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Editor, News-Register:
The Friends of OVMC and their efforts to preserve a piece of history from the wrecking ball are to be praised, and the WVU Medicine decision-makers would do well to consider their requests.
Too often Wheeling city planners obliterate what has been with no consideration of its historical value. If WVU Medicine is wise, it will help the city reverse some of its myopic destruction.
As a child riding with my parents and brothers, I recall passing the orange neon OVGH sign as it was blazing through the night of a Wheeling pea soup fog, serving as a beacon of light in hazardous conditions. Little did I know that I would both one day work there and graduate from OVGH School of Nursing.
Similarly in the early 1970s, I remember picking friends up the door of the Wheeling Hospital School of Nursing, the old art deco lamps illuminating the three cross symbol that was that school's insignia.
Sadly, these symbols of Wheeling Hospital's history were pulverized in the name of progress, never to be memorialized for a future generation. Shall the same be said about OVGH?
Anyone with a memory can recall that all were treated there, both rich and poor, and without prejudiced. Who cannot recall the great flood of September 1975 The newly christened Wheeling Hospital underwent disaster evacuation from the floods. Patients were practically hanging from the rafters of OVGH as it sought to accommodate surge capacity. The history of both hospitals is rich yet little was done to embed the memory of either into the present and future. WVU, now the decision to preserve or destroy the history of what was is up to you. Shall you step up to the plate?
John Roxby, RN
McMechen