SEQUIM – Dr. Robert Littlejohn, the family doctor who helped put Sequim on the map as a retirement destination, died Thursday of natural causes.
He was 88 and had suffered a blood clot in his lungs, said his son, Bill Littlejohn, 60, who lives in Sequim with his wife Esther.
Dr. Littlejohn was a Cornell University-educated Army physician assigned to evacuation hospitals in France and Germany during World War II.
He worked as a surgeon for a time, but after moving to Sequim in 1948, “he did everything,” his son said.
Dr. Littlejohn developed some of the first retirement communities in Clallam County.
By the mid-1950s, Dr. Littlejohn was purchasing property, including what was then the Old Folks Home on Washington Street and the Thompson farm off Fifth Avenue.
The Old Folks Home was on the verge of closing, Bill said, so Dr. Littlejohn gradually renovated it and renamed it the Sequim Nursing Center.
The home later became Wisteria Cottage, an assisted living complex, and the farm turned into the Sherwood Manor community, the Fifth Avenue retirement home and the Fifth Avenue Medical Plaza.
Bill Littlejohn owns and runs the properties his father developed, including Sherwood Assisted Living, The Lodge at Sherwood Village and The Fifth Avenue retirement home, as well as Olympic Ambulance.
