Dr. Lloyd M. Hummer

Dr. Lloyd M. Hummer, former Medical Director of the Wichita Clinic, dies at 88.  Under his leadership the Wichita Clinic made its transformation into a large multi-specialty facility

Lloyd Hummer’s influential career in medicine almost didn’t happen. The soon-to-be magna cum laude graduate of McPherson College was planning to begin graduate work in Chemistry at Purdue University in the fall, 1953. He had heard that it was nearly impossible to get into medical school without family connections, but took a chance on the MCAT, the standardized medical school exam.

Dr. Hummer’s worries were hard earned. He had grown up on a dusty, windblown farm on the Oklahoma Panhandle during the “worst hard time”: The Great Depression, made even more miserable by the Dust Bowl. His parents had been settlers, his father having moved from McClouth, Kansas to the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle around 1900; and his mother from Lyons, Kansas to Cordell, Oklahoma by covered wagon in 1895. For someone whose mother and father had once lived-in dugouts, and whose earliest memories were Black Sunday (the great dust storm of 1935) and a bedroom in a dank cellar (where he slept until his father built a third bedroom when he was seven), a college education and medical school seemed far away.

All of that moving, and settling, and striving – and the encouragement of his mother, a rare college graduate herself – perhaps explains the ambition. Hummer graduated from the University of Oklahoma medical school (1957), where he became a junior-elect member of the highly-selective medical honorary, Alpha Omega Alpha; he did a year internship at George Washington University Hospital; and served as a Captain in the US Army in Augsburg, West Germany (1958-61). Augsburg was a revelation. In just his 26th year, a descendent of German peasant farmers had gone from milking cows in the morning before school to serving as a doctor in the Army at a time when a person could travel Europe on a military salary.

Captain Hummer returned to Oklahoma City for his medical residency, joined the Wichita Clinic in 1965, and practiced general internal medicine and oncology until his retirement in 1999. As its Medical Director (1983-98) he oversaw the Clinic’s move from the original home at Rutan and Douglas to the current building (now Ascension Medical Group Via Christi) on Murdock; and its transformation into a large multi-specialty conglomerate with satellite locations. Prior to that he served on the Wichita Clinic’s Board of Directors (1968-80) and as its President (1972-74), inspected and accredited medical clinics throughout the country, and trained residents at Wesley Hospital as an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine for the University of Kansas School of Medicine. He chaired Wichita’s Walk for Mankind (1981-82), and was a patron of the Wichita Art Museum.

Hummer was the center of a large family, and held them together with his quiet strength through some difficult times. The same protective care and steadiness that made him an admired doctor was felt by his loved ones at home. In his old age he would periodically marvel that a child of the Depression had put his many children through college.
After his retirement, he traveled with his wife, Mardeane, had dinner every Friday with a close group of friends, visited his scattered children, took grandchildren to Disney World, and supported the Kansas Health Ethics nonprofit, which he helped establish in 1992 and which provided quality-of-life counseling.

Born in Beaver, Oklahoma on April 17, 1932, Lloyd Hummer died peacefully of natural causes early Sunday morning, December 20, in Manhattan, Kansas at the home of his daughter and son-in-law Whitney and Steve Short, while holding the hands of his daughters Whitney and Karen, and with his daughter Erika virtually present. He was predeceased by his father Melvin Hummer (1975), his mother Pearl Hummer (1995), first wife Dorothy (Nave) Hummer (2003; divorced 1975), and in 2013 by his wife Mardeane (Frasco) Hummer. He is survived by his older sister, Verlla Coughenour of Lindsborg; and his seven children, Whitney (Steve) Short, Manhattan, Kansas; Karen (Ron) Lickteig, Portland, Oregon; Erika (Duane) Frerker, Las Vegas, Nevada; Hans (Sara) Hummer, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan; John (Amy) Hummer, Las Cruces, New Mexico; Dena (Jack) Albright, Carbondale, Colorado; and Chris (Jodi) Hummer, Portland, Oregon. From them he had fifteen grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and two soon-to-arrive great-grandchildren.

Cremation is planned with services to be held when it is safe for everyone to attend.
Online condolences may be left for the family through the Yorgensen-Meloan-Londeen Funeral Home website at www.ymlfuneralhome.com.

Memorial contributions may be made to either the Second Century Scholarship at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, checks may be made payable to the University of Oklahoma Foundation with designation of Fund # 50861 in the memo line, PO Box 258856, Oklahoma City, OK 73125-8856 or online gifts may be made at https://giving.oufoundation.org/, or the National Gaucher Care Foundation (NGCF) | National Gaucher Foundation at https://www.gaucherdisease.org/financial-support/care-program/.

The Yorgensen-Meloan-Londeen Funeral Home, 1616 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, Kansas, 66502, is assisting the family with arrangements.