RAYMOND RITTER SR., LONGTIME PHYSICIAN, DEAD AT AGE OF 92

Raymond A. Ritter Sr., a beloved physician and health care pioneer, community leader and philanthropist in Cape Girardeau for more than 60 years, died Friday evening, May 30, 1997. He was 92.

"He'll be missed, not only by the medical community but by the whole community," said former Cape County Presiding Commissioner Gene Huckstep, who served with Ritter on the board of directors of St. Francis Hospital and called him "a very dear friend. If you needed any advice, whether medical or in any part of life, he was the very best. When Dr. Ritter talked, you listened."

Calling Ritter "the outstanding physician in the Cape area for a half-century," longtime Cape surgeon Charles P. McGinty said, "His influence was great on all phases of medicine. He was a fearless man in trying to do what was right for the practice of medicine."

Said fellow Rotarian and longtime Southeast Missourian editor John L. Blue, "He was a real historian of Cape County medicine, and it's amazing the medical advances he saw in his career. But Dr. Ritter was such a generous community leader, so active in fundraising drives for worthy projects that people would say, when he showed up at their offices, ~`How much do you want?'"

Ritter was the patriarch of a family of physicians. Two sons, two nephews, a son-in-law and two grandsons followed him into the practice of medicine, facts in which he took great pride.

Ritter was educated in a rural, one-room school in his native Warren County, Mo. Orphaned at 14, he moved to St. Charles, where he lived with an older brother and finished high school. He was a graduate of Central Wesleyan College, after which he received a research fellowship in zoology at the University of Missouri.

"It was a struggle for me to get my education -- a real hard struggle," Ritter told an interviewer. "A few times I was on the verge of quitting. About that time, someone would come along and encourage me, give me a boost when I needed it." He later enrolled at St. Louis University School of Medicine, from which he was graduated in 1932 after working his way through as an instructor in basic science.

In 1933 he moved to Cape Girardeau and established a medical practice that has since grown into Orthopaedics Associates of Southeast Missouri. A son and grandson practice there today. "In those days doctors did everything from delivering babies to mending cuts and bruises and broken bones," Ritter later told an interviewer. "It was similar to what general practice is today."

Ritter's early years in Cape Girardeau were marked by the community service that he continued the rest of his life. Ritter served on the city's board of health, during which time sanitary milk production and inspection were established, restaurant grading was begun and latrines eliminated. For 40 years, without charge, he treated students, brothers and priests of the old St. Vincent's College, the venerable former Catholic seminary overlooking the Mississippi river. In 1977 college officials honored him with a Raymond A. Ritter night, establishing an award in his name.

In 1933 he married Helen Hammer, and together they had four children. She died in 1969, and in 1975 he married Lillian Kimbel, who survives. Ritter had nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

Active as a Boy Scout leader and in innumerable fundraising drives, he served as merit badge counselor for 24 years and later became a district chairman of the Southeast Missouri Boy Scout Council. In 1957 he served as scoutmaster for 1,400 scouts attending the national jamboree at Valley Forge, Pa. From there he took three troops of 28 scouts to a world jamboree in England to commemorate the 50th anniversary of scouting. This was followed by a tour of Europe, and altogether, Ritter and his scouts were gone for two months. He was later honored with the Silver Beaver award for distinguished service to scouting.

He served as president of the Cape Girardeau County Medical Society and was a regular contributor to its journal. Ritter headed the staffs at both of Cape's hospitals, was vice president of the Missouri State Medical Association and of the Missouri State Surgical Society. During the polio epidemic of late 1940s, Ritter joined with others to establish the polio treatment center at old St. Francis Hospital. In 1972 he became one of the first physicians to serve on the board of directors of St. Francis Hospital. In 1961, Gov. John Dalton appointed him to the State Board of Healing Arts, where he served for seven years.

Ritter invested in the old Farmers and Merchants Bank, later purchased by Boatmen's Bancshares of St. Louis, and served on its board of directors. He was a longtime, active member of the Downtown Rotary Club and was honored as a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International. He was also a 32nd Degree Mason and a Shriner.

In 1974 Ritter was honored by the Exchange Club with its Golden Deeds award for exceptional community service. He was a former deacon and elder at the First Presbyterian Church.

Ritter retired from surgery in 1978 after a heart attack. He continued in active employment as medical director of the Southeast Missouri Professional Standards Review Organization.

Ritter wrote and published a book about his decades of small-town medical practice entitled "A Healing Life: Memoirs of a Missouri Doctor." In a newspaper interview, he said of the memories evoked in writing the book, "It brought a lot of joy and happiness and occasionally a few tears. But that's the way life is." Recalling his own struggle to earn an education, the Ritters donated proceeds from the sale of the book to St. Francis for the establishment of a scholarship. He also helped establish an exchange scholarship at Southeast Missouri State University for German students, to whom he extended entertainment and medical care.

In later years Ritter traveled the world with his wife, visiting dozens of countries.