A Look at History
Mackinac Straits Hospital Built by Grassroots Effort
BY FRANK STRAUS

The Mackinac Straits Hospital is a health care facility that is now more than 50 years old. It was built as part of a nationwide surge of hospital construction after World War II. Many press exposés of the late 1940s pointed out loopholes in the health care available to Americans in thinly settled and rural areas.

During the 1940s, while the Democrats and the Republicans disagreed on many issues of public policy, they were united in the belief that U.S. veterans, who had returned home to their communities, should be able to continue to receive the same quality of care that they had received on the battlefield. Congress appropriated money to be granted to communities across the United States for the construction of new hospital buildings. This money was a key factor in the successful construction of Mackinac Straits Hospital. However, matching funds were also required. The people of St. Ignace, Mackinac Island, and neighboring towns in Mackinac County came together to meet this challenge.

The key announcement came April 14, 1949: St. Ignace could win a grant to build a new hospital, costing $300,000, if the people of the town and its neighbors could raise one-third of this sum ($100,000). This was a substantial goal at a time when dollars were made of silver coins. St. Ignace lacked many items of modern infrastructure at that time; for example, there were no dial phones to automatically reach another line. Local citizens who wanted to pledge money toward the hospital goal were urged to pick up their phones and tell the operator that they wanted to be connected to line #598.

The chairman of the effort was St. Ignace's P.J. Della- Moretta. His committee's drive started in earnest in 1950, with local leaders "touched" for substantial sums matching their resource status within the community. Former federal Senator Prentiss Brown, for example, pledged $10,000. Lists of pledgers were printed in the two local papers. On August 10, 1950, the pledge drive announced that the promises to give had topped the $100,000 mark.

The next push was to turn these pledges into actual transfers of money. May 23, 1952, the key "Hospital Day" deadline, was called "H-Day" in a nod to World War II's D-Day. With the money in hand, the hospital's construction could begin. Ground was broken July 13, 1953.

Local press accounts in the St. Ignace papers provided their readers with detailed information on the new forms of equipment that were being installed. Locals learned that the new hospital would contain X-rays and a system for delivering oxygen to patients who required help with their breathing. Items of health care infrastructure like this, taken for granted in later decades, were new and exciting to the people of St. Ignace. It was not possible to rapidly evacuate a patient to the northern Lower Peninsula in those days. Helicopters had not yet come into general use, and the Mackinac Bridge had not yet been built. For many of the people of Mackinac County, the existence of a modern town hospital was seen as a matter of life and death.

It took only 15 months to build the new hospital, which opened its doors September 11, 1954. The dedication of the new facility was probably the biggest celebration the town had ever enjoyed, and would retain that status up to the opening of the Mackinac Bridge three years later.

The new hospital was a key provider of health care to the people of Mackinac Island. The Island did not have a medical center at that time; the first free-standing Island medical center, a house-sized building on the Island's Market Street, would not be opened until 1957.

Even after the first medical center opened, Islanders and visitors were often evacuated to St. Ignace or Mackinaw City for transport to a place where they could receive continuing treatment. The Coast Guard, based first on Mackinac Island in the current State Park visitor center, and later at its current St. Ignace base, stood ready to make these evacuations in cases when transport by air was not possible.

During the years since 1954, Mackinac Straits Hospital continued to evolve to meet the needs of its community. The hospital opened clinics on Bois Blanc Island and in Naubinway, and established a relationship with the Mackinac Island Medical Center. The hospital built a 75-bed longterm care facility for persons needing extended nursing care, and helped the Island's medical center build its current facility that opened in 2004.

Many Mackinac Islanders and visitors receive care today from Mackinac Straits Hospital. Sometimes this care is not visible.

With the continued growth in specialized medicine, the physicians at the Island's new medical center often transfer electronic information and laboratory samples to the St. Ignace hospital (and other hospitals) for testing and diagnosis.

As we move into the late summer of 2007, Mackinac Straits Hospital and health care advocates on Mackinac Island are once again joining hands to raise the matching funds that will be used to construct a new, modern hospital and ambulatory care facility.

As this new hospital takes shape, its friends on Mackinac Island hope it lasts as long and provides as much care as the current hospital has done.

With almost 53 years of service behind it, the current hospital has lasted a long time for a building that provides acute care to patients.

Everyone wants state-ofthe art medical care, and it seems unusual to talk about the history of a hospital structure. Perhaps soon, in St. Ignace the story of a new hospital building will begin.