Heritage Snapshot: Part 192

In 1950-51, the United States Army razed the old Battle Creek College, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Nothing but rubble remained, and machinery was leveling the grounds and pushing everything into the old college basement. As Mr. Olaf Andy Andersen passed by, he saw the men about to roll the old American Medical Missionary College boulder into oblivion. AMMC was the first Seventh-day Adventist school of medicine and the predecessor of Loma Linda University School of Medicine. From 1895 to 1910, it graduated 193 physicians, some of whom, in 1909, started the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda. “May I have that stone?” Andy asked. “Sure, take it with you!” the workmen replied. After Anderson negotiated with them, they promised to do nothing with it until he could obtain a crane and equipment. That same afternoon the old stone was moved to the Battle Creek Academy grounds. It remained there until it was transported to the Loma Linda campus of CME for its 50th-Anniversary celebrations in 1955. Mr. Andersen trucked the AMMC Stone to Loma Linda with the help of Mr. A. Z. Morrison and his young son. A relocation and unveiling ceremony for the old waymark was held on June 5, 1955. Dean Walter E. Macpherson introduced the honored speaker, Dr. James W. Erkenbeck of San Diego, one of 10 living members of the AMMC Class of 1899. Delivering the stone to Loma Linda was no small task. Weighing 1,720 pounds, the stone began its westward journey on A. Z. Morrison’s ¾-ton truck on May 7, 1955. Tire repairs were needed in Tucumcari and Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Ninety miles from Flagstaff Arizona, however, atop 9,000-foot Mount Minges, the high altitude stalled the truck. Fortunately, a soft-drink truck came by and the driver consented to pull them up and over the grade. The last stop was in Prescott, Arizona. Then came 150 miles of desert. The stone and its escorts arrived in Loma Linda at 2.30 p.m. on Friday, the 13th. Everyone was happy to have added a footnote to the history of AMMC. Andy Andersen was the father of the nurse namesake of the Marjorie Andersen Jesse administrative wing of the School of Nursing; the father-in-law of Claran H. Jesse, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at LLUMC; and grandfather of James T. Jesse, DDS, immediate past president of the Loma Linda University Councilors. The AMMC stone is a tribute to those who relayed the torch of Christian compassion from the first generation of church-educated physicians (included Alfred Q. Shryock, MD, president of the Class of 1899 and namesake of Shryock Hall) to the present generation. It is also a reminder of the debt of gratitude LLU owes to AMMC for providing the nucleus of the first faculty of the College of Medical Evangelists. Interestingly, the mottos of AMMC and CME/LLU, when combined, complement one another: “Let Us Follow Him. . .To Make Man Whole.”