Hometown Rankin - February & March 2016

William J. Harris’s fascination with the heart began
in early elementary school when he checked out a book
about heart surgery from the library. Always a tinkerer,
he was a detail person from an early age. “I always
liked doing things with my hands,” he said. “I built
models, and I loved books on how and why things work.
I would break things down to see how they worked,
then put them back together again.”
The Jackson native was born in Dallas and moved
to Jackson when he was four years old and attended
St. Richard’s School through the eighth grade. His
family moved into the Mill Creek subdivision near the
Reservoir in 1975, and Harris graduated high school at
Northwest Rankin. He went to college at Mississippi
State University, where he majored in bio-medical
engineering.
“I chose my major because I thought it would be fun.
Only about four or five people from my class went on
to medical school.” Harris went to medical school at the
University of Mississippi, then completed an internship
and residency in general surgery at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham. He then completed a
fellowship and residency in cardiothoracic surgery at
the UAB before returning to Jackson.
“I didn’t have physicians in my family,” said Harris.
“But after wanting to be a priest, I decided around
the ninth grade that I wanted to go to medical school.
I suppose I’ve always felt a calling to help people.”
Harris credits his bio-medical engineering education
with giving him the skills to take a big problem and
break it down into small, fixable, problems. “That’s what
medicine is all about. Medicine is complicated–I like to
make sense of it.” The credit to his real interest in heart
surgery goes to Anthony Petro. “When I was a first
year med student, I got in contact with him, and he
invited me to come up and watch him do surgery. He
taught me detail things; like scrubbing hands before
surgery—there’s a sort of ritual to it. It got to where he
or his nurse would call me when they were doing
different procedures, and if I had time, I’d go scrub in
and observe.”
Today, Harris is chief of cardiovascular surgery at
Baptist Medical Center. While he does all types of heart
surgery, he has a special interest in mitral valve repair,
robotic cardiac surgery, minimally invasive heart valve
surgery, minimally invasive atrial fibrillation ablation,
treatment of varicose veins, venous reflux and spider
veins. “The best thing is to repair mitral valves, not
replace them. That requires both technical skill and
scientific knowledge. It has an artistic sort of bent to
it, which really appeals to me.”
Harris clearly remembers the first time he looked
down on someone’s chest. “A clamp was placed on
the aorta, and the heart and lungs were not moving.
It profoundly impacted me. From then on I was certain
of what I wanted to do.”
He has been at Baptist for 14 years now. “From a
professional side, my analytic personality finds
satisfaction in doing surgery. I get immediate feedback
on what I’ve done. It’s nice to know that what I’m doing
provides someone with immediate help. It’s also
gratifying to take someone who is extremely ill and do
something technically challenging. Organizing a team
to help you do something very difficult to provide a
good quality of life is rewarding. Doing surgery on
people creates a very personal relationship. It takes a
lot of trust for people to give up control to someone
they may not know very well. I spend a lot of time
away from work thinking about my patients.”
In his spare time, Harris enjoys spending time with
his family. He is married to wife, Cindy, and together
they have three children. “I also enjoy riding my bike
when I can, and playing guitar.” Harris has been playing
guitar since he was 13, and now plays for the show choir
at Jackson Prep, a gig he’s had for about ten years. n
Hometown Rankin • 53