Table Of Contentpyramid
on the prairie
craig miner
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Pyramid On The Prairie
Copyright © 2011 Riordan Clinic
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or
by any information storage without permission in writing from the
copyright owner.
Photos by Steve Harper
Cover design, book design and layout by Jim L. Friesen
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012933553
International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9850681-0-3
Printed in the United States of America by Mennonite Press, Inc.,
Newton, KS, www.mennonitepress.com
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dedication
Published in honor of my husband, Dr. Hugh D.
Riordan, a maverick and charismatic physician,
and Olive W. Garvey, a bold and visionary
philanthropist. Hugh and Olive conceived of
The Center for the Improvement of Human
Functioning, which became well known
and highly regarded for its patient-centered
nutritional approach to healing.
olive w. garvey
Businesswoman and philanthropist.
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ForeWord
a
nyone who has driven along the northern edge of Wichita, Kansas,
has likely been struck by the sight of seven geodesic domes and a white
pyramid rising from the prairie. This collection of unusual buildings
is home to an alternative health center established by two remarkable
people: Hugh D. Riordan and Olive W. Garvey.
My husband, Hugh, was a physician ahead of his time; Olive was a
generous philanthropist who understood the value of his foresight. In
1975, he and Olive conceived of The Center for the Improvement of
Human Functioning. Today, it is well known and highly regarded for
its patient-centered, nutritional approach to healing.
About a decade ago, Hugh commissioned Dr. Craig Miner, the Wil-
lard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History and former
chair of the history department at Wichita State University, to under-
take the writing of a history of The Center. At the conclusion of Dr.
Miner’s efforts, however, Hugh was reticent to have it published. Hugh
died in 2005 and the manuscript lay idle for five years, until it turned
up recently while I was going through Hugh’s extensive personal papers.
Although I was very familiar with The Center’s many programs
and services in the areas of wellness, nutrition, and vitamin/mineral
research, I had little to do with its operation. I had been busy raising
a large family of six children, practicing my profession as a Registered
Nurse, pursuing advanced degrees in my chosen field, and working as
a Professor of Nursing at Wichita State University.
I found Miner’s manuscript fascinating and I learned a lot from it.
The story reflects the tumultuous changes in health care over the course
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of the last quarter of the 20th century. The book gives the reader a
glimpse into the struggles of doctors of the time who sought to incor-
porate “holistic” care in their practices while experimenting with new
nutritional approaches to treatment.
In reading the Miner manuscript, I came to a different conclu-
sion than did Hugh: I felt that Dr. Miner, whom The Wichita Eagle
called “Kansas’ premier historian” upon his death in 2010, had cre-
ated a revealing, historically significant, and accurate document that I
believed deserved to be disseminated.
I decided to discuss the possibility and advantages of going forward
with publication with Susan Miner, Craig’s widow. I also consulted
with members of The Center’s Board and some key staff members. All
agreed that the story needed to be published. And so, here it is.
Jan Riordan
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contentS
Chapter 1 The Doctor And The Lady...........1
Chapter 2 Throwing a Rope .......................29
Chapter 3 Personal Health Control ............65
Chapter 4 One of a Kind ...........................95
Chapter 5 The Master Facility ..................133
Chapter 6 Health Hunters .......................161
Chapter 7 A New Era ...............................203
Epilogue...................................................229
Favorite Sayings of Hugh .........................233
Journal Articles ........................................235
About the Author .....................................249
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Chapter One
the doctor and the Lady
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n May 1975, Dr. Hugh Desaix Riordan, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, and Dr. Bill
Schul were welcomed into a pleasant and spacious corner office on the
top floor of the Ray Hugh Garvey office building in Wichita, Kansas. It
was the headquarters of Garvey, Inc. and the Garvey Foundation. The
former concern had until recently operated a substantial and diversi-
fied business empire, including, among many other interests, a major
independent petroleum exploration and development corporation, a
group of grain elevators with around a quarter billion bushels of storage
capacity, holdings of over 100,000 acres of farmland, a gasoline retailing
company, and 2,000 rental housing units in Wichita. Those companies
had been spun off to the next generation of the Garvey family, but
the two-building office complex remained along with enough other
business to be the envy of most operators. The second entity for which
decisions were made in that corner office, the Garvey Foundation, was,
and had been for 15 years, one of the major philanthropic forces in
the state of Kansas. Among its many achievements were substantial
support of Friends University in Wichita and Washburn University in
Topeka, the establishment of public television stations in both Wichita
and Topeka, and making an enormous difference in the sweep and
quality of the local and regional YMCA.
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Pyramid On The Prairie
But it was hardly an ordinary executive suite. For one thing, it was
decorated much like a home, with a sofa, a credenza, paintings, and
memorabilia from world travel. For another, the person behind the
desk, the one in charge of all this, was not only a woman, but a grand-
mother and great grandmother, eighty-one years old. Olive White
Garvey had taken over the Garvey family enterprises in 1959 when her
husband, entrepreneur Ray Garvey, was killed in an auto accident, and
both the business and the philanthropies had not only survived but
grown and prospered vigorously since. The three doctors knew that
Mrs. Garvey had wide-ranging interests and was a considerable reader
as well as a published writer of fiction, non-fiction and plays. And they
knew that among her interests were medicine and nutrition, although
the depth and extent of that interest was doubtless not guessed at by
any of them. A favorite Biblical quote of hers was from Proverbs: “with
all thy getting, get understanding.”1
Mrs. Garvey had read Nutrition and Your Mind by George Watson,
which she had begun one day with enthusiasm while under the hair-
dryer. She had also read the publications of Pfeiffer, who was working
in Princeton, New Jersey, and the work of Dr. Roger Williams on nutri-
tion and on the importance of understanding the unique biochemistry
of individuals. She had gone to grade school with Karl Menninger,
1 There are a number of published sources for the life of Olive White Garvey. She
herself wrote (with Virgil Quinlisk) a biography of her husband, entitled The Obstacle
Race: The Story of Ray Hugh Garvey (San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1970),
which included much about herself, and a volume called Once Upon a Family Tree
(1980), which was a personal account of her life and ancestry. In addition there is
Billy Mack Jones, Olive White Garvey: Humanitarian, Corporate Executive, Uncommon
Citizen (Wichita: Center for Entrepreneurship, 1985) and Craig Miner’s Garvey,
Inc.: Expectations to Equity (Wichita: privately printed, 1992) which documents her
role in Garvey, Inc. after 1959. She kept scrapbooks, which were a source for these
paragraphs also, as were the author’s many talks with her, some of them videotaped.
I knew “OWG” well, our acquaintance beginning in the 1950s through my family,
but always from afar until 1985, when I began working for her son Willard and we
met regularly at her corner office in the Garvey building to talk about her still long
list of ideas and enterprises. After her death I designed an exhibit about her. I have
drawn on all this here.
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