Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans undergo heart surgery. This winter, one of our very own New Ulm High School principals, Mr. Bergmann, joined that number, reminding us that even leaders are human.
About six months ago, Bergmann first noticed something was wrong. It wasn’t until this winter that he went to the hospital.
“I go to the doctor’s appointment, and the doctor does EKG, which came back normal. And then they did blood work, and they said, if the blood work isn’t good, we’ll call you.” Bergmann said.
After some time, he got a call from the hospital telling him that he needed to come back for a chest X-ray. Bergmann was having a heart attack at that moment, but he didn’t feel any pain.
While Bergmann was talking to the doctors, he said, “Why didn’t I, you know, like, lay down and die?”
It turns out that it was supposed to be a 100% block. Luckily, only two of them were 90% blocked, and the other three were 75% blocked. That was when Bergmann found out that he had to have quadruple bypass surgery. He was ambulanced to Rochester Hospital and met the lead surgeon in the cardiovascular unit.
“They took blood vessels, two blood vessels out of my left calf, one blood vessel out of my left arm. And then two vessels out of my chest, and they bypassed,” Bergmann said.
After his surgery, Bergmann had two choices: come back to work or retire.
“Everything good that you have as a student in this school has happened over 23 years of me being here,” Bergmann said. “Your open lunch, your college study times, your college classes, they didn’t have them when I came here. Now starting some online classes. There are just so many parts to this school that I started that were never here. There’s still more for me to do.”
His recovery physically was good; coming to work and doing what he loves to do helped him a lot.
Mr. Bergmann came back better, stronger, and ready to spend time with the school family. He wants the students to know to “…, take advantage of every opportunity you have here, because you don’t know when you’re not going to have it anymore.”
Bergmann hopes that students “appreciate all the stuff that not just me, but everybody has done through this school.”
In the end, his journey shows that true leadership isn’t just about guiding a school, but about showing strength, resilience, and heart when it matters most.
