Shreveport physician publishes memoir, creates Western art business

After Dr. James “Jim” Ciaravella Jr. retired as a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon in Shreveport in 2003, he started a unique business making custom western furnishings and began painting and sculpting to acclaim with his Dr. C’s Designs.

This year he has added another major creative endeavor to his life, the publication of  “Charity’s Children, The Long Days and Nights of the Iron Men,” a book about the practice of medicine at the now-defunct New Orleans Charity Hospital.

"Charity’s Children" is about the training of a surgeon at the second oldest hospital in the country and one of the three largest hospitals, by patient beds, in this country,” Ciaravella said. The book, part memoir, part historical account, explores Charity from its founding in the 1700s to the professors and surgeons who helped define its worldwide recognition.

I appreciate books like this that come from the passion an author has for a topic—especially when the subject has strong area interest and saves a piece of history that could have otherwise been lost.

The book lingered in Ciaravella’s mind for years: “I initially thought of writing a book like this about 18 years ago and actually began dictating in a cassette recorder. I abandoned the idea, thinking someone else would do it. About 17 months ago, I felt the story had to be told.”

A New Orleans native, he was at Charity for 11 years, including four years at Tulane Medical School, a straight surgery internship year, four years of general surgery and two years of cardiovascular surgery training. His training was broken up by two years in the U.S. Air Force, and he returned as chief resident on the Tulane surgical service and assistant clinical director of Charity.

He chose the term “Charity’s Children” to refer to physicians who trained and taught there, as well as patients born, treated or who died there. On his first day as an intern, a resident challenged him on what he would have to do to become an “iron man.”

“I would have to be able to operate for however long it took to take care of the patients, take whatever abuse was served to me by the residents above me or the ungrateful patient,” Ciaravella said. “I would have to bend but not break. In the end of my training I might be an ‘iron man.’” 

Beyond his own experiences, Ciaravella wanted the book to reflect the medical history of Charity. “I was able to find and interview about 30 other physician contemporaries of mine and tell their stories,” he said. “Thousands of physicians, nurses and technicians trained at this noted institution until it was closed by politics and Hurricane Katrina in 2005… The training and care was done at a time before most all of the technological advances we have today were invented.” 

Ciaravella, who now lives half the year in Shreveport and half in Alpine, Wyo., initially moved to Shreveport in 1980 to practice medicine. He and his wife of 49 years, Len, later bought a home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and fell in love with the area.

“I had seen a mirror in a store made with cowboy boots,” he said. “When I retired I told my wife I was going to make one for our house. Just in case, I made two and someone made the mistake of complimenting me on them.”

He started selling them in Jackson Hole and began doing art shows in Wyoming and much of the Rocky Mountain West. After his leather work expanded, he took oil painting lessons from the late Camille Hirsch, Shreveport portrait painter. “It exploded from there to where I stopped making mirrors and started painting, drawing and sculpting,” he said. His shop is at 6030 Line Ave., Suite 500 in Shreveport, and he makes custom bolos, belt buckles and belts for the Hide Out, a leather store in Jackson Hole.

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He has been a juried artist at the Western Design Conference in Jackson Hole for 16 years and has twice served as a judge in that event. His art has also been on the cover of three editions of the “Journal of the Louisiana State Medical Society.” 

“Charity’s Children, The Long Days and Nights of the Iron Men” is available in paperback and hard cover on Ciaravella’s website: www.westernmirrors.com. The softcover has black and white photos and the hardcover includes color. The book will be released through other booksellers in the future.

To contact the author, email jim@westernmirrors.com. For more on his art and book, see www.westernmirrors.com.

Columnist Judy Christie is the co-author of the nonfiction “Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Storis of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home,” which she wrote with Lisa Wingate. “Before and After” is the true sequel to Wingate’s bestselling novel,  “Before We Were Yours.” Christie is currently working on a new novel. For more, see www.judychristie.com.