6113: Gwen Mellon obit from AP

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Gwen Grant Mellon

   MIAMI (AP) -- Gwen Grant Mellon, who along with her husband started a
hospital in an impoverished part of Haiti in 1956, died on November 29 from
complications after hip surgery. She was 89.
   Mellon and her husband, Dr. William Larimer Mellon Jr., helped open the
Albert Schweitzer Hospital in 1956 in Deschapelles, Haiti, where she lived
until her death.
   The couple's dream of opening the hospital began in 1947 when Larry
Mellon read an article in Life Magazine about Dr. Schweitzer, who founded a
hospital in West Africa in 1913.
   Larry Mellon, who died in 1989, was an heir to the Mellon fortune. He
wrote to Dr. Schweitzer to ask him for advice on how to get a medical
degree and build a hospital.
   The Mellons enrolled in Tulane University in New Orleans. Larry Mellons
earned his medical degree; Gwen Mellon studied tropical medicine.
   Gwen Mellon then recruited Haitian nursing students to train in the
United States and work in the facility. After learning Creole, she screened
and admitted patients and kept records. The hospital's clinics saw more
than 1,000 people a week.
   Gwen Mellon became the hospital's operating head after her husband died,
and had continued her administrative duties until her death.