Founder of naturopathic school dies

SEATTLE – Dr. William A. Mitchell Jr., who helped found Bastyr University and build it into the nation’s first accredited naturopathic school and one of the largest, has died of a heart attack at age 59.

Mitchell died Jan. 23 in Seattle within hours after his son Noah, 27, died in the same manner, of a myocardial infarction, according to a news release from the school in suburban Kenmore.

“Bill was a teacher, mentor, healer, and philosopher … an internationally renowned expert in botanical medicine, and played a significant role in the understanding of the profound healing interactions between plants and other living organisms,” wrote Jane Guiltinan, president of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and a clinical professor at the Bastyr Center for Natural Health. “His loss will leave a gaping void.”

Mitchell was also an author and, as a teenager, an accomplished guitar player. He was on the cover of Time magazine at age 16 for being the private tutor for the owner of a guitar company.

He earned a history degree at the University of Washington and spent for two years as an active naval reserve in Vietnam, then obtained his doctorate in naturopathy at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1976, playing guitar to pay his tuition and support his family.

In 1978 he joined Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, Dr. Lester Griffith and Sheila Quinn in founding Bastyr and was its first dean of admissions.

Today Bastyr is a nonprofit, private university offering graduate and undergraduate degrees with a multidisciplinary curriculum in science-based natural medicine. The school’s Seattle teaching clinic, Bastyr Center for Natural Health, is the largest natural medicine clinic in the Pacific Northwest.

Mitchell also faced a personal ordeal when he was charged with vehicular homicide in 2004 after his car struck Thien Nguyen, 54, a refugee aid worker and mother of two, as she was crossing a street on a dark and rainy night in Shoreline.

King County prosecutors said Mitchell admitted drinking three glasses of wine and had a blood alcohol level of .08, the legal threshold for intoxication, but a Superior Court judge declared a mistrial after a jury became deadlocked.

To the end, Mitchell was a fast and avid hiker who enjoyed harvesting herbs for healing in the mountains and meadows, said Pizzorno, who delivered his son, Noah.

“He was very committed to understanding the science, but he was close to the spiritual side of medicine and always inspired the students to work harder,” he said.

Mitchell’s books include “Naturopathic Applications of the Botanical Remedies,” “Foundations of Natural Therapeutics: Biochemical Apologetics of Naturopathic Medicine” and “Plant Medicine in Practice: Using the Teachings of John Bastyr.”