Dr. Hugh Riordan’s Memorial Service January 12, 2005 Comments of Dr. Ron Hunninghake I am Dr. Ron Hunninghake, the Medical Director at The Olive W. Garvey Center for Healing Arts. I have worked side-by-side with Dr. Hugh for the past 17 years. As you all know, Hugh did things his own way. One such special way of his was that attended the funerals of his patients. Oh, there were many he couldn’t get to. But he did his best to go. He wanted to go, to honor those who “had made the transition from life as we know it.” These are words he often wrote to bereaved family members. It is my great honor today to offer you a few thoughts about Dr. Hugh at this, his own memorial service, having made the Grand Transition himself. Dr. Hugh was a man of hope. "Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible." This and several other quotes I will be using today dot the walls of The Center. Dr. Hugh allowed himself to become a symbol of hope to thousands of patients for whom the flame of hope was fading. If you were to search all his writings, view all the tapes of his lectures at The Center, and spend 17 years working with him like I have, you would not find one comment of his dishonoring the noble profession of medicine or any discrediting any of his colleagues. Dr. Hugh was however guilty in the first degree of thinking outside the medical box. In the words of J.K. Gailbraith, "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." Doctor Hugh never attacked conventional medicine; he challenged conventional thinking. In the immortal words of Malcolm Muggeridge, words that Dr. Hugh loved to quote: "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream." He was not afraid to defy convention, again, not for the sake of defiance, but for the sake of the advancement of medical care in this country. It was for the sake of HOPE! Not "fluff" as he once told me, but for real medical progress, based upon a new way of understanding the underlying cause of chronic illness. This new medical care made use of an objective laboratory evaluation to characterize the unique nutritional biochemistry of the ailing patient. While this type of medicine has many names, he liked the name that was bestowed by his good friend, Linus Pauling: orthomolecular medicine. By carefully studying the whole patient, mind, body, spirit, and using "the right molecules" to normalize their biochemistry – devastating illnesses could often be helped. "He, who has health, has hope, and he who has hope, has everything." So Dr Hugh Riordan courageously offered himself and the beautiful Center he created as a symbol of hope for frustrated and weary patients everywhere. "While they were saying 'it cannot be done,' it was done!" Now, I believe this irritated a lot of people. Dr. Hugh felt this irritation. Don’t think it didn’t bother him. We all know that beneath that large Mongolian countenance was a very sensitive guy. So, as consolation, he started writing his famous trilogy, Medical Mavericks. These books recount the lives of famous doctors who dared to step outside the box of convention at their time in history. Dr. Semmelweise — who dared to suggest that his obstetrical colleagues, by failing to wash their hands after examining women who had died from childbirth fever, were actually infecting other women in labor — he was driven out of Vienna. What about Dr. Lind, who discovered that citrus fruit was the cure for scurvy? It took over 40 years for his discovery to be implemented. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer: "All truth passes through 3 stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third. It is accepted as being self-evident." Yes, Dr. Hugh Riordan was an icon of hope. But, was he an iconoclast, an attacker of tradition? I don’t think so. Perhaps that is a lingering misperception. His only intent was to help his patients discover why they were ill, and then help them treat those causes. His was willing to approach this in novel ways. Was he an irritant? Of course. He liked the attention and he wanted to goad people into thinking for themselves. "If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking." Words he lived by. Was he afraid to take the lead? As Lewis Gizzard once said: "Life is like a dogsled. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery doesn’t change much!" Dr. Hugh Riordan wrote Medical Mavericks because he recognized himself as a medical maverick. History has shown that medical mavericks are necessary for medical progress. He knew that, as a maverick, he would be shunned by those who misunderstood his message. He was willing to bear that. He was willing to be viewed as irritant to conventional medicine. But irritants, inside oysters, become pearls. He may have been perceived as an irritant, but if so we were his oyster. We took his vision into ourselves and we began coating it with real action. I know that many of you are here today because you in some way have contributed in helping to make this wonderful man’s irritating dream into a thing of lasting beauty. Hugh Riordan gave the Pearlmaker Award to many of you for your willingness to be an oyster. Thank God for the Pearlmakers of the world. His final message to all of us was written on a yellow pad next to his fax machine. We believe he wrote these words minutes before he collapsed in his office last Friday, and I quote: "What we learn from these superb observers and orthomolecular doers can literally change our lives for the better. That is why Medical Mavericks volume three has been written." Dr. Hugh Riordan was a superb observer and an orthomolecular doer. Let me conclude with the words of Andrew Carnegie: "As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." Now, let me conclude my part with a very short original musical composition for you to listen to, entitled Dr. Hugh’s Pearl. On July 24th of 2004, the composer, Dr. Alejandro Jose recorded Dr. Riordan’s brainwaves as he was remembering the creation of The Center many years ago. The brainwaves were digitally converted into sound. The composition begins with the sound of the sea. Then come the brainwave sounds, which, like a grain of sand in the oyster, is of an irritant quality. Then, layer after layer of new creation is added, until finally we are listening to a thing of great beauty. Please feel free to close your eyes and remember…Dr. Hugh’s Pearl. You will need RealMedia Player to play Dr. Hugh's Pearl. Click HERE for software installation. Back to Dr. Hugh's memorial page