50 Years

This week, DeKalb Medical celebrates 50 years of service to our community.  So why should anyone care?

In 1957, one year after I was born, a group of community leaders put theirs hands and hearts together to create a new institution. 

DeKalb General Hospital opened 4 years later, sprouting out of a 40 acre berry patch that "was well-known to the community because of its abundant growth of strawberries and blackberries ... The public was invited to help themselves to the delicious fruit free of charge." 

So reads the wonderful history book that was written by two people who have literally invested their lives into the lives of others through our institution.  Wytch Stubbs,MD, former chief medical officer, and Susan Parry, RN, former chief nursing officer, devoted four years of their lives in retirement to chronicle what I have called a "love story" ... because of the selfless service that flows out of the people who animate a community hospital.

Bob Wilson, a long-time board member, chairman of the DeKalb Medical Foundation, and a loved and respected voice in our community, often speaks of the important role institutions play in any community. 

"Institutions, such as schools, churches and hospitals, are indispensable components of the foundation of any healthy community.  Sometimes we love them, sometimes we hate them, but we cannot live without them.  They bring and hold people together for the common good and often do so amidst tensions and changing expectations in life."

From its humble beginnings in a berry patch, the people who serve under the banner of DeKalb Medical have been privileged to selflessly serve their neighbors, one at a time, for 50 years.  It strikes me as emblematic of what it means to be an American. 

Where ever you live, you should care about the precious community treasure that your local community hospital represents to you, your family and your community.  Institutions like hospitals are never perfect but they exist to serve everyone, and they need your support to do so.

Comments

[Eric Norwood]

Today's blog is being entered into a time capsule that will be sealed today in a ceremony at DeKalb Medical. The capsule is slated to be opened in 2021. My hope is that the institution will look back with pride on the work we do in the next 10 years, and we'll all have a good laugh looking back at this "new technology" called blogging ...
Eric