By Dave Balcom
Publisher

6-24-2008

It was a quick trip down memory lane Monday for a handful of Bishop babies born in the original 1949 hospital.
Georgan Stottlemyre, marketing director for the Northern Inyo Hospital, and Cheryl Underhill, community relations, quickly put together the event for residents with attachments to the old hospital.
“We hurried around because tomorrow they’re going to start asbestos removal and that’ll be the end of tours,” Stottlemyre said.

Underhill was born in the old hospital in 1953, and came to work there in the early 1970s where she studied under Eve Allen, RN.
“She was a good student,” Allen said of Underhill, as they bantered back and forth. Allen started work at the hospital in 1964 and served for 28 years.
Helen Dixon never worked at the hospital. “I just populated it,” she said with a laugh.
Dixon’s father was a forest supervisor here, and was credited with being instrumental in the hospital’s construction.
Helen’s first child, Alice Susan, was born in 1948 at the Army hospital at the airport. That building is now at Manzanar.

The staff of Northern Inyo Hospital poses for a photo on the steps of the hospital in 1954. The stairs were long ago removed, but parts of structure that was built in 1949 were still being used up until recently, when the building was vacated for asbestos removal and eventual demolition. File photo

Her second daughter, Kathryn Ann, was born in the then “new” hospital just weeks after it was dedicated.
Two more daughters were born in 1952 and 1955 at the old hospital.
For Jackie Bramlette, the nostalgia of the day was all about that dedication ceremony on Oct. 23, 1949.
“I was a member of the girl’s chorus for Bishop Grammar School,” Bramlette said. “We sang at the dedication.”
She said she knew they sang “Ave Maria” as one of their numbers, but she couldn’t recall the other song.
Carole Hamilton was an RN at the hospital from 1963-78 before moving to northern Nevada. “People will remember my husband (Dick Hamilton), who I met and married here.” She worked in obstetrics most of her time in Bishop, she said.
Doug Marcellin who works in Human Resources at the hospital was born in the old building in 1961.
“It’s like a little part of you goes away,” he said about the plans to tear down the building. “It’s best for the hospital, but change is hard.”
Janet Gutierrez was born in the building in 1951. She felt that with asbestos and other issues, tearing the building down for new construction was the right thing to do.
The buzz during the tour centered on the ornamental cupolas that mark the roofline of the old building.
The three wooden structures have metal caps that have weathered to a patina of green.
“They’re the look of the hospital,” said Allen. “They have to be preserved.”
The board, however, has ruled out an estimated $15,000 price tag on salvaging them.
“The company wouldn’t even guarantee they could get them down in one piece,” said Hospital Administrator John Halfen.
“We’re going to try and salvage the metal parts, and then we’ll have a kind of yard sale between the demolition and the new construction. People will be able to buy them for a donation to the Foundation.”
He said the salvaging effort would be made by hospital staff.
If someone wanted to build some kind of appropriate structure using those caps, and then donate that to the hospital as an ornament in the rose garden, Halfen said, that would “be up to the donor.”