Partly Cloudy, 36° F
(May 6, 1916 - May 17, 2012)
Former Powell resident, Lowell Dean Kattenhorn, died May 17, 2012 at Spring Village in Grants Pass, Ore. He was 96.
Dr. Kattenhorn was a General Practitioner who served Powell in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.
He was born May 6, 1916, in Merrill, Ore., to Rudolph and Ina Kattenhorn. His father was a blacksmith and later an automobile mechanic. His mother was training to be a teacher. She was a sincere Christian woman who had a strong sense of raising her children to know God. With a younger sister, Carol, they moved to Medford, Ore., for a time and ultimately to College Place, Wash., in 1927 where his mother wanted the children to be educated in Seventh-day Adventist schools.
The early 1930s brought the Great Depression, and the family had to rent its home to help meet expenses. Lowell’s mother’s health began to fail, and she died in 1934. Lowell told of working in the orchards and onion fields and milking cows for the Nichols Dairy as he attended Walla Walla College Academy and went on to college.
While attending academy, he met Doris Peterson, and they took their friendship to college. They were pre-professional students and were married in June of 1936 after completing college in three years.
Lowell was accepted at the College of Medical Evangelists, now called Loma Linda University. This necessitated a move to Loma Linda, Calif., and the next two years in Los Angeles, followed by an internship in Boulder and Denver, Colo., which he finished in 1941.
Dr. Kattenhorn had joined the medical practice of Dr. Harold Coulston in Powell after his internship. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 which plunged the United States into World War II, Dr. Kattenhorn was called into active duty military service as an Air Force medical officer. He was discharged a Major in 1945 and returned to Powell in February of 1946 to rejoin Dr. Coulston’s practice.
In the early years of his practice, between 1949 and 1953, Dr. Kattenhorn was in the top five physicians for delivering babies in Wyoming.
In 1956, he left his practice in the hands of Dr. Dick Balkins while he spent a year in Karachi, Pakistan. In 1968, he went on a three-month mission to Seoul, Korea.
Then in 1971, he left Powell to accept a position at the Portland Adventist Hospital. In 1974, he moved on to Tillamook, Ore. In Tillamook, his wife, Doris, died in 1975. He later married Oma Radford and moved to Grants Pass, Ore., in 1976.
In 1978, he served three years in a medical mission in Blantyre, Malawi, a mission he repeated from 1990 to 1994. Dr. Kattenhorn enjoyed the practice of medicine and the interaction with patients, which began for him in the era of home deliveries and house calls. In all, he spent more than 50 years in general practice.
He enjoyed gardening, travel and completed some beautiful counted cross stitch. During WW II, his wife taught him to knit his own wool socks when they were unavailable for purchase.
He is survived by his wife Oma at Spring Valley, Grants Pass, Ore.; daughter Anne (J.W.) Richman of College Place, Wash.; sons Dick (Carleen) Kattenhorn of Lafayette, Colo., and Jon (Jeanette) Kattenhorn of Boise, Idaho; nine grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and one great-great granddaughter.
A memorial service will be conducted June 9 in College Place, Wash. Memorial donations to charities in his name would be appreciated.
He was preceded in death by his parents; his sister, Carol Corbett; and his wife, Doris Kattenhorn.
