It is thrilling to me to see what my father, Arvid Lindau, accomplished in the course of his career at work. That was a side of him I did not know during his lifetime. He didn’t talk about his work at home.

He was a fun-loving person. He loved soccer, and was a referee for local soccer games for many years. He enjoyed caricatures of himself. At a shooting booth at a local fair someone put a formal picture of him over one of the targets as a joke. After the fair he bought the target, took it to his country house and enjoyed inviting friends to take shots at him.

He nearly always wore a butterfly bowtie. He was very active. His day began about 5:30 in the morning. He read three daily papers. He was active in civic affairs and held various offices in the town, and always wanted to find the best solution for society and the people. After his morning reading he had his breakfast. He avoided coffee because of the ulcers he had acquired from smoking and from a hectic lifestyle. Then he went by bicycle to the Institute of Pathology in our home town of Lund, at the southern tip of Sweden.

He had his first smoke of the day while biking. He carried three silver cases: one for cigars, one for cheroots, and a very small one for cigarillos to offer to the ladies. His wife also smoked a pack a day of cigarettes.

After lecturing at the institute, helping co-workers and seeing guests, he had lunch at home about 12 o’clock. He often brought someone home for lunch — international guests, students or colleagues. I met a wide variety of people that way.

About 5:30 in the evening he would have dinner at home followed by a short nap (half an hour) and then off to the evening’s meetings — handball, professional meetings, or town meetings.

When he came home he would read something, usually in English, with a big cigar, and a glass of abricot or whiskey. He would read until about 12:30 and then go to bed. That was his type of life.

Beginning in 1924 he did military service as an officer and was medical chief of the southern military district of Sweden. He was extremely punctual. If a meeting was to begin, he started. If people were not there on time, he said, they must have something more important, and he accepted that. But the meeting began as scheduled.

During the war the Institute of Pathology in Lund had many refugees from Denmark and other countries. It was a very productive time for Lund, with people coming from Estonia, the Baltic, and continental Europe. It was a very prosperous and exciting time for our community, and for my father’s work.

He did a lot for the students at the Institute. He was very good at raising money, and knew people who had the ability to give something. One of his proudest moments was when he dedicated a center for sports outside Lund and gave the field to the student union. It is a recreational center, and a quiet place to study. In the summer it is used as a summer camp for city children from Lund.

My father never spoke about his job, but he often took me along on his trips. "You are the young one with the quicker reactions," he would say, "You drive." To him it seemed a sensible solution. Thus by the time I was old enough to have a driving license I had already driven in six of the capitals of Europe.

His advice to me was that "you should do what you want to do every day." He told me that he was once in Baltimore with Dr. Harvey Cushing, the father of modern brain surgery, doing grand rounds, when a patient stopped them and looking at Cushing said, "Doctor, I want to thank you for saving my life."

"Don’t thank me," said Cushing, pointing to my father, "you should thank this young man here." My father said that that one moment made all the hard work of a lifetime worthwhile.

Harvey Cushing was a friend of my father’s and they corresponded for many years. Lindau wrote all letters by hand, and kept no copies. I have the correspondence to him, and have placed most of it at the university library at Lund. Correspondence from him to others is scattered throughout the world.

Arvid had a number of governmental medals and decorations, but he rarely wore them. When he did, he would only wear those he thought people would be interested in. He was fond of cars, was always well dressed, and had a little dachshund. He had a fancy 1949 2-door Studebaker coupe, the only one in Sweden. He also loved motorcycles with sidecars.

At the end of his life he was scheduled for surgery and was concerned that it might not go well, so he left a letter for his wife. "Forgive me for not always being the way I wanted," he said. "Count only the bright days." Two days later he died. He has been gone now for 39 years. I miss him.

Editor’s Note: Arvid Lindau was born 23 July 1892 in Malmö, Sweden, the son of a regiment doctor. After completing school (B.A. 1910) he was trained as a military officer and physician. He got his medical training in Lund (M.D. 1923, Ph.D. 1926). He was a pathologist at the hospital in Lund 1918-1933, and held a concurrent appointment as a military doctor beginning in 1924. Over the course of his career he published more than 40 papers on pathology, neurology and bacteriology.

Early in his career Lindau observed and studied a condition involving hemangiomas of the central nervous system and linked this condition to the similar condition of the retina which had been described by Dr. Eugen von Hippel of Germany. This became his doctoral dissertation work (Ph.D. 1926). He published his findings in a Swedish journal of microbiology in 1926. He was awarded the Lennmalm’s prize (1929) from the Swedish Medical Society. The syndrome he described is now called von Hippel-Lindau disease.

As published in the VHL Family Forum 5:3, September 1997. For permission to reprint, please contact VHL Family Alliance, editor@vhl.org. Further information is available from the VHL Family Alliance, info@vhl.org.