ESCONDIDO – Dr. John Verplank Larzalere died 60 years ago, but you can still find residents who were brought into the world by him or had their lives saved by him.
Larzalere practiced medicine in Escondido for almost 50 years, from 1896 until 1944. For a good many of those years, he was one of just a handful of doctors in what was then a small rural community. For a time, that small number of doctors included his son, Raymond, who died an untimely death at 38.
Courtesy of Escondido History Center
Dr. John V. Larzalere (standing, third from left) gathered with other members of the Escondido Chamber of Commerce in 1914.
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The elder Larzalere was born in 1859 in Waterloo, N.Y., of French and Pennsylvania Dutch descent. He received a medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1884. He developed a successful practice in his home state, married Frances Peckham and had two children, Raymond and Lena, before deciding to move to California.
The Larzalere family moved to San Diego County in 1895. They lived for a year in National City before relocating to Escondido. A third child, Harriett, was born in 1903.
Escondido had less than a thousand residents when the Larzaleres came. For many years, according to historical accounts written in the 1970s by Eloise Perkins, residents gave directions in relation to where Larzalere lived.
The doctor and his family first built a large frame house on what is now Oak Hill Drive. In 1907, he built and moved into a house near the intersection of what is now Fourth Avenue and Juniper Street. He made the move to be closer to his patients after having to “answer night calls in town too often,” according to a 1971 Perkins article in the Daily Times-Advocate.
“People knew him for his rubber-tired buggy and matched set of trotters,” said Donald Larzalere, 82, his grandson. Although his grandfather preferred using the horse-drawn buggy for his house calls, Donald Larzalere said, rough backcountry roads and periodic floods sometimes necessitated riding on horseback to reach a patient. Even after the coming of the automobile, a doctor sometimes had to trade a car for a horse to make a house call in a remote area.
Larzalere was a local surgeon for the Santa Fe Railroad, and he served a term on the county Board of Health for the Escondido area. He was also involved in numerous other civic activities.
In 1907, Larzalere helped revive interest in the Escondido Board of Trade, according to Alan McGrew's 1988 book “Hidden Valley Heritage.” When the board was reorganized in 1911 as the Escondido Chamber of Commerce, Larzalere was elected its first president.
The doctor also served as a director of the Escondido Irrigation District, where he was instrumental in the district's reorganization and retirement of its bonds in 1905.
Raymond Larzalere followed his father into the practice of medicine, earning his medical degree and training as a surgeon in Los Angeles. After serving as a surgeon in the Army during World War I and two years on the staff of a hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Raymond Larzalere returned to Escondido to join his father's office.
In April 1927, Raymond Larzalere was summoned to deliver a baby during a period of spring flooding. He set out in his Hudson automobile, but, according to his son Donald, the doctor had to “trade his Hudson for a horse,” swimming with it across a rain-swollen river. He delivered the baby, but shortly thereafter developed an ear abscess that progressed to a severe case of pneumonia, which took his life.
“Escondido has lost one of her finest and most useful citizens,” began the May 2, 1927, front-page article in the Times-Advocate. “The sorrow of the home was shared by the entire community, for all shared in the love of him.”
For some years after Raymond Larzalere's death, his widow, Lettie, a nurse, worked in her father-in-law's office. John Larzalere's wife, Frances, also worked there as a nurse.
Frances Larzalere died in 1935. In 1940, John Larzalere closed his Escondido office after 56 years, but he wasn't finished seeing patients. He had moved onto the ranch of his son-in-law, Crosby Rees. Rees converted some ranch buildings into a home and a small office. Dr. Larzalere continued to receive patients on a limited basis until 1944, two years before his death at 87.
“Escondido has lost another of her real pioneer citizens,” the Times-Advocate wrote. He was saluted as a leader in “community and public interest affairs, (who) likewise never neglected his practice as a physician and surgeon and a help in times of trouble.”
Vincent Nicholas Rossi is a freelance writer who lives in Rancho Bernardo.
