Natural health expert Dr. Agatha Thrash remembered for medical contributions

Dr. Agatha Thrash, a world-renowned expert on natural health remedies and vegetarian cuisine, died Thursday at her home in Seale, Ala. She was 84.

Thrash and her late husband, Dr. Calvin Thrash, co-founded the Uchee Pines Natural Health and Lifestyle Center in Seale, along with Country Life Natural Food Store and Vegetarian Restaurant in Columbus. The restaurant, located at 1217 Eberhart Ave., will be closed Sunday because of Thrash's death, according to a post on its Facebook page.

"She had been declining after several strokes, and finally succumbed to complications related to her condition," a

Facebook post read. "The funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. on Sunday, at the Uchee Pines Seventh-day Adventist Church."

Prior to launching the ministries, Thrash was chief pathologist at St. Francis Hospital and her husband was an internist in private practice, according to family and friends. The couple left conventional medicine in the 1970s after converting to the Seventh-day Adventist faith, dedicating their lives to preventive practices. They wrote 15 books on natural healing and alternative medicine and treated patients with hydrotherapy and other natural remedies.

Dr. Tom Theus, a retired internist who worked in the Columbus community for 35 years, said he and his wife, Peggy, first met the Thrashes in 1968. Theus had met some Seventh-day Adventists serving in the Army and became interested in the religion. When he returned to Columbus, Calvin Thrash asked him to take over his practice for a year while he went to study at Loma Linda University in California. Theus said he also served on the Uchee Pines board of directors and referred patients to the center.

"She and her husband were quite a team," he said of Thrash. "They were pioneers in preventive medicine and did a great job in training medical missionaries and treating a lot of patients with simple remedies and had good results in most cases."

Agatha Thrash, a native of Baxley, Ga., was a graduate of the Medical College of Georgia and attended Berry College and the Georgia State College for Women. She was a member of Who's Who and obtained her private pilot license at King Aviation in Columbus.

Thrash was a member of the Uchee Pines Seventh-day Adventist Church and taught a weekly Bible class at the Columbus First Seventh-day Adventist Church until two years ago.

Ann Thrash-Trumbo, the couple's daughter, said her parents launched their ministries in 1969 with a health food store called Staff-O-Life. They began preparing healthy foods for their patients.

"It was even difficult to buy whole wheat flour in Columbus in the 1960s," she said. "And whole grain rice was hard to find."

When her mother couldn't find peanut butter without sugar in the grocery store, she made special arrangements with Tom's Peanuts to have them delivered.

Eventually, the health food store turned into a luncheon club, where 10 to 12 people would eat with them every day, Thrash-Trumbo said. In the 1970s, they moved the restaurant to the Eberhart location and changed the name to Country Life. They also purchased land in Seale to establish the lifestyle center.

The first program they started was a day-camp for overweight girls.

"Mom just put a little classified ad in the Ledger-Enquirer and got several responses," Thrash-Trumbo said. "I think we had about 15 to 18 girls that first summer and we ran it for about four years."

Prior to starting Uchee Pines, Thrash had her own lab, called "Thrash Labs," her daughter said.

"She had this ambition, before Christ, to establish this very big regional lab," she said. "She wanted Thrash Labs to become the most prominent lab in the Southeast and I think she would have done it, except Jesus got a hold of her and said, 'I have a different way I want you to go, not just making a lot of money. I want you to change lives.'

"And she did."

Alva James-Johnson, 706-571-8521. Reach her on Facebook at AlvaJamesJohnsonLedger.

This story was originally published September 4, 2015 at 11:49 PM with the headline "Natural health expert Dr. Agatha Thrash remembered for medical contributions ."