From 1970 until his death on January 28, 1985, Melvin P. Judkins, MD, built and maintained a world-class academic department at Loma Linda University Medical Center. His greatest satisfaction was one-on-one patient interaction. Though maintaining a hectic professional pace, he saw each patient the night before coronary angiography to explain in his quiet folksy way what was to take place, including risks and benefits. When he conducted post-catheterization conferences for patients and their families, he took all the time necessary to explain things in the simplest of terms. He spoke not as a world authority, but as a concerned physician.
Melvin P. Judkins was born at the White Memorial Hospital on May 3, 1922, and reared in a sparsely populated area near the Los Angeles County General Hospital. His family had chickens, a milk goat, a cow, and Melvin’s most beloved childhood pet—a goose. Mechanical and electrical things fascinated him. He especially liked automobile engines and radios. He built crystal sets, learned the Morse code, and passed the test for a first-class radio operator’s license.
Melvin earned his own tuition from elementary school through college with jobs including an early morning paper route, construction, and driving truck. He once sold newspapers at a busy Los Angeles intersection. During this time he earned enough money to buy a bicycle and eventually a used Model A Ford.
Judkins’ favorite courses at Los Angeles and Lynwood Academies were science and “shop,” which included woodworking and mechanical drawing. A master craftsman teacher engendered in Melvin a life-long admiration for trees, beautiful wood, and things made from wood. Following graduation from Lynwood Academy, Kaiser Shipyards in Long Beach hired Melvin to wire Liberty ships being produced to meet the demands of World War II. He slept in his car at the shipyard during the week and went home on Friday evenings to spend the Sabbath with his parents. Early Sunday mornings he went back to work at the shipyards.
Experience as a teenage orderly on the orthopedic ward at the Los Angeles County General Hospital gave him practical experience in health care. Melvin’s college aptitude test scores were equally high in engineering and medicine. For a time he considered a career in engineering. But perhaps because two of his uncles were physicians, several of his aunts nurses, and his father a physical therapist, he decided to become a physician. In an accelerated premedical program at La Sierra College, Melvin worked as a laboratory assistant in the physics and chemistry departments to help pay for his tuition. He also became a night shift orderly at the nearby Camp Anza Army Hospital. During short vacations, he resumed working at the shipyard and living in his car. In 1943, the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists accepted Melvin into its accelerated medical education program.
Because of World War II, starting in 1943, CME eliminated vacations and started classes every nine months. It reduced its medical school curriculum from four years to three and increased its class size from 75 students to 96. The freshman class started on July 1 rather than in September. Most of the male students were of military age and had been deferred from active military service as a courtesy by their respective draft boards. Now, according to the new regulations, they must submit to induction into the United States military. With his classmates, Melvin was inducted into the Army, donned a uniform, and joined the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) Number 3934 in Loma Linda. The Army paid for their medical education.
Melvin married Meryl Eileen Cobb, a Loma Linda student nurse, on June 23, 1946, one week before their graduation from the CME, and started a one-year internship at the Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital. He then studied urology and obtained a staff appointment at CME. The experience introduced him to catheters, medical equipment he would someday turn into a major contribution to world medicine. Early in 1948, Melvin became a commissioned officer for the United States Army and, as a first lieutenant, chief of the urology section at the 28th General Hospital in Osaka, Japan. When Eileen joined him, the Judkins were assigned a two-story Western-style house in a Japanese village some distance from Osaka. Their large bathroom doubled as a dark room so that Melvin could pursue the photography hobby he began in academy days.
In 1949, the Far East Army Medical Journal published Melvin’s first scientific paper, “A New Surgical Technique for Varicocele.”
After completing his Army tour as a Captain, Melvin began a one-year residency at the Sacramento County General Hospital (now UC-Davis Medical Center), and Eileen became an operating room nurse at the nearby Mercy Hospital.
The Judkins then purchased a small-town family practice in Sumas, Washington, a dairy and farming community near the Canadian border. While his practice built, Melvin remodeled the living quarters of the small home-office he had purchased from the town’s recently retired physician. Eileen became a receptionist, bookkeeper, physician’s assistant, and laboratory and X-ray technician. The Judkins’ first patient was a dog that was examined, X rayed, and attended as lovingly as any human—and at no charge.
As a general practitioner Melvin Judkins took office X rays to Bellingham, Washington, where he made hospital rounds and sought interpretative counsel from a radiologist. Due to the mentoring of “a magnanimous general surgeon,” he soon had full surgical and obstetrical privileges at three area hospitals. But in time the 24-hour demands of a private practice, long commutes to hospitals and church, and winter road hazards, caused the Judkins to reassess their professional direction.
To be continued….