Sriram Naidu, pioneering cardiologist from Great Neck, dies at 86

Sriram Naidu made his name not only as a pioneering cardiologist but as a man with a heart, family and friends said.

To say the Great Neck resident had a great bedside manner would understate his humanity, those who knew him recalled. If anyone admired something he had, Naidu gave it to them, including his sports coat, a valuable baseball collectible and a tie. People with appointments on their birthdays would get a cake. He helped many financially, writing off patients’ bills and once giving about $10,000 to a hospital technician who couldn’t pay his child’s college tuition, Naidu's children said.

“A lot of the patients just wanted to see him for everything,” said Nancy Vallo, his secretary for almost 40 years. “He took on all their problems, even their psychological problems. He just was like a real people doctor.”

Naidu died on Oct. 27 after contracting an idiopathic lung illness, less than a year after the death of his wife, internist Saraswathi Naidu. He was 86.

In the 1970s, when cardiology was a budding specialty, Sriram Naidu gained a reputation for skillfully inserting catheters into blood vessels to the heart and diagnosing problems, colleagues said. He worked at several New York City hospitals and taught at New York Medical College.

“He did cardiac catheterization on a large scale and not too many people were doing it,” said cardiologist Joseph Anto, a friend and former student who knew Naidu for about four decades.

From 1980 to 1990, Naidu was the director of Nassau County Medical Center’s cardiac catheterization laboratory, expanding the fledgling operation at a time when few such labs existed.

The county hospital salary wasn’t much, Anto said, but Naidu wanted to help people who didn’t have the money for health care.

“His philosophy was not money in medicine, that’s for sure," Anto said.

For many of those years, Naidu worked from 9 a.m. to midnight a few days a week as he led the hospital lab during the day, then focused on growing his private practice by seeing patients at other hospitals or his Garden City office, those who knew him said.

But his children never felt cheated of his attention.

No matter how late he got home, he’d rouse them a little to spend time with them, then put them back to sleep, recalled his daughter, Srilata Naidu of Darien, Connecticut, an ophthalmologist who shared the Garden City office with her father.

“He would come to our bedrooms … and tell us stories," the daughter said, "give us a little back massage or head massage every night.”

She said her parents made sure she and her brother, Srihari, had everything they needed, from piano lessons to summer research camps. He even took them regularly to various places of worship to expose them to different faiths, his children said, and his example of giving back to his hometown in India taught them about life.

“He took care of a person’s soul,” his daughter said.

Raised in India

Naidu grew up the youngest of eight surviving children in rural Chikmagalur, a lush, mountainous area of coffee plantations and farms off India’s southwest coast. The family house had a stone roof and few walls, with animals roaming in and out.

The son of a government pharmacist, Naidu early on just wanted to be a farmer, but he did well on higher education exams so India's education system placed him in medical school, his family said. He met fellow student Saraswathi in college, flustered when she flirted by blocking his way several times, but it was the start of a love match, his daughter said.

Naidu immigrated to New York City in 1965 for his residency, completing his cardiology training at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. He faced discrimination when hospitals refused to give him practicing privileges, but his “quirky” humor and treatment of everyone as equals usually earned him friends of all ranks, said his son, Srihari Naidu, a cardiologist in Manhattan.

Those who knew him were amazed at how he had time for personal pursuits. He read his son’s college textbooks, watched the news faithfully, collected elephants and other artwork and was so up to date on cultural trends that he could sing “shine bright like a diamond” from one of Rihanna’s hit songs.

“He was voracious about everything,” his son said. “He was so interested in learning and growing all the time.”

Besides his daughter and son, Sriram Naidu is survived by a sister, Parvati Kalappa of Chikmagalur; and his brothers Nagaraj Naidu of Chennai, India, and Balasunder Naidu of Chikmagalur.

Naidu was cremated Oct. 30.