Angel View Foundation

Angel View Crippled Children’s Foundation is now fifty years old and continues to do wonderful work with those who are not able to do all they could for themselves.

There have been numerous boardmembers, several board presidents and an untold amount of angelic contributors.

I wonder, though, how many actually know of the man, without whom, there may not have been an Angel View Foundation.

The man was Dr. Robert Bingham; a caring, decent man, who had a big heart for children but little knowledge for  business. 

He met, befriended and became a partner of sorts with Les Morgan, who became Dr. Bingham’s business manager for a clinic that he had in mind. It would turn out to be the beginning of Angel View Crippled Children’s Hospital in Desert Hot Springs, California.

Dr. Bingham was aware of the mineral water which flowed under Desert Hot Springs and had heard the rumors of its healing properties.  In fact, Les Morgan had come to the desert because of a severe knee injury and had found beneficial results from treatments in the hot sand, the sun and the hot baths in the wonder water.

After meetings were held and it was decided that a hospital would be located over these miraculous springs, the first board was formed. It started there. The rest is history.

Dr. Bingham the man, is what I want to discuss here.

He was controversial; he was complex; he had enemies; he had many more friends; he was kind, yet stern, but having a great sense of humor.

Dr. Bingham is what I would call a country doctor at heart.

He would see a person with an injury or disability and would treat the person. He didn’t pull out printed forms and piles of paper for a patient to fill out; ie; insurance, amount of money in the bank, next of kin; the first thing Bob Bingham did was to treat the wound or disability. Then he would ask if you were able to pay for it. If not, he would work some with you to make it right.

His beard, his hair, his moustache, his goatee.his toupee’. his method of sewing my wrist.

On one special occasion, our Sunrise Rotary Club gave a tribute dinner to Bob, who along with myself and several others, formed the Sunrise Rotary Club of Desert Hot Springs.

It was nothing but fun! NO business, no Rotary; just all Bob.

We razzed him, cajoled him, made fun of him in any way we could without actually cutting to the quick. We did it because we loved and respected him.

I did a cartoon “chalk talk” in which I showed his uncanny and seemingly daily transformation from a handsome and emaculate figure, with a head of thick, silver hair, to a serious, balding, mustachioed doctor figure, with a dignified goatee and then back again. Bob would wear a toupee on days that he was clean shaven and on other days would be sporting a mustache and goatee, then sometimes a goatee without mustache, but wearing the hair piece.  I was able to show this by using cartoon cut-outs of his beard, mustache and hair, over a sketch of a completely hairless Bob. It came off without a hitch and the good doctor loved it.

A few years later the same club honored me with a dinner and there was Dr. Robert Bingham with his trusty camera, recording everything.  He later surprised me with a scrapbook  he’d made of the evening. I still treasure it, as well as his memory