John Jerome Rupp, M.D.
Dr. John Jerome Rupp, who practiced medicine in the Ojai Valley for 44 years, died at his Ojai home on Sunday, Feb 4, 2001, at age 94. “He brought an Old World, courtly charm to everything that he did in this valley, touching the lives of countless people with his physical ministrations,” according to family friend Dr. Alfred Bacharach. Dr. Rupp, the first internist to practice in Ojai, continued to make calls until he retired at age 80 in 1986.
He would take calls at any time. Once he was called out while Dr. Rupp was told by the wife that her husband was now OK but that he might as well take his blood pressure anyway.
Dr. Rupp graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago, in 1933 after taking a literature degree Phi Beta Kappa at USC. He had a lifelong passion for music, poetry and art and became an exceptional photographer. He met his wife, Eleanor, a nurse at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, while doing his residency there. He was a skilled pathologist as well as an internist and conducted cancer research with his colleagues, Drs. Fritz Bischoff and Guillermo Lopez, that drew the attention of the New York Times. Ten days after Pearl Harbor, he was called to active duty in the Navy. In a journal entry for Dec 18, 1941, he wrote: “Closed my new office (they were just ready to put up my name).” He volunteered for sea duty after finding himself, as head of a hospital ward in San Diego, signing his name to more than 300 papers before noon. He celebrated by going out with a friend to see “Citizen Kane.” Dr. Rupp saw action in the South Pacific and the Mediterranean except for one year (1942 to 1943) when he headed the pathology and clinical laboratories of the Long Beach Naval Hospital. Wanting a good place to raise his children, knowing of the scarcity of physicians in Ojai at the time and attracted to the teachings of Theosophy, Dr. Rupp moved with his wife and children to Ojai in 1946. That same year, he designed and build his own clinic at East Matilija Street, (where Paradise Artists is today) with the bricklaying assistance of Howard Bald, who liked to quote long passages from Shakespear while they were both at work. Dr. Rupp added a laboratory, a surgery and an X-ray room and did his own lab work for many years. In 1961, to the dismay of his fellow physicians, he opposed the building of a proprietary for profit hospital in Ojai. With some prescience, he argued in favor of a nonprofit hospital. Now, 40 years later, that vision has been realized. Dr. Rupp volunteered as the first medical director of the St. Joseph Health and Retirement Center, from 1966 to 1986. He and his wife, Eleanor, devoted themselves the educational needs of the community. He served for many years on the board of the Happy Valley Foundation and Eleanor Rupp was the first woman to be elected to the Ojai Unified School District Board, serving for more than 12 years.
Born Sept. 19, 1906, in Colorado Springs to Daniel Horatio Rupp and Elsie Wheeler Rupp, John Jerome Rupp had an unusual childhood. He remembered his father a Harvard law graduate, an engineer, and a friend of William James, the philosopher reading to him Plato’s “Republic” when he was a young boy. His father died when Jerome was 9. Jerome’s mother was the daughter of Harriett and Jerome Wheeler, a silver mining magnate; founder and owner of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, and a direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The young Jerome was raised by his mother on her goat farm in Colorado Springs.
He loved all animals, cats especially. As a young boy on the goat farm, he found his own cat finishing off the milk from the tops of bottles he was about to deliver. Jerome poured water into all the bottles to fill them up before delivering them. Dr. Rupp, preceded in death by his wife, is survived by four children, Marion Leeman, John Rupp, Stuart Rupp, and Daniel Rupp, all of Ojai; three daughters and one son-in-law, 11 grandchildren; seven great grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 2 pm Saturday, Feb 17, at St. Joseph’s Chapel, 2464 E. Ojai conducted by the Rev. Carroll G. Laubacher, S.J. A reception in the Villa Giuseppe will follow. Friends with remembrances are encouraged to write them down and sent them to the Rupp family, P.O. Box 353, Ojai, CA 93024.