wish I had another lifetime to live," says G. Gordon Hadley, M.D., dean emeritus of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. "There is so much that still needs to be done." Yet for the God and church and university he loves, Dr. Hadley has already crowded into the first fourscore-plus years of one lifetime an amazing record of accomplishments.
A 1943 graduate of the College of Medical Evangelists (CME)--as Loma Linda University (LLU) was known prior to 1961--Dr. Hadley first served in the military during World War II. After completing a residency in pathology at CME, he moved to the "city division," as the Los Angeles campus of CME was then known, to join the medical school teaching staff.
From then until Loma Linda consolidated its two campuses in 1962, Dr. Hadley taught not only at CME/LLU but on church mission assignments at medical colleges in Vellore, India, and Kabul, Afghanistan.
For nearly 10 years, beginning in 1977, Dr. Hadley served as dean of the LLU School of Medicine. In 1986 he was invited to become director of the General Conference health and
temperance department, where he served until 1991.
Returning to the medical faculty at Loma Linda, Dr. Hadley was asked by the university in 1994 to assume leadership of a new hospital in China--the Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital in Hangzhou. A Hong Kong-based media magnate and philanthropist, Sir Run Run Shaw generously underwrote financing of the hospital, and asked Loma Linda University Medical Center to assume responsibility for its operation and management. Shortly after its opening in May of 1994, Dr. Hadley became its chief executive officer--a position he held until 2001.
Twice a year, Dr. Hadley returns to offer his services at the Kabul University School of Medicine in Afghanistan. An octogenarian who shows no signs of slowing his pace, Dr. Hadley continues to pour his energies into the work of educating and healing exemplified by the divine Healer and Teacher--a mission Gordon Hadley accepted as his own as a student at Loma Linda. "Our best days," he says with genuine conviction, "are still ahead."
