Heritage Snapshot: Part 208

J. Lamont Murdoch was born August 7, 1938, at a Seventh-day Adventist Sanitarium near London, in Watford, England. His father, William G. Murdoch, was the principal at Newbold College. At age 8 his family moved to Australia where his father had been called to work at Avondale College. Lamont came to the United States at age 14 when his father joined the faculty of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary in Takoma Park, Maryland. Earlier, when Lamont was about 8, he became ill and was in bed for about 10 days. Thinking he’d make a good physician, his mother provided him with some books which featured Louis Pasteur and other physicians, and thus influenced him toward a career in medicine. During summer vacations the Murdochs visited relatives in La Sierra and Loma Linda, California, where Lamont would wander around the College of Medical Evangelists and imagine that he would be here someday. In 1959, Lamont graduated from Washington Missionary College (now Washington Adventist University) and started attending CME, from which he graduated in 1963. In 1961, CME became Loma Linda University. While a senior he met Judith Fallbeck, a student nurse. He married Judy in Fresno, California, in 1963 while taking a rotating internship at the White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. They had three daughters. In 1964, Dr. Murdoch became one of two internal medicine residents at the Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital. Following his rotating internship at “the White,” and his residency in internal medicine at the Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital on the hill, Dr. Murdoch took a one-year fellowship in Endocrinology, with a special interest in thyroid disease. He was Loma Linda’s first fellow in Endocrinology and the first chief resident at the new Loma Linda University Hospital, which opened in July, 1967. Following six months of his senior residency, he entered an 18-month fellowship in Hereditary Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Murdoch joined the faculty of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1967 as an instructor. When he returned from Johns Hopkins University in 1969 he was appointed assistant professor. As he rose through the ranks, in 1981 he became a full professor. During that time, in 1977 he became endocrinology section chief, a position he held for 36 years. He has also served as chief of the endocrine clinic at both the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center and the Riverside Regional Medical Center. Dr. Murdoch describes his career as “fascinating and rewarding.” He has especially enjoyed his relationships with students and patients. Most of Dr. Murdoch’s patients now are outpatients suffering from thyroid disorders. Judy died in 1981. In 1987, Lamont married Rebecca Eller in Corona, California. Becky was a member of the faculty of the Loma Linda University School of Nursing. They have two children and enjoy spending time with their combined five children and four grandchildren. Dr.Murdoch’s sister, Marilyn M. Herrmann, PhD, was dean of the Loma Linda University School of Nursing from 2005 to 2015. His first cousin, Brian S. Bull, M.D., was Dean of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine from 1994 to 2002.