Loran B. Morgan
Marriages
Beth Morgan
Obituaries
Social Security Death Index
82240 Torrington, Goshen, Wyoming
14 Oct 1918
23 Nov 2009
SSN issued Colorado before 1951
Star-Herald, Scottsbluff, Nebraska - October 2000
LORAN B. MORGAN, M.D.: PERENNIAL MEDICAL STUDENT AND WORLD TRAVELER.
Where does he start? Where does he end? Loran B. MORGAN, M.D., doesn't think about those points, only about what he can do in between.
As a youngster growing up in Pipestone, Minn., MORGAN decided he wanted to be a doctor. "I can't remember ever wanting to be anything else," he says, sitting in front of a computer in his Torrington, Wyoming, home.
According to MORGAN, he was impressed by an uncle who was the chief surgeon at a veteran's hospital in Chicago. "That's the only think I can think of that might have influenced me," he says with a chuckle.
After graduating from high school in 1936, MORGAN attended the University of Minnesota. He did his internship in Denver, where he met his wife, Beth, a Torrington native.
Beth had graduated as a registered nurse from St. Luke's Hospital the year before Loran arrived to do his internship. Once they were married, she never worked full time as a nurse. She stayed home to raise the couple's two children, both born at St. Lukes.
A member of the medical arm of the ROTC, MORGAN joined the U.S. Army as a parachute battalion surgeon in December, 1943.
Initially, he intended to be an obstetrician, but the Army trained him in orthopedics. "I was really lucky," MORGAN says with a laugh. "I was one of the few who actually got to do what we were trained to do. Usually a lawyer was a rifleman, or a farmer was a clerk. It didn't make much sense.
In 1944, Loran and Beth were married and it wasn't long before he was shipped overseas.
While in Europe, MORGAN's battalion was dropped behind enemy lines in Germany as part of the Varsity Operation, and participated in the Battle of the Bulge. I was during the jump over Germany that bullets tearing through the bottom of the plane ripped into a book and a packet of his photos. He still has the torn items.
His battalion jumped into Germany March 24, 1945. "We suffered major casualties in 20 minutes," he says of that unforgettable day. Out of 300 paratroopers, there were 100 wounded and 50 dead. "I was a battalion surgeon, the first doctor the wounded saw."
According to MORGAN, casualties from that jump near the Rhine were placed in a barn attached to the farmhouse they used as a medical headquarters.
"We didn't lose even one of those men," MORGAN related in a 1998 oral history interview with the U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. His experiences were also used in a 1999 segment on the history channel.
He has some harrowing experiences during the rest of his stay in Europe, and he didn't get to enjoy VE Day because he already had orders for jumping into Japan. However, the war ended before his battalion made it to Asia.
After the war, MORGAN and his family lived in Gilman, Colo., where he practiced medicine for two years. Then, in 1948, on a visit to Torrington, he was stricken with appendicitis. Dr. KRAHL, who operated on him, persuaded MORGAN to join his practice in the small Goshen County community. They were joined by Dr. KILDEBEK, a dentist, and built the Torrington Medical Group building at the corner of East A and 20th Street in Torrington.
Morgan was a general practitioner for about 14 years, before deciding it was time for a change.
"Things were moving so fast," he says. "Medicine was advancing and I didn't think I wanted to go in that direction, so I switched to ophthalmology. It is more structured and more of a pure science."
After about nine years in Torrington, MORGAN returned to the classroom in 1957 to become an ophthalmologist. In 1960 he returned to practice in Torrington, where he remained until 1981 then he sold to Larry GODDARD.
