History

In the early 1980s, the hospital merged with the Roanoke Hospital Association and by 1987, another renovation and expansion project was completed. In 1996, under a new branding strategy and guideline, the hospital was renamed Bedford Memorial Hospital to reflect its partnership with Carilion Health System in Roanoke. Two years later, Carilion appropriated funds to expand services and improve technology. The initiative resulted in renovations of the hospital lobby, expansion of the Emergency Department and completion of a two-story medical office building, which now serves as the main entrance of the hospital. Carilion and Centra Health (Lynchburg) signed a formal letter of agreement on July 9, 2001, to jointly own and operate Bedford Memorial Hospital.

“We Did the Best We Could”

Bedford County is cradled at the foot of a particularly scenic section of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The county may be small in population, but is certainly not small in spirit. Home to Thomas Jefferson’s summer plantation, Poplar Forest, the rural county was almost 200 years old when its citizens began a drive to build a modern, well-equipped hospital to serve approximately 30,000 residents.

The city of Bedford is located halfway between the cities of Roanoke and Lynchburg, effectively making the area a bedroom community for the two larger cities. Attractive to retirees as well as native residents, Bedford has historically had a large proportion of elderly citizens. Since the 1930s, both farmers and suburbanites received medical care at two privately owned hospitals located in converted residences in the town. While staffed well, they were small and limited in equipment. Retired physicians recall that, during their early careers, babies were delivered in homes or in the emergency room or X-ray room at John Russell Hospital and in the operating room at Hartwell Hospital (if it wasn’t already in use).

“We did the best we could with what we had,” remembered Dr. Tom Jennings, who started a family practice in Bedford in 1952. “We had a number of doctors practicing here, so John Russell was especially crowded. For serious cases, we had the big hospitals in Lynchburg and Roanoke, but each was more than 30 miles away.”

Transportation to access medical treatment was a considerable concern. Dr. Jennings recounted the tense details of using his personal car to carry an expectant mother from the western part of the county to a hospital in Bedford. On the way, he had a flat tire. Able to get to a telephone, he called for an ambulance from town. She made it in time.

Bedford Needs a Modern Hospital

After World War II ended, local civic leaders acknowledged that their community needed an accessible, up-to-date and larger medical facility. It took more than five years, a lot of planning and praying, plus the leadership skills of two very committed women to accomplish that goal. Harnessing a strength the county didn’t know it had, Mrs. Robert A. Harper, assisted by Mrs. Jesse T. Davidson Jr., organized a building campaign that became known as “the county’s greatest achievement.”

The idea of a hospital had roots in an effort to establish a memorial to honor community members who served in the war. In 1946, a meeting was held in the Bedford County Courthouse to discuss such a memorial. Despite the fresh memories of the significant sacrifice of the community toward the war effort, discussion among civic and patriotic groups ended on a pessimistic note. The idea was put aside.

In 1948, a second attempt at a memorial was linked with the area’s need for a new hospital. By this time, Congress had passed the Hill-Burton Act, which provided federal and state matching funds for community hospital construction. A committee was formed to assess whether the community could raise the local match required to apply for the Hill-Burton money. The State Department of Health sent officials to Bedford to discuss the details of possible participation in the program, but the project was stalled when it was determined to be impractical.

Unwilling to give up on a good idea, Harper, a prominent civic leader, gathered a large group of people in her home in the fall of 1949 to “talk hospital.” This setting would become the command post for the project’s ultimate success. An organizing committee was named and a major campaign was publicly announced. Despite the discord, indecision, and faintheartedness often found in small communities, the hospital committee persisted through 1950. A hospital board of directors was formed to employ
professional fund-raisers from the American City Bureau of Chicago, architects were hired and plans for a 40-bed hospital were adopted. From campaign headquarters on South Street, the board prepared to ask citizens to contribute $350,000 to be matched with Hill-Burton funding to build Bedford County Memorial Hospital.

Using the hospital as a way for people to memorialize their loved ones was timely and particularly welcome. The project met with overwhelming enthusiasm. As local news accounts reported at the time: “In this campaign Bedford County is going through the most stirring emotional experience of its history. No one who has watched this movement grow in half a year from the first faint flickering hopes to today’s swelling tide of determination...can doubt that this community of nearly 30,000 souls is undergoing a spiritual rebirth.”

Involving hundreds of participants from all sections of the county and town, the campaign was a success beyond the hope of most workers. The campaign kickoff dinner, held on June 8, 1950, was attended by more than 450 people, “the largest gathering of people ever served a meal of that proportion” in Bedford up to that time, according to newspaper reports. Everyone wanted to be part of the effort. The high school home economics class even helped serve iced tea.

By July 1950, corporations, fraternal groups, civic groups and more than 3,100 individuals had donated and pledged almost half a million dollars.

In addition to financial commitments, a beautiful building site for the new hospital was donated by the family of local businessman and farmer, Fletcher O. Thomas. The new hospital would be located on what was then the northern outskirts of town on high ground. The site offered a magnificent, unobstructed, sweeping view of the valley to the Peaks of Otter, those serene mountains held dear by all Bedford residents.

“It Was Awfully Hard to Wait”

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The glow of success for Bedford was interrupted by the onset of the Korean War, which caused rapid changes. Inflation and war efforts halted many government projects, including appropriations for Hill-Burton funding around the country, including the one in Bedford. Coincidentally, the state of Virginia had ceased contributing its share to the Hill-Burton program for two biennial periods. Unwilling to compromise the plan for Bedford Hospital, the board of directors decided to wait until federal and state money could be obtained before beginning construction.

“We never doubted that the project was doable,” remembers Mrs. Davidson, who was secretary of the board at that time. “But it was awfully hard to wait.”

The community didn’t always share Mrs. Davidson’s optimism. For nearly three years, frustration and concern were expressed in letters to editors of local papers, and in civic meetings. Bedford’s hospital was passed over in the allocation of funds by the Virginia General Assembly until 1952, when an all-out effort was undertaken to secure appropriations. New studies were conducted proving the county’s urgent need for a modern hospital. Hartwell Hospital had burned, leaving only one facility to handle the entire county. On August 4, 1952, an energetic group from Bedford, most of them members of the hospital board of directors, marched on Richmond. They pleaded their case before the Virginia Hospital Advisory Council, the group which made recommendations to the State Department of Health, regarding allocation of federal and state hospital funds.

By this time, war-fed inflation had caused construction and equipment estimates for Bedford Memorial Hospital to increase to $900,000, nearly $200,000 more than originally planned. Also, due to war expenditures, the federal government had cut in half the usual contributions to fund Hill-Burton hospitals. Bedford had expected to be able to rely on government funding for nearly 55 percent of the total cost. When the dust settled after federal and state political maneuvering, Bedford’s allocation was authorized at $308,000 – only a third of what was needed to complete the project. Fortunately, the money was to be made available in one lump sum. Other programs around the state received allocations spread over a three-year period.

Feeling vindicated, the Bedford Hospital Board plunged into construction plans, securing a line of credit to bridge construction costs with local pledges and government appropriations. The suspense was palpable in a crowded courtroom on June 9, 1953, when construction bids were opened. The Roanoke firm of H.A. Lucas won the contract from among 15 other bidders. Within the next month Charles H. Frenzel came to Bedford to assume the duties of hospital administrator, directing the hiring of staff and purchasing of equipment. Appropriately, the cornerstone for the building was laid on Armistice Day of that year.

In the autumn of 1954, it was necessary to undertake another public fund drive to fulfill the hospital’s financial obligations. Costs had risen, some pledges had been canceled and extra government funding had not come through. This extra request for citizen support produced nearly $100,000, including a $10,000 war bond contributed by the Bedford County Board of Supervisors. The hospital was able to open nearly debt-free.

On Feb. 20, 1955, with balmy, spring-like weather, the citizens of Bedford dedicated their new hospital. Nearly 2,000 people attended ceremonies to hear solemn speeches, followed by musical numbers by the Bedford Firemen’s Band. For more than three hours members of the hospital auxiliary were hostesses for guided tours. The local newspaper gave front page coverage to the event: “The dedication rites were held n the big parking lot just south of the hospital. A raised platform, embellished with evergreens and flowers, enabled the speaker and other notables to look out over the crowd…with the Peaks of Otter in the background.”

Acknowledging more than five years of planning, giving and very hard work, and an outlay of nearly one million dollars, the paper called the event the “greatest civic undertaking in modern times.”

Amazing even themselves with the accomplishment, leaders for this highly successful effort included the original organizer Mrs. R.A. Harper, hospital Board President Robert F. Johnson, Mrs. Jesse T. Davidson Jr., Building Fund Campaign Chairman DuVal Radford, Aubrey E. Strode, who commandeered the Completion Fund Drive, and T.E. Reynolds, who chaired the building committee. Serving as first president of the auxiliary was Georgette Parker.

“The Best Little Hospital in Virginia”

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The 48-bed hospital accepted its first patient March 8, 1955. The superintendent of maintenance was Edward E. Nuckols, and other original staff included Administrator Charles Frenzel; Mrs. Mary R. Bosta, housekeeper; Tersa Pseifer, director of nurses; Miss Hilda Brown, X-ray technician; Mrs. Kathleen Hutcheson, office manager; and Mrs. Hattie Branch, lab technician.

Chartered as a not-for-profit institution, services were provided for as low as $9 per day for bed, board and all nursing. Private rooms were $12 per day. The charge for delivery of babies and a six-week checkup was $100, a fee that lasted for more than 25 years. Doctors were charging $2 to $5 for an office visit during this period. Nurses remember working for $1 an hour during the first years at the hospital. They mixed medicines, IVs and administered prescriptions.

“There was good nursing care, very caring bedside nursing,” according to Dr. Freeman Jenrette, retired family practitioner.

The new hospital brought the medical community together, and was well supported by its citizens, all of whom appreciated the improvements to community health. By the end of the first year reports show that approximately 500 babies had been delivered, almost 1,600 patients had been treated, 500 surgeries were performed, and another 1,000 patients had received emergency room attention. The hospital’s new facilities enabled physicians to provide improved care for patients using modern equipment and accessible emergency services. Ambulance transport was provided by the local funeral home until life saving crews were organized in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Among those tending patients during the start-up years were surgeon J.G. Jantz, M.D., and family practitioners Drs. Tom and Eileen Jennings, William Rucker, Sam Rucker, as well as Drs. W.G. Hardy, D.H. Robinson, O.B. Darden, J. Tucker, E.L. Johnson, D. Wilkinson and K. Walden.

After less than two years of operation, the hospital was approved by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals. Bedford was one of the first in the state for hospitals of its type and size to be accredited. By April 1, 1957, the hospital celebrated the delivery of its 1,000th baby.

Bedford Hospital was ably managed for many years by a board of directors and administrator. It became known as “the best little hospital in Virginia.”

As a cooperative effort between the hospital and the Bedford County School System, a School of Practical Nursing was begun in September 1964, graduating approximately 12 students each year to date. Community pride in being able to establish the hospital flowed over to family-like working relationships among the small staff. “What we did, we did well” was a common remark among long-time employees.

Doctors remembered taking advantage of the rural setting. On slow afternoons they could walk to the fields surrounding the hospital to dove hunt and return home for a late supper. However, being located at the end of the road surrounded by a cornfield wasn’t always advantageous. Again, memories of Dr. Jenrette emphasize the rural nature of medicine. The blizzard of 1964 had overwhelmed Bedford’s maintenance crews, which were unable to keep the road to the hospital open. “There was no way in or out. A few doctors and nurses were trapped in the hospital for three days until the wind and snow stopped. Everyone did OK.”

Expanding Through the Years

The hospital expanded in 1964 to accommodate private rooms and a long-term care unit, bringing the bed count to 78. By the mid-1970s hospitals nationwide were being whipsawed by government regulated reimbursement programs, often below local costs. The long-term care/nursing home unit was draining operating funds from Bedford Hospital’s daily needs.

Ever mindful of the high number of elderly in the community, the hospital began a $3.7 million addition in 1974 to accommodate another 100 beds in a long-term care wing. The addition also included a wing for a new emergency department, as well as expanded admissions department, laboratory, radiology and respiratory therapy departments. A medical office building was also built in 1977 adjacent to the hospital. Nevertheless, as a rural, not-for-profit institution serving an above-average proportion of elderly patients, the hospital was having difficulty finding cash to maintain the upgrading and modernization required of a major medical center.

Attracting younger physicians to the area was difficult because pay scales were lower than competing larger cities could offer. With no emergency room (ER) doctors on staff, Bedford’s doctors rotated duty at the hospital ER for 24-hours or all-weekend shifts, in addition to covering their private practices.

The hospital’s directors enlisted the services of a management firm from Atlanta, Ga., to provide managers and financial expertise. The management company contract concept, however, proved unsatisfactory. Keeping with the founders’ tradition of persistence, the hospital’s board dropped the management firm and continued to search for a way to pay for the level of care the citizens of Bedford had come to expect, yet remain financially viable.

Affiliation and Further Growth

During the early 1980s, negotiations began between Roanoke Hospital Association and Bedford County Memorial Hospital toward a merger. Because the hospital was publicly owned, a vote of the membership was arranged. Typical of the hospital’s struggles, the first time the proposal was voted on, members rejected the arrangement. The project was by a 98-percent favorable vote after assurances that the proposed merger would guarantee that the hospital would remain open until after the turn of the next century. In 1984, the “best little hospital in Virginia” joined Roanoke Hospital Association.

Affiliation with what is now Carilion Health System has enabled Bedford’s hospital to embark on aggressive modernization and renovation of the facility, providing for a broad spectrum of medical specialties and diverse services. A $2.5 million foundation was established by RHA for community healthcare services. In 1985, a second medical office building was constructed on the hospital campus to accommodate a growing medical staff and encourage additional full- time specialists to join.

In 1987, a $3.3 million renovation and expansion project was completed, which modernized obstetrical/nursery departments, surgical suites, intensive care units and medical surgical units. Thirty-eight acres of land have been added to the hospital’s property for future expansion. In 1996, the hospital was renamed Bedford Memorial Hospital (CBMH) to reflect its partnership with Carilion Health System.

The Community Comes to the Rescue

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The hospital has never been abandoned by its core of community supporters. And it really needed them when fire threatened the hospital. A fire broke out on the night of June 3, 1997 in a second-floor recreation room of CBMH’s long-term care wing – Oakwood Manor.

Almost immediately emergency workers were on the scene. The fire was contained to one room and was extinguished within 30 minutes. Once again, the community rushed to the hospital’s aid. Residents and staff offered blankets and comforted patients while emergency crews worked to extinguish the fire and transport patients to other facilities for care.

Hospital and emergency workers safely evacuated 87 of 122 patients. The evacuees were taken temporarily to the local National Guard Armory.

“It was one tremendous response from fire and rescue personnel from Bedford and Campbell counties,” said Mike Shelton, Bedford’s mayor. “It looked chaotic, but with the command centers they have set up, they had things well under control.”

A Commitment to Future Healthcare

In July 1997, another benefactor, Mrs. Marjorie Maupin, dedicated a free-standing adult day care center built on the hospital grounds, funded by a grant from the Maupin-Sizemore Foundation.

In November 1998, Carilion Health System appropriated $12 million to Bedford Memorial Hospital over a five-year period as part of its commitment to healthcare in Bedford. The initiative has resulted in quite a few improvements already.

• Complete renovation of the hospital lobby.
• Expansion of facilities and programs for women’s services.
• Adding a cardiology clinic, which eliminated the need for individuals to travel away from Bedford for routine visits.
• Hiring a full-time board-certified anesthesiologist.
• Expansion of the Emergency Department and orthopedic clinic. Expansion allows for an additional day of orthopedic examinations by a specialist.
• A renovated and remodeled surgical suite to include endoscopic procedure.
• Completed design of a two-story, 32-thousand-square-foot Medical Office Building (MOB) to adjoin the hospital.

Carilion Clinic and Centra Health (Lynchburg) signed a formal letter of agreement on July 9, 2001, to jointly own and operate Bedford Memorial Hospital.

Today, Bedford County is the fastest growing county west of Interstate 95. It continues to attract suburbanite families from nearby larger cities as well as retirees from outside the region. As a major employer in the county, the hospital has provided jobs for county residents so they can work and live in this beautiful area. Now, as it was in mid- century, Bedford’s community strength is surprising. What looks like a small town has a major “can-do” medical facility for everyone’s future – Bedford Memorial Hospital.

Administrators

• Charles H. Frenzel
• David G. Williamson Jr.
• A. L. Burkholder
• Kenneth H. Axtell
• Charles LeMaster
• Dean Martin
• David Hill
• Chuck Klotz
• Melvin Lester (Acting)
• Lucas Snipes
• John Fretz
• Howard Ainsley
• E.W. Tibbs
• Georgia Watts (interim CEO)
• William Flattery

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