Everett hospital leader was devoted to work, family

Published 12:08 am Sunday, May 2, 2010

When Alfred Muller Jr. was administrator of Everett’s General Hospital, the father of three would sometimes bring his boys to work. Today, they remember his love of the hospital, and of people.

“I’d be walking the halls with him,” said Steve Muller, the middle son. “He would stop. There could be a woman scrubbing the floor, and he’d know the names of her kids, or ask about a son by name.

“It was everybody. He loved people,” Steve Muller said.

Alfred Muller Jr. died April 4, Easter morning. The Marysville man was 87 and had suffered from cancer.

He served as administrator of Everett General from 1960 until he retired in 1985, growing deep roots in a community that wasn’t originally home.

In 1994, General Hospital on Colby Avenue merged with what was then Everett’s Providence Hospital on Pacific Avenue to form what is now Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, with its two campuses.

During Muller’s tenure, General Hospital added a patient and administration tower, established an obstetrics unit, and grew with the critical care tower and the Saunders Heart Center.

At his father’s memorial service, Steve Muller said that he joked about Muller’s being offered a hospital leadership job in Newport Beach, Calif., before coming here. “Everett or Newport Beach? I don’t know if I would have made that choice,” the Marysville man quipped.

Alfred Muller Jr. is survived by his wife of 61 years, Katherine “Kaye” Muller; sons Thomas, Stephen and Gregory; grandsons Nicholas and Schuyler; and many other loved ones and friends.

He was born March 8, 1923, in Santa Fe, N.M., to Alfred and Mary Hayes Muller. In 1940, the family moved to San Bernardino, Calif., where Al graduated in 1942 from San Bernardino High School.

He served in the Pacific Theater during World War II with the U.S. Army Air Force. He met his future bride, a surgical nurse, at San Bernardino Community Hospital. They were married July 18, 1948.

Muller was always a champion of education, his sons said. He earned a degree in business administration from San Diego State University in 1954 and a master of public health in hospital administration from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956. Before coming to Everett in 1957 as General Hospital’s assistant administrator, he held that position at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.

Greg Muller, his youngest son, remembers his father’s great patience. “He seemed to have endless patience to listen to people’s stories or complaints,” he said. He remembers his father roaming the hospital to check on patients and their families.

“Years after the fact, I was told by a parent of a child in for surgery that, although against policy, my dad arranged for the parents to spend the night in their son’s room,” said Greg Muller, who lives in Olympia.

Al Muller had a hand in medical organizations; his church; and the Rotary Club of Everett, where he served as president in 1979 and 1980. He served as president of the Seattle Area Hospital Council and the Washington State Hospital Association, and as chairman of Blue Cross of Washington and Alaska. He was also an elder at Everett’s First Presbyterian Church.

“I was Rotary president the year before,” said Tom Rainville, of Mukilteo. Rainville was one of the chairmen of the General Hospital Foundation when Muller was the hospital’s leader. “He realized the hospital was going to have to grow,” Rainville said. Property acquired by the foundation back then is today being used for the massive expansion at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, he said.

“Al’s forward thinking provided all of that,” Rainville said. “I had a lot of respect for him.”

Greg Muller said his father focused on work and family. “He wasn’t one who liked to travel. In the summer, we’d rent a cabin on Lake Goodwin. He would stay in Marysville to be close to work, and come to the cabin on weekends,” he said.

Walking was a favorite pastime. Greg Muller said that back in the 1980s, a small neighbor boy named Kevin would take walks with Al Muller. “One day as Kevin and his mom were driving through the neighborhood, Kevin started to recount to her which neighbors lived in which houses, and what they were up to,” Greg Muller said. The mother asked how the boy knew all that. “He said that’s what he learned walking with my dad,” he said.

“He was the steel cable that held us together,” said Tom Muller, his eldest son. “He was always there for us, always supportive, always encouraging. When we fell, he was there to pick us up, dust us off and put us on the path again.”

Kaye Muller said her husband wasn’t the sort of leader who sat in his office.

“He was all over the hospital,” she said. “He knew everybody and everybody’s family. And still, after all these years, he would always go to the employee picnic.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.