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Dennis Franklin Rupel
Sept. 27, 1930 - June 4, 2000Dennis was born in Lassa, Nigeria, British West Africa. He was the eldest of three children of Paul and Naomi Rupel. He spent his early childhood in Nigeria and Liberia except for two years of furlough time his family spent in the United States. When he was 8 years old, the family left Africa, moving to California where Dennis attended public school through high school. He graduated from Riverside Polytechnic High School in 1948. In 1952 Dennis graduated from Manchester College in Indiana as a pre-med, then attended Northwestern Medical School in Chicago. Dennis and LaVon met in Chicago while he attended med school and LaVon was the Director of the Brethren Service Unit in Elgin, Illinois. They were married Dec. 20th, 1954 in Grand Junction, Colorado. Dennis did his internship at Denver General Hospital and then spent 3 years in Puerto Rico working in Ryder Memorial Hospital at Humacao. While in Puerto Rico, their son, Wesley, was born. When they returned to the States, Dennis completed a 3-year residency in Psychiatry at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas. Their daughters, Kirsten and Ingrid, were both born in Kansas. In July, 1963, Dennis joined the staff of the Oaklawn Psychiatric Center in Elkhart, Indiana, a new, church-sponsored, community mental health center, opened just two months prior to his arrival. Dennis was a pioneer in what became known in the 60's as Community Psychiatry. Academicians were beginning to write about the need to take the insights and the dynamics of psychiatry out where the people were living their day to day lives, as opposed to waiting for people to seek out psychiatric help after they developed problems. Dennis was in the forefront of creating programs and services to successfully apply the theories being written about. Newly graduated from the Menninger School of Psychiatry, he was for 11 years a staff psychiatrist for the Oaklawn Psychiatric Center and eventually its Medical Director. In what became a model for the National Institute of Mental Health, the Oaklawn Psychiatric Center in Elkhart, Indiana, opened its doors in 1962. Dennis helped promote this community outreach and became a master at helping people build effective teams for accomplishing agency goals, enhancing group spirit and facilitating individual growth, teaching others to do what he seemed to do naturally and giving them the credit. He helped develop and direct the first day hospital for mental health patients in the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health personnel visited often and wrote the program up in their literature. Dennis was President-elect of the Northern Indiana Psychiatric Society when, in 1971, he took a year's leave from Oaklawn in order to respond to an invitation to teach in the Department of Psychiatry at Loma Linda Medical School in Southern California. In the fall of 1974 he received a faculty appointment at UC Davis Medical School. At this time, he also became Medical Director of San Joaquin County Mental Health Services. Dennis' overriding concern was to bring to the public sector the insights, innovations and creative applications of community psychiatry that had been so successful in the private sector. When he arrived, the former medical director had just been indicted for embezzlement of public funds. It was said that was possible because communication was so poor and teamwork was totally absent. In this climate of no one trusting anyone else, Dennis was able, with the help of others, to build what became a model county program, so honored by the State of California. Probably the most conspicuous achievement during these years was the development of the new mental health in-patient facility in Stockton. For years, the County ran the in-patient service in the old State Hospital. The buildings were not suitable and endless bureaucratic chaos meant patients were, in the end, not provided the best of service. Since there were insufficient funds for a new facility, Dennis worked with others to get a bill passed through the State Legislature to create a new model - a Psychiatric Health Facility. This new "Puff", as it was fondly called, the first of its kind in the State, was streamlined to meet the specific needs of mental health in-patients while by-passing the non-essential and costly regulations of general hospitals that had, in the past, made them too expensive to fund. For three decades, Dennis volunteered time with the Mennonite Mental Health Services across their international system of hospitals and mental health centers. Locally, Dennis was a Su Salud volunteer physician, helping to improve personal health services to Latino clients. He maintained a private psychiatric practice in Stockton for 15 years, while also working as a consultant with several community agencies. He retired in December, 1998, but continued to provide consultation services to several community agencies, the University of the Pacific Counseling Center, and San Joaquin County Mental Health Services. Dennis was a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He was an active Rotarian for 25 years, 23 of which he had perfect attendance. He was a Paul Harris Fellow. Throughout his life he was active in his local church, also serving from time to time on district and national committees for the Church of the Brethren. For 9 years he served as a Trustee for the University of LaVerne. Dennis is survived by his wife, LaVon Rupel of Stockton; children, Wesley Rupel of Redmond, Washington, Kirsten Rupel of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Ingrid Rupel of Waikele, Hawaii; sisters, Doris Wimber of Eugene, Oregon, and Joyce Merkl of Birmingham, Michigan. Professional Service
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