievable, but Prof David’s dedication ensures they get to live as normal a life as possible.

“This is a very serious case,” he says, looking at a photo of a Chinese-Indonesian boy called Denny.

“He is the little boy who was tied up like a dog in a village with his big facial clefts.

“A couple of Salvation Army people came across him and they convinced the people to let him come back to Singapore. They paid for his education and then he came down to us.

“He couldn’t speak and he was in the (Adelaide) Children’s Hospital sitting there waiting for us to work on him and he started to speak like Bugs Bunny because that’s what the television was sprouting.

“He was as smart as anything but never had any input. We did so much surgery for him over the years.

“He’s an adult now and married. He has a job in a hotel in Kuching (Malaysia) and became a born-again Christian. I got a nice message from him somewhere about the award.”

Malaysian boy Denny, 9, was operated on by Professor David David in 1985 for severe facial clefts.

The award Prof David is referring to is for the 2018 South Australian of the Year, which he won last week. He is now the state’s entrant for Australian of the Year which will be announced on January 25.

He will use the platform to again call for a national craniofacial unit, bemoaning the fact that interstate patients are being denied a referral, by doctors, to come to South Australia.

“The community needs to make sure they don’t let administrators and bureaucrats diminish what we have got because it can happen in a millisecond and you can’t get it back again,” he says.

Prof David founded the Australian Craniofacial Unit on Melbourne St, North Adelaide, in 1975, and it remains one of only two dedicated units in the world. The other is in Dallas, Texas.

It is also the only place in the world where budding craniofacial surgeons, who are already qualified plastic and oralmaxilofacial surgeons, can become fully qualified with a masters of advanced surgery.

The unit has performed thousands of life-changing surgeries – such as inserting ribs and hips into jaws – and operation techniques have evolved to cut times from 22 hours to half a day.

In 1971, Prof David began learning his craft under the guidance of Frenchman Paul Tessier, who is considered the father of modern craniofacial surgery.

He is passionate about the profession and steadfast about the minimum requirement to be successful.

“There are a lot of people who do want to do these things part-time as a hobby but they’re not in the hunt because it’s too serious and it’s too difficult and there’s too much at stake,” he says.

“It’s an all-or-nothing thing and in doing that, like all or nothing things, you have to take a big deep breath and leave other things behind you and that isn’t easy.

“You have to take off a certain amount of the comfort blanket and then you step outside of that and then you take on a new mantra particularly if you are on your own.”

Professor David David with Dr Jason Diab, the craniofacial registrar at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Picture: Matt Turner

Prof David John David was born at Malvern Community Hospital on December 21, 1940.

His mother’s family, mostly Irish, came to Australia in 1847 during the Irish Potato Famine – a period of mass starvation that claimed the lives of more than one million people.

His great-grandfather – also David David – was Lebanese and moved to Australia in the 1870s with the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

“An Irish-Catholic girl meeting a Lebanese chap happened lots because they were Christians and they went to Mass on Sunday and that’s where people met,” Prof David says.

It is somewhat a quirk of fate that Prof David should end up working with people’s skulls when his namesake grandfather, a pub owner at the tiny settlement of Olary, near Broken Hill, was shot in the head by shearers.

“It didn’t kill him. It took a piece of bone out of his head and he had to come down here,” he says.

“He had his skull repaired by Sir Henry-Simpson Newland, who had been in World War I and was one of the great founders of modern plastic surgery as a war surgeon.”

So what’s the reason for the name David David? The name is Arabic, not Jewish, and cultural tradition allows for the first son of every second generation to carry the surname as a forename.

“It’s actually spelt Daoud and they changed it to David, the westernisation of the Arabic name,” he says.

“It was a hell of an imposition as a kid because there were all sorts of funny jokes about it but, of course, it stood me in enormously good stead because no one forgets it.”

Prof David says the name does still cause some confusion with people contacting his surgery – akin to a comedy skit.

From this reference, we learn Prof David is an admirer of British TV comedies.

“The generation of people who don’t know about The Goon Show, Monty Python and Ripping Yarns has lost a lot. Underneath it is the most enormous intellectual stuff,” he says.

Prof David grew up in Adelaide with his brother, former Supreme Court Justice Michael David, and sister Barbara, who now lives in Queensland.

A father of four and grandfather of nine, he married his second wife Bronwyn, who works in the same building for the Australian Cranio-Maxillo Facial Foundation, a year ago.

If not for his burgeoning medical career, Prof David may have ended up donning the cricket whites instead of the surgical scrubs.

His football career with Sturt – 27 league games as a ruck-rover and halfback flanker between 1959 and 1963 – was curtailed by a persistent groin injury so he left to play cricket for University.

Prof David flourished on the uncovered and “unplayable sticky wicket” at University Oval, where he took a career-best nine wickets against West Torrens, including eight state players.

“There is something about the University Oval on a hot day that, from 5pm to 6pm with the Torrens, a bit of moisture comes up off the turf and the ball would do lots,” he says.

His ability to move the ball both ways in a similar style to Australian Test cricketer and fellow South Australian Neil Hawke made him an potent opening bowler.

“I wasn’t fast. There is a pace at which you can do your best and if you bowl any faster it does not work,” Prof David says.

“You look at who’s got (among the highest number of Test) wickets – Richard Hadlee, James Anderson – it’s the last-minute swing.”

David David with teammate Bill Heinicke playing for University in the A-grade pennant competition in 1961.

At 26, Prof David became just the ninth player to win the South Australian Cricket Association’s prestigious Bradman Medal for best first-grade player in 1966-67.

He received a personalised letter from “The Don” before heading off to England to continue his medical studies and refine his bowling in the swing-friendly conditions.

“I bowled to the best people in the world and I could get them out because if you move the ball sideways, some fella will smash you for four but you will get wickets,” he says.

Prof David joined Finchley Cricket Club – where county cricketers would turn out when Middlesex did not have a match – and played alongside and against international cricketers.

He recalls preparing to open the bowling on a cold morning when a West Indian batsman strode to the crease.

“I bowled not a bad first ball and this fella hit me through the covers so hard and (wicketkeeper) David Hayes just put his hands behind his back and looked up to the sky,” he says.

“I thought ‘What’s going on here?’ so I tried a bit harder and the next ball was a good ball and he hit it ever harder and I thought ‘Bloody hell, what’s going on here?’.

“The next ball was an absolute winner and this fella nicked it and he was out and there was a lot of joy going on and I said ‘What’s all that about?’.

“(Hayes) said ‘Didn’t you know who that was?’ and I said ‘No’ and he said ‘That’s Conrad Hunte, didn’t you know?’. If I had known, I would’ve gone home.”

Hunte scored 3245 runs, including eight centuries, for the West Indies at an average of 45.06 across 44 Test matches.

“Cricket in England was just brilliant. We went to the most marvellous places and met the most wonderful people,” Prof David says.

He plans to retire in eight to nine months but his legacy will live on through the Australian Craniofacial Unit, his successors and the various societies he established.

He says his proudest achievements are educating people about craniofacial surgery and the enormous influence of his work in Asia.

“When I established the Asian Pacific Craniofacial Association – and you think about the number of people with facial deformities in that corridor going up taking in China and part of India – the timescale we can operate on during a day,” he says.

“I got the two Chinas to the table without a fight – Taiwan and China – and every two years we have our meetings and we have our conferences in those places.”

Prof David says he will stop operating but continue to teach. It will give him more time to pursue his hobbies – history, arts and the opera – and keep fit.

“I’ve got a group of mates called the greyhounds and we go running from Henley Beach to Grange every Saturday morning. Us old fellas, we just stagger,” he laughs.

Brothers’ birth deformity — but you’d hardly know

WHEN Parker and Arlo Kenchington were growing inside their mum’s womb, she found out both her sons would be born with a cleft lip, writes Katrina Stokes.

After initial fears they would be born different, Sarah and husband Chris’s thoughts were put at ease the moment they met the man who would help fix their sons – Professor David David.

“I actually saw him, at 34 weeks when I was pregnant with Parker,” Mrs Kenchington, of Kimba, recalled.

“When I walked into Prof David’s office he said to me ‘It doesn’t matter what it is, I can fix it’.

“He makes you feel 100 times better.”

Parker, 4, and Arlo, 1, were born with a cleft lip.

At tree months, they had surgery to fix the deformity.

“Their noses also had to be modified and moved around,” Mrs Kenchington said.

“They’ll probably both need extra surgery when they finish growing but, at this stage, they won’t need anything until they’re older.

“A lot of people don’t even notice it.”

Like so many grateful parents before them, Mrs Kenchington thanked Prof David and his team for their help.

“I did a lot of research when we found out about Parker’s cleft lip and a lot of stuff came up on Prof David, including that he was a world-renowned doctor,” she said.

“It was after we’d been to see him that I found out how special he was.”

Teasing at school now a distant memory for Kristy

GROWING up, Kristy Kokegei says she was introverted because she looked so different to everyone else, writes Katrina Stokes

Born with the lower half of one side of her face underdeveloped, the 39-year-old holds warm and thankful memories towards Professor David David for making her feel like she could achieve anything.

Her condition – a congenital disorder called hemifacial microsomia – not only affected her physically but also caused problems with her sight, hearing and breathing.

“I owe so much to Professor David ... he always made me feel that being different made me special, not just ‘different’,” Ms Kokegei, a mother-of-three, said.

“I was teased at school and remember being so excited every time I went to an appointment to see Prof David because he always greeted me warmly and I would always run up and sit on his lap.”

From the age of two, Ms Kokegei, of Rostrevor, said she had about 12 surgeries, including major reconstructive operations to fix her jaw and face, as well as prosthetic ear implants fitted.

“I remember being so scared every time they would wheel me into theatre for surgery,” she recalled.

“Prof David always made a point of coming in and seeing how I was doing before they put me to sleep. It always instantly calmed me and I’ll never forget that.”

Ms Kokegei said she felt “incredibly fortunate” for Prof David’s help.

“He challenged me to be the best person I could be and that I could achieve anything,” she said.

“This, and my new-found confidence after all my treatments, had a profound impact on the life I then went on to lead.

“I’m just so proud that Prof David’s work has been recognised by receiving the South Australian of the Year Award – it’s fabulous.”