Phillip L. Rossman; Founder of the Venice Family Clinic

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. today at Hillside Memorial Park for Dr. Phillip L. Rossman, the much beloved and honored internist who gave birth to the Venice Family Clinic 20 years ago.

Rossman was 76 when he died Monday at St. John’s Hospital and Medical Center, where he had been on the staff for many years.

In 1970 he and Dr. Mayer Davidson, now director of the diabetes program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, established the clinic after Rossman learned there was only one doctor serving 18,000 people in the Venice area, as opposed to a 1-400 ratio statewide.

Rossman first became aware of the Venice community’s need when he attended the opening of a county health facility in nearby Santa Monica. What was to have been a celebration, he recalled years later, nearly became a riot.

“Loud chants of ‘We want medical care!’ came from protesters outside,” he said. The demonstrators were poor people from Venice who would have had to take two buses just to get to the new Santa Monica clinic.

Rossman, who was there as the appointee of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn.’s Bay District 5 Public Health Committee, went outside to hear their complaints.

“I just told them to give me their names and a number where I could reach them,” he said. “And in the meantime I told them to go inside and eat their cookies and drink their tea. . . . Just behave yourselves and we’ll work it out. . . .”

From that conversation and meetings with Davidson, who arranged for volunteer physicians, a nonprofit free clinic was established in a UCLA dental facility on Lincoln Boulevard near Rose Avenue. Rossman guided the clinic in its formative years. In the clinic’s first year it served only what few patients he could see at the end of his own professional day.

But as physician interest expanded and drug and X-ray services became more plentiful, the clinic grew to a point where it now serves 30,000 a year. With a recent building addition at its new location at Rose and 6th avenues, it is now capable of serving 50,000.

In 1987 Rossman was honored by the National Philanthropy Committee as “Outstanding Founder in Philanthropy”; the same year St. John’s named him its outstanding physician. This year the clinic--which many thought would eventually have to be funded by county taxpayers but instead exists on fund-raisers, some state help and private foundation grants--also honored him.

He is survived by his wife, Ruth, a daughter, two grandchildren, a sister and a brother, who ask donations in his name to the clinic at 604 Rose Ave., Venice 90291.