Dedication of Loma Linda Sanitarium

The dedication of Loma Linda was something Ellen White could not miss. Invited to give the dedicatory address, she made a trip south to meet the appointment and to attend, a week later, the dedication of the Paradise Valley Sanitarium. She, with her son W. C. White, Sara McEnterfer, her niece May Walling, and Clarence Crisler, reached Loma Linda on Friday afternoon April 13.6BIO 29.2

She was glad to arrive a few hours before the Sabbath began. She sometimes traveled on the Sabbath and sometimes arrived at her destination after the Sabbath had begun, but she said, “It is very painful to me to be arriving on the Sabbath.”—Manuscript 123, 1906.6BIO 29.3

By the time the sun was setting over the orange groves, casting light on the snowcapped peaks beyond, Ellen White was comfortably settled in the “nine-room cottage,” one of several on the eastern end of the Sanitarium grounds. She found the surroundings beautiful—the air filled with the fragrance of orange blossoms, the lawns green and flower gardens colorful, and the glow on Mount San Gorgonio a rich pink from the last light of the sun.6BIO 29.4

Sabbath morning in the Sanitarium parlor Ellen White gave a sermon on Second Peter. Sunday morning was spent looking over the property as guests came in from all over southern California for the dedication that afternoon. About 500 gathered in the chairs set up on the lawn under the pepper trees. Among the guests were “several physicians and other leading men from the surrounding cities.” The speakers’ platform was an improvised structure about three feet off the ground and covered overhead and in back by a striped canvas.6BIO 29.5

Ellen White made her way to the platform for her talk and took her seat beside Elder Haskell (Manuscript 123, 1906; see photo). When her turn came to speak, she stood, according to one of the few pictures of Ellen White in action, just to the left of the small table in the center of the platform. Part of the time she placed her right hand on the table, while she gestured with her left.6BIO 29.6

Her long, dark dress came within two or three inches of the platform floor. Her jacket, or the top part of the suit, was also long, coming well below her waist, but the buttons reached only to her waist. Her plain white collar was fastened with a simple brooch, and she was hatless, though several in the congregation and on the platform wore hats.6BIO 30.1

She was beginning to show her age, with a slight bulging at the waist. Her illnesses, along with her difficulties with her heart and hip, kept her from getting the exercise that she needed, so it is only natural that at her age she had become somewhat rotund.6BIO 30.2

In her talk she reviewed the providences of God in the purchase of Loma Linda, delineated the purposes of establishing sanitariums, and stressed the values of its then rural location in the treatment of the sick (The Review and Herald, June 21, 1906).6BIO 30.3

She would keep in close touch with Loma Linda, both by correspondence and by visits when these could be arranged. She urged that in its educational features nurses and physicians should be trained there. The training of physicians at Loma Linda was a phase of the work with which she would be involved in 1909 and 1910.6BIO 30.4