The ‘new’ Union Hospital
On Sunday, May 10, 1952, several thousand Tuscarawas County residents and dignitaries gathered for the dedication of the new Union Hospital Annex.
Reprinted from The Chronicler, the newsletter of the Tuscarawas County Historical Society
On Sunday, May 10, 1952, several thousand Tuscarawas County residents and dignitaries gathered for the dedication of the new Union Hospital Annex, which would more than double the size of the existing facility and, consequently, was referred to as the New Union Hospital. The Ohio State Health Department declared it, with some embellishment, to be “one of the nation’s most complete hospitals.”
Among the dignitaries were mayors of county municipalities, other well-known and lesser known politicians, prominent members of the business community, the architect and general contractor, physician and nursing staffs, hospital officers and board members, several clergymen and one clergywoman, and the director of the hospital facility section of the Ohio Department of Health.
Gov. Frank Lausche was to have attended but canceled due to another commitment. One suspected he was attending a dedication in another part of the state where Democrat votes were harder to get. Entertainment included the Dover and New Philadelphia High School bands and the Massillon City Hospital Student Nurses Choir.
Prior to the dedication, according to the Daily Times, 17,000 people attended the three-day open house, with busses transporting visitors from the fairgrounds and the Reeves plant parking lot.
Thirteen days after the dedication, the new hospital exploded.
Planning for the hospital annex began shortly after the end of World War II, and groundbreaking occurred on Jan. 13, 1952. The cost of construction was $1,250,000 (approximately $14,000,000 in 2020 dollars).
Funding came from the federal and state governments, business and individual contributors, civic organizations, and fundraisers conducted by volunteer groups. The Union Hospital Women’s Auxiliary, known as Twigs, held bake sales, festivals, dinners and parties.
The most popular and profitable event was Twig 6’s Spring Bonnet Show. The auxiliary’s contributions went toward furnishing the nurseries. A local car dealer donated a 1952 Chevrolet, which was raffled off at $1 a ticket.
The new three-story addition increased the beds by 75. Nineteen of the beds were in the maternity wing, which also included four nurseries and a fathers’ waiting room with soft chairs and plenty of ashtrays. (We were at the high point of the baby boom.)
Each floor had a solarium. A medical library and conference room were provided for physicians’ use. The second floor was devoted to three new operating rooms, recovery rooms, surgical support facilities, X-ray rooms and a small laboratory.
Support services including the kitchen, cafeteria, laundry, other laboratories, heating and cooling systems, an emergency power plant, and storage areas were located in the basement.
In the late morning of May 23,an explosion rocked the basement, extensively damaging the kitchen, cafeteria and laboratory areas. Areas on the upper floors sustained lesser damage. The preliminary estimate of the damages was $100,000 ($1,110,000 in 2020 dollars). It was quickly determined the explosion resulted from a gas line that was uncapped.
The plumbing contractor had been finishing the gas-line work in the basement. Just after the explosion, a witness saw the plumbing company foreman drive one of his employees away from the hospital. The foreman drove around Dover until he could reach the plumbing company owner in Gallion. The foreman then took the employee home “to help calm his nerves.”
The next day both the foreman and the employee returned to Dover for questioning. The employee admitted he was the person who was seen by a cook in the basement area at the time of the blast but claimed he couldn’t remember anything about what happened. He was emphatic, though, that he did not have his torch lit but admitted he could have been smoking a cigarette at the time.
Three hospital employees were injured in the explosion. The telephone switchboard operator “collapsed at her switchboard” and was taken to a bed in the old section of the hospital. Other employees fled the building not knowing whether the building would collapse.
Most patients in rooms in the annex were moved back to the old part of the hospital. Some patients were removed from the hospital by family members. The claim that none of the patients panicked met with some skepticism.
Due to the damage to the kitchen, Dover High School students cooked food in the school cafeteria and delivered it to the hospital.
The loss was covered by insurance, and by July, repairs were completed and the addition reoccupied.
Like any business, the damages to the facility resulted in some loss in revenue. The number of births at the hospital in 1952 was 1,050, down from 1,070 in 1951 and 35 fewer than 1953.
In August Dr. George Thomas of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a researcher with the Explosives Division of the U.S. Bureau of Mines inspected the hospital and following his inspection praised the hospital’s safety features. The timing could have been better.