Richli, William Campbell (1913–1985)

Dr. William Campbell Richli was a missionary medical doctor in the Philippines and in Africa known as the “Flying Doctor of the Philippines.” He also distinguished himself as the first individual to cross the Pacific in a solo flight in a single-engine plane, and as a gifted self-taught engineer who restored hospital facilities and designed and built hydro-electric plants to benefit the institutions he was serving.

Early Life

William Campbell Richli was born on November 14, 1913, in Loma Linda, California to Dr. William Richli and Christine Campbell Richli.¹ His father, Dr. William Richli had been a mechanical engineer when he first heard the gospel message of the Seventh-day Adventist and became one of the first graduates of the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda (later Loma Linda University). Dr. William Richli married Christine Campbell, a nurse from Canada. They had two children: William Campbell Richli and Elmira Richli Buxton, who became a medical missionary as well.²

Education and Marriage

William Campbell Richli attended several schools to complete his formal education from primary to his medical training. He attended Lodi Academy, Pacific Union College, College of Medical Evangelists, and the University of Pennsylvania.³ After his completion of studies at the College of Medical Evangelists in 1937, he took his internship at the St. Helena Sanitarium and Hospital.⁴ In the following year, he married Lilith Newball who was a graduate of New England Sanitarium and Hospital School of Nursing.⁵ They had two children: Ramona Ann and William Rudolph.

Career and Ministry

Dr. Richli began his surgery residency in 1940 at the infamous penitentiary on Rikers Island, New York. When World War II broke out the family returned to Stockton, California. In 1944, he was called to serve in the Army and assigned the work of rehabilitating fighting men who had been injured in battle. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of captain.

While being in the army service, Dr. Richli also ventured into another career–mechanical engineering. He had no formal training but studied it in his spare time.⁶ In October 1946, the Seventh-day Adventist Church called Dr. and Mrs. William C. Richli to serve in the archipelago of the Philippines as the new medical director of the Manila Sanitarium and Hospital (today Manila Medical Center). In Manila, he quickly established his reputation as a gifted surgeon and self-taught engineer while attending to the needs of the patients and working to rehabilitate the hospital which had been severely damaged during the war.

The Flying Doctor

In March 1951 Dr. Richli tendered his resignation and set up the Richli Surgery Clinic where he treated a variety of conditions (often for free) and launched the first successful commercial blood bank in the country. Realizing there was a great need for medical care in the countryside, he devised a mobile surgical theater which he took with him to operate all over the island of Luzon. He also developed a specialty in operating goiter patients, performing almost 2000 thyroidectomies.⁷ He eventually ventured across the whole country as far as the island of Mindanao.⁸ Because of his policy of treating everyone that needed it without regard to their financial resources, his name soon became a household word all over the archipelago. People traveled many miles and waited several days to be treated or operated wherever Dr. Richli and his team came to set up their operating theater. He often hung up the mosquito nets and set up the operating table in schools, community centers, private homes, or wherever it was possible. All he required was a roof over his head, and if the occasion demanded it, he could dispense with that too.⁹ In the early days, he and his team would travel by bus, train, or ship. Soon, realizing that he needed a more efficient mode of transportation, he bought a small Stinson L-5 plane, took flying lessons, and within a few weeks, was flying all over the archipelago to offer his services wherever he could land, hang up his mosquito nets and improvise with whatever he could find to set up an operating table. He flew thousands of hours, often in very hazardous conditions to bring help to thousands of people who did not have access to medical services. He developed a reputation for undertaking bold surgeries, saving the lives of hundreds of people and for developing innovative technical solutions to the challenges of operating under primitive conditions. His technical know-how, audacity and selfless dedication earned him the love and respect of countless Filipino people.

In 1958, he and his family returned to California to set up a medical practice in Colton where he practiced medicine for five years. But he eventually decided to return to the Philippines, this time with a more powerful plane. He bought a used Beechcraft Bonanza 35 four-seater, 1948 model, and fitted it to be able to fly from the United States to the Philippines, over Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Japan. When he reached Manila on August 26, 1964, he had spent 85 hours in the air, flying in difficult weather and surmounting countless physical challenges, as well as facing technical and administrative hurdles to become the first private pilot to fly his own single-engine plane solo from the United States to the Philippines.¹⁰

The Visionary Engineer

In 1955, the Church’s Mountain View College, at the time a new educational institution located deep in the mountains of Mindanao, had run into severe financial difficulty. Its future depended on its ability to provide students with an income. This proposition was tied to its ability to exploit the surrounding forest and run a sawmill to generate cash. But the college had failed to obtain the necessary permits from the government allowing it to operate. Dr. Richli had taken an interest in the young college, realizing that it was not only key to developing Adventist youth in the southern part of the country, but also in facilitating the eventual success of a future medical school at Philippine Union College. He set up a corporation and rehabilitated the Mountain View College sawmill at his personal expense, employing students and donating the profits to the college without even taking a salary. Soon he initiated the installation of a hydroelectric power plant that provided electricity for the entire campus. When it started operating on January 1, 1958 it became the first of its kind in Southern Mindanao and gave a significant boost to Mountain View College. With the cheap power generated by the plant, seventeen industries could be created, providing employment to the students and guaranteeing a future for the college.¹¹ The Mountain View College paper The Views observed, “In the hospital, he is a surgeon; in the air, he is a pilot; in the shop, he is an engineer; in the forest, he is a logger.”¹²

His Service in Africa

In December 1975, the General Conference voted a call for him to join Gimbie Hospital in Ethiopia as physician and medical director.¹³ He served there for five years¹⁴ before being transferred to the Adventist College of Lukanga in Zaire where he set up a small hydroelectric power plant, then to Songa Adventist Hospital deep in the jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He served there until a last transfer to Heri Mission Hospital in Tanzania. In June 1985 Dr. Richli lost his life in an automobile accident in Tanzania while returning from South Africa.¹⁵ He is buried next to the Seventh-day Adventist Church of Heri Mission Hospital.

Legacy

In June 2004, ADRA Tanzania celebrated the completion and the opening of a hydroelectric power plant on the property of Heri Mission Hospital. The plans for this project had been drawn up by Dr. Richli, but his premature death postponed the realization of this project by almost 30 years. It was eventually financed by ADRA Tanzania with a grant from the Swedish government.

More importantly, while the electric powerplants in the Philippines and Africa are operational to this day, Dr. Richli left a legacy of thousands of restored lives in the Philippines and Africa, and of hundreds of men and women who were the beneficiaries of his mentoring and financial sponsorships to help them complete their studies. Inspired by the love of Christ, completely dedicated to the message and mission of the Seventh-day Adventists, bold and innovative in his practice as a medical doctor and self-taught engineer, visionary in what could be accomplished for the love of God and His people, he remains in the memory of countless men and women on two continents as the quintessential missionary and servant of God.

Sources

“For the Record: Died, William, Richly.” ARH, August 8, 1985

Mahon, Jack. “Reports Show Church Growth.” ARH, February 7, 1980.

Minutes of Meeting of the General Conference Committee, December 24, 1975.

Personal Service Records of William Campbell Richli. Southern Asia-Pacific Division, Silang, Cavite, Philippines.

“Richli, Christine Campbell,” obituary. Pacific Union Recorder, June 27, 1949.

Woolsey, Raymond H. Flying Doctor of the Philippines. Washington, D.C.: Review and

Herald, 1972.

Notes

1. “Richli, Christine Campbell,” obituary, Pacific Union Recorder, June 27, 1949, 12.↩

2. Raymond H. Woolsey, Flying Doctor of the Philippines (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1972), 15-17.↩

3. Personal Service Record, William Campbell Richli, Southern Asia-Pacific Division Archives.↩

4. Woolsey, Flying Doctor of the Philippines, 15.↩

5. Ibid.↩

6. Ibid., 16.↩

7. Woolsey, Flying Doctor of the Philippines, 58.↩

8. Ibid., 43-53.↩

9. Ibid., 63.↩

10. Ibid., 160.↩

11. Ibid., 136-137.↩

12. Ibid., 97.↩

13. Minutes of Meeting of the General Conference Committee, December 24, 1975, 75-467.↩

14. Jack Mahon, “Reports Show Church Growth,” ARH, February 7, 1980, 17.↩

15. “For the Record: Died, William, Richly,” ARH, August 8, 1985, 23.↩