Gwen Grant Mellon Free-spirited American who devoted her life and fortune to the health of the poor in Haiti

Paul Paryski

The life of the nurse and philanthropist Gwen Mellon, who has died aged 89,was proof that, occasionally, the very rich do give it all up to help the very poor. In 1956, with her doctor husband, Larry - and using their own private fortune - Gwen founded the L'Hôpital Albert Schweitzer at Deschapelles, a remote part of central Haiti. When they arrived in the district, the only health care was two, small government clinics for 185,000 people.

NDLR:Mrs Mellon always said that the hospital was founded by her husband and never presented herself as such.

Since then, the hospital, and its outreach centres, have evolved to provide a system of care for 2,500 patients a year and 400 outpatients a day - some of whom arrive on donkeys or bamboo stretchers - as well as offering every sort of community project through an outreach programme, thus bringing hope to the poorest of the poor.

Born in Englewood, New Jersey, to an upper-middle class New York family, Gwen attended a private boarding school in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 1934 from Smith College, Massachusetts. High spirited, beautiful and adventurous, she separated from her first, very conventional, husband, packed her bags, gathered up her three young children and took a job on a ranch in Arizona. There, she met Larry Mellon, another refugee from conventionality and wealth, and heir to a banking and oil fortune. He had purchased, and personally ran, a small cattle ranch. They married in 1946.

But the pleasures of working under Arizona's azure skies only partially satisfied their spirits. Touched by a Life magazine article about Albert Schweitzer's hospital in West Africa, Larry began corresponding with its founder. When he told his wife that he was thinking of becoming a doctor and practising in the developing world, Gwen replied: "You're right, we don't want to sit around looking at the damn cows all our lives."

Based on Schweitzer's advice and their desire to follow his example, the Mellons started medical training at Tulane University in New Orleans - he as a doctor, she as a medical technician and nurse. Their studies finished, they visited Haiti and located an abandoned banana plantation in Deschapelles, 90 miles north of the capital, Port au Prince. Struck by both the poverty and the strength of the Haitian peasants, and Haiti's unique history and culture, they decided to use Larry's fortune to build a hospital there.

Gwen charmed General Paul Magloire, then Haiti's president, into granting them the permanent use of the plantation, and, abandoning their comfortable life in America, the Mellons moved to Haiti. There, living in adverse and trying conditions, they built and developed their dream. To have constructed and run a modern hospital in one of the most rural and inaccessible sites in one of the world's most impoverished countries was a formidable achievement.

After Larry died in 1989, Gwen took over the management of the hospital. Her office was a table under a mango tree in a courtyard, where she personally screened and talked with almost all the patients. During the violent and turbulent political unrest in Haiti, she was an elegant pillar of strength, calm and sympathy. Even as she grew frail with age, her spirit and mind remained sharp, as did the wit that sparkled in her striking blue eyes.

Last summer she wrote: "I often wonder how it is I am so lucky as to see The sun rise and look forward to what the day will bring. Since the opening of the hospital, we have daily been able to do what Dr Mellon and I came to do - improve the quality of life over the whole district. It is what makes the hospital unique; respect one for an other, and we will strive to keep it so."

Gwen Mellon possessed that rare combination of courage, spirit, intelligence, perseverance (I might add inner and outer beauty) and deep devotion to Haiti and its people. She and her husband's personal fortune was buried in the rich soil of Deschapelles and grew into a modern miracle. It was a rare and inspiring adventure. Her autobiography, My Road To Deschapelles, was published in 1997. Gwen Mellon was buried in a cardboard box, the way the poorest of the very poor are buried on Haiti. She is survived by her daughter, Jennifer, and two sons, Ian and Michael.

NDLR : From e-mails.
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Objet: Fw: Gwen Mellon Free spirited-American who deveoted her life and fortune to the poor of Haiti

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