ET3AD 1947 Ethiopia
Operator: Claude E. Steen, Jr., M.D.
Claude E. Steen, Jr., M.D. of
Candler, NC, died July 23, 2015 at the age of 95. He was a family
medicine practitioner in West Asheville from 1959 till his
retirement in 1991. Dr. Steen was also a deeply committed member
of the Seventh-day Adventist church, having served as a medical
missionary in Ethiopia for 12 years, and elder of the Mount
Pisgah Academy Adventist church for about 50 years and a member
of the Carolina Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Executive
Committee for a decade or more.
Born February 7, 1920 in Long Beach, California, Steen was the
second child and only son of Dr. Claude E. Steen Senior and Willa
Simons Steen. When Claude Junior was very young the family moved
to Orange County, living first in Brea and then in Fullerton,
California, where Claude Senior conducted a medical and surgical
practice with his brother, Dr. E. J. Steen.
All of Claude Junior's education was in Seventh-day Adventist
schools in Southern California - his college education at what is
now La Sierra University and his medical education at Loma Linda
University School of Medicine, then known as the College of
Medical Evangelists, where his father uncle had also become
doctors. During those higher education years Claude Junior was
also very active in religious activities and in music; playing
his cello in string ensembles; performing vocal and instrumental
duets with his sister, Barbara, who was a violinist, vocalist and
keyboard artist; and singing in various choral groups.
Three days before becoming a medical doctor Steen married
Elizabeth Fuller of San Diego on March 25, 1943, then served two
years as a US Army doctor during World War II. When the war was
over the young couple was asked by the Adventist Mission Board to
go to Gimbie in Western Ethiopia to establish a hospital at the
mission station where Herman and Sue Davis, whom they had met in
Hattiesburg, MS during army service, were running a school and
doing evangelistic work.
Claude and Elizabeth were 27 when they arrived in Gimbie with two
sons, just one and two years old. It was May of 1947 and it had
taken them three months to make the trip from California: by
train across the US, by freight ship across the Atlantic, through
the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, by airplane to
Addis Ababa, and finally by truck to Gimbie over almost
impassible roads. In spite of mind-boggling difficulties the
young doctor repaired buildings left from the Italian occupation
of Ethiopia, designed and built water, sewage and electrical
systems, set up basic lab, x-ray, operating room, clinic and
inpatient wards and trained staff, all with the help of a single
Swedish LPN and an Italian construction worker. The result was
the only hospital within a radius of nearly 100 miles that has
served uninterrupted to this day.
After serving five years in Gimbie the young family, now with
three sons, moved to Addis Ababa where Dr. Steen was medical
director of the Adventist hospital in the capital. The clientele
there included some of Emperor Haile Selassie's royal family, the
employees of Ethiopian Airlines and the poor and not-so-poor of
the city. During his service in Addis Dr. Steen was invited by
the International College of Surgeons to be inducted into their
membership in recognition of his accomplishments as a surgeon. In
1959, the family, now with four growing sons, left Ethiopia to
settle in Candler, near Mount Pisgah Academy where the four boys
could benefit from Christian education.
Here Dr. Steen joined doctors Louis Waller, Bud Summerville and
Les Smart in family practice in West Asheville. One of the
highlights of those years was the construction of a medical
office building for the four physicians and the building of a
home for the Mount Pisgah Academy Church. In addition to his
other church and community responsibilities Dr. Steen served as
chairman of the church building committee and later played a
major role in the purchase and installation of the pipe organ in
the church.
Dr. Claude Steen will be remembered for his strong commitment to
the Seventh-day Adventist church, his personal interest and care
for each of his many patients, his strong Christian leadership in
his family and his unshakable confidence in the soon return of
Jesus Christ to take his faithful followers to the home he has
prepared for them in heaven....
QSL from the estate of W5BGP /
W5IO
Info, QSL courtesy of W5KNE