Dr. Darryl Tannebaum and some of his office staff pose for a photograh, Ginger Troxell, at left, Ashlyn Wischmeyer, Bailey Lofton, Tannenbaum, Ashley Slate, Sandi Cockerham and Mikala Fuqua at Southern Indiana Orthopedics in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, November 23, 2022. Carla Clark | For The Republic
As Darryl Tannenbaum was completing his training in Michigan as a medical doctor, he considered 75 job opportunities across the country before deciding to join Southern Indiana Orthopedics as an orthopedic physician and surgeon.
Tannenbaum had been on the fence over pursuing a career in private practice or accepting an academic position. But when Tannenbaum and wife, Suzanne, visited Columbus in 1997, they were won over by the city’s beautiful architecture.
“The community was very good to my wife. My sons were happy,” Tannenbaum said of their early years in Columbus. “I never re-evaluated academics.”
While at work, Tannenbaum’s devotion to his family was apparent from the photos, school drawings and newspaper clippings he kept attaching to the four walls of his office on Marr Road and 10th Street in Columbus.
One photo showed his sons at ages 2 and 3, taken shortly after the Tannenbaums moved to Columbus in 1997. Brendan, now 28, is a medical student in Philadelphia. Nick, 27, is an actor in Los Angeles.
“I just never took anything down. This has been my whole life for 25 years,” Tannenbaum said, gazing with pride from one section of a wall to another.
The Tannenbaums quickly got involved in the Columbus community, in particular programs that benefitted children. Suzanne Tannenbaum was on the kidscommons Children’s Museum board of directors when it moved from inside The Commons to its current stand-alone location across Washington Street.
During a 2005 “fund-razor” event, Tannenbaum and two others agreed to have their heads shaved on stage during the organization’s annual Mardi Gras when the group achieved that year’s $10,000 goal.
And at work, the honors graduate from Harvard Medical School helps people in Columbus and nearby communities improve their mobility and quality of life. For over 25 years, Tannenbaum completed nearly 5,000 knee replacements and 3,000 hip replacements, while also mending patients’ ankles, elbows, feet, hands and shoulders.
Tannenbaum specializes in using leading-edge techniques for hip and knee replacements. Eleven months ago, the board-certified joint replacement surgeon performed the first ROSA Knee robotic-assisted total knee replacement in Columbus.
Dr. Thomas Marshall, who launched Southern Indiana Orthopedics in 1976 with Dr. Ronald Bennett, remembered his first impressions of Tannenbaum when recruiting him.
“He was eager. He was well trained and he was interested in coming to a small town and working,” said Marshall, who retired from the practice in 2014, but still helps out in the urgent care clinic.
“He showed a particular interest in doing joint-replacement surgery, which we wanted him to do,” said Marshall, who promoted Tannenbaum to partner after a year.
“He proceeded to hone his skills and he brought some innovative ideas to the practice,” Marshall said. “He was very hard-working and cared about his patients and took care of his patients. You can’t ask for a lot more than that.”
Finding orthopedics
Having initially entered college to be a biochemist, Tannenbaum—also a college basketball player—said he enjoyed the science courses he took in college, which led him to orthopedics.
“It satisfied my interests in science, sports and working with my hands,” Tannenbaum said of his chosen profession. “You have to build a foundation to put a hip replacement or knee replacement in. I liked using my hands,” he said.
He referred to orthopedic surgeons as carpenters who work on people because they use tools such as hammers, saws, screwdrivers, chisels and drills.
Tannenbaum has also helped patients in the field of sports medicine.
The doctor began running for exercise and recreation himself in 2009 at age 44, believing he needed to pay better attention to his own health.
Tannenbaum started running four laps at a time at the Northside Middle School track, one mile in total distance—and took off from there. Seven months later, Tannenbaum was running his first 26.2-mile marathon in Austin, Texas.
“I put my mind to it,” Tannenbaum said matter-of-factly of his interest in long-distance running, and then ramped up his aspirations.
Tannenbaum went on to run in the World Marathon Majors, consisting of renowned marathon races in Chicago (2010), New York (2011), Boston (2011 and 2012), London (2013) and Tokyo (2014). He also ran in the Antarctica Marathon in 2015.
“After people do the World Marathon Majors, they do the Seven Continent Club,” he said, joining that fraternity of runners, too.
Having already run marathons on the continents of North America, Europe, Asia and Antarctica, Tannenbaum joined the Seven Continents Club by running marathons in Africa in 2016, and South America and New Zealand in 2018. Fewer than 400 people in the world have done that.
Tannenbaum’s next running achievement will be completing the marathon Grand Slam by running on the icy surface of the Arctic Ocean in the North Pole Marathon in April, which fewer than 150 people have done.
His personal best marathon time is 3:48:41 in Tokyo in 2014. Tannenbaum chalks up his pursuit of marathon milestones to his goal-oriented behavior, which he said began to manifest itself as early as age 5 while collecting baseball cards, which he still does.
Tannenbaum used profits from his sports-card collection to help pay his way through college and medical school and to purchase his wife’s engagement ring.
“It’s just who I am,” Tannenbaum said of his driven approach to accomplishment in life. “If you’re going to do it, go for it. Don’t hold back.”
When their oldest son, Brendan , began showing strong potential as a youth tennis player, the Tannenbaums made a new commitment to help their sons achieve their own personal success.
Starting back in 2006, they established a second residence in Indianapolis and enrolled both sons at Park Tudor, a private, independent private school with a highly touted program in tennis. Brendan became a state tennis champion at Park Tudor, graduating in 2013, and played tennis all four years at Dartmouth College, twice earning all-Ivy League recognition. Meanwhile, their other son Nick excelled in lacrosse and graduated from Park Tudor in 2014, and then attended the University of Michigan.
What awaits
The Tannenbaums maintained residences in both Columbus and Indianapolis for eight years, until 2014, when they sold their Columbus home. Now, Tannenbaum—who will be 58 next month—is leaving his only post-college professional home in Columbus for retirement and a chance to do something more with his life.
It’s a calling that’s been weighing on him since before deciding to come to Columbus.
As a medical resident in the mid-1990s at the University of Michigan, Tannenbaum set up the surgery schedule and assisted with joint replacements for veterans at the VA Hospital in Ann Arbor.
At the time, the wait for a joint replacement through the VA was about a year.
“When I’d call them, generally everyone was happy,” Tannenbaum said.
But when Tannenbaum reached out to one Ann Arbor patient’s family in June 1996 to let them know that his turn had come, the veteran’s wife explained that regrettably, her husband had died while waiting for his knee replacement.
“That had a profound impact on me and throughout my career,” Tannenbaum said. “I knew I always wanted to go back and help the veterans before I retired. I feel I owe it to them.”
Starting in February, Tannenbaum will begin a post-retirement position as an orthopedic surgeon splitting time between VA facilities in Indianapolis and Phoenix, where the Tannenbaums have had a second home since 2016.
He will be doing joint-replacement and revision surgeries on local veterans who have had complications from previous surgeries—something the VA in Indianapolis had not been able to offer, Tannenbaum said.
Tannenbaum expects to improve the capacity and availability of joint-replacement surgeries for veterans in Indiana and Arizona, figuring he still has five to 10 good years as a surgeon ahead of him.
Andy Bulla, Tannenbaum’s physician assistant in Columbus for the past 16 years, has also taken a job in the orthopedic department at the Indianapolis VA medical center. Bulla will help veterans prepare for their joint-replacement surgeries in his new role.
If Tannenbaum is able to increase surgery volume by 50 to 100 percent, he believes the improved services in Indianapolis and Phoenix could be duplicated in as many as 30 additional geographical markets serving military veterans.
“Then you’ve made some big differences,” he said.
But starting on a new path comes with the bittersweet reality of leaving people behind that he’s worked with in Columbus for 25 years.
That includes Southern Indiana Orthopedics founder Marshall, office manager Sharon Fischer, operating room nurse Julie Clingan, scheduler Vickie Roberts and Columbus Regional Hospital operating room nurse Cindy Hotz, who attended Tannenbaum’s first and last Columbus surgeries in Columbus.
“It’s been pretty profound for me to have those relationships,” Tannenbaum said. “It’s been a privilege for me to take care of all these people – families in Columbus and the surrounding communities. I’m really going to miss that. This has been a great place for me and my family. It’s been that way since I came to town in the summer of 1997. It’s a little scary to leave.”
Darryl A. Tannenbaum
Age: 57
Hometown: Ellenville, N.Y., near Buffalo, where he was born.
Residence: Former Columbus resident who now resides in Indianapolis
Family: Wife of 32 years, Suzanne; sons Brendan, 28, a medical student, of Philadelphia; and Nick, 27, an actor, of Los Angeles.
Education: Ellenville (N.Y.) High School, valedictorian; Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, undergraduate degree in biochemistry, 1983-1987; Harvard Medical School, medical degree, 1987-1992; University of Michigan Health System internship, general surgery residency, 1992-1993; University of Michigan Health System, residency in orthopedic surgery, 1993-1997.
Career: Orthopedic physician and surgeon, Southern Indiana Orthopedics, 1997-2022; director, Columbus Regional Health Joint and Spine Center, 2009-2022; United States Orthopedic Mission to Haiti, 2010.
Medical affiliations: American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, American Medical Association, Indiana Orthopedic Society, American Medical Athletic Association, American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons.
