2012 Induction Ceremony, Awards Presentation and Reception
The University of Toledo - Health Science Campus
Howard L. Collier Building and
Atrium, Center for Creative Education
April 28, 2012
6 – 8 pm
2012 Recipients:
Harvey Doorenbos, MD
Holland, Michigan
Born on a farm in northwestern Illinois to Christian parents, Dr. Harvey Doorenbos found his calling at an early age. His mother, a missionary in Nicaraugua in the 1920s, married his father whose first wife was her sister who died leaving small children. His father convinced her that she should consider her mission to help raise her nieces and nephews.
Dr. Doorenbos’ formal education came in a one-room country school with one teacher for eight grades. An avid reader, he learned as much on his own and from his parents as he did from school. Dr. Doorenbos went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Hope College in Holland, Mich., and his medical degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. It was at Hope that he would meet his wife, Margaret.
With never a time in life that he did not believe in Jesus Christ as his Savior, Dr. Doorenbos made a conscious decision to serve Jesus through whatever way he was called to serve Him. That service was to be as a medical missionary. While in medical school, he applied to the Reformed Church in America for an appointment.
The newly minted physician’s first appointment by RCA was the Arabian Mission, specifically the Sultanate of Oman. He spent ten years in the Muslim nation, but by the end of the second five-year term his application for re-entry to Oman was rejected for religious reasons. The Director of Health Services in that country decided only Muslims should be employed to work in Oman. The rejection was overturned by the Minister of Health, but by that time Dr. Doorenbos had already committed to work in Ethiopia. It would be where he would spend the next 24 years of his life.
Arriving in Ethiopia one year after Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by a communist coup, Dr. Doorenbos began work in a hospital made of mud construction. While in that country, he performed general surgeries and, out of necessity, became proficient in cataract and glaucoma procedures. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment in Africa came with his two-year reconstruction of Aira Hospital into a large out-patient and 80-bed in-patient hospital. The total cost for the project was approximately 1.5 million United States dollars. By comparison, hospital construction costs in the U.S. at the time were approximately $1.0 million per bed.
Dr. Doorenbos “retired” from RCA in 1999, but until 2012 offered his services eight months each year as a missionary surgeon furlough replacement. That work took him to India, Kenya, South Sudan, Malawi, Cameroon, Zambia and Liberia.
An early leader of the Pan-African College of Christian Surgeons, he has trained African national physicians to become surgeons, replacing absent missionary surgeons in mission hospitals throughout that nation.
Now officially retired, Dr. Doorenbos and wife, Margaret, have two sons, Dirk and Keith.
S. Amjad Hussain, MD, FRCSC, FACS
Toledo, Ohio
He’s been called a Renaissance Muslim by the Journal of the Islamic Medical Association and recognized as a living legend by the president of his medical school alma mater. Writer, photographer and explorer, this cardiothoracic surgeon has, for over 40 years, taught a legion of medical students and doctors and donated tons of supplies and equipment while on mission and teaching trips to the Dominican Republic, China, Libya, India and his native Pakistan.
Dr. S. Amjad Hussain graduated with distinction from Khyber Medical College in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1962 and came to the former Maumee Valley Hospital in Toledo for advanced training in cardiovascular surgery, reaching the highest positions in academic medicine. Now professor emeritus of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at the University of Toledo’s College of Medicine and Life Sciences where he has a professorship in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery named in his honor, he has never forgotten his roots, returning to Khyber Medical College bearing gifts of time, talent and treasure for those in need.
“It must be a quarter of a century ago when I had the pleasure of meeting the maverick called Amjad Hussain in many different perspectives within a couple of days,” said Dr. Muhammad Hafizullah, president of Khyber Medical College. “He advised us about cardiac theatres [and then we] received ten permanent pacemakers that he donated for poor patients who could not afford the life-saving expensive devices.”
That meeting was one that would be replicated many times around the world. Dr. Hussain’s missionary teaching work includes the traditional – annual one- and two-weeklong surgical trips to countries like the Dominican Republic – with teams of medical professionals through organizations like Midwest Medical Missions. It also includes – as befits the man – the non-traditional.
An internationally recognized explorer who founded the Team Indus exploration group, Dr. Hussain has traversed the entire 2,000 miles of that river in Pakistan and the source of the river in western Tibet while also working as a medical missionary. In one case, he saved a 20-year-old man gasping for air who had a collapsed lung. The patient needed a chest tube. With none available, Dr. Hussain fabricated the needed implement from a flatus tube.
“He has a heart of gold which has unlimited stories of love,” Dr. Hafizullah said.
The inventor of two surgical devices – the pleura-peritoneal shunt and a special endotracheal tube to supply oxygen during fiberoptic broncchoscopy in awake patients – Dr. Hussain views life as a relay race where one receives the baton and then passes it on. He says he should have been an engineer because he likes to build bridges.
The bridge-building is on display in his op-ed columns for The (Toledo) Blade, in his photographs documenting world culture, and in his eight books which cover subjects as diverse as religion, culture, history and international relations.
Said Dr. Hafizullah, whose institution recognized Dr. Hussain with its first lifetime achievement award during its golden jubilee celebration: “He has the unique distinction of blurring the artificial boundaries between different cultures and science and art, various fields of arts, and different languages and conquering them all.”
Dr. Hussain was married to the late Dottie Brown Hussain. He is the father of three grown children: Natasha, Monie and Qarie.
Lincoln Nelson, MD, EPCS
Battle Creek, Michigan
Dr. Lincoln Nelson’s passing on March 15, 2012, at the family home in Battle Creek, Mich., brought to a close a 60-year surgical and ministerial career that followed his life motto, “Preach the Word and heal the sick,” taken from Luke 9:2. It was a life that transformed thousands of lives and several areas of the Philippines.
Born in North Collins, N.Y., Dr. Nelson completed his undergraduate degree at Wheaton
College in Wheaton, Ill., before returning to his home state where he completed medical
school at the University of Buffalo. A Lieutenant JG in the United States Navy, he
served during the Korean Conflict as a Naval Surgeon in the Philippines and in Annapolis,
MD, receiving the American Area and the World War II Victory medals.
Following his honorable discharge from the Navy in 1947, Dr. Nelson returned to the
Philippines once again, this time by choice. Having grown to love the country and
its people while serving in the Navy, he went back in 1951 as a missionary physician.
His medical missionary career was highlighted by the construction of four 16- to 20- bed hospitals in some of the poorest rural areas of the Philippines. Two of those facilities would grow to more than 50 beds while the other two now have more than 100 beds. He was also proud of the fact that those hospitals resulted in the creation of more than 120 churches.
Serving with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, Dr. Nelson worked until his retirement in 1987. Following his retirement, he continued doing missionary medical work in the Philippines, the Ukraine, Bangladesh, Togo, Gambia and Brazil.
A man who offered physical and spiritual healing, Dr. Nelson became an ordained minister in 1961, often performing marriage ceremonies for other missionaries.
Dr. Nelson married his grade school sweetheart, Lenore, in 1944. As children, the pair also attended the same church. She is a registered nurse who, along with Dr. Nelson, raised five children: Linda, David, Sandra, Michael and Shirley. All three girls were born in the Philippines. David is an ordained minister in Battle Creek and is a commercial pilot who worked in the Philippines as a medical air ambulance pilot.
Delighting in spending time with his five children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, Dr. Nelson authored With Christ in the Family and With Scalpel and Sword about his medical missionary work and The Other End of the Stethoscope, a record of his life as a patient following a paralyzing attack of meningeal encephalitis in 2006.
Lawrence V. Conway Distinguished Service Award
Patricia J. Metting, Ph.D.
Vice Chancellor and
Sr. Associate Dean for Student Affairs in the College of Medicine and Life Sciences
Dr. Metting is being honored for her work in support of the Medical Mission Hall of Fame and medical missionary work at the University of Toledo. In her role, Dr. Metting works directly with students who participate in medical mission trips as part of their education. She has also been an active participant in numerous Medical Mission Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and is an enthusiastic supporter of the MMHOF throughout the community.
Dr. Metting has been an employee of the University of Toledo and its predecessor, the former Medical College of Ohio since 1978. Now a professor of physiology and pharmacology, she earned her PhD in physiology from the former MCO in 1980. It was her third degree from what is now UT. In 1975, on the Bancroft Street campus, she completed work on a bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in individualized studies with a focus on respiratory therapy. That same year, she completed an associate’s degree in respiratory therapy. Dr. Metting was named as the College of Adult and Lifelong Learning’s Outstanding Alumni Award recipient in 2011.
In 2010, Dr. Metting was presented the prestigious Association of American Medical Colleges – Group on Student Affairs’ Award for Exemplary Service. This lifetime achievement honor was given in recognition of her commitment to medical students and for her efforts in trying to promote their careers, helping them to achieve their lifetime goals at a critical time in their lives.
Inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society in 2005, Dr. Metting is a fellow of both the American Heart Association’s Council for High Blood Pressure Research and the American Physiological Society’s Cardiovascular Section. She is renowned for a lifetime of work in cardiovascular physiology and hypertension and its basic sciences.
A native Toledoan who graduated from St. Ursula Academy, Dr. Metting is the co-editor of Physiology: PreTest Self-Assessment and Review, now in its 13th edition, published by the McGraw-Hill Companies. A student-focused administrator, among her many honors she has received the Golden Apple Award and Dean’s Award for teaching excellence on the Health Science Campus.
Dr. Metting and her husband, Mike, have two adult children, Megan and Patrick.