SNOHOMISH — When a plane he was on hit heavy turbulence and was losing altitude at a terrifying rate, an unflappable Dr. Leeon Aller got out of his seat and walked down the aisle playing his harmonica to soothe the frayed nerves of fellow passengers.
He would often explain to people the extra “e” in his first name was to scare off lions.
The longtime Snohomish family physician who founded a medical clinic, an international charity and a prison ministry died Tuesday after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 88.
“He was drawn to solving problems,” said Dr. Brad Gerrish, a medical partner and close friend of Aller for 40 years. “He was a visionary and had a wonderful capacity to envision a solution and the creativity and dogged determination to inspire others.”
A one-time American Family Physician of the Year, Aller is said to have delivered 9,000 babies during a nearly four-decade career in Snohomish.
The San Francisco native, who went to high school in West Seattle, Aller left behind a larger-than-life legacy and is responsible for spreading needed medical care and aid to the poorest regions of the world.
Gerrish, who retired from the medical profession last year, first met Aller after he heard him give a speech on family medicine at the University of Washington. Aller was on the advisory board that helped shape the UW’s department of family medicine, which is now consistently ranked the best in the country.
Gerrish was a medical student at Dartmouth College, but decided to finish his studies at UW’s School of Medicine. He graduated in 1969 and joined Aller’s Snohomish Family Medical Center in 1972.
Aller was a decorated military medic before becoming a doctor. He witnessed horrific carnage in the Pacific theater during WWII and later on the battlefields of the Korean War.
He was awarded a Silver Star — the nation’s third highest decoration for valor — and retired as a colonel and surgeon general in Washington state’s National Guard.
His experience in war later led to his advocacy for the peaceful use of the military in Guatemala, where he spent years battling disease and extreme poverty in nation torn apart by a 36-year civil war that included genocide and created by some estimates 1 million refugees.
In 1985, Aller and his wife, Virginia, founded the Hands for Peacemaking Foundation. They helped build a school and hospital and launch a reforestation effort in the frontier coffee region of Santa Cruz Barillas, Guatemala.
From 1985 to 1998 the Allers made 48 trips to the Mayan town in the mountains of northwest Guatemala, where many have no access to electricity and clean water.
The charity continues to provide medical care and job training, and plans to begin construction next year on the Aller Center, a building to house job training programs for villagers.
Pete Kinch, Everett’s Mayor from 1990 to 1994, is now the unpaid executive director for the charity, which operates on about $250,000 annually in donations from churches, clubs and individuals.
Kinch remembers Aller, harmonica in hand, soliciting donations from the Port Gardner Rotary Club in the late 1980s.
“They were going where others don’t go,” Kinch said of Aller’s charity, which delivered disease immunizations directly to people in remote villages. “They were working, living and staying where the greatest need was.”
Aller founded the Snohomish Family Medical Center in 1953 and retired in 1989.
In 1972, partners of the medical practice created a sabbatical program, which included a rotating position for one physician to always be away, often foregoing income for a year to volunteer their services in the poorest corners of the globe.
Ethiopia, South Africa and New Guinea are among the places Aller went to help people.
Once, in New Guinea, a poor villager fed him chicken for dinner. Aller didn’t find out until later that it was the last chicken in the entire village.
“My wife, Virginia, and I both agreed that we wanted to do things to bring peace to worlds that were so unequal from ours,” Aller told The Herald in 2003, explaining his desire to help people in the developing world.
He also was active with causes at home.
He was a Boy Scouts of America leader for about 50 years, cared for at least 60 foster children over the years and was a founding member of a prison ministry called Match 2.
He was a member of the Snohomish First Presbyterian Church church and was guided by a deep faith.
Decades after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he gave a commencement speech there and ended with an uplifting rendition of “Amazing Grace” that he blew on his harmonica, Gerrish said.
His daughter Lisa Larson, 48, Snohomish, remembers her dad as a loving and generous man, who would tell scary campfire stories and pull “roller coaster” maneuvers in his small Cessna.
“One of his personality traits was he wanted to heal the world,” she said. “That was one of his biggest goals.”
He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Virginia, and a son Leeon “Butch” Aller III, of Roseburg, Ore. He was preceded in death by a son, Lance, and a daughter, Toni.
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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