Mercy General Hospital
Sixth in a Series
The May 16, 1957, issue of the Tupper Lake Free Press carried grim news for this community under bold headlines: “MAY CLOSE MERCY GENERAL HOSPITAL.”
The simple fact behind that heading was that the hospital was only operating at 40 percent of capacity. That figure was not acceptable to the Sisters of Mercy, who reluctantly explained to the local hospital advisory board that unless the facility operated at or near 75 percent of capacity, it could not break even financially, and it would appear advisable to utilize the time and efforts of the nuns where there was greater need for them.
The community struggled with this announcement for several years, with the situation steadily deteriorating.
Historian Louis Simmons tells us in his local history book, Mostly Spruce and Hemlock, “It assumed crisis proportions in 1962 when the Joint Commission on Accreditation advised the hospital that it could no longer be accredited unless a huge rebuilding or replacement program was undertaken.”
Loss of accreditation would have made the hospital ineligible to receive payment for hospitalization for patients with Blue Cross or Blue Shield insurance coverage. It could also not care for welfare, workmen’s compensation patients or others covered by any group insurance carrier.
There was only one answer and it was not an easy one – build a new hospital at an estimated cost of $750,000! Federal grants of $375,000 were available to ease this financial burden but only if matching funds were raised by this community.
Many readers will remember the huge fundraising campaign that followed the decision to build. A professional fundraising firm from Texas was quickly hired. Then came a series of kickoff dinners, and a huge campaign thermometer was set up to focus public attention on “pushing the temperature over $300,000” by Dec. 20, 1962.
As I remember it, the entire community got behind the drive, and committees were formed that left no stone unturned when soliciting pledges and contributions. Summer residents contributed some $75,000, and additional cash and pledges soared to $$475,000 by the goal date, ensuring the erection of the new hospital.
Part of the plans for the new hospital involved tearing down the Sisters’ convent, and the former L.C. Maid home was purchased at this time, remodeled slightly to serve as a new convent for the Sisters of Mercy staffing the hospital (now the residence and office of attorney John Ellis).
The winning bid to construct the new hospital went the A.J. Beaudette Construction Company of Syracuse, with a low bid on the general contract at $711,200. That firm was headed by a Tupper Lake native, Arthur (Art) Beaudette, who was well known here.
Construction started in January 1964. The new Mercy General Hospital, a 36-bed facility with provisions for caring for 50 patients comfortably as well as having the option for future expansion, was dedicated two years later on May 9, 1966, with hundreds of area residents participating, despite a snowstorm.
The community had once again reacted with solidarity and spirit, and it assured the area of continued hospital protection. The old hospital had been a blessing to Tupper Lake. It had served two generations faithfully, and its obsolescence was bittersweet.
There was a powerful nostalgia not easily dismissed. Many in the dedication ceremony that snowy May day were thankful for the care it had provided. Many had been born there; many had their tonsils and appendixes removed there; others had their wounds sutured and even their lives saved in that place.
What follows are three personal reminiscences that I trust many readers will share with this writer:
- It is after hospital hours. I enter the Mercy General’s front entrance. Low lights, almost to the point of darkness, point the way down the long, cathedral-like hallway. It is quiet, silent, celestial, like an empty church. At the far end of the corridor, a single desk in the center. A young, attractive nurse works on her charts, her work lighted by a single lamp. Blonde curls spill from her traditional peaked nurse’s cap, its colors those of her nursing alma mater; the two stripes indicate her rank of staff nurse. Her cap resembles, in the dimness, a halo over her head not unexpected because when your are in pain, a nurse can be like a saint to you. You feel reassured, thankful – this is a place of mercy and of care, and you can sense that and thank the Sisters of Mercy and the community for building this hospital.
- Dr. Roy Bury, the quintessential family doctor, is kind, gentle and caring. Few knew that he had come here expecting to die from the shrapnel that laced his body. Saved from death in the trenches of war-torn France during the First World War – saved to do his considerable good works for mankind. You meet him in the corridor of the hospital’s second floor OB unit. He is dressed in green surgical scrubs, surgical mask covering his face, his hands stretched out like wings to dry their sanitation bath before entering sterile gloves. A frightening scene – he looks like someone you would imagine from space, and he is about to deliver your firstborn. You thank God for saving this man and his consummate skills that helped so many in this community by giving them hope, strength and wellness.
- The year, 1962, a late March afternoon. Hundreds of skiers on the newly opened slopes of Big Tupper Ski Area. For the sixth time in an hour and a half, the area’s red town-owned station wagon has backed to the hospital’s side door. Six trips, six leg fractures – a result of what ski patrollers know as the “last-day-last run syndrome,” when skiers are tired, the light is flat and deteriorating conditions often become troublesome. The nun at the inadequate receiving door is shocked. Raised on a farm in southern France, she is mystified by the strange footwear consisting of multiple layers of leather and laces and the form-fitting ski trousers, whose seams often had to be cut away to access a limb. What madness is this, she must have thought, that people spend such money and risk such injuries and still term it fun? Who are these people handling the litter, rust-colored jackets with large yellow crosses emblazoned on the back? Competent, professional, helpful in removing the strange padded plywood box splints used to immobilize the broken leg so it can be x-rayed. “Mon Deiu!” she exclaims. “More fractures in a single day than the hospital ordinarily sees in a year – and on a Sunday!”