Harding renames health sciences center for Farrars

Grace and Henry Farrar in 2008. (Photo provided by Harding University)

Harding University in Searcy, Ark., has renamed its Center for Health Sciences in honor of Dr. Henry Farrar and his wife, Grace.
Henry Farrar, 83, a longtime medical missionary, died Feb. 22 in a Nashville, Tenn., hospital, six days after he fell and hit his head at Carthage, Tenn., General Hospital where he worked. The fall caused a neck fracture and complications from which he never recovered.
One day before his death, Henry Farrar took communion in his hospital room, his daughter, Marty Farrar Highfield, told The Christian Chronicle .
“He had not missed communion on Sunday since his baptism at age 11, and he did not miss this one,” she said. “Finger dipped in flour — the ultimate unleavened bread — and finger dipped in juice. ‘Standing on the Promises,’  and ‘I Know that my Redeemer Lives.’ Dr.Henry ‘sang’ these with us, mouthing every word around his breathing tube. What a powerful witness to our faith.”
I had the pleasure of hearing Henry Farrar speak at various medical mission seminars. He always had a mischievous grin on his face — as if he were about to tell you the punchline to the funniest joke in the world. The joy that his work for the Lord gave him was apparent.
Here’s some additional information from a Harding news release:

Henry Farrar graduated from Harding in 1948. He earned a medical degree from University of Tennessee and went on to practice medicine for 56 years. In 1964, he and Grace moved to Nigeria, West Africa, to begin Nigerian Christian Hospital with an outpatient clinic in response to an outcry from missionaries in the area to help the country’s many suffering people. Their work continues even today — the 110-bed facility serves 30,000 patients each year.
In addition to their work in Nigeria, the Farrars helped start the Christian Mobile Clinic in Cameroon, West Africa, and also worked at the Chimala Mission Hospital in Tanzania, East Africa. In 1982 they served in Shenyang, China, where Henry was visiting professor of surgery at China Medical University.
Farrar served on the board of trustees at Harding from 1993 until his death. In life, he received numerous honors and awards for his years of practice as a physician, medical missionary and gospel preacher. … He is survived by his beloved wife of 59 years and their six children.
The Center for Health Sciences was completed on the Harding campus in fall 2008. The $7.7 million, 35,800-square-foot facility houses the College of Pharmacy and the Physician Assistant Program. The university will celebrate the center’s new name at a dedication ceremony this fall.

Please share your thoughts and memories of the Farrars.

• Feedback
  That’s great. Although I don’t know the Farrars personally… they are likely the type of missionaries/medical missionaries that we should be honoring.

  Al Elvin Meakes

  July, 14 2010

  Dr Farrar is a great doctor and missionary. May his soul rest with ther Lord. Nigerians will ever remember him.

  Anthony E. Ouuria

  July, 16 2010

  I want to thank the Christian Chronicle for publishing this article about my brother, Henry Farrar. He truly was a great doctor, walking in the steps of the Great Physician.

  Lucretia Farrar Patterson

  July, 19 2010