ABOVE: Bethesda Memorial Hospital opened in 1959 with 70 beds and 32 physicians.
Firstborn remains impressed with hospital | Phantom of the Opera theme | Meet the Co-Chairs
By Paula Detwiller
As supporters of Bethesda Memorial Hospital clink cocktail glasses at the 57th Annual Bethesda Ball next month, they’ll be celebrating an important milestone. It’s been 65 years since a group of dedicated local residents formed what would become the Bethesda Hospital Foundation and began the push to build a much-needed acute care hospital to serve southeast Palm Beach County.
Gulf Stream Mayor Bill Koch Jr. was one of those dedicated citizens. Koch, now 91, has served on the Bethesda Hospital Foundation board continuously since it was founded in 1947. As the fundraising arm of this busy, nonprofit medical institution, the foundation has kept Bethesda Memorial Hospital operating and growing, year after year.
“Just like Jack in the Beanstalk,” Koch says. “From a little bean in the ground to a huge stalk! We’ve climbed a lot of leaves to get up to where we are now.”
To put that into context, consider life before Bethesda Memorial Hospital was constructed on South Seacrest Boulevard in Boynton Beach. The nearest hospital for folks in Gulf Stream, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach in the 1940s was in West Palm Beach, and the fastest way to get there was via Federal and Dixie highways. When Koch looks back, he remembers anxiety and dread.
“There was no local hospital to have our children in,” Koch said. When his wife went into labor with their first child, Koch made the 20-mile trek to St. Mary’s Hospital with a racing pulse, his wife screaming in pain. Once there, they learned it was false labor. “And of course, she wasn’t giving birth, so I’d bring her home again and wait for the next time.”
Koch says many babies were born in the backs of pickup trucks. On-the-job accidents were a boss’s worst nightmare.
“Guys would get hurt out there on the farms, and you’d have to load them up in the back of a truck and drive them to the hospital yourself. We had no ambulances, no paramedics, no nothing.” The severely injured often died en route.
Koch says wealthy residents living along the coast worried about surviving heart attacks. African-Americans living inland worried about surviving, period; medical services for blacks in the years before the civil rights movement were extremely limited.
“We kept talking about it, and we finally said ‘we’ve got to have a hospital,’ ” Koch said. “We needed and wanted to serve everybody. That was a given.”
Hospital District Secretary-Treasurer Catherine Strong snips the ‘ribbon’ (surgical gauze) at the Jan. 24, 1959, dedication of Bethesda Memorial Hospital. Others pictured, from left: Emory J. Barrow, first and longtime chairman of the Southeastern Palm Beach County Hospital District Commission; Merrill F. Steele, M.D., founding Administrator; Chief Engineer J.R. O’Neal; Commissioners Col. Andrew L. Faben; Mrs. Charles Spalsbury; and William F. Koch Jr., president of the Gulf Stream Hospital Association and master of ceremonies for the historic event.
Today, Bethesda Memorial Hospital continues to fulfill its original mission of offering medical care to the indigent and the affluent alike. From humble beginnings with 70 beds and 32 physicians, the hospital has grown into a 400-bed, full-service medical facility with more than 550 physicians in more than 40 specialties. And another full-service hospital, Bethesda West, is under construction at Boynton Beach Boulevard and U.S. 441, set to open next year.
Revenues from this year’s 57th Annual Bethesda Ball will support the main hospital’s Center for Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery, which includes a surgical robot and a first-in-the-state simulator needed for in-house training.
The Bethesda Hospital Foundation was established originally as the Gulf Stream Hospital Association in 1947 to support Bethesda Memorial Hospital.
The Foundation is raising funds through its “Caring for Our Community Campaign” to maintain and enhance Centers of Excellence including the Bethesda Heart Hospital, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Cornell Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine, Driskill Endovascular Center, Center for Women & Children, Orthopaedic Institute, Center for Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery and the creation of Palm Beach County’s newest hospital, Bethesda West, set to open in 2013.
Today, the hospital has 400 beds and more than 550 physicians.
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