PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2023

PLAYING IN PEORIA

INTRODUCING MARK PLUNKETT & THE HEARTMENDERS Peoria cardiac surgeon Mark Plunkett relaxes outside the operating room by channeling his inner Ringo

BY NICK VLAHOS

Dr. Mark Plunkett, second from right, and his band

D r. Mark Plunkett knows a few things about beats – from the heart and from the soul. Plunkett is chief of pediatric and congenital heart surgery at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria. He is co-director of the Congenital Heart Center at the Children’s Hospital and OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center. He also is a professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. In other words, it appears Plunkett knows what he’s doing in his chosen field of medicine. But it also appears he knows what he’s doing in his avocation. So say those who have heard him play the drums. “He’s great,” said Dr. Lew Schwartz, a Chicago-area vascular surgeon and medical professor. “He keeps a good beat, doesn’t make things too complicated and lets the audience dance.”

SCALPEL BY DAY, DRUMSTICKS BY NIGHT On rhythm guitar, Schwartz joins drummer Plunkett in a band that performs three or four times a year at charity events, mostly in the Peoria area. It’s the most recent incarnation of a group the two first formed when they were surgical residents some 30 years ago at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. “By day, we were learning surgery,” Plunkett said. “When we had time at night, we were playing the venues and bars in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill in a rock band.” The Research Triangle area is where Plunkett first took up the drums, while he was attending medical school at the University of North Carolina. These days, Mark Plunkett & The Heartmenders

specializes in rock and roll from the 1960s through the ‘80s. “Everything from Elvis and the Beatles to Tom Petty and Talking Heads,” Plunkett said.

Dr. Plunkett taking a practice break (photo by Ron Johnson)

Schwartz and Plunkett fill the other band spots – lead guitars, bass guitar and keyboards – with professional musicians from the Chicago area. Schwartz knows them from years of gigging on the side.

54 APRIL 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE