Word: mellons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...late 1947, William Larimer Mellon Jr., scion of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was rich and 37, with a pretty wife and children and a new house on a smooth-running Arizona ranch. He was looking through the pages of LIFE one day when he stopped at a picture story about Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who 51 years ago gave up a brilliantly versatile career−as theologian, organist, teacher and musicologist−to become a doctor and work among the natives in the African jungle. "There was a picture of Dr. Schweitzer and an antelope," Mellon recalls. "I had thought...
Gradually a strange and consuming determination took hold of Mellon. His wife Gwen gulped when she heard it: sell the ranch, become a physician and follow in Schweitzer's footsteps. Larry Mellon had plenty of money, but both age and education were against him−he had left Princeton after his freshman year. Mellon wrote to the great Dr. Schweitzer himself, and back came eight pages of encouragement and advice...
...told me just how to proceed,'' says Mellon. "He advised me what subjects to take in medical school. He said not to study tropical medicine, that if I came there he could teach me more tropical medicine in a week than I could learn in school in three months." The Mellons moved to New Orleans. Larry completed his premed work in two summers and a regular term at Tulane University, and ground his way through Tulane's Medical School in four years. "I didn't know whether I was going to be able to make...
Originally Mellon had planned to set up his hospital near Africa's Congo River, then he switched to Haiti because its population is denser and its medical needs acute. Ninety miles from Port-au-Prince, in the Artibonite Valley, Mellon found a site and began to build...
Quiet, white-haired Dr. Mellon and his wife, both Disciples of Christ, still exchange letters every month with 81-year-old Dr. Schweitzer in his jungle headquarters at Lambarene. As the hospital was about to open its doors, Schweitzer wrote: "The beginnings are always difficult. But you are courageous...