The destination known today as Loma Linda once faced a dismal future. In 1887, the city fathers in San Bernardino declared that “its proximity to Colton and San Bernardino precluded the probability of its ever being anything more than a possible way station” on the Southern Pacific Railroad.
In 1916, eleven years after the founding of the original 1905 Loma Linda Sanitarium, and two years after CME (College of Medical Evangelists) graduated its first class, John Harvey Kellogg, MD, a noted mid-western medical educator, wrote, “The future of the Loma Linda medical school is absolutely hopeless. The medical profession will not tolerate such a thing as a medical college under sectarian control…. I am as certain as I am alive that the Loma Linda Sanitarium will never get any higher recognition than it gets now.”
He even questioned the very morality of asking “poor men and women who have barely sufficient to supply themselves with the [necessities] of life and seldom are able to indulge in the smallest luxuries, to invest their hard earnings in an enterprise that has no future.”
Today, the Loma Linda University School of Medicine has graduated 11,156 physicians, almost 2,000 more than any other school of medicine in the western United States. Its educational facilities serve 4,500 students and 700 resident physicians.
In 1980, the State of California recognized Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) as the only Level I, regional trauma center for its four Inland Counties, providing the highest level of care available to patients in more than one-fourth of the state. The institution’s heliports have accommodated more than 1,600 flights a year, as many as 14 flights a day. Patients arrive from around the world. Today, Loma Linda University Health employs a workforce of 15,000. Its faculty of 1,200 physicians schedules 1.5 million patient visits a year.
Both the Medical Center and University have become international institutions. Students come from up to 90 countries. Employees representing 100 countries speak 40 languages. Loma Linda University Medical Center has become the flagship of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist healthcare service, which reaches into more than 50 countries, and employs 124,000 people in 650 medical institutions. U.S. News and World Report has regularly recognized LLUMC as one of “America’s Best Hospitals.” The Solucient Leadership Institute placed LLUMC in the Top 100 Cardiovascular Hospitals—at the time, the only California hospital to earn this distinction. In 2009, Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital became the first children’ hospital in America to be named “Baby Friendly” by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
From the beginning, based on scripture, the institution taught that the human body is the Temple of God. Its mission was to train gospel medical missionary evangelists. The first Loma Linda graduate to become an overseas medical missionary was Miss Almeda A. Kerr, a 1907 graduate of the Loma Linda Sanitarium Nurses’ Training School. Miss Kerr worked first in Montevideo, Uruguay, and then in River Platte, Argentina.
Olive Santee-Smith, MD, became one of CME’s first graduate physicians to accept an overseas mission appointment. She belonged to CME’s second graduating class (Class of 1915). In September 1918, two months before Armistice Day, she and her husband Frank, a registered nurse, arrived in Calcutta, India. In spite of the language handicap, Dr. Olive began a medical practice within a week in Lahore, India, where she cared for women and children.
By 1955, CME had graduated more physicians who had gone overseas as medical missionaries than all other schools of medicine in the United States combined. Today, more than 60 years later, the School of Medicine has graduated more physicians who have accepted appointments overseas as medical missionaries, than has any other school of medicine in the world.
God has used dedicated and inspired individuals with all of their human weaknesses and poverty to build this institution in a most spectacular way. Seventh-day Adventists have transformed the facilities from a failed healthcare institution in 1905 to a world-class, internationally recognized leader in patient care, medical education, and scientific research. Most importantly, they have led the way in Christian service.
During the institution’s 25th anniversary in 1930, Harold M. Walton, MD, Medical Director of the Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital, defined the institution’s legacy: “The purpose, ideals, and spirit which actuated the founding of this institution have been handed down to us as a sacred heritage to be cherished and safeguarded.
Indeed, the faithful consider Loma Linda University and its affiliated corporations to be “God’s institution.” They believe that He molded its development from its inception through His guidance and blessings. This belief has inspired its leaders to seek God’s continued guidance in daily activities and also in the development of new facilities and programs.
Seventh-day Adventist involvement in Loma Linda is a “Legacy.” Thirty-five church members, mostly young people in their 20s and 30s, moved onto the hill by the end of 1905. At first they exchanged their time, talents, and skills for room and board. Eventually, the Loma Linda Sanitarium could generate enough revenues to pay their meager salaries, ranging from $12 to $20 per week.
These pioneers and the institutional giants who followed over the decades cast long shadows and left huge footprints. They had no way of knowing that their sacrifices and dedicated efforts would someday lay the foundation for an internationally acclaimed institution, world renowned for its pioneering infant heart transplant program. They could not foresee that their efforts would someday permit the establishment of a daring, first-of-its kind Proton Treatment Center that would provide breakthrough cancer treatment and permit the United States to contribute to the safety of an international space station.
By faith, they knew just one thing—Loma Linda was God’s institution. In Christian love for their fellowmen, and in honor of their Example, “the Great Physician,” they consecrated their lives and efforts to Him.