COLUMBUS — Six-year-old Jeff Cunningham of Cleveland could be a regular first-grader today if someone in his school had known the Heimlich maneuver, says his father, James Cunningham Jr.

        After choking on a meatball in kindergarten and spending 30 days in the hospital, Jeff is in a special-education program, Mr. Cunningham told the Senate Education Committee Tuesday.

        Mr. Cunningham's plea for a state law requiring schools to have someone trained in the Heimlich maneuver present while children eat lunch also drew Dr. Henry Heimlich, the Cincinnati physician who invented the method of saving choking victims.

        “I don't think anything is more important than what we are talking about today — saving children,” Dr. Heimlich said.

        Dr. Heimlich introduced the method of saving choking victims in 1974. In 1985, the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, called the Heimlich maneuver the only safe method of saving someone choking.

        The bill, proposed by Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, D-Cleveland, is in direct response to Jeff Cunningham's choking incident.

        “In this instance, nobody was there,” Dr. Heimlich said. “There was brain damage and there could have been death. It happened here and could have happened elsewhere.”

        The measure, already passed in the House, is one of the few Democrat-sponsored bills to move steadily through the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

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