Samuel Ketting

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Born in Rotterdam, I was educated there through primary education. After high school, I attended Erasmus University School of technology and engineering. After two years, I quit and did a stint in the Royal Dutch Navy for three and a half years. I moved to the Dutch East Indies, then to Australia where I worked for Philips Electrical for a few years and became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Next, I moved to Walla Walla College, where I worked my entire way through school, primarily in construction.

In 1956, I moved to Loma Linda, obtaining an MD degree four years later. I married Effie Jean Potts ’54 in 1960, two hours after graduation. We moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where I spent three years in a tropical surgery residency. Then we moved to Phuket in West Thailand, participating in designing a thirty-bed hospital that was opened in 1964.

In 1967, we moved to Penang, Malaysia, where there was much surgery to be done. A master building plan was designed, and construction is in progress. The entire property has become a tertiary facility.  We spent 14 years in Penang, redesigning and building a new surgical wing, ICU, kitchen and cafeteria. On the yearly inspection trip by the G.C. committee, I had to explain where this new wing came from, and that it was all was paid for. 

During the period in Penang, I made two or three trips to Hong Kong to review the building plans of their newly built hospital and to make sure the oft-forgotten linen closets and slop sinks for each nurses station were added.

Our children were born in Bangkok and finished high school in 1981, followed by graduation from Walla Walla College. Ginger obtained a PhD in education from Claremont and is academic dean to the president at what is now Walla Walla University under the name of Ginger Ketting-Weller. Case works in Santa Maria as a radiation oncologist, trained at Washington University.

EJ and I built a good-looking clinic in Kennewick, WA, where we worked until 1996, still thinking about the joy of working in the church's mission hospitals. After disposing of this piece of real estate, we made yearly volunteer medical mission trips to do relief work in the Caribbean, in Africa and the Australasian Division. On our last relief journey, EJ developed a nasty angina. We finished that assignment in the Cameroons and then returned to Spokane where EJ had an open bypass. By the time we set off to Cameroon, we were and felt like octogenarians (Sam 82 and EJ 84). We now wonder what happens to all the gray matter when we do Sudoku and Dell's crossword puzzles to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

We cannot imagine a life of 50 years that has been more enjoyable, inspiring, motivating and satisfying.  Through all these years, the Lord has worked many miracles and close shaves and, above all, worldwide relationships with many groups of people who, with us, are looking for the Lord to come.