Earlham College

Ralph “Newt” Otto was a four-year all-American soccer standout at Earlham. His national awards include first-team honors in 1958 and 1959. Lettering all four seasons, he was named to the all-Midwest Collegiate Soccer Conference second team and the all-Midwest region squad in 1955. A co-captain at Earlham, Otto participated in the 1955 and 1959 Pan American games tryouts. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Earlham, he graduated from Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College in 1963. He continued on with an internship and residency in pathology at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., before serving a tour of duty on a hospital ship in Vietnam from 1968-69. Otto was chief pathologist at Chelsea (MA) Naval Hospital from 1969-72 and at Western Memorial Hospital in Springfield, Mass., from 1972-76. For 16 years until retirement in 1992, he was director of hematology and immunology in the department of pathology at Bay State Medical Center in Springfield. Newt and his wife Cecilia lived on a farm in Connecticut at the time of induction.