28 Facts About Stanley Biber

Stanley Biber's parents hoped he would become a pianist or a rabbi, and he briefly considered both before World War II began.

Stanley Biber tried out for the Olympic team and narrowly missed the cut.

Stanley Biber raised nine children with the same wife on a ranch outside Trinidad, Colorado.

Stanley Biber was survived by his wife of 11 months, Marylee Biber.

Stanley Biber was survived by seven children, seven stepchildren and twenty-two grandchildren, including singer Snatam Kaur by his daughter Prabhu Nam Kaur Khalsa, a new age singer.

Stanley Biber and Marylee married after working together for four decades; Marylee was a nurse involved with his practice.

Later in life Stanley Biber said that he did not see himself as a religious man.

Stanley Biber served as a civilian employee with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, stationed in Alaska and the Northwest Territory.

Stanley Biber graduated from the University of Iowa medical school in 1948.

Stanley Biber began performing surgery while in residency at a hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.

Stanley Biber then joined the Army, where he was the chief surgeon of a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War.

Stanley Biber finished his service at what is Fort Carson, Colorado.

In 1954, retiring from military service, Stanley Biber took a job at a United Mine Workers clinic in Trinidad, Colorado.

Stanley Biber had been living as a woman and on hormone replacement therapy under the supervision of Dr Harry Benjamin for some time.

Dr Stanley Biber kept his first few surgeries secret from the Catholic nuns who operated the hospital, due to concerns that they would react negatively.

Stanley Biber spoke about his point of view on the matter to the local paper in 1973.

Stanley Biber made the point that the visitors brought in business to the local economy by staying in local hotels and eating at local restaurants with their families while they received and recovered from surgery.

The nuns who worked at the hospital actually worked with Dr Stanley Biber and cared for his trans patients as well.

Dr Stanley Biber began performing vaginal construction surgeries when they were fairly rudimentary and refined the procedures around a half dozen times to achieve a more natural and realistic look.

Stanley Biber's practice became the first private-practice transgender surgery center in the United States.

When Dr Stanley Biber began his practice on gender changing surgeries, they were so rare in number in the United States that none of it was covered by any medical insurance and there were no widely used restrictions or guidelines on who qualified for a procedure.

Stanley Biber made up his own criteria, trying to avoid performing an operation on someone who might later regret it.

In 1990 a seat on the Las Animas County Board of Commissioners was vacated due to a recall, and Stanley Biber ran to fill it.

Stanley Biber's opponent ran ads in the local paper alleging that Dr Biber's work had made an unseemly impact on the public image of the community.

Stanley Biber's campaign countered this with ads saying he had put Trinidad on the map and brought in $750,000 annually to the local economy.

Stanley Biber retired in 2003, at age 80, because his malpractice insurance premiums had risen to levels which he could not afford.

Stanley Biber was hospitalized in January 2006 with complications from pneumonia, to which he succumbed on January 16.

Dr Stanley Biber is mentioned often in the film, as is his protegee Dr Bowers.