Conrad, Paul (1918-2008)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2008 Aug 11 p. 7

Birth date: 1918 Sep 23

text of obituary:

Missionary doctor gave a life of medical service

Conrad served in India, Ethiopia

By Mennonite Mission Network staff

GOSHEN, Ind. — In India, Ethiopia and the United States, physician Paul Conrad served his patients with humility, caring and Christ's love.

Conrad, 89, died July 17 at his home in Goshen.

With his wife, Nancy, Conrad spent 15 years providing medical care and ministry in Dhamtari, India, primarily at Dhamtari Christian Hospital.

He served as medical superintendent through Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities, a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network. Conrad then headed Shantipur Leprosy hospital near Dhamtari for one year, where he introduced innovative techniques for preventing complications of leprosy.

In Ethiopia in the 1940s, he helped start a hospital on the site of an old cotton gin.

During his medical career in the United States and broad, he practiced medicine, trained physicians in general medicine and surgery, and was a clinical psychiatrist.

In a statement read at his memorial service, Conrad's children and grandchildren thanked their father and grandfather for his faith, courage and humility, for living simply and for telling them that he was in India for his beliefs, "not necessarily to change the beliefs of others, but only to try to make one small . . . patch of our world a somewhat better place."

Conrad was born on Sept. 23, 1918, in Portland, Ore., to Lester and Mabel Geiger Conrad of Canby, Ore. He attended Goshen (Ind.) College and Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago.

He married Nancy Henley of Scottdale, Pa., on Jan. 24, 1946, in Nazareth, Ethiopia, where together they established and operated a hospital under the auspices of MBMC for three years.

After returning from Ethiopia, Conrad spent several years as a general practitioner in Welch, W. Va., as a company doctor for U.S. Coal and Coke Co., a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The family then served under MBMC in India.

The Condrads returned to the United States in 1967 so he could complete a residency training program in psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he was assistant professor of psychiatry from 1969 to 1977. After leaving the university, he spent 22 years practicing psychiatry in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Conrad was a member of the Mennonite Medical Association, which named him Doctor of the Year in 1987. He also served on the board of directors for Associated Mennonite Biblical seminary in Elkhart.

He is survived by his wife, Nancy; two sons, Glenn and his wife, Margaret, and Paul and his wife, Martha; a daughter, Mary Conrad Lo and her husband, Mathew Lo; daughter-in-law Yvonne Kraus Conrad Forman and her husband, Robert Forman; and eight grandchildren. Yvonne Forman was married to Conrad's son John, who preceded him in death.