Just as the Lord made man a living creature endowed with power to reproduce his kind, so also the medical institutions which came about by the providence of God are dynamic and living, for institutions are primarily people rather than brick and mortar, buildings and equipment. Frequently they also demonstrate the power of God to reproduce themselves, as institutions beget institutions; and often small indeed is the arm that turns the helm of destiny.
A banker from Denver, Henry M. Porter, was visiting his daughter who lived in Pasadena, California. By habit he spent the winters in southern California and timed his travel so that his birthday was spent on the train to prevent his friends and family from making an occasion of the event. While visiting his daughter, he contracted a heavy cold; and his daughter suggested that he go to the Glendale Sanitarium not far away and get a hydrotherapy treatment. This he did, and after the treatment he fell asleep on the treatment table. Awakening, he felt much relieved and offered the boy who gave the treatment a dollar tip. The faithful Adventist boy thanked the patient but declined the offer, saying that he was paid by the sanitarium and it would not be right to accept further payment.
The Denver Banker Is Impressed
This small example of unusual integrity impressed the Denver banker. Some years later he and his wife were again spending the winter in southern California, this time at the Hotel del Coronado across the bay from San Diego. Once more Mr. Porter came down with a heavy cold and, remembering the previous experience in a Seventh-day Adventist sanitarium, inquired if such an institution existed in the vicinity of San Diego. He was referred to the Paradise Valley Sanitarium and entered as a patient. Here he found the same sort of people he had met at the Glendale Sanitarium. His cold responded to the hydrotherapy treatments, and his soul responded to the atmosphere and the environment.
He later told the story of how each day he would open the door of his room just a crack so that he could peek through into the room across the hall where resided an old gentleman suffering from Parkinson's disease. Daily he watched a young student nurse feed this old man and noticed the unfailing kindness of the student nurse, who never knew that her tender care was watched.
Mrs. Porter later joined her husband in the sanitarium. The inarticulate influence of the institution and its many workers prepared the soil of the heart for the planting of the good seed of gratitude, about to spring up and bear fruit. The sanitarium sojourn ended, the bill was paid, and the patients returned first to Coronado and later to Denver.
Bookkeeping was then done by hand, and the patients' journal was balanced at the end of each week. The following weekend, however, the books did not balance. A search for the error eventually led to Mr. Porter's account and revealed that he had been overcharged forty-five cents. The sanitarium credit office promptly sent a check for forty-five cents with a letter of explanation and apology. Shortly thereafter they received the following reply from Mr. Porter:
Fby. 12th, 1928
Dear Sir:
Your letter of 10th with check for 45 cents received, and I thank you for it and return it to you for credit your general fund. I feel I have underpaid you all for your kind and careful treatment and attention, and I owe you all a debt of gratitude for the kind consideration while with you. Mrs. Porter and I are well, and I am gaining strength daily. With our regards and best wishes to you all.
Yours sincerely,
/s/ H. M. Porter
The letter was acknowledged and forgotten; the account in the sanitarium office was closed and filed.
The Porter Memorial Hospital
This was not, however, a closed account in the heart of Mr. Porter. The simple sincerity of the workers, the kindness of the personnel, the high quality of medical care received, and the unfailing integrity which he experienced made a deep and lasting impression. In April, 1928, the credit manager of the Paradise Valley Sanitarium received the following letter:
April 16th, 1928
Dear Mr. ----------:
Mrs. Porter and I came home the first of this month and are quite well, thanks to your kind treatment at the sanitarium.
We have had three snowstorms and some freezing weather since we came home; today is warm and springlike.
Can you give me the address of the general manager of your various corporations, as I would like to correspond with him in regard to establishing a like institution in Denver.
Yours truly,
/s/ H. M. Porter
Remember me kindly to Mr. Hansen, Dr. Lockwood, and your sister.
This letter started a chain of negotiations which culminated in the gift of $330,000 by Henry M. Porter and his daughter, Dora Porter Mason, for the erection of the Porter Sanitarium and Hospital on a forty-acre tract of land in south Denver--a tract, incidentally, which was part of the original estate of the Porter family.
Just before the close of the American Civil War Henry M. Porter and his brother decided to go west. Together they brought the first telegraph service into Denver. In these early days Mr. Porter was one of the scheduled riders on the famous pony express. The brothers staked out claim to much land on which Denver originally grew, and the present site of the Porter Memorial Hospital is part of the land originally claimed by Mr. Porter's brother from an unexplored new West.
Before the original building was complete, a further gift of $50,000 was made for the erection of a suitable nurses' home. Thus was born the Porter Sanitarium and Hospital, now known as the Porter Memorial Hospital, the child of the Paradise Valley Sanitarium and the Glendale Sanitarium, which institutions were in turn children of the Spirit of Prophecy, which is a child of God.
A Continuing Gift
Through the years that have followed, the Porter family has taken an active interest in the institution and has made frequent and substantial donations to its capital improvement. The interest of the father was transmitted to the son, Will Porter. He, after the passing of his father and mother, with the recurring regularity of Christmas, annually remembered the institution his father and sister founded. On June 23, 1958, Will Porter passed away. His estate was valued at more than $13,000,000, and his will contained the following clause:
Item IV--B. "I give and bequeath to the Porter Sanitarium and Hospital, a Colorado corporation, situate at Denver, Colorado, one of said shares, or one sixth of my residuary estate, said amount to be held by said Porter Sanitarium and Hospital in its building fund and to be used only for the construction of permanent betterments and improvements to said institution."
Thus the one-dollar tip declined and the forty-five-cent overpayment returned, plus the many other influences which played upon the lives of these people, were multiplied even more than the loaves and fishes of old. The Porter Memorial Hospital stands today not alone a monument to the generosity of the Porter family, but also as a tribute to the unidentified treatment hand, the nurse who fed the old man, and all of the others who were used by God to tell the story of His love through deeds of daily exemplary living.
The Kettering Hospital a Child of Hinsdale
The history of the church is but the annals of similar providences of God repeated in many places under a great variety of circumstances. One of the largest of such providences came to its fruition in the year 1964 in Kettering, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. But it was in fact born much earlier.
In 1949 a tragic epidemic of poliomyelitis raged in and around Chicago. The dread disease was no respecter of persons, knocking alike on the doors of the rich and the poor. Hospitals were overcrowded. Many of the general hospitals, lacking equipment for the care of this type of patient, were obliged to refer these stricken children to the county hospital in Chicago.
The Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital was operating in its old and time-stricken facilities in this rather exclusive suburb of Chicago. True to the traditions and heritage of our medical institutions, this sanitarium had a well-equipped physical medicine department, uniquely strong in hydrotherapy. These facilities were particularly useful in treating polio, and the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital opened its door and its heart to the little patients who came for care.
Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Kettering and their three children lived not far from the sanitarium, Eugene being the only son of the famous inventor Charles F. Kettering. Society is debtor to this inventor for the self-starter common on our automobiles, the quick-drying paints, the application of the diesel engine to the railroads, ethyl gasoline, and many, many other inventions which have blessed our lives. He was a vice-president of General Motors Corporation.
A kindly providence spared the Kettering children from the clutches of the disease, but Mrs. Kettering had friends whose children were not so fortunate, children who were brought to the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital for care and treatment. Frequently she was a visitor in the sanitarium and noticed the care given to her friends' children.
Being an unusually observing woman, she saw much more than routine care of children stricken by polio. Back of the care but shining through, she saw tenderness, dedication, unusual concern for others, a spirit of service which knew no bounds, and a firm belief in a loving God whose arms enfold the world. She saw nurses pray with praying mothers and weep by the bedside of little children with weeping fathers. She watched as nurses forgot mealtimes and changing shifts in order to continue their tender care of small suffering bodies.
In due course the epidemic subsided, but the picture of the dedicated workers at the Hinsdale Sanitarium lingered in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Kettering. The contagion of poliomyelitis passed; the contagion of dedication and unselfish service above the call of duty continued in the lives of the Ketterings, and spread. Under their leadership and with their liberal support a community campaign was conducted which resulted in the raising of more than a million dollars for the complete rebuilding of the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital into a modern 195-bed institution dedicated to the glory of God through the medium of service to man.
A Memorial to an Illustrious Inventor
Charles F. Kettering, the father, passed away, and the world lost one of its great inventive geniuses. The only son and daughter-in-law desired to erect a memorial to the illustrious father. The first thought was that the most fitting monument would be a hospital dedicated to his memory and located in the suburb of Dayton in which he resided and which bore his name.
An architect was engaged and instructed to draw the plans for a hundred-bed hospital. A public health survey of the community needs, however, revealed that a hundred-bed hospital would be quite inadequate. A much larger institution was needed. The Ketterings counseled with close friends and decided that if their immediate friends and the community leaders would contribute funds sufficient to increase the project by one hundred beds, they would increase their contribution sufficiently to add a third block of one hundred beds, and thus a three-hundred-bed institution would be erected.
In the meantime serious thought was being given by Mr. and Mrs. Kettering to the organization and operation of this institution, now to be born. Admittedly they did not have the time, the experience, the inclination, nor the resources to successfully operate such a medical institution. Their minds immediately turned to their Seventh-day Adventist friends in Hinsdale. Why not erect the institution and give it in total to the Seventh-day Adventist Church to own and operate in similar fashion to the sanitarium and hospital with which they were acquainted in Hinsdale?
Contact was made, first with the administration of the Hinsdale Sanitarium, and through them, with the leadership of the Columbia Union Conference and the General Conference. These negotiations resulted in an agreement that the Church would assume the responsibility of ownership and operation of the institution if this could be without restricting qualifications and without encumbrances. This was willingly agreed upon.
Friends Join the Ketterings
The next problem was one of informing friends of their plans and enlisting their assistance in providing funds for their portion of the project, the second block of one hundred beds. Mr. Kettering felt that to see is to believe and therefore arranged to take three airplane loads of his friends from Dayton--industrialists, bankers, and leading citizens--to the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital and show them a representative Adventist hospital in operation. In this group was one physician.
The management arranged an extensive guided tour of the plant, and the group followed their guides through offices and operating rooms, laboratories and laundries. But the one physician did not make the tour. He elected rather to spend his day in the physicians' lounge interrogating the attending staff as they came and went. This physician later reported to the Dayton Medical Society that he questioned the attending physicians as to how Adventists operated hospitals, the care they gave, their standards, ideals, and restrictions. He reported that without exception the non-Adventist physicians with whom he talked in Hinsdale responded that they preferred to have their patients in the Adventist hospital for three reasons: the cleanliness of the institution, the completeness of the equipment, and the dedication of the nurses and workers.
After the delegation had returned to Dayton, in due time a meeting was called and the financial leaders of the community were invited. Here Mr. Kettering first presented his offer to increase his original hundred-bed project by one hundred beds if the leaders of finance and the captains of industry in Dayton would contribute enough for a block of one hundred beds also.
After Mr. Kettering had finished speaking, the president of National Cash Register Company and a vice-president of General Motors spoke, inviting those gathered to contribute to the project. At the end of the room was placed an easel with pages similar to a Sabbath School Picture Roll. The first few pages told of the need of Dayton for more hospital facilities, the next few pages revealed Mr. and Mrs. Kettering's offer, and the last pages told of Seventh-day Adventist medical work around the world. This presentation was prepared by the Public Relations Department of the National Cash Register Company without the knowledge of the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
It was an impressive and a sobering experience to listen to the president of the National Cash Register Company and a vice-president of General Motors describe to their friends the selfless service of Seventh-day Adventist medical workers around the world, and ask their friends to contribute one and a half million dollars for the erection and equipping of a hospital in their community, to be given without strings to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In approximately twenty minutes this amount was subscribed.
Ground Broken and Work Begun
On July 7, 1961, an appropriate ground-breaking ceremony took place on a level tract of land which was formerly a part of the Kettering estate. The family home is secluded in the trees that crown the hill behind the hospital property. Work began on a three-hundred-bed hospital complete with all that money can buy, but made possible only by the demonstration of those things which money cannot buy. The building was structurally planned so as to add another floor with another one hundred beds at some future time, bringing the total to four hundred.
One day while the building was in progress some friends of the Ketterings, members of the Harrison family, were visiting in Dayton. Mr. Harrison was a former associate of Charles F. Kettering. They were brought out to the partially completed plant and shown the building under construction. In conversation the Ketterings mentioned that the building was so constructed that another floor could eventually be added.
The Harrisons were greatly impressed with the hospital, the detail of its planning, the completeness of its facilities, and the dignified elegance without ornate display everywhere evident. When they questioned why the additional floor was not put on now, they were told that it was a matter of finance. At once they offered to give $500,000 toward the fourth-floor project. Immediately the Ketterings agreed to match the amount. Eagerly Mrs. Kettering and her friends hastened to the office of George B. Nelson, the administrator, to break the good news that they now had another million dollars and to ask him to start work at once on the fourth floor. Thus even before the formal opening, the original one-hundred-bed hospital planned had grown to four hundred beds.
Another Seventh-day Adventist Hospital Opens
On February 16, 1964, with appropriate ceremonies the Charles F. Kettering Memorial Hospital was officially opened. The plaque in the lobby states that it is to be a memorial to Charles F. Kettering, the noble inventor. And this it is, but it is much more. It is a lasting memorial to unidentified nurses who missed their meals to minister to ill children in the hour of their desperate need. It is a monument to the "dedication of the workers" and the inarticulate spirit which possesses Seventh-day Adventist medical institutions as they glorify God by serving mankind.
Thus the genealogy of the institution might read that the Charles F. Kettering Memorial Hospital is a child of the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital, which was in some part at least a child of the former Battle Creek Sanitarium and Hospital, which was in its day a child of the Spirit of Prophecy, which was a child of God.
The hospital represents a total investment of thirteen and a half million dollars in buildings and equipment--the largest single gift ever to come to the denomination up to this time. The church has invested funds only to staff the hospital and provide its stock of supplies and to erect a complementary building on the campus for the housing and education of nurses.
Institutions seldom stand still. They grow or they die. The rebuilt Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital, even with its 195 beds, soon was unable to meet the needs of those who sought its sanctuary. The community again rose to help and, with a further gift of one million dollars from the Kettering family, provided funds to expand facilities to 356 beds, its current capacity.
There Are Others, Too
Not all institutions are big, nor should they be. A six-hundred-thousand-dollar bequest from the grateful husband of a former patient at the Boulder Sanitarium and Hospital made possible the rebuilding of that institution, which was first founded in faith in 1895.
A small Seventh-day Adventist medical institution was quietly and inconspicuously serving the needs of its rural community in Santa Anna, Texas. From this light was kindled a similar candle in Menard, Texas, as the Seventh-day Adventist Church was entrusted with the operation of the Menard Hospital and Retirement Home. Shortly thereafter the forward-looking and alert college community of San Marcos, Texas, erected a forty-two-bed modern hospital to better meet the needs of the community.
The lights kindled in Santa Anna and Menard reflected in San Marcos, and the community leaders invited the Seventh-day Adventist Church to assume the responsibility for staffing and operating their new modern medical institution. Hardly had this been accomplished when a similar situation arose in Beeville, Texas, Here again the community joined together to completely build and equip a modern seventy-four-bed hospital. Once more the lamp lighted in San Marcos cast its glimmer in Beeville, and again the Seventh-day Adventist Church was requested to staff and freely operate this new institution. In all of these cities churches are now open each Sabbath morning as the gospel light is being extended to many hitherto unlighted corners of the land.
Again, the Memorial Hospital of Beeville, Texas, is the child of the Hays County Memorial Hospital of San Marcos, Texas, which in turn is the child of the Menard Hospital and Retirement Home, which in its turn is the child of the Santa Anna Hospital, which like all of our medical work is a child of the Spirit of Prophecy, which is a child of God. And so will it be until the Great Physician returns to cure the diseases of the world.