Heritage Snapshot: Part 133

“The angel pinched the baby.” With these words and a twinkle in his eye, Iner Sheld-Ritchie, MD (CME class of 1915), explained how he started a medical missionary work in Mexico. His early contacts with the Mexican people, coupled with influences from a country doctor during his childhood, led Iner to devote his life to helping people in need. With the help of Jerry L. Pettis, a future United States congressman, he established an ongoing medical missionary outreach program in Mexico. The baby was the daughter of Baja California Governor Abelardo Rodrigues, a man who eventually became president of Mexico. When the governor’s baby daughter would not stop crying, and other physicians were unable to help, her mother became frantic. Iner calmed the baby, using hydrotherapy techniques he had learned at the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists. Not knowing that he was a Seventh-day Adventist who did not smoke or drink, Governor Rodrigues offered Iner his thankfulness and his best whiskey. Iner appreciated the gratitude, but declined the whiskey. When he also declined the governor’s Havana cigars, the head of state asked, “What can I offer you?” This was just the opening Iner needed to bypass some local political challenges in order to start a home nursing education program. In 1926 Ritchie bought the family practice of his friend, Ralph Smith, MD, and built the first hospital in Calexico, California, just three blocks from the Mexican border. The move not only brought him into close proximity to Mexico, but also satisfied his desire to help people in need. Sheld-Ritchie enjoyed being a physician. But he also enjoyed teaching. By offering a class in home nursing he could combine his interests, enlarge his circle of influence, and thus help more people. His main challenge was circumventing jealous local physicians who had blocked his efforts to find a place to teach. When Governor Rodriguez asked what he could do for Sheld-Ritchie, he explained his need for a classroom. “No problem,” replied Rodrigues, “how about the High School Auditorium?” Iner’s motivation to help people was fueled by painful childhood memories which profoundly influenced his life. His last name was Sheld at that time. He saw a country doctor struggle through long hours in an unsuccessful effort to save his mother’s life. “…and unconsciously a seed was sown,” reported Dr. Ritchie, “for there was born within me a growing desire as I grew older to join the ranks of the men whom he represented—men whose lives are dedicated to the unselfish service and self-sacrifice of the medical ministry to suffering humanity.” When Iner’s mother died in May 1893, he was only seven. Abandoned by their father, Leander Sheld, Iner and his two brothers were placed in a Los Angeles orphanage. After three years the Sheld brothers became farm hands and cowboys near Chino, California, doing ranch chores and sleeping in a barn hayloft. Iner had had experience herding cows by horseback from the tender age of 5. By 7 the barefoot boy was milking cows. By 1903, at age 17, the industrious young man held a job on the Fuller Ranch near Corona, California, and tended his own bees. The bee business led to a life changing relationship with the Ritchie family in Corona. William Shanon Ritchie and his wife Lula Joseph Ritchie sold honey, olives, and olive oil from their homestead. Iner Sheld bought supplies for his bees from Ritchie. As Seventh-day Adventists, the Ritchie family held Sabbath services in their home for as many as 50 worshipers. In 1904, Iner attended evangelistic meetings and eventually was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. As the relationship with the Ritchie family developed, Iner was invited to join them for meals. He taught himself how to play the guitar and violin for church. He seemed to have outstanding capabilities. A dream impressed Mrs. Ritchie to treat Iner like a son. He was invited to adopt the Ritchie name. Because he was 23 at the time, and too old to be legally adopted, on Jan. 26, 1909, he formally announced that his name was Iner Sheld-Ritchie. The Ritchies introduced him as their newly adopted son. An announcement in the local newspaper made the name change official. Earlier, in 1907, the Ritchies invested in Iner’s education by paying his tuition to Pacific College of Osteopathy in Los Angeles. In the fall of 1908, he transferred to the Loma Linda College of Evangelists. The next year when the institution officially started its school of medicine and changed its name to College of Medical Evangelists, Iner enrolled in its first class. He was unable to complete the five-year curriculum in 1914 because of a bout with typhoid fever in 1910. During his year off, Iner became well enough to earn his tuition by working on two ranches and in an apiary of bees he and his roommate, Owen Parrett (CME class of 1915), ran in the Cajon Pass. On Nov. 24, 1914, when Iner was about to finish medical school, he married the Ritchie’s adopted daughter, Inelda Ruth, who had been “crazy in love with him” from her childhood. Throughout her life friends and family knew her as a conscientious, devoted, and self-sacrificing little woman. The couple eventually had four children: Iner William, Anna Virginia, Inelda May, and Robert Lorraine. Iner became the first medical student from CME to intern at the Riverside County Hospital during the summers of 1913 and 1914. Even though the superintendent and matron were not fond of student interns, he earned so much respect that by the end of the first summer they trusted him to supervise the hospital when they both went on vacation. Following graduation from CME in 1915, Iner Sheld-Ritchie, MD, practiced medicine in Burbank for a year. Even though he signed legal documents as “Sheld-Ritchie,” his patients always knew him as “Dr. Ritchie.” And because the hyphenated name sounded pretentious, his family always used the name Ritchie. In 1916 he and his family moved back to Arlington, California, where he joined E. H. Wood, MD, the man who had supervised his internship. Iner spent time getting acquainted with new patients and thus earned their affections. He treated all patients alike, without regard to race, including the local Chinese. In those days, some Los Angeles physicians treated their white patients first while everyone else waited. Carloads of Chinese would come to Arlington from Los Angeles for Iner to serve them.