ALUMNI
A Legacy of Healthcare
When Peter Norman ’00 decided to start a business, he recruited the first person he met at Westmont to join him: Eric Mortenson ’00. The two best friends enjoyed adventures such as hiking, backpacking and traveling. They also shared a strong commitment to their faith. Together they founded Bellevue Healthcare (BHC) in 2000.
Peter got the idea from delivering medical equipment after graduating a semester early. Always entrepreneurial, he thought he could operate his own company more efficiently. Eric agreed to join him, and they began leasing equipment to adult family homes in the Seattle area.
Then they met people in the hospice industry, which opened up a new market and became the backbone of the business. An economics and business major, Peter focused on the business side. Eric, who earned a degree in biology, developed the company’s philosophy and mindset. “He was an essential part of helping us succeed at something we had no business doing,”
Peter says. “He helped form a culture that endures. “It’s not easy to start a business together. We had to work all the time, but doing that with someone you really enjoy is hard to duplicate. We both worked for UPS at night during the first six months to get the company off the ground. We had a vision of gathering like-minded people to get something going, solve problems and make helping people the core of our business.”
“He was an essential part of helping us succeed at something we had no business doing,” Peter says. “He helped form a culture that endures.”
Eric stuck with Peter for three years while the company grew. He left to earn a
doctorate in immunology at the University of Chicago and pursue a career at the Mayo Clinic. But during his postdoc, he decided to join private industry instead. At Bristol Meyer Squib, he worked as an executive medical science liaison with teaching hospitals and physicians who used the firm’s products off-label.
Meanwhile, BHC diversified. They still provide equipment and supplies to hospice providers throughout the Pacific Northwest, but they also offer a full line of equipment and supplies for customers needing complex rehab, respiratory, and basic home medical equipment, including ventilators, oxygen and sleep therapy. The company also operates retail locations and maintains an e-commerce presence.
Peter and Eric continued their adventures, traveling to places such as Guatemala, Peru, Machu Pichu, Norway fjords, Denmark and Iceland. They share a Scandinavian heritage. Then Eric was diagnosed with Stage-4 stomach cancer. “He was the healthiest dude I’ve ever known,” Peter says. “Part of his dissertation discussed an alternative drug with implications for stomach cancer. Few people get diagnosed with something they have a doctorate in.”
For five years, Eric fought the disease while continuing to travel with Peter, mostly in the United States. They took off in a van for a while to tour national parks. Eric also spent time with Peter, his wife, Jana, and their growing family of four sons.
Eric died in 2023 in Minneapolis at the age of 44. To honor him, Peter funded a bench near Winter Hall with a quote from C.S. Lewis: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” He also plans to establish a nursing scholarship in Eric’s memory.
Peter considers BHC’s success to be the greatest testament to Eric, who played such a formative role in its founding. The company operates in 25 locations in Washington, Oregon and Idaho and employs nearly 300 people. Joel Gallion ’01 serves a president, and many of the staff attended Christian colleges like Westmont. Peter manages 50 commercial buildings, purchasing and renovat- ing property for new locations. Most of all, he seeks to care for the people they serve as well as their employees in keeping with the heart of the business he and Eric established.
This is a story from the Spring 2025 Westmont Magazine