Dr. Dalton Finley McClelland, Jr. shuffled off his mortal coil on Saturday, December 3, 2022. He passed at peace and without pain, surrounded by family, just shy of his 92nd birthday.
His message: In Dalton’s final years, you may have heard him say we need to “put an end to all war” and “get on top of climate change.” All his life he was adventurous and inquisitive. Anyone who met Dalton became a friend, and he was generous to a fault. He worked and hoped for peace and to live a life of service, and to do his part to provide health care as a human right for all.
Life: He was born December 30, 1930 in Madras. India, where his father served as secretary for the International YMCA. In 1945, at age 14 he came to the United States, studied at Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts, then on to college at Oberlin and ultimately attended medical school at Case Western Reserve in Ohio. In the years between high school and medical school he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, stationed in England. He moved to the southwest to practice medicine first at the Presbyterian Mission Hospital in Embudo, NM, then at the Eastside Community Health Center in Denver, CO. After returning to New Mexico, to Española for a brief stint in private practice, he loaded up the Volkswagen van in 1973 with wife Beth and 6 children, and took a job at the new El Rio Neighborhood Health Center. There are a multitude of stories in the intervening years-some happy, some sad, during which time he became an active member of Southside Presbyterian Church and eventually a regular at the U.S. federal building on Friday afternoons, protesting US intervention in Central America, and other wars and aggression. He was also a devoted Red Sox fan, but in all other sports he would inevitably root for the “underdog”. When he retired from El Rio in 2001, he began a life of activism and volunteering with Samaritans, Clínica Amistad, Veterans for Peace, Women in Black, and countless others.
Survivors/Legacy: Dalton is predeceased by his parents, Dalton Finley McClelland, Sr. and Maud Kelsey McClelland, and his sister and brothers Marion Cramer, Harry and William McClelland, and his beloved daughter Amy Lynn McClelland. He is survived by his nine wonderful grandchildren, and by his children Jody Elizabeth Wilkens, Andrew Christopher McClelland, Karen Denise Cameron, Margaret Kay McClelland, Deborah Jean McClelland and Lee Ann Chamberlain, and numerous dear nieces, nephews and sisters in-law. He also leaves behind a multitude of friends and admirers. In his final years he lived independently at the Fountains at La Cholla community, where many will remember him fondly.
Memorials: In person celebration of Dalton’s life will take place in the early part of 2023, at a time and place yet to be determined. In the meantime we ask that you share memories here, and go out into the world and do something that reminds you of him (a nice hike in the desert, making a new friend, sitting down to a delicious meal with loved ones, something to make you or others smile).
Gifts in his memory: In lieu of flowers please consider contributing to Clínica Amistad, Casa María, Tucson Community Food Bank, Veterans for Peace-Jon Miles Chapter, Pima County Public Library, or any organization you feel embodies the Dalton that you knew & loved.