LLUAHSC SCOPE Spring 2002 - Richard H. Hart, MD, DrPH, reflects on LLU in his inauguration address as chancellor

...Except as we...forget

Richard H. Hart, MD, DrPH, reflects on LLU in his inauguration address as chancellor

[SCOPE, Spring 2002]

Dr. Hart delivers his inaugural address as Loma Linda University chancellor on October 24, 2001.

It was not unlike many other institutional committees before and since. Powerful pressure groups arrayed on either side of the issue. Inability to reach a consensus. A beleaguered chairman calling multiple meetings with changing membership, trying to break the impasse.

Finally, in an act bordering on insubordination, he made his own decision. Walking to the local bank and borrowing $1,000 against his personal reputation, he made the initial down payment on the thrice-failed hotel that locals had come to call “Lonesome Linda.”

And in that single act, Loma Linda University began. The next three months unfolded a sequence of events that convinced even the most skeptical that God’s hand was in this endeavor.

Nearly 100 years have now passed. Years that have seen near-death struggles on occasion, and a few brilliant victories. Years that have produced men and women who have been called to make lonely decisions—decisions with profound impact not only on the University itself, but on a growing health-care network created by its alumni that now spans the globe.

The first half of this institution’s history was filled with many remarkable events, perhaps culminating in Percy Magan’s leadership bringing solid accreditation to the struggling medical school.

For most of us, the last 50 years are better known, with individuals whom we have personally known and respected. While it is always dangerous to select out single events or individuals, let me risk my perceptions.

The decision in the 1960s to consolidate the school at Loma Linda from the Los Angeles campus was one of those defining issues. Led by Dr. David Hinshaw, a small group of clinical faculty committed to leave the established facilities and patient base in the city, believing that a unified campus could survive, patients would come for quality care to what was then an outlying area, and the institution’s objectives would be better served. It was my privilege during my freshman year in medicine to watch the towers go up that formed the core of the new building here in Loma Linda.

Even the change of name from Hospital to Medical Center sounded bold. That summer, I was working for a local moving company, and at the appointed time, we backed our moving vans up to the loading dock of the old hospital on the hill, rolled the few patients still left in their beds into the vans, secured them, and took them down to the new facility. To that small group—Drs. Hinshaw, Ralph Thompson, Louis Smith, Bruce Branson, John Peterson, Varner Johns, Joan Coggin, Roy Jutzy, Ellsworth Wareham, and others—we extend our thanks.

Gerald R. Winslow, PhD, offers the dedicatory prayer at the inauguration of Richard H. Hart, MD, DrPH, as chancellor of Loma Linda University.

Emboldened by the new facility and a growing reputation, an expanding number of young Adventists came to Loma Linda for their professional education. In the 1960s and ’70s, their bright, inquiring minds asked many questions of their Church, their society, and how to appropriately understand and explain God’s role when confronting challenging circumstances.

Thousands of our alumni from that era are forever indebted to two individuals who were willing to meet those questions without defensiveness, providing a clarity of understanding that has given this Church many local leaders and Sabbath School teachers through the years.

Drs. Graham Maxwell and Jack Provonsha, whose total commitment to truth made their wisdom and counsel acceptable and appealing, thank you for anchoring this University in its understanding of God’s role in this world.

From its inception, Loma Linda had emphasized teaching and service, but had only dreamed of being a research center. Increasingly, as it matured and stabilized, a growing number of faculty started pushing various research agendas.

The era of innovation and research then received a jumpstart from a single surgery in the fall of 1984 that was recounted around the world—Baby Fae. From Dr. Leonard Bailey’s commitment to dying infants came a turning point in Loma Linda’s reputation and recognition. Along with Dr. Bailey, Drs. Larry Longo, Jim Slater, Gary Fraser, David Baylink, and others have now established LLU as having a commitment to inquiry that is acknowledged worldwide.

Dr. Bailey, please accept our thanks as a symbol of all our researchers who are pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

The final era I would like to mention came in the last 15 years. With scientific acceptance, educational maturity, and administrative cohesiveness, the institution was able to more overtly emphasize its original agenda—“the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus Christ.”

With an environment provided by our president, Dr. Lyn Behrens, and methodology articulated and championed by Dr. Wil Alexander, LLU has steadily and deliberately claimed its uniqueness among academic health-science centers as an institution truly driven and instructed by its Christian commitment. Thank you, Lyn and Wil, and many others, who have made us proud of our heritage.

Each of those pivotal events, and thousands of others, called for singleness of purpose to guide this institution through uncertain waters. Those called to decision- making were certainly plagued with struggles and doubts. Is there something spiritually or morally valuable in facing so much uncertainty and questions? If not, why does the God who ordained this institution allow so many difficult challenges to confront its leadership? My sense is that God uses the uncertainties of our tomorrows to maintain our faith and commitment to the certainty of His future.

Years ago, I read an article by Dr. Mervyn Hardinge, the founder of our School of Public Health, discussing the then current interest in anticipating and planning the future through “feasibility studies.” His fundamental thesis was “What would have happened if Noah had done a feasibility study? Or Moses? Or Daniel? Or John Burden, who made our initial $1,000 down payment?”

Conceived in faith, succored by adversity, Loma Linda University has met many challenges, from both internal and external forces, and is now positioned for the 21st century.

So what about the future? With a still small and over-committed institution, what will it bring to us? New challenges to be sure, for they are already here. New champions undoubtedly, for that is the way change occurs. September 11 has shown us that we cannot predict or control the future. Even the date, 9-1-1, seems to have prophetic overtones.

How do we balance our commitment to quality education, global service, and innovative research? What does our constituency—our Church—need from us? And, if I can be so arrogant, what does the world itself need from us?

There can be no question now that we are members of a global village. Information exchange and the networking of ideas are changing everything.

We have clearly endorsed our motto,“to make man whole,” by articulating the many facets of personal wholeness. But as we move into the local and global community, we are recognizing that the physical, mental, social, and spiritual components of wholeness may not complete the picture.

The brokenness of this world cannot be healed without economic wholeness, without political wholeness, without environmental wholeness. How far into those realms can an academic health-sciences center with limited resources reach effectively? Yet, clearly our commitment to wholeness is not complete without that kind of restoration.

Can Loma Linda University fill this continuing and expanding demand for principled Christian leaders to carry out these objectives? What skills and characteristics will they need? What kind of qualities will distinguish our graduates?

Robert Coles, the noted Harvard psychiatrist, tells the story of one of his students. She was from a midwestern town, of modest means, who had made her way to Harvard out of her own hard work. She had taken a job cleaning other students’ rooms to support herself when she came to Coles with her predicament.

One of her classmates, she recounted, was a brilliant student, already published, heading for medicine, and achieving A’s in all his classes. But he had been propositioning her in his room while she cleaned. Her poignant question should haunt us all: “What’s the point of knowing good if one doesn’t go on trying to become a good person?” She finally left Harvard, or what she came to call “fancy, phony Cambridge.”

Character. Values. Commitment. Compassion. Integrity. What role does an institution of higher education have in developing them? Are quality alumni primarily a function of a good admissions committee who seeks to determine who is really behind the nice words on the forms?

Or, is there a role for the curriculum committee and faculty in these areas—molding, challenging, confronting, guiding? Is it arrogant—is it safe—for an institution, even one founded on Christian values, to try to influence a student’s character? Loma Linda University has unabashedly made a commitment to not only provide quality technical education, but to also produce quality people.

It is clear that this kind of education will not occur primarily in the classroom, but on the wards, in the clinics, and in the community, as human needs are confronted and force an understanding of our own perceptions and values.

It is these kinds of experiences, accompanied with appropriate mentoring and reflection, that provide the meaning and direction for life. When one’s commitment is real and goals are pure, the path is sure. John Gardner from Stanford commented on this when he wrote “Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties...out of your own talent and understanding...out of the things you believe in…. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”

The past has always shaped the future. I believe our founders would be proud of the institution today and would have confidence in its future. For it was our founder, Ellen White herself, who penned our assurance and guide, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget God’s leading in our past history.” Thank you for sharing this time with us, and may God continue to bless Loma Linda University.

Inauguration address

[SCOPE, Spring 2002]