HOMECOMING 2002

Pastor, Psychiatrist Honored as Distinguished Alumni

A psychiatry professor striving to cure drug addicts and a Lutheran minister devoted to sheltering the elderly were awarded Dana’s highest alumni award in October.

The Rev. George Demant (D ’50
T ’53) and Dr. William R. Yates (’74) were chosen to receive for the Dana Distinguished Alumnus Award for their achievements since attending Dana College.

The Rev. George Demant

In the mid-1960s, a woman from a neighboring parish came to Demant. She had an idea to create a place to “take care of the old Lutherans,” but her own pastor was not interested.

Demant took the idea to a meeting of the Lutheran churches in Humboldt County, Calif. Everyone thought it was a great idea, and thought the best plan was to “just let George do it.”

So Demant went from chair of the Idea Committee, to chair of the Fundraising Committee, and on to chair of the Building Committe. Under his direction, St. Luke’s Manor became a 38-bed convalescant hospital, with Demant as Chairman of the Board.

But the board couldn’t find an administrator who would work for the salary they could offer. Demant read a book on hospital administration, took the state licensing test and filled the job himself.

It would be a position he would hold for 20 years, through St. Luke’s growth and its related challenges. Today, St. Luke’s has 100 beds, 78 rent-subsidized apartments and 12 luxury apartments for the elderly.

Not bad for a farm boy from Wisconsin who never thought he would pursue a higher education. Demant entered Dana in 1946 after feeling God’s call to enter the ministry. While at Dana, he studied sociology with minors in English and Christianity, and met his future wife Elna Marie Nielsen ’50. He paid for his education by working in Dana’s kitchen and in maintenance, but his main income came from being the campus barber. For 50 cents, he would cut the hair of any man on campus. He entered Trinity Seminary — at the time also located in Blair — in 1950 and was ordained in 1953.

Rev. Demant said he feels his time at Dana influenced how he would approach ministry in the future. “I found that although I had been born and raised in the ‘Holy Church,’ there were other ways of life that were acceptable to living in God’s kingdom,” he said.

Dr. William R. Yates

Dr. William Yates remembers spending quite a bit of his time during his years at Dana in the chemistry lab. But who knew then how far that time in the lab would take this Geneva, Neb., native?

Now a professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine-Tulsa, Yates earned his M.D. from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine in 1977 and earned an M.S. in preventive medicine from the University of Iowa in 1986.

He went on to teach at the University of Iowa and then moved to Tulsa in 1997. He has been named to the Best Doctors in America directory for three straight years, and was honored with the Outstanding OU Psychiatry Faculty Resident Teaching Award in 1999.

Yates has also led a remarkable career in terms of research and leadership. His interests in psychiatry in primary care populations; alcohol, drug, nicotine and anabolic sterioid abuse; and epidemiology and health services research have been prominent in his research studies and in his more than 200 scientific manuscripts, abstracts and chapters, authored or co-authored by him. Yates also served as president of the Association of Medicine and Psychiatry for the 1999-2000 year.

Yates graduated magna cum laude in chemistry from Dana in 1974. He was a varsity golf letterman from 1971-73. He was also a member of the Pre-Med Club, Alpha Chi Honor Society, and played football, basketball and softball for Rasmussen Third Floor in intramurals. He currently is a member of Joy Lutheran Church in Tulsa, where he sings with the ‘Joy’ful Mens Choir.