The Bostoner Rebbe today paid a visit to Dr. Rich Roberts, who is credited for saving the Rebbe’s father’s life.

Dr. Roberts shared with the TLS the incident that saved the previous Rebbe’s life.

In approximately 1987-1988. Dr. Roberts served as an intern in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston.

“I saw these people sitting there and holding open these big books in the waiting room, I didn’t know what those books were,” said Dr. Roberts, who was not Frum at the time.

“At about 6 o’clock at night, when all the doctors left, I was on call that night and he was being followed by another doctor but the doctor signed him out to me for the nighttime.

“I was called at nighttime several times because he was having chest pain at rest time. I injected morphine into him and I gave him nifedipine under the tongue and was able to get rid of the chest pain and stabilize his heart.

“The next morning, when the doctors came back and they told me that he needs cardiac catheterization and he’s waiting for a certain doctor to get back from vacation, and the thing is that to have chest pain at rest – not like exercising and then relaxing and it goes away – but at rest there is no other way to relax except death.”

“So I went to his room and I told him that the doctor he is waiting for is a great cardiologist – this is Harvard, they’re all great cardiologists, but his life is in danger and needs cardiac catheterization right away.

“I found out five years later when I bumped into him in Har Nof, that he had taken my advice and went for cardiac catheterization- they did not let him off the table because he was in such danger of having a massive heart attack right on the spot, they took him right into surgery and did a quadruple bypass surgery on him.

“He lived for many many years and he remembered me. When I saw him in Har Nof, he said to me, “Oh, you’re the boy from Philadelphia?!”

Today, the current Rebbe, thanked Dr. Roberts for what he did for his father, and gave Brachos to him and his family.