Our Roads to Dhorpatan
(NOTE: SB does not like above pic) A sudden illness took Stephen’s older brother at age four. This ignited Stephen’s resolve to become a doctor dedicated to saving lives. While at the University of Toronto, he climbed Banff, and his lifelong love of mountains began. Prior to medical school, he spent a year walking in Nepal, drawn by the allure of the world’s highest peaks. He loved the tranquility of living a week or two’s walk from the nearest road in a simple rural setting. Although mesmerized by the mountains, the resilience of the rural villagers captivated him just as much. In the 1970s, no country had fewer miles of motorable roads than Nepal. Travel meant walking, sometimes for days, weeks, or even an entire month. He might have stayed in Nepal forever, but he received word of his acceptance to Stanford Medical School. Stephen aimed to master the medical skills necessary for treating patients in Nepal’s remote areas. His focus on Nepal and eagerness to start work led to a faster graduation timeline, mentors, and structured rotations in parasitology, wound care, obstetrics, anesthesiology, accident surgery, tuberculosis, and pediatric emergencies. He also learned to speak the Nepali language. Looking to apply his newly acquired medical skills in Nepal, he answered Ross’s ad for a doctor to staff the remote Dhorpatan Community Health Project. Inspired by China’s “barefoot doctors,” Stephen realized that Western technology was unsuitable for rural areas lacking electricity, running water, and readily available replacement parts and technicians. They could only use simple, culturally suitable tools and materials. This matched Ross’s plan, much to his delight. On September 28, 1974, Stephen flew to Dhorpatan in the Swiss Pilatus Porter plane flown by master pilot Emil Wick. It was an exciting rollercoaster of a flight that left Stephen crying and laughing in exhilaration. The people immediately took him to care for a critically ill young man near death. Thus began his first day at the Dhorpatan Community Health Clinic, one of the most profound experiences of his life.
Nine months and two days after his Oklahoman parents married, Ross and his fraternal twin brother were born. In the following decade, his parents had six sons. His father joined the family business, called the C. R. Anthony Company, a chain of clothing stores started by his grandfather. Just as it said on the door, the C. R. Anthony Company was a “Family Department Store,” but they all learned that the important part of that label was the word “family.” The business grew to include around three hundred smaller stores west of the Mississippi. But company values outweighed the importance of business success. The Anthony boys learned that with honesty, hard work, and determination, anything is achievable. Equally significant was the understanding that community membership entails responsibilities for everyone. It’s vital for those with advantages to support and give back to their community. For years, only people who worked for the company owned stock, and employees could buy stock for a 20 percent discount. Ross’s mother, too, taught her sons strong values. For her time, she was remarkably accepting of diverse cultures and backgrounds, rising above narrow-mindedness, a feat for a small-town woman. Ross left Oklahoma to attend Williams College (now Williams University), a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts. He encountered a vast range of new ideas, historical events, political systems, and artistic expressions there. He worked one summer in Cody, Wyoming, and fell in love with hiking in the Grand Teton Mountains. His job with a British import-export company in Japan the next summer led to a deep appreciation for Asia. The Vietnam War severely restricted options for graduating college seniors. But he found inspiration in a film on Albert Schweitzer and books by Thomas Dooley detailing their overseas grassroots health work. Motivated by President Kennedy’s 1961 call to public service, Ross, like his future Dhorpatan colleague Mike Payne, asked what he could do for his country. So, he applied to the Peace Corps. He accepted a training position for an agricultural extension agent in Nepal that aligned with his development studies. And, no minor consideration, Nepal was in Asia surrounded by mountains. Looking back, Ross sees the Dhorpatan project as an outcome of his parents’ instilled values: strong work ethic, determination, contributing to society, and valuing every human being. The Dhorpatan team’s amazing success resulted from its diverse skills and collaborative spirit, enabling its members to improve others’ lives and their own in unexpected ways.
Mary’s upbringing didn’t prepare her for Himalayan life. She grew up in a large, middle-class family in the D.C. suburbs, and was the second oldest of nine. She attended a small Catholic boarding high school and Jesuit college, spending her junior year studying in Rome. As a college friend of Mike Payne, a future Dhorpatan Health Project team member, he urged her to volunteer to join Peace Corps to teach English. She was told that Nepal was the only Peace Corps location where they needed English teachers. Mary knew nothing of Nepal. She had never even camped, hiked, or spent much time in the outdoors.
Following her initial year of Peace Corps service in a village school, Mary worked as a community health worker with a Nepali team serving small villages near Kathmandu. The team offered maternal and child health assessment and treatment. Working alongside colleagues and villagers, she witnessed the long-term social and economic consequences of poor health on families. However, the intense dedication of mothers to their children and families’ well-being truly ignited her passion for future health work.
In September 1973, Mary and a friend from Peace Corps planned a final mountain trek to inner Dolpo, an area northwest of Dhaulagiri. As they prepared to embark on this trip, a young Tibetan Buddhist monk asked them to deliver letters to his brother Kalsang in Dhorpatan. Mary and her friend agreed, as it was customary for travelers to deliver messages to remote areas. While staying with Kalsang’s family, neighbors sought Mary and her friend’s help to treat various illnesses and injuries. Healthcare was a five-to seven-day walk south or east, making the journey even harder for the sick or injured. Kalsang informed them of Ross’s planned health project in Dhorpatan so she wrote to Ross about what she learned in Dhorpatan. A few months later, Mary finished her Peace Corps service and left Nepal with no intention of returning. She went home to start pre-nursing classes and adapt to American life again. About three months later, Ross invited her to collaborate on the Dhorpatan project. Sometimes Mary feels compelled to follow a certain path, regardless of how crazy it seems, and this was one such occasion. In August 1974, she once again reassured her family, loaded the old sleeping bag and a two-year supply of socks into her backpack, and set off on an uncertain journey.
Growing up in Cleveland’s suburbs, Mike recognized a disparity in opportunity between his large, middle-class family and many people in the US and abroad. He sought ways to create a fairer playing field for others. When President Kennedy founded the Peace Corps in 1960, issuing his famous challenge to “ask what you can do for your country,” Mike honed his focus. The Peace Corps had a dual mission: to provide countries with volunteers who had expertise that was lacking or underdeveloped; and, equally, to foster intercultural understanding and respect. Mike attended four colleges in four years. One was Wheeling University. There, he noticed Mary Murphy in a biology lab, peering into a microscope. Mary would play a crucial role in Mike’s later Nepal experience and in his life. He left Wheeling College after a year, thinking that the U.S. Air Force Academy might provide him with the kinds of opportunities he was looking for. He decided he would not find those opportunities flying missions in Vietnam. So he moved on to Loyola University, Rome, observing that traveling Europe built invaluable cross-cultural skills, which proved to be more useful than college classes in preparing him for the Peace Corps. He ended up graduating from UC Riverside and was accepted into the Peace Corps for an animal husbandry program in Rajasthan, India in 1970. He became increasingly enthralled by Nepal, its history, people, Hindu and Buddhist cultures, and the Himalayas. In 1971, he was accepted into Peace Corps Nepal’s first water supply program. Then he took a contract with Nepal’s National Parks Department, building warden quarters for the newly established Lake Rara National Park—Nepal’s first. The construction occurred during monsoon season. As the cabin neared completion, his longtime friend Mary Murphy contacted him about the Dhorpatan Community Health Project. The Project’s fall plans included capital improvements such as water system repairs and a new hospital. He met with Ross and was offered the job. His role would be to design, construct, and maintain the physical infrastructure that supported the project’s clinical, educational, and economic core missions. After tying up loose ends on the Lake Rara National Park project, he shouldered his backpack and made the almost week-long trek to Dhorpatan, arriving in October 1975. It was a peaceful transition from the busy cities of Kathmandu and Tansen to the tranquil Dhorpatan villages characterized by a high alpine valley, Himalayan fir forests, and a stunning backdrop of snow-capped Himalayas.