S T A N F O R D M E D I C I N E

Volume 16 Number 3, SPRING 1999


Eureka Appreciation

BY CHRISTIE KNUDSEN

Eureka, Calif., recently honored one of its most beloved citizens -- a Stanford School of Medicine alumnus TED LORING, MD, (CLASS OF '46) -- by naming a street on the grounds of the town's original hospital for the physician. Loring, who was Eureka's first board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist when he moved to the town in 1951, had delivered approximately 6,000 babies by the time he retired in 1992. Hundreds of people attended the street-naming ceremony, including many of Loring's former patients.

"When I finished my residency in '51 and told people I was going to Eureka, they couldn't understand why I wanted to leave San Francisco," says Loring, who pursued Stanford's San Francisco ob-gyn residency program after serving two years in the US Army Medical Corps. "But I knew I wanted to practice where I felt more of a need for my services. If I'd stayed in San Francisco, I would have been just another doctor."

His dedication to his community has made Loring a "highly respected, beloved person, in Eureka and elsewhere," says his former classmate Ralph Schaffarzick, MD. When a 1964 flood washed out roads in and around Eureka, Loring took a helicopter to the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation to help an expectant mother and to bring back a premature infant for hospitalization.

Loring's community efforts include volunteering with the Salvation Army and the Boy Scouts, and helping save one of the town's two hospitals from bankruptcy.

Like Loring's patients, his fellow physicians value his commitment. He was a California Medical Association delegate for 25 years, a California delegate to the American Medical Association, and, in 1988, his accomplishments earned him the California Medical Association's Rural Physician/Frederick M. Plessner Memorial Award.

Now retired and still living in Eureka, Loring remains connected to his former patients and to his adopted hometown. In 1995, he attended the wedding of one member of the first set of triplets he delivered. And last year, he helped establish the Union Labor Health Foundation to provide health care grants for low-income individuals and non-profit organizations. SMD