Gwen Grant Mellon

Gwen Grant Mellon (July 22, 1911 – November 29, 2000) was an American medical missionary and the founder and administrator of Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti in Deschapelles, Haiti. As a single mother she worked as a riding instructor on a dude ranch in Arizona, where she met neighboring rancher William Larimer Mellon Jr., heir to the Mellon fortune. Shortly after their marriage in 1946, the couple decided to emulate the work of Dr. Albert Schweitzer in an underdeveloped country and enrolled at Tulane University, he to receive his medical degree and she to study tropical medicine. She planned the building of the 75-bed hospital in Haiti, paid for from the couple's personal fortune, and worked there from its opening in 1956 until her death. She was honored with the first Elizabeth Blackwell Award in 1958 and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 2000.

Life Gwendolyn Grant was born on July 22, 1911, in Englewood, New Jersey, to William Wright Grant, a construction engineer, and Katherine Hall, a former New York debutante. She grew up in Geneva, New York. She was a graduate of the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and in 1934 received her bachelor's degree in sociology from Smith College.

With her first husband, John de Groot Rawson, she had four children, one of whom died.

The couple enrolled at Tulane University, where he earned his medical degree in 1953 and she studied tropical medicine and hospital administration. The couple chose to build a hospital in an impoverished location in Deschapelles, Haiti, where 185,000 people were serviced by two government health clinics. Both she and Mellon are buried on the grounds of the hospital they founded.

Awards and honors On September 27, 1958, she received the first Elizabeth Blackwell Award at the 50th anniversary convocation of William Smith College. In 2000, she received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism.

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