John Leonard Connell, who died in Melbourne on 8 August 2008, had an outstanding career in the fields of General and Vascular Surgery for forty years prior to his retirement in 1992. John graduated in medicine with high distinction, in 1947, from St Vincent's Hospital Clinical School of The University of Melbourne. After completing a two year residency at St Vincent's Hospital John chose a career in general surgery and within a remarkably short time he obtained the Master of Surgery Degree and the FRACS. In 1951 he went to England where he obtained a coveted training position at the West Middlesex Hospital with Mr W J Ferguson acknowledged as being one of the most accomplished surgical technicians in England. Whilst there John became interested in the newly developing speciality of Vascular Surgery and would attend operating sessions and clinics at St Mary's Hospital, London where Professor Charles Robb and his Unit were pioneering this speciality. He took up a surgical position at St Vincent's Hospital in 1954 and quickly established a very large practice in public and private surgery. The major emphasis was on the full spectrum of General Surgery as practised at that time but he maintained his interest in Vascular Surgery. However as is often the case with new developments, the response of the hospital and his colleagues to the introduction of Vascular Surgery was rather ambivalent. Despite this he continued to perform some vascular surgery operations and in 1957 did the first or one of the first carotid endarterectomies in this country. He was also involved in the first successful operation at St Vincent's Hospital for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. In addition to his operative and clinical surgical commitment he was a dedicated teacher much sought after by undergraduate final year medical students and then later, with the development of the RACS Training Program, by those doing postgraduate study. John had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Senior Medical Staff at St Vincent's Hospital becoming a Senior Surgeon in 1962. By that time he had been joined in his clinic by the late Ellery Ryan - his great friend, golfing partner, and enthusiastic Vascular Surgeon with the result that there was a gradual increase in the amount of vascular surgery performed and this was further augmented when the author who trained at St Mary's Hospital London joined the Connell Unit in 1964. Although John continued to do General Surgery until his retirement the proportion of Vascular Surgery gradually increased and by 1980 after quite a number of years of gentle but persistent persuasion he and the hospital agreed to the establishment of a Vascular Surgery Unit and John became its first Senior Surgeon. John was a prodigious worker with great determination, concentration and stamina but he also found time to be active in the committee structure of the hospital and to take an active part in the affairs of the RACS particularly with respect to the development of vascular surgery. He was well known and prominent in the national vascular surgery scene and also had many friends in vascular surgery in other countries, particularly the United States. It was not all work and no play, and John maintained active participation in sporting activities - for many years tennis, and an enthusiastic and dedicated golfer, a game he loved and played until the last months of his life; but also chess for a change of pace. John's first wife Betty (née Fitzpatrick) was a popular and well known person, particularly with regard to her famous or infamous (depending on your point of view!) support of the Collingwood Football Club. John was devastated when Betty died in 1990 and it took him some time to regain his balance. He was extremely fortunate eventually, to be reacquainted with one of his former operating theatre nurses, Deirdre Connelly, who became his second wife and who cared for him with great love, devotion and dedication particularly during his prolonged terminal illness in Queensland and in Melbourne. In his busy life John had much success and achievement and this was recognised by an award in the Order of Australia, the receipt of the RACS Medal, and perhaps most cherished of all by him, his selection as the Rudolf Matar Lecturer by the Society for Cardiovascular Surgery in 1989. However, not that you would know it from John, an intensely private person, he also coped with considerable ill health, sadness, and tragedy with great courage and fortitude. He was an exemplar of the words in Rudyard Kipling's famous poem - "if you can meet triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same... then you will be a man my son". That is the way I will remember John L Connell. John is survived by his wife Deirdre and by four of his five children, his eldest daughter Patricia having pre-deceased him in 2006.