On a hot afternoon in Cleburne, a tiny, older lady looked inside a parked car and stepped back in the shade. Had she forgotten where she had parked? Did she need help?

When approached by a friend of mine, Johnetta Sanders, she told an amazing story.

She was waiting for her granddaughter, who was shopping inside, and Verlene Youngberg was not confused or lost.

Soon she would return to Honduras to be help carry on a dream she and her late husband, Dr. Stephen Youngberg, began almost 50 years ago, the Pan American Health Service.

I visited with Youngberg and her daughter, Aileen Youngberg Zelaya-Jackson in Keene to find out more. I was overwhelmed by what I learned.

In 1960, the Youngbergs moved to the mountains of Honduras with their two sons and two daughters to an area of great need. They cleared out a space in the jungle for four used buses filled with medical equipment and supplies.

Youngberg, a nurse, had scouted and chosen the area the year before, when her father, Dr. Joe DeWitt, provided the capital for the land.

The news that a medical doctor had arrived in the Lake Yojoa Valley spread rapidly through the mountain grapevine.

In the first three months Dr. Youngberg saw 9,000 patients with a wide range of medical conditions.

Underlying virtually all the children’s problems was malnutrition.

“The poor people in Honduras eat only beans and rice,” Youngberg said. “By the time the father is fed and then the mother, there is often very little left for the children.”

Pan American Health Service, Inc., a nonprofit, Christian, medical and educational agency devoted to combating childhood malnutrition, grew out of that beginning.

“It is not what we have done; it is what God has done” Youngberg said. “All these years he has provided.”

I was shown an overview of the history of the project. As the photographs appeared, Youngberg called many of the children by name.

At LLU in California, when Stephen was studying to be a doctor and she to be a nurse, they had prayed for the time when God would lead them to a place where, in their words, “the need was the greatest.”

They worked first among the poor of Tabasco in southern Mexico. He suffered from hepatitis twice, malaria three times, and then developed tuberculosis.

They moved to her home town of Harlingen.

When he recovered, he opened a medical practice there. On Sundays he helped out at a Matamoros clinic, where he met Dallas businessman, Walter Tynes.

Tynes’ son needed emergency medical care and came to the clinic. He and Stephen Youngberg became friends.

Tynes had his lawyers set PAHS up as a nonprofit organization and helf two big fundraisers for the organization.

He also encouraged other philanthropists and pharmaceutical companies to come on board.

“We were shocked when Walter died five months after we arrived,” Zelaya-Jackson said. “I remember that even though we didn’t know where the money would come from, my dad said that we couldn’t afford to leave.”

“In Honduras there were 2.5 million people in a country the size of Tennessee,” Youngberg said. There were only 275 doctors in the entire country. There were none in our area, except Stephen.”

More and more malnourished children were brought to the Youngberg’s compound for treatment. They had swollen abdomens, stick legs, visible worms, scabies, ribs showing.

Some died soon after arrival. For them, it was too late.

In 1965, a nutritional rehabilitation center was opened for little patients with Kwashiorkor protein deficiency, as well as other calorie and vitamin deficiencies.

These children, typically from 1 to 6 years of age, usually stay from three to six months before returning home.

Over the years, no one has returned to claim some children, less than 5 percent.

Not willing to subject these children to further uncertainty and rejection, they are kept in the children’s home.

They are trained and educated to make a difference in the poverty-ignorance cycle. Bonds of affection often bind them to their children’s home family, closer than to their biological families, they said.

“We are so proud of our young adults,” Youngberg said. “Our house mother, Hilda Mendez, was brought to us when she was three, so very malnourished. She is still with us after 42 years — the best listener in the world. So calm and loving.”

Zelaya-Jackson has served as program director and president of Pan American since her father’s death in 2001.

Her children, Nellie, Anita and Steve, are team members in nursing and finance management. Youngberg assists in many ways.

They said Stephen Youngberg’s determination to find a way to prepare soybeans on site to serve the children was a breakthrough.

He knew the high protein value of the soybean, but he also knew the bean could not be digested raw.

He attended a food processing university and learned about Combustion Engineers in Chicago, which ground coal.

He visited them and was told if he found that roasted soy beans could be ground they would furnish equipment.

Stephen Youngberg contacted Dr. Ed Lucia, a food technologist at Texas A&M; University. Experiments validated the premise. The equipment was donated.

Meanwhile, the children’s home population was growing. It began with three children. Within three months, there were 40, in six months, 100.

“We had surplus U.S. Army cots,” Verlene Youngberg said. “We put four to a cot — two at each end. When the children were so malnourished that they had no strength, that arrangement worked. As they got well they were running up and down between the cots.”

In 1964, PAHS was given 13 wooden buildings by the Morrison-Knudson Company of Idaho after a hydroelectric canal was completed. They charged $1,000 for all 13 buildings.

“One of their employees paid $500 of that out of his pocket,” Youngberg said with a smile. “It was wonderful; we had more room.”

An article from September 1974 Guideposts magazine named Dr. Stephen Youngberg as its choice for their Good Samaritan Award.

This exposure gave the Youngbergs contributions they desperately needed.

The medical alumni of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Loma Linda University have been contributors from the beginning.

Because of the jungle’s humidity, termites have greatly weakened those structures.

“Daddy was always finding some extra lumber somewhere and trying to patch everything,” Zelaya-Jackson said.

In 2001 the Youngbergs made a trip back to the States for a convention for LLU alumni. Afterward, at a stop in Burleson, Stephen was about to walk cross a street when he was struck by a vehicle.

“I couldn’t find him anywhere, so I went to the police,” Zelaya-Jackson said. “They told me that my father had been rushed to Harris Hospital. Before I left the police parking lot, I learned he had died.”

Family members gathered and knew what Dr. Stephen Youngberg would want. They took his body back to his place of service in Honduras for burial.

“The jungle was full of people who loved Stephen,” Verlene Youngberg said. “We had to have the service outdoors as no building was big enough to hold the people. Little children huddled behind his casket with their blankets while people raised their hands to share their memories. They all thought that the medical care and children’s home had ended.

“But Aileen and her children announced, ‘It’s not over. We will be here to carry on!’ ”

The crowd cheered and cried.

There are 35 children in the nutrition program, 40 others with no parents available, and 25 children of four single mothers on campus.

Often children are so malnourished when they arrive that they have to be transported to a hospital for a blood transfusion.

The center spends $1,000 a month on disposable diapers alone.

Zelaya-Jackson said disposable diapers are not a luxury; they are a necessity.

“Their little legs are so tiny and thin that cloth diapers and rubber pants won’t stay on them,” she said.

Volunteers and student missionaries are a vital part of their survival.

“Student missionaries play with and tutor the children and assist with child care at the hospital and the children’s homes,” Zelaya-Jackson said. “We always need help with building and maintenance, and we are looking for business-oriented people who can stay for six months or more to help develop and expand our industries such as the bakery, concrete block-making, gardening and nursery.”

Groups from Huguley Memorial Medical Center and Alvarado were recent volunteers. Families from Cleburne are among their contributors. University students, studying nutrition, and church crews come to study and work.

Melaleuca membership catalog sales provide limited income for family members and the organization.

“We have three full-time nurses and a village physician offering his discounted services when needed,” Youngberg said. “We welcome and appreciate visiting volunteers in medical and other professional lines of work. We need sponsors for more than 80 grade-school, academy and college students, as well as for the vocational and literacy training of more than 200 young people and adults on our campus and from the community.”

Visiting volunteers are gradually constructing new concrete block buildings. The work has been ongoing for more than seven years.

We might have never known this story if one of us hadn’t sensed that someone needed help.



This story was suggested by Johnetta Sanders.



Larue Barnes may be reached at laruebarnes@yahoo.com



For information, visit

www.PanAmHealth.org

P.O. Box 888

Keene, TX 76059

Fax/Phone: 866-641-2646