Durangoan's grandparents established hospital that's crucial now in Haiti

by Katie Burford
Herald Staff Writer After an earthquake reduced much of the Haitian capital to rubble, Durango doctor Wendy Grant began doing what many in her large extended family were doing: working the phones in search of money and supplies for the Albert Schweitzer Hospital.

The hospital - located 40 miles north of Port-au-Prince and founded by Grant's grandparents in 1954 - has been inundated with quake survivors fleeing the capital, where 100,000 or more are said to have died.

Grant last week sought and received commitments of supplies, money and even staff from her medical group, Durango Orthopedics Associates, and Mercy Regional Medical Center.

“For most of us here, that's probably the most important thing we can do," Grant said during an interview at her home.

Monitoring her e-mail on a laptop, Grant opened a message from her sister, Susannah Grant, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

From Los Angeles, Susannah Grant had contacted actor Matt Damon's people about assistance. In the e-mail, her sister indicated that space had been secured aboard a cargo plane to get supplies to the hospital through ONEXONE, an organization Damon is involved with.

Meanwhile, their uncle, Ian Rawson, managing director of the hospital, has struggled to oversee care of about 500 patients a day, compared with the 80 the hospital normally sees.

“The suffering of the seriously injured patients who have been here for four and three days before getting into the operating room is heart-rending," Rawson said in an e-mail this week.

Amid suffering on such a scale, he might take comfort in the words of his hospital's Nobel Prize-winning namesake: “The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive. It creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates."

The road to Deschapelles

Grant's grandfather, William Larimer Mellon, didn't really have to do anything.

The Mellon family fortune, built on oil and banking, was said to rival or even surpass that of the Rockefellers, according to Song of Haiti, a book by Barry Paris about the hospital.

But growing up in opulence was more a point of discomfiture for Mellon than pride.

After his first marriage fell apart, he left Pittsburgh and moved to Arizona to be a rancher, something he succeeded at, much to the surprise of his critics.

Arizona is where he met Gwen Grant, a striking mother of three recently arrived from the East Coast, where she left behind a stifling marriage.

A romance was written in the stars for the kindred spirits, though it had to be put on hold while Mellon did a stint as a spy in Europe during World War II, according to the book.

After Mellon returned, they were married. Gwen had just finished decorating their ranch house when her husband proposed a radical change of course.

The idea was sparked by an article in the Oct. 6, 1947, edition of Life magazine. The article, titled “The Greatest Man in the World," was about Albert Schweitzer, who founded a hospital in a remote corner of Africa.

The article struck Mellon to the core, and he proposed leaving Arizona so he could study medicine and establish a hospital as Schweitzer had.

“He was very influenced by the biblical verse that for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven was harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle," author Paris wrote.

Mellon, with the help of his wife's charm, finagled his way into the Tulane University medical school despite lacking a bachelor's degree. Meanwhile, his wife studied to be a lab technician at nearby Loyola.

The Mellons were scouting sites for their hospital before he even finished medical school.

In Haiti, they found the country with the most need. And in the Artibonite Valley, they found the place in Haiti with the most need.

“That 600-square-mile area with 185,000 people contained not a single doctor in private practice and only two small government clinics," the book reads.

In a village called Deschapelles, some well-built stone buildings remained from Standard Fruit Co., which formerly had operated a plantation in the area. With approval from the government, the site became theirs.

“It's turned out to be a good place," Wendy Grant said.

Gwen Mellon oversaw construction of the hospital almost entirely on her own. It was dedicated Dec. 11, 1954.

Grant said her grandmother's thought at the time was, “Gosh, is anyone going to come?"

She had nothing to worry about.

Never enough

Over the years, her grandparents did more than just tend the sick.

Her grandfather spent much of his time on development projects, including bringing clean water to the village.

“He actually didn't spend a lot of time working as a physician in the hospital," Grant said.

He preferred being outdoors, among the people.

The hospital also established various “dispensaries" in the region, which made it possible to bring preventive care and treatment closer to where people lived.

It oversees tree plantings to revegetate the countryside denuded by the French colonists and later by the villagers for firewood. It operates a small farm and ranch.

The facility, which employs 400, mostly Haitians, also helps generate a modicum of prosperity in the region by providing jobs.

But life in the valley remains desperate.

“There's never enough work, never enough resources," Grant said.

Grant followed her grandfather's and father's footsteps into medicine and did stints at the hospital in medical school and during her residency.

Her grandfather died in 1989 and her grandmother ran the hospital until her death in 2001. They both are buried there.

Grant, whose mother and father met at the hospital, has continued to visit and fundraise over the years and most recently was in Haiti with her family in March.

She said she never was concerned for their safety and was optimistic about the country's future.

“Recently, things really had been stable for a while," she said.

kburford@durangoherald.com

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Before and after satalite images of Haiti