FOLEY, Ala. — Prior to the national shock that settled over the country in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a different kind of shock had been felt along coastal Florida, Alabama and Mississippi for months in connection with a shark attack at Pensacola Beach. That attack severed the arm of an 8-year-old Ocean Springs, Miss., boy on July 6.

Jessie Arbogast’s arm was retrieved from the gullet of the 7-foot-long bull shark and reattached after 12 hours of surgery. Coastal residents and, indeed, the nation at-large followed the daily medical drama of Jessie’s fight for survival.

Ed Bosch, a retired nurse anesthetist at South Baldwin Regional Medical Center, calls the plastic and microvascular surgeon who reattached Jessie’s a “great man and a great surgeon.”

Bosch paid tribute last week to Dr. W. Ian Rogers of Gulf Breeze, Fla., who died recently. The native of Ireland practiced at several Florida hospitals, including Baptist and Sacred Heart. He had been in the Florida Panhandle area for over 20 years.

But Bosch remembers Rogers in particular in connection with a number of medical mission trips that the two made along with other medical personnel that included staff members at SBRMC.

According to Bosch, most of those trips were made to Peru, where the doctors and nurses stayed by and large in Lima and treated patients at a Roman Catholic children’s hospital. Bosch, who served as Rogers’ anesthetist and interpreter on those trips, said the doctors treated a lot of birth defects, including cleft lips and palates.

“Some of the children were also victims of dog bites, especially to the face,” Bosch said.

He recalled Rogers being a “magician” when it came to using his skills to treat the Peruvian children.

“He could make the children look as normal as could be,” Bosch said of Rogers, who sometimes helped with expenses to make it possible for other medical personnel to make the mission trips. Those out of pocket expenses could run from $2,500 to $3,000 a trip for those who went, Bosch said.

“He was as nice as could be to the families,” Bosch said, a reference to Rogers’ treatment of the families of those children he treated in Peru.

“I will miss going on mission trips with him. He was a great man and a great surgeon,” Bosch said of Rogers, whose funeral service was held April 14 at St. Ann Catholic Church in Gulf Breeze.