Murdock, Thae

Raymond Jacob Reitzel (1888-1984) was born in Mitchell, South Dakota, and received his undergraduate degree from Cornell College, where he became active in the YMCA. He served as an officer of the YMCA International Committee and representative for the Red Cross in European prison camps, first in Hungary in 1916, among Russian prisoners of war. Eventually he was transferred to the Russian headquarters in Minsk to work with POW’s on the Eastern Front. War prisoner relief work led him to Siberia in 1918, where he met Gail Linnae Berg (1894-1969), a YMCA secretary from San Mateo, California. The two married in Vladivostok in 1919, where they remained until their return to the United States in 1920, as the Russian Revolution gained ground in Siberia.

Raymond Reitzel subsequently enrolled in medical school at Harvard, and their two children Ray and Thae were born in Boston. Upon Ray Sr.’s graduation, the family moved to Galveston, Texas, where Ray taught clinical pathology. In 1930, they finally settled in California, where he directed laboratories for San Francisco General Hospital, taught clinical pathology for the University of California Medical School and as a member of the field staff at the University of Indonesia introduced clinical clerkships to their teaching curriculum. He also ran a private practice in internal medicine, and retired from medicine in 1971. The Reitzels were active members of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Burlingame, and Ray often performed in stage productions. In later life, the couple recorded their life stories in two volumes, Gail’s Shifting Scenes in Siberia and Ray’s All in a Lifetime .

...