Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

I’m not a doctor, but I write about them in the newspaper. Sometimes, at least. I have a talk to give later, and the topic is the hospitals of Lock Haven and their history. Over the years, I’ve discovered that the most efficient way for me to memorize this stuff is to write it into an article, a process I wish I’d learned back in high school. So I’m writing this column on the basis that I’ll retain this information for my speech.

Early on, all available medicine was practiced on the banks of Great Island. It pretty much consisted of praying for the injured person to heal, which didn’t develop a great track record. Around the time Lock Haven was founded, they invented actual medical care, and a hospital was built on the east end of Water Street. This was known as the “Jerry Church Hospital” after our town founder, and not too much is known about it.

In 1903, a new hospital was built on Susquehanna Avenue. It was on land donated by Wilson Kistler, who was a local tannery owner with a home on Church Street. Kistler was a generous man, and almost singlehandedly responsible for every good thing in Lock Haven around that era. The new hospital was considered state of the art, which back then meant there were twenty percent fewer infections. That one lasted for quite a while, in spite of a fire in 1908 that totalled the place.

On July 28, 1908, the hospital caught fire. The cause was never found, or at least never reported in any of the newspapers I’ve checked. Neighbors allowed patients to wait on their porches for the duration, and local people pitched in by bringing out furniture and equipment and guarding it from theft, on the orders of the mayor.
The hospital was rebuilt, and functioned up into the mid-1950s. The board convened in 1956 to proclaim that they were outgrowing the building, and discuss what they were going to do. The problem was exacerbated by the closure of the Teah Hospital, on Main Street, which was a smaller hospital run by Dr. Theodore Teah. He’d begun it after World War I, and it continued until his death. Without the Teah Hospital, the local hospital had more patients, and needed more space. At the first meeting, the end result was basically a shrug.

And then Lee and Bessie Graham entered the picture.

Lee and Bessie were horse farmers who owned a lot of land on top of the hill. One of their horses, a Palomino named Sandy, was the grandson of Trigger, Roy Rogers’s famous horse. (This has nothing to do with Lock Haven Hospital; I just thought it was cool.) As they aged, they decided that they couldn’t take care of as many horses anymore, and sold all but three. (They kept Sandy.) And they agreed to donate their land to a local doctor as a clinic.

That doctor responded that he didn’t need a clinic, necessarily, but the hospital was looking to expand. And that was how Graham Acres became the site of the Lock Haven Hospital.

On May 12, 1956, Lee Graham turned the first shovel of earth for the construction of the new hospital. I’m assuming he didn’t have much to do with construction after that. The hospital was completed and opened to the public on October 8, 1961. A monument was created out of a piece of stone pulled from the creek, and still stands, bearing Lee and Bessie’s name on it. Both of them died there later, in the place they’d donated. They were buried in Highland Cemetery.

The hospital still stands; I’ve been in it many times myself. Don’t bother asking me what my treatment was….Dammit, I’m a writer, not a doctor!