Dr. Agatha Thrash

I met Dr. Agatha Thrash back in 1974 when I went to stay with my brother-in-law Ted Nick and my sister Betty Rae. I managed the Country Life Natural Food Store (it was not then a restaurant) for nearly a year. Well, I was manager and sole worker. I didn’t really get to know Dr. Agatha very well, but I’d have lunch with Dr. Calvin Thrash on a regular basis.

I note that I never really connected, and indeed my life has gone very far from the sort of life style upheld at Uchee Pines Institute (then Yuchi Pines). I’m no longer Seventh-day Adventist which puts me multiple steps for self-supporting SDA programs and institutions.

But I do want to highlight a paragraph from the article on Dr. Agatha Thrash in Adventist Today:

As a pathologist, Thrash had a goal to establish a large lab to process tests for doctors throughout the region. But when she became an Adventist, “Jesus got a hold of her and said ‘I have a different way I want you to go, not just making a lot of money. I want you to change lives.’ And she did.”

I would note that my father also worked in self-supporting Adventist institutions, as medical director of Wildwood Sanitarium and Hospital. By the time I was working at Uchee Pines, he was a missionary in Guyana, South America.

It was an interesting year I spent at Uchee Pines (still can’t get used to the new spelling/pronunciation!). I was very young, but also a member of staff, so I spent a year as neither fish nor fowl. Yet the Drs. Thrash still had a significant impact on my life. I know those who survive her will find peace in the certain hope of the resurrection.