Ronald Eugene Krum

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I was born March 14, 1933, in Capetown, South Africa, of Seventh-day Adventist missionary parents. Being exposed to numerous mission stories in my early youth helped me to want to be a missionary. I wanted to spend my life sharing my faith with others, and could see that a doctor could reach people that a minister might not be able to reach. One book that inspired me to study medicine was “Microbe Hunters” by Paul DeKruif. 

My pre-med education was spent at Washington Missionary College, later Columbia Union College. I enjoyed the science subjects but the religion classes were the most enjoyable because of several terrific religion teachers, such as Leslie Hardinge, whose brother taught at Loma Linda University.

I got married in 1956 after graduating from college, and my sweetheart, Ruth, graduated from nursing school the same year. We have four children and 13 grandchildren, and we praise God that all our children are faithfully serving God in some phase of ministry for the SDA church.

I interned at Washington Sanitarium, later Washington Adventist Hospital. My only formal post-graduate education was a MPH degree from Harvard in 1968.

My real post-graduate education was on-the-job training in surgery and tropical medicine as a missionary in Nigeria and Ghana from 1962 to 1970. In 1967 our family experienced the Nigerian Civil War. My wife and children had to be evacuated to Ghana and I stayed on in rebel territory with my partner, Sherman Nagel, for three months until the church advised me to leave and join my family in Ghana, since my wife and I were expecting twins. After finishing my MPH at Harvard, I returned behind enemy lines as a Red Cross volunteer for another three months and headed up a team of physicians and nurses at the same hospital, allowing Dr. Nagel to return to the United States for a much-needed rest.

On returning to United States, our family settled in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where I joined the staff of what is now Park Ridge Hospital as a family physician with eventually a geriatric subspecialty. I enjoyed my practice very much. I can’t say I ever dreaded going to work. My last 10-15 years of practice before full retirement in 2003 were spent doing geriatrics mostly in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and hospital care settings instead of office practice. Ruth and I live a very satisfying life with church and family activities.

Our oldest child, Lynette Glass, is a nurse working as a stay-at-home mom. Her husband is a math and science teacher in an SDA academy in West Virginia. They spent six years as missionaries in Tanzania, and now their two oldest children, both nurses, have been student missionaries.

John, our oldest son, has a math major, but has spent his working years mostly in mission-oriented work. He and his family pioneered Paata SDA Mission in Chuuk in Micronesia in 1994, which now has 100-plus church members and an elementary school of about 85 students.  They are now currently working with Restoration International, an SDA-supporting ministry for family spirituality.

Leland, the “oldest” of our twins, has a computer programming major and has his own self-supporting ministry, producing Christian interactive stories for young people. He spent a year as a student missionary in Taiwan.

Roger, our youngest, has a major in Technology Education. He spent a year as a student missionary in Tanzania, and currently, with his wife and two children, has been in charge of Paata Mission for the last 11 years.