By SHANNON O. WELLS

Using a rather exotic lizard to anchor a memoir detailing a year of childhood on a U.S. military base in Spain may seem unusual, but the source of its inspiration to its author, anesthesiology professor Steven Orebaugh, might be even quirkier.  

“I once saw a little write up on the movie ‘Caddyshack,’ which is kind of a funny movie about golf,” he said of the irreverent 1980 comedy starring Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. “They related that (‘Caddyshack’ creators) made a bunch of funny scenes, but couldn’t figure out how to tie them together.

“They finally figured out that the gopher that’s in the movie was the way,” he said of the anthropomorphic mammal that tunnels around the golf course, tormenting its greenskeepers in the process. “And this is exactly what happens in this book. The lizard, or at least the search for the lizard, ties everything together.”

“The Six-Lined Racerunner,” the fifth book by Orebaugh, professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine in the School of Medicine, derives its name from Orebaugh discovering an early passion for biology in the lizard population around Torrejón de Ardoz in central Spain, where he spent a few years as a child of a military father.

“It really was a neat time in my life because being over in Spain was just fascinating,” the 64-year-old physician explained. “I like history, and there’s a ton to see and do. We went out around the countryside to a lot of the older cities and towns and got to experience all of that.

“At the same time, I have a good band of little friends that we all chased lizards together with, that I detail in the book.”

His book, subtitled “a memoir detailing life as a U.S. military brat in Spain, overcoming paralyzing shyness, and the inspiration to become a doctor” and published by Sunbury Press Inc., details when Orebaugh, the son of a U.S. Air Force senior master sergeant, and his family lived near the Torrejón de Ardoz military base.

The year-long snapshot of U.S. military life provides what his publisher described as “a mini-travel log of Spain,” as the 10-year-old Orebaugh explores Madrid, Segovia, Sevilla and other cities with his family. Highlights include descriptions of his grandfather’s panic attack at the top of a gothic tower, embarrassing moments on the baseball field, and the ongoing search for the elusive six-lined racerunner lizard.

“It chronicles my life of chasing lizards, playing baseball and developing confidence in and out of the classroom — which was an essential moment in my life, given how shy I was,” he said of the “transformative” year. “Most importantly, this was the year I learned to love biology as we pursued lizards in central Spain, a passion which became the foundation for my desire to become a doctor later in life.”

Constant change

Orebaugh, who has been at Pitt and UPMC since 1993, described his lack of assertive, outgoing traits as “pathological shyness.”

“I was a really sort of recalcitrant little boy, and this drove my father crazy,” he said. “Not that he was a super bold man, but he wasn’t like me, and he was trying endlessly to get me to be a little more assertive in my interactions with other people, to not be afraid. I was the kind of kid who was afraid to go up and get another piece of cake in the cafe because I didn’t want to face the cafeteria lady or something like that.

“On the baseball field, I was … just not someone to aggressively go after the ball,” he explained, noting that it took his dad years “to get me any skills whatsoever. And he kept trying, to his credit.”

The book also explores what it’s like to be a proverbial “military brat.” “Because we moved around a lot may have had something to do with why I had such a tough time with all that. I didn’t get to be raised and live in one place where I had a pretty solid group of people around me that I stayed with for half a generation, or most of the generation.

“It was constantly changing,” he said. “By the time we moved to Spain I had lived in, I guess, about five different places.”

Born in Japan, Orebaugh landed in a few places in the U.S. before crossing the Atlantic in the late 1960s to live in Spain for four years. Following a couple other locales, Orebaugh’s father eventually settled into a duty station in central Pennsylvania.

“So, I got to actually go to late middle school and high school all in one place, which is very fortunate for me,” he said, while his sister changed high school several times. “We were two kids who, socially, were very different. She could sort of walk into a room and mingle in immediately. … She was, in her way, assertive and warm and friendly, where I was really sort of retiring, and the wallflower of the two of us.

“I think that the military lifestyle, when you moved every couple of years, was probably part of that.”

Although all that movement — eventually, at least — contributed to the siblings’ adaptability, Orebaugh found late elementary school a time of “real struggle.” Along with a “band of good friends,” he credits his fifth-grade teacher, Gene C. Walden, with helping him overcome his awkwardness.

“I’ll never forget Mr. Walden,” he said, describing him as “one of those people you look back on” and think, “ ‘That person really made a big difference for me.’ That experience in the classroom with him and his endlessly pushing us forward to explore things, to learn about things, along with my dad — sort of in the background — pushing me to be a little bit more. All of those things kind of came together.”

Around then, he also discovered how much he liked animals and biology, which “began to dovetail into an idea of becoming a physician,” he recalled, describing himself as moving “from a pupil to a student.”

He credits Walden, whose teaching approach included having students read a book per week, offering Spanish-language lessons and emphasizing Spanish dancing and culture.  

“He pushed us pretty hard. So, at the beginning I think we were all kind of intimidated,” Orebaugh recalled, adding that such diligence ultimately was worth enduring. “We took field trips to various places to learn about the Spanish culture. On the usual reading, writing, arithmetic (subjects), I think he was more demanding than my other teachers ever had been.”

Orebaugh also credits his father’s emphasis on education.

“He wasn’t really highly educated, but he realized that in order to get anywhere in life, you probably needed to be,” he said. “He really pushed my sister and I to get a good education.”

Pursuing dreams

Despite some “real setbacks,” including his fraught relationship with baseball — namely the “inability to play it very well” — all these elements came together in what Orebaugh called a “wonderful milieu” in Spain. This, he said, “kind of set me on a path, I think, to become a physician in the future.”

Simply gaining the ability to believe he could achieve something like that went a long way. “Whereas maybe a year or two before that, I never would have even dreamed about it.”

Within a few months of the time period “The Six-Lined Racerunner” covers, after Orebaugh’s fifth grade year, his family returned to Pennsylvania, where he started sixth grade in Pittsburgh.

“It was a very different, unusual life compared to what I’d left here,” he acknowledged. “Certainly, we missed the weather. You know, sunny and warm every day. You can go out and play almost every day.”

He also traded country for urban living. “My grandparents lived in Carrick (in Allegheny County). The ability to go out and just rummage through the countryside was no longer there. I missed that for sure.”

The culinary options also required personal adjustments. 

“There were certain foods we … enjoyed over there that we were no longer able to eat over here. That was a good swap … Hamburgers and hot dogs were a welcome thing to come back to,” he recalled. “But (we missed) things like fried lamb on a skewer and the wonderful Spanish olives (where) they would cut up these potatoes and fry them and put a special sauce on them.”

Moving up in the world

Because he applied early, Orebaugh was able to skip his senior year of undergraduate studies at Pitt. “And I went to medical school a year early, so I don’t actually even have an undergraduate degree, which is kind of a funky thing,” he said. “I wasn’t even aware that you could do that.”

He went on to Temple University for medical school, where he graduated in 1986. Orebaugh then trained in emergency medicine at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. After a few years in that field, he returned to Pittsburgh and retrained to further serve in the U.S. Navy, which had paid for his schooling. “I owed them time,” he explained.  

During his anesthesiology residency at Pitt, he balanced both that and emergency medicine, before the juggling act “got to be a little complicated.” After six years, he dropped emergency medicine and became a full-time anesthesiologist. He’s been at Pitt ever since.

Drawn to journaling at an early age, Orebaugh’s writing about his own experiences morphed into a secondary career as an author — first of medical books, then fiction.

One novel was about practicing emergency medicine in a small department in Pittsburgh, while the second was “more about the opioid crisis, because during my career, I’ve probably had at least a half a dozen, if not more, colleagues fall prey.”

Orebaugh doesn’t hesitate to call “The Six-Lined Racerunner” his most personal work to date.

“And there are some kind of shameful moments in this book, because it’s kind of hard to write these things,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little bit therapeutic as well. You’re looking back, but really kind of tracing (your) own development. I had to own up to some things that if I could go back, I would shake myself and say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Like, why are you acting this way?’

“It was something I had to work through. There were some moments in the book that are pretty embarrassing,” he confessed. “But they’re definitely the most personal things that I have written.”

Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.

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