Editor’s Note: This article is part of Reflections, a special supplemental magazine to The Hopewell News and News-Patriot detailing local history.
By Ashley McLeod, Staff Writer
Sep 29, 2015, 16:39
HOPEWELL — This year, the hospital is celebrating its 100-year anniversary. The John Randolph Medical Center is a pivotal part of Hopewell and is also one of the oldest organizations in the city.
It all started with two brothers, Jeffrey and David Elder. The two were students from North Carolina who were studying at the Medical College of Virginia. When the two graduated, it was just about the time that Hopewell was beginning to rise up out of the earth. The two came to Hopewell, where Jeffrey worked as a surgeon with the railroad. Wayne was looking into beginning his own practice, and so the two decided to open one in Hopewell.
At first, the brothers opened up a drugstore. After some time, the brothers move their drugstore into a larger building and open up a hospital alongside it. The building was right next to the Berkeley Hotel on East Broadway, right in the middle of everything that was going on. The hospital was located above the drugstore and had 15 beds for patients. It was crowded and small, but it served its purpose.
Then tragedy hit Hopewell in the form of a giant fire. In December of 1915, a fire was started accidentally in a Greek restaurant and spread fast throughout the area. Out of all of the businesses in Hopewell, 90 percent were destroyed. But the Elder brothers were in that lucky 10 percent that survived.
“When the fire comes in December, it burns pretty much everything down. But the Berkeley motel stops the fire and the hospital doesn’t get burnt,” said Jeanie Langford, the assistant librarian and archivist at the Hopewell Library’s Ann K. and Preston H. Leake Local History and Genealogy Collection.
The brothers continue their work at the hospital for a few more years. Jeffrey decides to join the service and spends time in Europe during World War I. While there, he witnesses the horrors of war, and at one point gets gassed by the Germans. When he returns, his brother is mayor of the city of Hopewell and is still operating the hospital, which was now located in an old boarding house on Sixth Avenue.
Following the Great Depression, there was once again a need for a bigger space for the hospital as Hopewell was becoming more and more populated. By this time, President Franklin Roosevelt had passed the New Deal, which was put in place in order to help rebuild the country. Under the New Deal was a program called the Works Progress Administration. The program helped localities pay for infrastructure projects, such as building new schools, roads, and hospitals. In order to benefit from this program, the hospital needed to raise at least half of the money required for the project.
With help from the community, the hospital was able to raise approximately $18,000. A variety of fundraising events were held to raise the money, such as dances. But at the time, the location for the new hospital was unknown, until they got another stroke of good luck.
“Tubize, the largest employee there at the time, gave them land to build the new hospital,” Langford said.
The site was the location of the original plantation given to Peter Cawson in the 1600s when the Virginia Colony was building itself up. The property was given to Cawson in return for him serving as a lookout for hostile Indians in the area.
The new hospital was completed in 1936 and was named the John Randolph Medical Center, after John Randolph, a prominent lawmaker who was born on the property.
The hospital included 20 beds for patients. Dr. Elder once again delivered the first baby in the new hospital, just as he had done after opening the original location. Soon after, in 1946, another building project was put in place. The community once again helped to raise money and a 20-bed addition was built. In another few years, the need for more room had grown again. In a third expansion project, the community once again helped to raise money in order to allow for a total of 80 beds in the hospital. This addition was completed in 1959.
In 1966, a third floor was added, allowing for 30 more beds, and in 1967 an extended care and rehabilitation facility was added. The hospital could now hold 150 patients.
This pattern continued well into the 1970s, adding 50 nursing home beds and a skilled care unit. Then the hospital expanded its emergency room, pharmacy, radiology and pathology departments. By the end of all of the renovations, the hospital has grown to what it is today. Walking through the halls, you are still able to see parts of the original buildings.
“The old hospital is encapsulated inside the different fronts and additions; it’s still in there,” said Langford. “Most additions made to the hospital were built around the original structure, so the hospital was able to stay open while expansions were happening.”
The entire time the hospital had been open it was considered a private hospital. By the 1990s, the debt had piled up and the hospital owed approximately $20 million in hospital bonds and debt. A solution came in the form of a buyer, the HCA Health Care Corporation.
The purchase cost the company a large sum: $48 million dollars. $20 million of this amount was used to pay off the hospital’s debt, and the remaining money was funneled into a charitable foundation which we now know as the John Randolph Foundation. This was done in order to help fund health care programs at the hospital in the future.
Now the hospital operates with 147 beds and serves the communities of not just Hopewell, but Colonial Heights, Petersburg, and other surrounding areas. After 100 years, the hospital has become a landmark in the city of Hopewell and helps thousands of patients throughout the year.
