Edith Seaton Edith Bender Seaton and Ronald S. Seaton met on the first day of freshman orientation for Wooster's Class of 1947 in the fall of 1943. They had come to the College from rather different directions: Edith was born in West Virginia but grew up in Milton, Pa.; Ron had been born in China to medical missionary parents and enrolled at Wooster from Princeton, N.J.

While Edith spent four consecutive years at Wooster where she majored in religion and philosophy, Ron left Wooster in February 1944 to join the Navy V-12 Program. After writing to each other every day for four years, they were ultimately reunited (and united in marriage) in December 1947. Ron studied at Trinity College (Conn.) and received the M.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where Edith worked as a secretary at Faith Presbyterian Church.

After Ron started his surgical residency, he joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps and was sent to Korea where he was in charge of a 400-bed surgical unit for prisoners.

In 1956, Ron completed his residency and the Seatons began what would become more than three decades of missionary work in India. Their work there was punctuated by a four-year stint in the States from 1970 to 1974. For three years, they lived in New York where Ron was director of Health Affairs for the Presbyterian Church. In 1973, they went to Pasadena, Calif., where Ron attended the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary and where, together, the Seatons wrote their first book, Here's How: Health Education by Extension. In 1974 they returned to India sponsored by three mission boards to work in community health training. Ron began training community health workers, including pastors of village churches. During one two-year period the Seatons spent full time training community health trainers under the auspices of the Voluntary Health Association of India. They wrote a health course to be included in the seminary curriculum for pastors, and compiled a manual for community health trainers. They wrote a second book, Health Is for Everyone, which was published in Madras.

During this period they served in a number of hospitals where Edith taught English to student nurses. At Miraj Medical Centre she also coordinated foreign medical students who came to serve as part of their medical course, conducted tours of the hospital for foreign visitors, and published a newsletter about the Medical Centre for supporting churches in the U.S.

From 1988 to 1991 the Seatons worked with the Christian Medical Association of India, first in Nagpur and later in New Delhi. They retired from mission service in 1991 and returned to the U.S., where Ron was surgeon at Summers County Hospital, Hinton, W.Va., until 1999. He now directs a wellness center in Hinton and trains community health workers in outlying mini-centers. Edith volunteers at the hospital and teaches several Bible classes.

The Seatons are parents of four sons: Douglass '71, Paul '73, Ronald 'x76, and Jonathan 'x82. As Ron explains, "The most significant contribution we can claim for Wooster is that Edith and I initiated a tribe of 11 Seatons, including spouses, who attended there."