Quaker Marvin Rockwell reminisces on original settlement

Marvin Rockwell speaks on Jan. 5, 2012, at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica. Sally French/Missouri School of Journalism

by Marie French

MONTEVERDE, Costa Rica – Marvin Rockwell remembers one of the first cases he treated in Costa Rica. An 8-year-old Costa Rican boy had cut his foot with an axe.

“Of course, I had no anesthesia or anything,” Rockwell said. “That poor little fellow had to sit there while I sewed it up.”

Rockwell arrived in Monteverde with 11 families of Quakers in 1951. They left the United States mainly because of the mandatory registration for the draft during the Korean War. Costa Rica was particularly appealing because the country abolished the military in 1948. Pacifism is an important element of the philosophy of the Religious Society of Friends.