Dr. Rick Ross (left) and Vernon Rahn (right) at a family dinner gathering in Canada this past May.

A heart mended

“Blue baby” comes back to Canada to say thanks

By Harold Jantz and ChristianWeek | July 17, 2015

WINNIPEG, MB—When Donald Vernon Rahn came to Canada from Paraguay in May, he was on a mission. His story has a 30-year arc that began in Paraguay, brought him to Canada as a two-year-old, and back once again as a 32-year-old adult.

Rahn was born a “blue baby” in 1982. Soon after his birth, his parents learned that he was suffering from a congenital heart condition—he had a hole in his heart. The remedy would have been to operate and close the hole, but in 1985 Paraguay had no hospitals where such an operation could be done.

Rahn’s parents had family who moved from Paraguay to Canada and lived in Winnipeg, among them Herman and Magdalena Rahn and Cornelius and Tamira Martens.

A Winnipeg physician, Dr. Rick Ross, met and became friends with Cornelius while volunteering on the board of Camp Arnes, a Christian camp in Manitoba where his wife was the nurse one summer. When vacationing together in Arizona, Cornelius told Ross about his cousin in Paraguay whose child was unlikely to survive because of the heart condition. The story struck home. The Rosses also had a child, Deidre, who had been born with the same condition and was successfully treated for it in Boston. They both agreed they had to do something to help.

After exhausting many options, the thought occurred to Ross that he should call the SickKids Hospital in Toronto for suggestions. He was told that a fund existed to bring children from the developing world with congenital heart diseases to Canada for treatment.

The Martens and Ross raised enough money to bring Vernon and his parents to Winnipeg in April 1985. “Vernon was not a healthy boy,” says Ross. “His skin colour and finger nails had the bluish tone that reflected their oxygen deprivation.” Soon after their arrival, the child was sent to the SickKids Hospital in Toronto, where on May 13, 1985 (after a seven-hour operation) Rahn’s heart was successfully mended by surgeons.

Rahn, now healthy and working as an architect, came back to Canada to thank those who helped save his life. At a family dinner gathering to which the Rosses and the Martens were invited, he used a PowerPoint presentation to tell his story.

He described his life from early childhood to the present. He told them what it was like growing up on a farm in a Paraguayan Mennonite colony. High school was challenging and busy. He excelled in academics. After high school he worked for a colony architect to see whether it might be the career for him. He saw he had talent for it, but funding his education posed a problem. With help from his community to fund the cost of his studies, Rahn was able to earn a university degree and graduate summa cum laude in 2011.

“He’s a smart kid,” says Ross.

Recently, Rahn was involved in preparing drawings for a half size replica of the Red Gate that once stood at the Soviet Union-Latvian border. Not only does this carry special meaning for the Rahn and Martens families, having been among the Mennonites who fled the Soviet Union in 1929, but it also has a connection to Ross. He was one of only two non-Mennonite investors in the film production And When They Shall Ask, a movie about the escape of Mennonites from the Soviet Union which prominently featured the Red Gate.

“How cool is that?” says Ross. “What a blessing, it restored my faith. It’s a Mennonite story, a medical story, a story of grace."