Heritage Snapshot: Part 196

Professor of Surgery, Clifton D. Reeves, MD, the oldest of four sons, was born August 27, 1934, in Carlton, Oklahoma, where he attended a small public school. He became one of five graduates from his class at Suthard High School. Because he was a good basketball player, a small college in Oklahoma offered him a scholarship. But he knew that he couldn’t go there and remain a Seventh-day Adventist. So he chose to attend Union College, in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he started studying business. Harold Ficus, an Oklahoma premed student who was two years ahead of Clifton at Union College, told him he thought he would be a good doctor and wondered if he would like to take the premed course. But the most important experience he had at Union was meeting his future wife. Between Clifton’s junior and senior year in college, he and Sandra Joiner were married at Navid, Iowa, where Sandra’s father managed a broom factory at Oak Park Academy. Dr. and Mrs. Reeves have three sons. Clifton graduated from Union College in 1956 and eventually joined Ficus at the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists from which he graduated in 1960. Dr. Fiscus and David B. Hinshaw, Sr, MD, both influenced him to become a surgeon. The new Dr. Reeves took the first three years of his surgery residency at the White Memorial Hospital and started a fourth year at City of Hope. In 1965, while implementing the consolidation of the School of Medicine in Loma Linda, Dean Hinshaw requested that Dr. Reeves leave the City of Hope, where he was completing the thoracic and cardiovascular part of his surgery residency, and become the first senior surgery resident at the Riverside General Hospital. The following year, in 1966, Dr. Reeves joined the Loma Linda University School of Medicine Department of Surgery faculty at Riverside General and his been on faculty ever since. Be became board certified in both general and thoracic surgery. In the meantime, one of Clifton’s residency supervisors in Los Angeles had become quite upset over the consolidation of the School of Medicine in Loma Linda and made it known that he did not approve of Clifton’s move. Later, to his credit, the man admitted that participating in the consolidation and joining the new School of Medicine faculty was the smartest thing he could have done. For 40 years Dr. Reeves practiced surgery at Riverside General Hospital, where he enjoyed providing good care for people regardless of their ability to pay. He helped design the new County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley and continued as its chief of surgery until 2002, when he started working part-time there and part-time at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center, in Loma Linda. Dr. Reeves continues to practice part-time at the VA Medical Center, where he shares an office and practices surgery with his son, Mark E. Reeves, MD, PhD. He has served on the School of Medicine Admissions Committee for 38 years; the past 23 years as chair. In 1983 Dr. Reeves became President of the School of Medicine Alumni Association. His awards include Honored Alumnus of the School of Medicine Alumni Association for 1985; School of Medicine Alumnus of the Year Award for 2000 and 2015; School of Medicine Distinguished Service Award for 2014; and Loma Linda University Health Lifetime Service Award for 2012.