BANGOR, Maine — A renowned local surgeon who in 1987 performed the first heart surgery in the Queen City was presented the Katahdin Area Council of Boy Scouts’ most prestigious award during the council’s annual awards dinner Thursday night at the Cross Insurance Center.
Dr. Robert Clough was selected for the 2015 Distinguished Citizen Award because he exemplifies what the Boy Scouts stand for — good citizenship, strength of character and a commitment to helping others, according to Scout officials.
“No one in this room is more surprised or as confounded or as confused by the fact that I am standing before you,” Clough said during the awards ceremony.
“I’m impressed by the people who received this award before me, and I am humbled and flattered and honored to be included among them,” he said.
An avid fly fisherman, Clough said he almost didn’t make it to Thursday’s event. Just two days ago, Clough and his wife, Jo Ann, were fishing on a river in Yellowstone National Park.
When they went to the airport in Niagara Falls to catch an 8 a.m. flight, they learned that their plane actually had departed at 6:50 a.m.
“Having been a Boy Scout, I was able to figure out a way to get us home,” he said, drawing chuckles from the audience. “So we rented the smallest car in the world, drove to Salt Lake City, took a plane to Atlanta, took a plane to Portland. [We] got there at midnight last night and drove to Bangor today.”
Clough started Bangor’s first cardiac surgery program in 1987, according to a biography provided by the Scouting council.
He is the lead physician for Cardiothoracic Surgery of Maine, chief of the cardiovascular service at Eastern Maine Medical Center and head of the cardiac surgery section at EMMC. A graduate of Brown University and Tufts University School of Medicine, he has been a physician for 38 years and a practicing thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon for 31 years.
Before he became a physician, Clough was a Life Scout with Troop 18 in Sayre, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
The annual awards banquet is the Katahdin Area Council’s biggest fundraiser. The money it raises funds Scout programs in Penobscot, Piscataquis, Aroostook, Washington, Waldo and Hancock counties, including leadership development training and summer camps such as Camp Roosevelt in Eddington.
Honorees are selected each year through a yearlong process in which a steering committee generates a short list of candidates and eventually votes the list down to one person who has shown outstanding service in his or her community.
As a recipient of the award, Clough joins an elite group that includes Husson College baseball coach John Winkin; Sen. Susan Collins; Gov. John Baldacci; the late businessman, philanthropist G. Peirce Webber; and Bangor community leaders Nelson and Carla Durgin.