Dr Maurice Heusinkveld was tragically killed while closing the gate to his home in Muscat, Oman on September 13, 1967. An unknown assailant shot him point-blank, sending shockwaves through the American Mission Hospital (AMH) workers.
Before his untimely death, Dr Heusinkveld had served at AMH Bahrain during two periods (1958 and 1960- 1962), and subsequently moved to Oman, where he worked for approximately five years.
The news of his murder caused deep sadness and confusion among the doctors, nurses, and other medical staff at the AMH hospitals in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Muscat, which were then operated by the Arabian Mission of the Reformed Church in America (RCA), based in New York.
“It was widely suspected that the assailant had been a disgruntled patient with high social status who had been forced to wait his turn like everyone else at the morning clinic,” wrote National Evangelical Church missionary, teacher and author Lewis R Scudder III.
In his book The Arabian Mission’s Story, Mr Scudder noted: “This (queuing system) had been a discipline which Heusinkveld doggedly enforced in the teeth of all advice to be more flexible. But it emerged years after the event that, in fact, the assailant had been a hired hand.”
Some believed that a high-born individual had become enraged when Dr Heusinkveld insisted that he leave the consultation room while examining the individual’s wife, who was the patient.
However, given Dr Heusinkveld’s extensive knowledge of Arabic language, customs, and traditions, many were convinced that he would never have acted in a way that could provoke such a violent reaction.
Following the incident, British officers of the Omani Police advised the mission not to pursue the matter further. The case was eventually dropped, leaving many questions unanswered.
Dr Heusinkveld’s wife, Ellie, and their sons returned to Holland, Michigan, in the United States after completing the school year.
Ellie, born on November 2, 1922, in St. Paul, Minnesota, had married Dr Maurice Heusinkveld after graduating from the University of Minnesota as a registered nurse in 1943. Together, they served as RCA missionaries to the Arabian Mission from 1946 to 1967, with assignments in Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. Ellie passed away on November 17, 2016.
One of their sons, Paul Heusinkveld, has written a children’s book titled Elephant Baseball, which includes anecdotes from his own life and the lives of other missionaries’ children who grew up in India and Arabia.
The book also recounts the tragic story of his father’s assassination.
A few months after Dr Heusinkveld’s death, former AMH Bahrain chief medical officer Dr Donald Bosch and his wife Eloise travelled to Muscat on October 30, 1968, and helped revitalise the hospital.
Dr Heusinkveld’s legacy is honoured with a photograph among the hospital leaders’ portraits in the AMH Manama hospital corridor near the ears, neck and throat (ENT) department.
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