Irvin Poff holds a photograph of himself at age 23 in the cockpit of a B-17 Flying Fortress while stationed in Italy during World War II. Photos: Milo Mitchell
PILOTING BOMBING MISSIONS OVER EUROPE in a B-17 during World War II was a dangerous job. More than 4,700 of the planes — over a third of all the B-17s produced — were lost in combat. During one mission, while flying in formation with 28 other planes, one of the engines of Irvin Poff’s Flying Fortress failed five minutes before he was to drop 6,000 pounds of explosives over an Austrian oil refinery. Knowing that German fighters were keen to pick off solo flyers, he diverted full-throttle emergency power to his remaining three engines — risking a possible engine explosion — to stay in formation and complete his bombing run.
Poff survived the war, but the repeated climbs to 20,000 feet in the plane’s unpressurized and unheated cockpit and descents to return home following his missions wreaked havoc on his inner ears and led to hearing loss. Seventy-five years later, when hearing aids no longer worked for him, he decided to pursue a cochlear implant.
He was 102 years old. “I realize that cochlear-implant surgery is unusual for someone of my age,” Poff says. “You have to be open to change, because the world is going to change, with or without you.”
When Poff underwent surgery for the implant at UCLA, he became one of the oldest Americans to receive the device.
“Mr. Poff wants to hear so he can continue to socialize and be independent,” says Akira Ishiyama, MD (RES ’96), director of UCLA’s cochlear implant program. “I’ve never seen anyone like him. He doesn’t look a day over 80.” Age-related hearing loss is a serious concern, leading to social isolation and increased risk for dementia and cognitive decline, Dr. Ishiyama says. Many elderly patients suffer needlessly, not realizing that treatment exists, and unaware that Medicare covers the cost of both cochlear-implant surgery and the device itself. Poff ’s procedure was performed under local anesthesia, eliminating the risk of putting a man his age under general anesthesia.
Left: Irvin Poff at age 23 in the cockpit of a B-17. Right: Poff in the garage-turnedworkroom of his Ventura County home. The processor for his cochlear implant is visible above his ear.
Unlike a hearing aid, which amplifies speech, a cochlear implant electronically stimulates the auditory nerve, bypassing the damaged inner ear. A speech processor, attached by a magnet outside the skull, sends signals to the implant, enabling the brain to decode the input as sound. Prior to the procedure, Poff was profoundly deaf and relied on a transcription device to understand conversations on phone calls. Now, he can discern 60% of words in conversation — a number that’s gradually increasing as he adjusts to the implant. “The first thing I noticed was my simple little electric clock,” Poff says. “I could hear the tick-tock real plain. I hadn’t heard it before.”
Poff, who ha s two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, has been delighted with how the cochlear implant has restored his hearing and quality of life. “Before the surgery, I couldn’t hear or understand people across the table at a restaurant,” Poff says. “It made me feel left out, and it was embarrassing to speak up, so I quit talking. Now I can sit on my front porch and enter into a conversation with my neighbors across the street.”
The world in which Poff now lives — one that includes the technology to restore his hearing — is very different from the one he grew up in. He was delivered at home by a doctor who arrived in a horse-drawn buggy. He grew up without electricity or indoor plumbing on his family’s 80-acre farm in Smithfield, Missouri, and attended a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade. After earning a degree in soil science, marrying and having a son, he volunteered at the outset of World War II to train as a pilot. He was sent to Italy. Poff flew 50 combat missions in three months, bombing German outposts in subterranean Italian caves and dropping explosives on railroads in Romania. He was discharged as a captain in 1945, and later promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and he returned to service to train cadets during the Korean War.
Twice widowed, Poff lives independently and stays busy exercising, repairing his home, watching Western movies and enjoying neighborhood block parties. He encourages other seniors to explore how cochlear implants and hearing aids can help them lead fulfilling lives and remain active in their communities. “I appreciate everything that UCLA did to get it done for me,” he says.
—Elaine Schmidt
For more information about UCLA Health’s cochlear implant program >
