Rev. Herman Richard Matern, M.D., F.A.C.S.
1927-2020
Herman Richard Matern (Dick), 93, of Phoenix, Arizona died on Christ the King Sunday, November 22, 2020. Dick was born on August 18, 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Herman Ludwig Matern and Catherine Ruby Schrack Matern. At the time, Herman Ludwig was attending medical school at Hahnemann Medical College. Dick’s brother, Donald Irvan Matern, was also born in Philadelphia. Upon completing medical school, Herman moved his family to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he took a general practice position at Hahnemann Hospital. In Worcester, the family grew as Walter Edward Matern, Robert Schrack Matern and Donna Louise Matern were born. Two other children died in infancy.
Knowing from a young age that he wanted to be a medical missionary, Dick went away in grade 9 to attend the Lutheran preparatory school, Concordia Collegiate Institute in Bronxville, New York. Concordia Collegiate was a feeder school for Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. While at Concordia Collegiate, he was described as being “top of his class, never missing an opportunity – no matter the topic- of expressing his opinions – no matter what they might be, whenever or wherever he thought the opportunity arose.” This description of his character held true, certainly, for the rest of his life. Ever dedicated to his studies, he also participated in sports and was known to be a “speed demon” on the track team. He also was on the chess team, football team, the glee club, the drama club and was a cheerleader!
During these formative years, Dick was bitten by the travel bug, a trait he kept the rest of his life and later shared with his family. He spent summers traveling and exploring the United States, even hopping trains to get from state to state. One summer, he rode a motorcycle all the way to Alaska and worked on a road crew. He loved to recount his encounters with bears!
After graduating from Concordia Collegiate in 1945, Dick went on to attend Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, a seminary for the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Here, Dick furthered his studies in Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic. In later years, Dick loved and studied his Jerusalem Bible and would also study and read from the New Testament directly in Greek. He also learned American Sign Language and frequently preached at a church for the deaf. His sister Donna remembers that Dick always aspired to be a medical missionary and to live in Africa. Seminary was the first steppingstone toward this goal.
During seminary, Dick enrolled at Washington University to complete prerequisite science courses for medical school. Upon completing seminary, moved to New York City to attend Cornell University Medical College. During medical school, Dick would often be invited to preach at local Lutheran churches. Dick spent part of his internship at the Indian Health Service hospital in Fort Defiance, Arizona.
After graduating from Cornell University Medical College in 1955, Dick went on to a residency in general surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Dick had joined the US Army Reserves and his residency was interrupted when he was called up to serve in Germany. He was stationed at army hospitals in Nurnberg and Wurzburg and served from 1957-1959 as a Captain in the US Army Medical Corp. Upon returning to the United States, he finished his surgical training in Detroit and then joined the United States Public Health Service as a commissioned officer and was sent to work in Staten Island, New York. When a colleague there was going to be stationed in Vietnam during the war and did not want to go, Dick volunteered in his place and was stationed in Nha Trang, Vietnam from 1966-1967. Here, Dick learned combat medicine and honed his surgical skills, learning to work with the limited resources at hand, a skill he found necessary the rest of his calling as a surgeon working in remote and underserved regions. Dick was also especially struck by the dire need for pediatric surgical care in Vietnam as he was frequently called upon to help injured children. His younger brother, Sergeant Robert (Bobby) Matern, of the US Marine Corp was stationed in Vietnam at the same time and was killed in combat in 1967, just prior to a planned weekend visit with his brother. After bringing his brother’s body home, Dick stayed in the US and was stationed in Gallup, New Mexico, as Chief of Surgery at Gallup Indian Medical Center.
It was in Gallup that he met his wife, Wilhelmina Barton, and the two would be married for 52 years. As the story goes, “Willie was the pretty operating room nurse and Dick was the handsome young surgeon.” Of Willie, Dick told a Navajo Times reporter, she was pretty and had a “delightful, very winsome quality,” but that is not what initially attracted him. “In the operating room, you don’t even know who you’re working with. Everyone is wearing a mask.” But soon he learned to recognize Willie’s style. “She would hand you what you needed before you even asked for it. Sometimes she would hand you something that wasn’t what you asked for, but it was exactly what you needed.” Dick and Willie married in Phoenix, Arizona at Christ Lutheran Church on Indian School Road on August 12, 1968 with Willie’s three children in attendance and the organ repairmen as witnesses. Willie became Dick’s pillar of support, helping him to carry out his bigger-than-life dreams and ideas.
Dick and Willie lived in Phoenix for a short while and worked for the Phoenix Indian Medical Center. Willie’s children, Joy, Deborah, and Jonathan Martin also moved with the couple and attended Christ Lutheran School. In short order, Dick was recruited to Elko General Hospital in Elko, Nevada and the family moved again. There in Elko, in 1968, the family welcomed a new addition, Roberta, named for his deceased brother, Bobby.
A quiet American life was never in the cards for Dick, however, and he felt called to return to Vietnam. The suffering of the children he had encountered there was always on his mind. In 1974, Dick and Willie joined World Relief Commission and spent a year working at the children’s hospital in Hoa Khanh, near Da Nang, Vietnam. Deborah, Jon and Birdie joined them as well, while Joy stayed in the US to study nursing. Here, Dick learned to care for horrendous trauma to children during war – everything from fractures and amputations to recreating missing bits of skulls from ribs. A year later Dick was moved to the teaching hospital in Hue, Vietnam. By 1975, American forces were withdrawing from Vietnam and the family had to evacuate. Willie and the kids managed to get to Saigon and were evacuated to Bangkok, Thailand. Dick felt compelled to stay to help his patients still in hospital. Eventually, he and his students and nurses had to join the evacuating crowds on the road heading south out of Hue. Dick spent 3 hair raising weeks on various US Naval ships, setting up various ad hoc field clinics and hospitals, rescuing and treating refugees, rounding up supplies and medicines as best he could.
In the midst of the chaos, he managed to get back up to Hue and rescue his beloved dog, Chả Giò. The terrified pup was zipped up into Dick’s ski jacket and in that way made it onboard the USS Pioneer Contender. Dick was devoted to his pets and Chả Giò was only one of long string of “man’s best friends”, others being Fowder, Bandit, Chico and Amelia.
Aboard the Pioneer Contender, Dick, along with four nurses cared, as best they could, for 7000 refugees, and with standing room only, they battled dehydration, infectious diarrhea and even the measles. The ship found harbor 36 hours later and Dick was off again on another ship finding and rescuing more refugees. Eventually, he wound up in a refugee camp on Phu Quoc Island in the Gulf of Thailand, and flew between there and Saigon, to bring medicines and supplies. By the end of April 1975, Dick was forced to realize that he was no longer safe and on April 28, 1975 left Saigon via one of the last helicopters out of the US Embassy as the country fell to the North Vietnamese forces.
After reuniting with his family in Seattle, Washington, they settled in Los Angeles, California so that Dick could take up a fellowship in pediatric surgery –to acquire a little finesse to his surgical technique. His passion and skill were remembered by a colleague from Vietnam who recruited him to a mission hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Dick, Willie and Birdie moved to Nepal in 1977 to join the United Mission to Nepal and he set to work at the Shanta Bhawan Hospital. Here, he continued to treat patients of all ages, but his passion was always for children. His techniques for cleft lip repair were excellent and many young people who once were without marriage prospects found their lives completely changed after coming to him for repair. Children with clubfeet were also a passion of his. Whenever he, Willie and Birdie took a trekking vacation, there would be an impromptu clinic or two in villages along the way.
An avid nature lover, Dick developed a love of birding while living in Nepal, where the tiny kingdom boasts over 900 species of birds. While trekking, he always had his binoculars around his neck and his well-thumbed Birds of Nepal bird book in his hand.
Five years after first arriving in Nepal, Dick started his own small mission and hospital - Friends of Shanta Bhawan and church, Pratigya (Promise) Church. Finally finding a calling for his seminary training, Dick became ordained in the Lutheran Church, taking his orders at the church of his childhood, Concordia Lutheran Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1983. At his small clinic and church, he trained young men and women in field health and the Lutheran Catechism simultaneously. The idea was to spread The Word and bring physical healing – doing this work himself but also training other to do so as well.
In 1984, Dick began to experience severe, debilitating vertigo and tinnitus (ear ringing). He was diagnosed with Meniere’s Syndrome and had to move back to the US for treatment for a while. This was a very difficult time for him – he wanted so badly to be back in Nepal continuing the work he had started. Eventually, he did get back to Kathmandu and his clinics in the surrounding hills, but his success caught the attention and ire of some. In 1998 he found himself jailed for spreading Christ’s word and work. The US consul intervened, and he was able to get back to the US.
Once back on US soil, Dick and Willie found themselves completing a circle. They again served the Indian Health Service, this time in Chinle, Arizona and then after a few years in Ft. Defiance, Arizona, the very same place Dick had volunteered at when he first started practicing medicine. During these years, they became very involved in the Navajo Lutheran Church at Many Farms, Arizona, just north of Chinle. Eventually, Dick and Willie retired and moved to Phoenix to live closer to Birdie and her growing family. However, he continued to drive five hours north each weekend to preach at Many Farms and then visit inmates at the jail in Chinle.
In 2001, Dick was recognized by the American Medical Association, which presented him the Pride in Profession Award. This award is presented to physicians who “have made extraordinary efforts to help the communities they serve by providing urgently needed health care services to the indigent, underserved and high-risk patients.”
Dick strove to be a servant of God and he was just that.
Alzheimer’s Disease slowly took away Dick’s ability to safely travel and his final years were spent in Phoenix with Willie carefully looking after him. Dick passed away peacefully on Sunday, November 11, 2020 surrounded by love and in the arms of his devoted wife.
Dick is preceded in death by his brothers Robert Matern (1967) and Donald Matern (2010). He is survived by his wife, Wilhelmina J. Matern, four children: Joy Martin of Flagstaff, Arizona, Deborah (Martin) Gwilt of Phoenix, Arizona, Jonathan Martin of Flagstaff, Arizona and Roberta Matern and her husband Stephen Taylor of Phoenix, Arizona, eight grandchildren: Amy, Sara and Christopher Cegielski, Dustin and Walker Martin, Robert Gwilt, and Kai and Maryn Taylor and four great-grandchildren: Gaige, Elijah and Mae Lynn Gwilt, and Quivo Martin.
Viewing will be the A.L. Moore Grimshaw Mortuary at 10 am, Wednesday, December 2, 2020, followed by a graveside service the Arizona Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery, Phoenix, Arizona at 1 pm.
The link for the live feed for virtual attendance is: https://www.facebook.com/ALMooreGrimshaw/
A Facebook account is not necessary.
A memorial service will be held at the M. L. Moore Grimshaw Mortuary at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Alzheimer’s Association at http://act.alz.org/goto/HRMatern
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