The Passing of Wayne Van De Graaff

November 24, 2009

"I saw Gpa VDG for the first time in several years tonight.  We arrived at his home in Calexico, CA late in the evening.  I walked up a ramp my dad had built the year before.  It connected the sidewalk up to their blue porch, nearly seamless.

My Mom had warned me that there would be a change in Gpa, but it was not what I met at all.  I expected a dose of senility with moderate disability and aging effects.

Instead, I was quite literally stunned.  He was gentle; so gentle.  I was mesmerized by the constant opening and closing flicker of his eyelids.  His vision followed each of us as we took turns crowding up to the head of the bed.  He was on one side, his left, his head on a pillow.  The whole sense of the room was the most simple love.  Like that of a young child's birth.  Just simple and sweet.  His arm and shoulder were exposed on occasion of his position.  I rubbed my hand along it, in now what I recognize as a gesture of affection.  Where it had been exposed to sunlight there were large discolorations and scabbing, my fingers caught slightly on them.  His upper arm was unaffected by age, and was soft, supple, and very white.

We would all ask the same question, "How are you doing Gpa?"  For an onlooker I'm sure it appeared absent-minded, as his response was consistently, "terrible, but now that you're here."  After several "terrible" responses we got our chuckling out and thought of different ice-breakers.

It was funny, in the short time I leaned over and hugged him, and asked how he was, I was compelled at once to tell him all the good and lovely from my life.  I wanted him to know I'd fallen in love, choosen the gospel, received my degree, and knew him.  I rarely know him, but from reunions in my youth and stories told at the dinner table.   I revere him because of who my dad is- they are blood.

Yet, wanting to expose myself came as a result of his completely exposed state.  Not vulnerable, but immediately open and truly uninhibited.  It was as if his past was gone, and with the passage of time also went his burdens.

I feel that this may be the state in which he meets our God.  Indeed, I said, silently, my hello and goodbyes.  I don't know what the future brings, but I am now at peace with his passing.  He has ultimately fought the good fight.

-Chelise"

My grandfather, Wayne J. Van De Graaff, will forever stand in my mind as one of the most charitably influential persons  I've both seen and known.  His first foundation was his family, to which I owe my own allegiance, and his second was "the clinic."  The clinic is the Calexico Valley Orthopaedic Clinic, co-founded with Dr. Nichols.  Dr. Nichols, an orthopaedic surgeon (bone, joint, spinal cords) , wanted to find a way to serve the underprivileged children in Mexico.  With the aid of my grandpa as a translator, they started an institution that brought children across the Mexican border into Calexico, where they would receive preliminary screenings for handicaps ranging from cleft feet to cleft palates.

Wayne J. Van De Graaff and Dr. Nichols, co-founders of the Valley Orthopaedic Clinic.

My grandpa serving "the clinic" during his young adulthood and the time of his young family.

My Dad grew up on the same staple of service.  He and his two brothers helped prepare the location of the initial clinic.  My grandpa bought the upper story of a run-down building, and it tooks several weeks of cleaning to prepare the site.  By cleaning, I mean shoveling bird droppings three feet thick; the dense matter had accumulated across the entire floor!  My dad swears it never stopped smelling.

 

Over time, the clinic gained both popularity and financial backing, allowing them to move to a finer (and better smelling) location just across the border.  The picture below has been the location of the clinic since my youth.

My father stands at the open door of the clinic.  His youth was spent serving the patients here.

The Van De Graaff family have all been influenced by the service of my grandparents Van De Graaff.  At one point, we all aspired to earn our medical doctorate and learn spanish to live out our lives serving at the clinic.

One of the foundational purposes of the clinic was to analyze and treat orthopaedic cases.  Many of the children receiving care had lived with their  symptoms for years.  Some patients had grown into young adulthood unable to walk, spending the bulk of their life crawling on the dust near the feet of their peers.  After screenings, some cases needed further care, and they would be transported to hospitals into northern California, and all the way to Salt Lake City for Primary Children's Hospital.  One such youth was getting a facial skin graft, and stayed at our home.  I still remember taking him and his mother for a tour of Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah.

I attribute the great charity of my Dad to his father and mother.  He frequently tells a story of his eighteenth year, growing up with the clinic.  When other young men were out playing ball or having fun on Saturday mornings, my day was translating, checking in youth, and watching over the sick.  One afternoon he helped a young man put on two prosthetic legs, and watching the illustrious beginnings.  It was the first step the young man had taken in his entire life- and he was eighteen years of age.  The same age as my father.

The clinic provided care to hundreds of thousands of children.  At its zenith, several hundred children a month would be either treated or sent to a hospital to receive treatment.  My angel Grandma bought a van and would drive the children long hours into the night.  My Grandpa was at one point the head of immigration, and was able to work on the paperwork allowing them to cross the border.  After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the bulk of trafficking stopped due to changes in immigration regulations.  It still functions today on a very minimal basis.

When compared with the medical technologies of the current day, our blessed Valley Orthopaedic Clinic would seem primitive and even rudimentary.  Prosthetics were molded against plaster-of-paris casts, sculpted by hand.  The x-ray, or radiation room, was a small enclosure with an old metal barrier fencing the patient from radiologist.

The pictures below are beloved to my heart- I'm afraid they'll be the last remnant to testify of the thousands of faces who entered.  There are documents citing some families couldn't afford the travel, so a mother would send her young child on a trip of hundreds of miles alone.  

There is a small film of dust over some of the products stacked neatly on the shelves.  It's as if they've been respectfully lined, and are waiting for a final commendation of the goodness they've witnessed.  The halls and corridors and a sacred temple to our family, and those that received free care here.  It is the place where "Hope Meets Help."  (See side of blog for a small video)

The bars seen though the back door are the protective fencing that divides the United States from Mexico.  It is a mere fifteen feet.

In addition to providing immense service through the establishment and running of the Valley Orthopaedic Clinic, my grandfather was also a man of great civic responsibility and respect.  Below is the name plaque of the municipal building named in his honor.

The last thing I did in my grandparents home before I left was to clean their bathroom.  I'm going to dearly miss that special home of joyful memories where my father grew into an honorable man, through the example of his father and mother.

The article citing his passing, as found in the daily newspaper: 

http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2010/01/29/local_news/news07.txt