Why was an episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ dedicated to Bob Verne?

Everyone knows Ellen Pompeo or Sandra Oh, but what about the faces working behind-the-scenes on TV’s most famous medical drama? Bob Verne was a long-time producer for Grey’s Anatomy, who died in 2001 at the age of 56 after a very short battle with esophageal cancer.

In writing the two-part “Six Days” storyline (Season 3: Episodes 11 and 12), Verne’s daughter Krista Vernoff drew upon her own experience with her dad’s cancer battle to craft the narrative in which George O’Malley’s father, Harold O’Malley, also dies. Verne’s story is told through George Dzundza’s portrayal of Harold, whereas Vernoff’s grief is communicated through George.

Here’s what Vernoff wrote on her official blog regarding “Six Days” and Verne’s contagious optimism in the face of an impossible surgery:

“The card at the end [of “Six Days”] was a tribute to my father.

He called me one day at my office at Charmed and told me he thought he had the flu. A week after that he had surgery on a massive tumor at the base of his esophagus.

Before the surgery he was laughing and celebrating with family. He had a profoundly positive attitude.

My Dad believed, truly believed, that he could fight that cancer, that he could live, if only they would remove the tumor.

The surgeon did as he wished. And I have yet to completely forgive that surgeon for that decision.”

Vernoff joined Grey’s Anatomy as a member of the creative team and later became an executive producer. In addition to the two-part “Six Days” storyline, she also wrote the sixth episode of the second season, “Into You Like a Train,” wherein a catastrophic train wreck brings in multiple casualties and two strangers, Bonnie and Tom, who are connected through the torso by a metal pipe.

“Into You Like a Train” was nominated for an Emmy award for Best Writing, and is often considered to be one of the greatest episodes in the show’s 20-season run.

The title card following the hour-long TV special read: “In memory of Bob Verne.”