Malouf Abraham, Jr.

Malouf Abraham, Jr. (born March 29, 1939), a retired physician, is a major art collector from Canadian, a community in the Texas Panhandle and the seat of Hemphill County. He is expanding his combination residence/art museum in Canadian called "The Citadel". The Citadel has been featured numerous times on Home and Garden Television. When the work is completed, The Citadel will become a museum only, with regular hours open to the public. The Canadian Town Council approved the zoning for the work in February 2007. The project could be completed during 2009 at a cost in excess of $7 million. It will have a three-story art wing, lookout tower, furnishings, and gardens. Abraham is a third-generation member of a large immigrant family whose progenitors came to the Panhandle in the early 1910s from a village in Lebanon with the goal of obtaining the "American Dream".

Early years and education
Abraham was born to businessman Malouf Abraham, Sr. (1915-1994), and the former Iris Lewis (1918-2001), a descendant of a pioneer Hemphill County family. The senior Abraham made a fortune in oil and natural gas and was the mayor of Canadian in the 1950s and a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1965-1969. Abraham, like his father, uncles, and cousins, graduated from Canadian High School. One of his uncles, Tom Abraham (1910-2007), took over the family department store after the death of the original Abrahams.

In 1961, the younger Abraham obtained his undergraduate degree from Trinity University in San Antonio. He received his medical degree in 1964 from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. He was the second youngest member of the medical school graduating class.

While on a medical internship in Greensboro, North Carolina, Abraham met his future wife, the former Therese Browne, a nurse from Mt. Airy, a small town in the eastern part of North Carolina which was the model for the fictitious Mayberry on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show. Griffith, who played the small-town "Sheriff Taylor" on the series, was also a native of Mt. Airy. Malouf and Therese were married in the Mt. Airy Catholic Church, which the Brownes helped to build with granite from their own quarry. As fate would reveal, Therese Browne Abraham (born 1936) did not become a sheriff, but she was the mayor of Canadian for the decade from 1982-1992.

Crossing paths with John Connally
In 1963, Abraham was an intern on duty at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas when U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Governor John B. Connally, Jr., were brought for emergency treatment. Kennedy of course perished, but Connally survived a close brush with death. The next spring Connally delivered the commencement address at Abraham's medical school graduation. The Abrahams often crossed paths with Connally. Malouf Abraham, Sr., became a legislator at the start of Connally's second two-year term as governor. The Abrahams also became Republicans even before Connally himself defected to the GOP in 1973. Connally ran for president in 1980 but received only a single delegate. The Abrahams came to Washington in 1981 for the presidential inauguration of Ronald W. Reagan, whom they had supported. Abraham, Sr., was a delegate to various Republican national conventions.

Air Force doctor
After graduation from medical school, Malouf Abraham interned in Savannah, Georgia, at the time of the fall of the Jim Crow segregation laws. Thereafter, on receipt of a draft notice for the Vietnam War, he enlisted as a captain and military doctor in the United States Air Force, Strategic Air Command. He remained stateside, mostly in Bossier City, across the Red River from Shreveport in northwestern Louisiana. While with SAC, he was assigned to treat allergies of military personnel returning from the rain forests of Vietnam. Many of the soldiers had extreme allergic reactions. He observed that traditional treatments were often ineffective. He also witnessed that some patients had multiple side effects from chemical-based medications. Abraham made the medicine milder and more effective by concocting vaccines that neutralize not just the specific allergen but also build up immunities for real, long-term health. For his work, Abraham won the Air Force Commendation Medal.

The couple's oldest son, Eddie (born 1965 in Savannah) graduated from Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He then completed the ranch and feed-lot program at the two-year Clarendon College in Clarendon in Donley County and has a cow-calf operation in Hemphill County. The middle son, Salem Andrew Abraham, was born at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City in 1966. He is a successful futures trader based in Canadian. Jason Abraham (born 1969 in Canadian) also graduated from the ranch program at Clarendon and has some two thousand horses on his ranch near Canadian.

Allergy clinic in Canadian, Texas
Dr. Abraham operated his allergy clinic in Canadian for thirty-five years. By the time he retired in 2001, Dr. Abraham reported that 46,000 patients from around the nation had come to Canadian to obtain treatment. Abraham pioneered a new treatment, "Allernon", a natural, homeopathic and non-prescription allergy relief remedy that works with the body's immune system to help fight itchy, watery eyes, asthma, sneezing, coughing, scratchy throat and other symptoms associated with allergies. As a natural formula, Abraham's remedy treats the entire body and helps the body to build its own defenses against allergies. Allernon was created with many of the same ingredients provided in the popular allergy shots that he prescribed during his 35-year practice. Prior to retiring, Dr. Abraham worked with a small Food and Drug Administration-approved laboratory in southern Indiana to create his homeopathic formula for natural, prescription-free droplets. He kept the clinic open for three additional years after his retirement with a staff of three to accommodate patients obtaining the allergy remedy.

Patron of the arts
In 1972, the Abrahams obtained a Norman Rockwell painting, The First Day of School. It turned out to have been the first of thousands of art works that they have collected over the past thirty-five years. Many of their general art exhibits are displayed in museums across the nation and abroad. Abraham said that it was partly his father's success in the oil and gas business that made his serious pursuit of art possible. The Abraham collection includes Couple Descending Staircase by J. C. Leyendecker, Girl with Faun by William Bouguereau, and Elephants Tearing Up Baobab Tree by Craig Bone.

In the middle 1990s, Abraham donated the "Malouf Abraham Family Art Center" to Wayland Baptist University in the Panhandle/South Plains city of Plainview.

In 1995, then Governor George W. Bush, appointed Dr. Abraham to the Texas Commission on the Arts.

In their active pursuit of art and aesthetics, the Abrahams maintain, in addition to their properties in Canadian, a condominium in Amarillo, an apartment at the Trump Towers in New York City, and a winter home in Sarasota, Florida.

Dr. Abraham and his wife, Therese, have announced plans to convert their home into a World-class art museum open to the public. The doors are set to open in the spring of 2008.