William Larimer Mellon, Jr.

Who was William Larimer Mellon, Jr.?

William Larimer "Larry" Mellon was an American philanthropist and physician.

He was born in Pittsburgh June 26, 1910, the son of financier William Larimer Mellon, Sr. and a grandnephew of U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon. His family fortune derived from Gulf Oil, Westinghouse, BNY Mellon, Koppers, Alcoa and others.

He was married twice, the second time to ranch hand and single mother Gwen Grant. He attended Princeton University for one year, worked for his family's Mellon Financial and served in the OSS during World War II.

He owned and operated a cattle ranch in Arizona until, at the age of 37, he read about, and then studied, Albert Schweitzer's medical missionary work in Gabon, and resolved with Schweitzer's encouragement and guidance to create a similar third-world hospital. He and Gwen Grant Mellon enrolled at Tulane University; he received his medical degree in 1954 at the age of 44, and she became qualified as a medical-laboratory technician.

In 1956, they opened the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti in Deschapelles, Haiti.

He died in Deschapelles at the age of 79 with cancer and Parkinson's disease, on August 3, 1989.