Heritage Snapshot: Part 150

Marilyn Christian graduated with a baccalaureate degree from the Washington Missionary College School of Nursing (1954) and taught there for the next six years. During this time she attended graduate school at the Catholic University of America, where she received her Master's Degree in Nursing Administration in 1957. She earned two majors (12 semester hours) and started teaching full time at Columbia Union College (18 semester hours). She also supervised Columbia Union College’s Health Service. Marilyn joined the faculty of the Loma Linda University School of Nursing on July 1, 1963. She became deeply involved in teaching Epidemiology and Public Health Nursing at the White Memorial Hospital and coordinated field experience. Although she had no intentions of becoming an administrator, she became Dean at age 36 (1969). She remembers thinking, "How did they choose somebody so young! So inexperienced? No mistake had been made. As Dean, in dealing with the Board of Trustees down to the beginning student, she always prayed for guidance in how to better understand different problems. Marilyn truly became a problem-oriented Dean. She loved dealing with challenges. She realized, however, that God gave her a strength not her own. Thus, she could keep going and practice the strong leadership style that she characterizes as "cooperative." Soon after becoming Dean, Marilyn Christian started advanced studies for her doctoral degree at the University of Southern California (EdD, 1974). Marilyn Christian married Maurice Eugene Smith on Valentine's Day, Feb. 10, 1980. The secret wedding was held at the Redlands home of Marguerite and Louis L. Smith, MD (a vascular surgeon at LLUMC and Mory’s brother). On May 21, 2001, three years after Mory's death from end-stage renal disease, Marilyn married Walter Laverne Gearing, a widower-neighbor. Her brother Ed conducted her second marriage in the Campus Chapel. A highlight of Marilyn's career occurred about 2/3rds of the way through her deanship. She invited her father, a retired, dynamic, family man, to accompany her one evening to pick up her briefcase and some papers from her office. While there, he said that he wanted to pray with her and invited Marilyn to kneel in front of her desk. Kneeling beside her, he put his arm on her shoulder. Then he prayed a most articulate prayer, straight from his heart. "Lord, I'm coming toward the end of my life. I don't know when that will be, but this is my daughter. She is doing the work now, and I want to give her my cloak." He put his arms around Marilyn and continued. "I want You to bless her, as You've blessed me—so that she will enjoy it all." Having ended his prayer, he embraced Marilyn and kissed her. Then, still an in-charge father, he said, "Now you can stand up." Marilyn regarded the experience almost like a birthright. Moreover, that was the last coherent prayer she ever heard him pray.