South St. Paul’s first (and only) hospital
Lois Glewwe
Contributor
One of the more interesting characteristics of South St. Paul is that throughout its history the community has often aspired to economic, educational, civic and financial accomplishments that other suburbs of St. Paul never considered possible. Readers of this column have learned that the strength of the city’s meatpacking industry led to such significant developments as the opening of South St. Paul High School 50 years before any neighboring suburb considered such a venture. Other firsts included the first public library and the first public parks system in any community outside of the capital city.
This civic self-confidence led a group of dedicated South St. Paul volunteers to make history yet again in 1962 when the first Twin Cities suburban full-service hospital opened in South St. Paul.
The effort began in 1945 as the country and the community began to recover from World War II. A group of city leaders, many from the livestock and commission industry, formed the United Communities Hospital and Health Center for the purpose of bringing a hospital to South St. Paul. As a fundraiser, volunteers went door to door selling memberships for $10. Andrew Reid served as the group’s first president, and local civic leader H.G. Swanson was the first treasurer. The community rallied and gave strong support to the effort. In 1959, the organization purchased seven acres at 19th Avenue North and Thompson. A sign stating "Future Hospital Site" was erected by drive chairman Richard Lilly of First National Bank, and the entire city began to visualize the hospital as a reality.
In those days, before managed health care and huge health provider organizations, establishing a hospital meant identifying an administrative organization to provide organizational services as well as securing funding to erect the building. Father Harold Whittet of St. John Vianney Parish in South St. Paul provided the first key to the administrative question when he encountered Sister Margaret of the Daughters of the Divine Redeemer from Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, while he was on a hunting trip in the Dakotas. Intrigued by the story Father Whittet told of South St. Paul residents who were buying $10 memberships to bring a hospital to their town, Sister Margaret told the popular priest that her order would come to Minnesota and open a hospital in South St. Paul if the volunteers could raise $750,000 of the estimated $3 million required for completion of the complex.
When Father Whittet returned to the city with this news, Richard Lilly spearheaded a wide-ranging funding campaign. Within two years, enough support had been assured to make it possible for the cornerstone to be laid on September 24, 1961. Hundreds of citizens turned out for the ceremony, and donations continued to be received as construction began. The new Divine Redeemer Hospital opened its doors to its first patients on April 25, 1962.
For the first time in our city’s history, newborns were registered as being born in South St. Paul; something that had not happened since home births had been supplanted by hospital stays. Most South St. Paul children born between 1920 and 1962 were born in hospitals in St. Paul. Now, mothers and babies were the happy temporary residents of the local maternity ward on Thompson Avenue.
Divine Redeemer Hospital soon provided ambulance service, and thousands of local residents appreciated the opportunity to spend their hospital stay in town rather than in a St. Paul or Minneapolis hospital. In turn, hospital physicians and staff, attracted from across the country to the new facility, moved into South St. Paul and were soon involved in the Chamber of Commerce, the PTA and city government, strengthening and expanding the partnership between the city’s first hospital and its long-standing history of civic involvement by industry leaders.
Changing times
In 1987, just 25 years after its opening, news reached the community that the hospital was to be sold to HealthEast Corporation. The comforting local presence of the Daughters of the Divine Redeemer came to an end in November 1987. HealthEast took over the hospital and continued to provide services until 1994, when the hospital was closed and HealthEast began the transition of the facility into a nursing home. Health East Bethesda Care Center was the new name of the residential care center, which is today known as Cerenity Care Center-Bethesda. Extensive renovations of the original hospital building and the construction of extensive new facilities have kept the care center a vital and significant part of today’s employment base and economy. For many in town, however, the complex on the corner of 19th and Thompson will always be Divine Redeemer – South St. Paul’s very own hospital. |
