For those who worked alongside Dick Cheney, he was more than just the vice president of the United States—he was "the boss." Revered for his steady hand and encyclopedic grasp of government, Cheney’s public persona often masked the private man who shaped a generation of White House staffers. Yet, as the world reflects on his passing at age 84 on November 4, 2025, another side to his legacy comes into focus: his extraordinary resilience in the face of relentless heart disease and the medical advances that allowed him to remain a central figure in American politics for decades.
Neil Patel, who served as staff secretary and later chief policy advisor to Cheney during the Bush administration, recalls a leader who set the tone for his staff with a demanding but fair approach. "If you couldn’t deliver, you wouldn’t be around for long. If you could, he was amazing to work for," Patel wrote in the Daily Caller. The White House is infamous for its chaos, but Cheney brought a sense of order. He kept a regular schedule, pushing his team to anticipate issues before they erupted into crises. That discipline, Patel says, helped minimize emergencies to only those truly outside anyone’s control.
But behind the scenes, Cheney was also a staunch advocate for family time, a rarity in the relentless world of Washington politics. Air Force Two was often filled with the laughter of grandchildren and staffers’ children alike. Patel fondly remembers that, despite the "crazy hours," he did not miss his own children’s early years thanks to Cheney’s leadership. "His commitment to family was so great that Air Force Two in those days was often full of kids," Patel recounted, illustrating a softer side of a man often labeled as unyielding.
Cheney’s wit, described as bone-dry, was legendary among his staff. He famously embraced the media’s comparison of him to Darth Vader, going so far as to don a high-end replica mask in the Oval Office as a practical joke. Patel still keeps the reimbursement check for that mask—a quirky memento from a boss who wasn’t above a laugh, even at his own expense.
Loyalty was another hallmark of Cheney’s character. When his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was prosecuted and left unsupported by President Bush, Cheney fought fiercely for a presidential pardon until the administration’s final hours. That loyalty inspired unusual devotion among his team; while the average White House staffer lasts about two years, nearly half of Cheney’s staff served the full eight years of the Bush presidency. "We loved working for him," Patel wrote, noting that Cheney’s staff was a fraction of the president’s but still heavily represented at the farewell dinner hosted by President Bush.
Yet, the path that led Cheney to the White House was anything but conventional. Born into a lower-middle-class family in the heartland, he earned a scholarship to Yale but lost it to youthful indiscretions. Forced to return home, he worked manual jobs before turning his life around and graduating from the University of Wyoming. From there, Cheney’s ascent was meteoric: he became the youngest White House chief of staff in history, then a congressman, secretary of defense, and ultimately, vice president. As Patel observed, "America gave him two shots," a nod to the country’s unique ability to offer second chances.
But beneath the surface of his political career, Cheney waged a private war with heart disease—a struggle that mirrored the evolution of cardiovascular medicine over the past half-century. According to The Conversation, Cheney suffered his first of five heart attacks in 1978 at the age of 37, a time when treatment options were rudimentary. The standard of care then was bed rest and pain relief; doctors didn’t yet fully understand that a blood clot, or thrombus, was the cause—not the result—of a heart attack.
As medical science advanced, so too did Cheney’s arsenal of treatments. He endured additional heart attacks in 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2010, with the 2000 episode occurring amid the tumultuous Bush-Gore presidential recount. Each time, new interventions came to his aid. Angioplasties—introduced in the 1980s—used balloons to open blocked arteries, though early versions suffered from the problem of "recoiling," where arteries would narrow again soon after the procedure. This led to the advent of stents, metal tubes that held arteries open, and later, drug-eluting stents, which dramatically reduced the risk of arteries becoming blocked again. Cheney received several of these stents during his long battle with heart disease.
Sometimes, though, even these innovations weren’t enough. In 1988, after his third heart attack, Cheney underwent a quadruple bypass operation, a major surgery to restore blood flow to his heart. Despite these efforts and a regimen of powerful medications, his heart continued to weaken, leading to a diagnosis of dilated, weakened heart failure—a condition that afflicts millions worldwide.
Modern medicine now offers four primary classes of drugs that together help manage heart failure, reducing hospitalizations and improving quality of life. But when these fail, only two options remain: a mechanical pump or a heart transplant. Heart transplantation, the gold standard for end-stage heart failure, is performed thousands of times each year in the U.S. and Europe. Thanks to these advances, many patients live decades longer than they would have in the past.
Cheney himself was candid about the roots of his disease. In a 2013 interview with "60 Minutes," he attributed his heart problems to "genetics and an unhealthy lifestyle," admitting he drank beer, ate fatty foods, and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. His experience is a cautionary tale for millions who share similar habits. As The Conversation notes, while stents and medications save lives, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The American Heart Association and other health authorities recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week—a brisk walk five days a week can make all the difference.
In the end, Dick Cheney’s life was shaped as much by the relentless march of medical progress as by the political storms he weathered. He was, as Patel put it, "an American original"—a man whose journey from humble beginnings to the heights of power, and whose triumphs over personal adversity, captured the complexity of the American experience. His story, woven through with loyalty, resilience, and the indomitable will to serve, offers lessons in both leadership and the value of second chances.
