Obituary body: SUNDEAN-Harald [sic] A. Sundean, Founder and Builder of
Community Hospital died May 7, 1996 at the age of 95.
Servies will be held Saturday, May 11, 1996 at 2:00 p.m. at the Santa
Cruz Seventh Day Adventist Church for Harald Adelphus Sundean,
entrepreneur, local contractor, apiarist and philanthropist.
Born to Swedish parents in Lincoln, Nebraska and reared on his father's
farm in Hinckley, Minnesota, Mr. Sundean learned the work ethic at an
early age. He began his first formal job at 12, working for three
Minnesota newspapers simultaneously. In his day, newsboys had to develop
their own routes, find their own customers and collect their own money,
or they " didn't get a thing".
Mr. Sundean left the farm in 1923, heading for Los Angeles in search of
work. Awed by the beauty of Santa Cruz, he decided to stay. He had
three dollars cash and seventeen dollor check in his pocket, so he picked
up a paint brush and became a painting contractor earning a whopping
$2.50 a day--for an 8-hour day!
In the 40's, he operated two businesses simultaneously. Winters he
would paint, summers he would load the car with wife and children and
head for Minnesota where he maintained thousands of beehives in the Red
River Valley, shipping honey out by the carload to the suger-sort [sic]
world of the war years. This teenage hobby of beekeeping made him his
fortune--"bees board themseves and work for nothing" was a favorite
saying of his. He sold the bee business when his children were grown and
attending medical school.
In the late 1950's, the medical staff of Santa Cruz approached Mr.
Sundean about the need for a hospital to be built. Since his children
were entering the medical profession, and "because a lot of nice people
said it was needed" he built a hospital on his own land with his own
money.
Community Hospital of Santa Cruz opened in 1959 with 49 beds and
offered acute care services. In 1963, it expanded to 99 beds, in 1971 to
180 beds. In early 1977, an alternative birth center was added to the
facility filling an important community need and served as a model
throughout the State.
Mr. Sundean retired in 1978 when he sold the hospital to AMI for 7.7
million dollars, donating the proceeds to the Sundean Foundation, a
non-profit family organization dedicated to the building of hospitals,
churches and the furthering of the Seventh-Day Adventists Christian
principals.
It was a credit to Mr. Sundean's administrative abilities that after
owning the hospital for 16 months, it was operating free and clear.
Mr. Sundean was predeceased by his first wife, Edith and by his only
daughter, Carol Nelson.
...
eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren...

1. Obituary: Sundean, Harold Adelphus,
2. Death Records: California (online),