Stanley Gordon Sturges

Sturges and his wife were very involved in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Sturges contributed to their quarterly journal, writing a piece titled “Ellen White’s Authority and the Church” in the summer 1972 issue.

Sturges received the American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award in 1965 and the Pacific Union College Honored Alumnus Award in 2016.

In 1961, Sturges was named one of America’s Outstanding Young Men by the US Junior Chamber of Commerce. The ceremony was broadcast on national television on January 20, 1961, and Sturges appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, the Today show, and met President Richard Nixon. He was also featured in Life Magazine’s September 14, 1962 special issue of “100 Outstanding Members of the Take-Over Generation."

Sturges had five children (Cheri, Stan Jr., Charlene, Jim and Mark) with Raylene Sturges. His fourth child, Jim, was delivered in a Land Rover on the way to Kathmandu in 1960.

Sturges and community members built the hospital themselves over one and a half years. It was officially opened and dedicated in a ceremony on May 18, 1959, which was attended by former Prime Minister BP Koirala, the Minister of Health, and 3,000 townsmen.

Two years after graduating from medical school, Sturges arrived in Nepal with his two children and wife, Raylene Sturges in 1957. The Seventh Day Adventist Church supported their mission, and Sturges later wrote in his autobiography that his “motivation to enter mission service centered chiefly in the desire to witness in a practical way to the love of Christ for all.”

Sturges played for the 1955 Loma Linda university volleyball team that went on to win second place at the national championship. It was the only organized sports program the university ever had. After beating big-name universities in the Los Angeles area and qualifying for the National Tournament, his team came within 2 points of winning the national championship against Florida State University. Sturges was named to the 1955 All-American team for the Collegiate Division.

Stanley Gordon Sturges (October 14, 1929 – July 12, 2019) was an American physician and missionary. He and his wife, Raylene Sturges, were the first Seventh-day Adventist medical missionaries to Nepal in 1957. They founded the Scheer Memorial Hospital in Banepa, which is the only Western hospital in Kavre District and serves half a million people. In 1961, the US Junior Chamber of Commerce named Sturges one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans.

Sturges was born in Congo on October 14, 1929 to medical missionary parents. His father, Dr. J. Hubert Sturges had a medical practice for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Congo. He had an older brother, Dr. Hubert F. Sturges who opened a missionary practice in Ethiopia and a younger brother, Dr. Keith W. Sturges who eventually took over the Scheer Memorial Hospital. His sister, Elizabeth Taylor was also a medical missionary in Kenya.