Ellsworth E. Wareham, MD (CME Class of 1942), the son of a farmer, grew up in Alberta, Canada, during the Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s. He attended a one-room elementary school where one teacher taught ten students in eighth grade. Following his high school education in a very small local high school and with financial help from his grandmother, Ellsworth attended Canadian Junior College for one year. That summer when he was 17 he earned a scholarship by selling religious books door-to-door.
Getting an education was important to Ellsworth, but lack of financial backing made going to medical school seem out of the question. Following two years at Canadian Junior College, Ellsworth dropped out of school for two years. During this time he developed a definite conviction that he should become a physician. The thought wasn’t just a vague idea; it was as strong as hunger. There was no other option. His dire financial situation didn’t impact his desire to study medicine. He had to do it, no matter what it took.
After taking additional pre-med courses, and with the equivalent of two years of college, Ellsworth applied to attend the College of Medical Evangelists. He started medical school in 1937 after working one more year as an orderly at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. In 1940 he and his classmate, Clifford Anderson, produced an annual which was named The March of CME and published it in 1941. He graduated from CME in 1942.
Following a stint as a physician on a destroyer in the United States Navy, Dr. Wareham became convinced that if he were to become a surgeon, he had to be well-trained. Following a three-year fellowship in surgery he began a residency in chest surgery at Belleview Hospital in New York City. As he finished his residency, cardiac surgery was just beginning. Despite counsel from his chief, Ellsworth had a definite impression that he had to have additional training in cardiac surgery. It came from within. He just knew he had to become a cardiac surgeon.
When Ellsworth started performing open-heart surgery in New York, he had no access to a heart-lung machine. By cooling the surface of the patient’s body he could operate on the heart for only six or seven minutes. In 1958, with a heart-lung machine, he started the open-heart surgery program at the White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles and brought the program to Loma Linda in 1963 the same year he and C. Joan Coggin, MD, started the Loma Linda University Overseas Heart Surgery Team. The Heart Surgery Team has performed more heart surgeries in more countries than any other similar organization. They not only performed heart surgeries but also taught local surgeons the teamwork necessary for successful heart surgeries. And they did it on their vacation time.
In 1974 Dr. Wareham sent one of his protégés, Leonard L. Bailey, MD, to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, the largest children’s hospital in the world, for additional training in pediatric cardiac surgery. When Bailey returned to Loma Linda and wanted to conduct research involving heart transplants in neonates, Dr. Wareham approved of him setting up a research laboratory with financial support from 40 fellow surgeons. Together they donated monthly for seven years and invested a million dollars of earned income to prove Dr. Bailey’s theory that the newborn has an immature immune system and is less likely to reject a transplanted heart. Through Dr. Wareham’s protégé Loma Linda University Medical Center became the world pioneer in infant heart transplantation.
In Nov. 2005, National Geographic magazine featured Dr. Wareham as one of “America’s longevity all-stars.”
The same author, Dan Buettner, wrote a book entitled The Blue Zones, again featuring Dr. Wareham in Loma Linda as one of five places in the world known for the longevity of its citizens. Dr. Wareham turned 101 on October 3, 2015.