Marion Theodore Ted Merrill, 89, died Feb. 26 in John Day, from a stroke a few days prior, less than three weeks shy of his 90th birthday. A memorial service will be at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 17 his birthday at the John Day Elks Lodge, 140 N.E. Dayton St.

Dr. Merrill was born March 17, 1923, in Columbia, Mo., to Clifford Merrill and Esther Jacoby Merrill. He spent much of his early life in Fairfield, Idaho. From eighth-grade through high school, he was informally apprenticed to a local doctor. He attended the University of Idaho as a pre-medical student.

In 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy, which was training doctors in anticipation of military needs. He pursued his medical education at Columbia University in New York, continuing after his naval discharge in 1946.

While there, he met and married nursing student Elizabeth Louise Betsy Good.

In 1948, he graduated from Columbia and, after two years of internship and residency, began his medical practice in Gilroy, Calif. During this time, he spent two-and-a-half years in Augsburg, Germany, with the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

In 1958, he moved his family and medical practice to John Day, where he spent the majority of his medical career, as well as his retirement. He and his partner, Dr. Howard Newton, had staff privileges at the hospital in Burns, until the one in Prairie City reopened, and he began working there.

In 1969, he took a break to teach at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., He returned to medicine three years later, to Oregon after three more years, and to John Day in 1978, where he spent 17 years in practice. He is said to have delivered more than 2,000 babies, mostly in the John Day Valley.

His wife died in 1983 after a long battle with heart disease. In 1985, he married Janis Green in Vancouver, Wash., and the couple moved to Portland. For the next eight years, he commuted to the hospital emergency room in The Dalles.

After tapering off his medical activities for a few years, he retired, and the couple moved back to John Day.

He was an active woodcarver most of his life, dabbled in oil and watercolor painting, and loved to think about things and write about what he thought.

After his retirement, he began writing with a passion, and started his own publishing company, Homeostasis Press. He wrote one book on his own, I Only Dress the Wounds, and co-authored another with is brother, Bill, River Runts. Two others, Earth as an Eco-Jar and Heartwood, were in-progress at his death, and will be published posthumously.

He was an avid fisherman, and during summers of his youth, he and his brother, Bill, not only fished, but were also salmon fishing guides on the Salmon River in Idaho.

He considered himself an ecologist, and helped organize one of the first Earth Day events in Plainfield, Vt. He joined a bucket brigade demonstration against water diversion in Oregons Klamath Basin, and gave slideshow presentations throughout Oregon, educating people about the dangers of plutonium. In 1966, he volunteered for a two-month stay in Vietnam where he treated people, and assisted and trained doctors under a U.S. Agency for International Development program.

He was a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Writers Guild of Eastern Oregon.

Survivors include his wife, Janis; her daughter, Janel Parker of John Day; sons, David of Portland, Richard of Brooksville, Maine, and Bob of South Pomfret, Vt.; daughters, Kathleen Merrill and Valerie Stein, both of Edmonds, Wash.; grandchildren, Trevor, Sorcha, Liberty, Noah, Zacharia, Joshua and Kendra; and great-granddaughter, Elizabeth.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Elizabeth Betsy (Good) Merrill; and brother, Bill Merrill.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made through Sterling Bank of John Day, for installation of a memorial in John Day.