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RMH CENTENNIAL
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Harrisonburg, Va.
RMH: A Century Of Service Medical Advances, New Buildings Highlight 100 Years Of Growth
that hospitals are seeing that they have to provide a continuum of care. They can’t just be the hospital anymore.”
‘A Woman Before Her Time’
By DOUG MANNERS Daily News-Record
HARRISONBURG — A major operation cost $5. All the equipment in the operating room was worth around $600 — or about twice the cost of a single trip to the emergency room today. Much has changed since William Glodomore Leake began planning for a hospital in Harrisonburg to save residents from needing to travel over the Blue Ridge Mountains on a dirt road to Charlottesville for medical care. Four years after securing a charter, the doors to Rockingham Memorial Hospital opened on Oct. 1, 1912. The 3,690square-foot facility with 20 beds and one operating room along Cantrell Avenue cost $27,000 to build. A century later, RMH handles more than 300,000 patient visits each year at a $300 million 238-bed facility situated on a 254-acre campus just east of the Harrisonburg city limits, and is the region’s second-largest employer with about 2,400 full- and part-time employees. RMH has grown beyond just a hospi-
Photo Courtesy of RMH
Miss E. Virginia Reilly caps Barbara Eckard Ross with assistance from Miss Elanor F. Glick in 1964. Marian Jameson, retired vice president of nursing services, credits Virginia Reilly, superintendent of nursing and later director of nursing, with improving the school and nursing at RMH during her 30-year tenure that ended with retirement in 1972. tal over the past 100 years. Like many of its peers nationwide, services under the hospital’s umbrella now include hospice care and a fundraising program, plus separate facilities dedicated to women’s
health, cancer and fitness. “Historically, hospitals were the place to go when you were sick or to deliver babies,” said Jim Krauss, president of RMH Healthcare. “What’s new now is
In the early days, the hospital’s only surgeon, Dr. Henry Deyerle Sr., performed three to five surgeries a day. Nurses assisted Deyerle in the operating room in addition to cooking meals and making batches of fudge to give patients additional strength before an operation. “Nurses did everything in the beginning … including preparing food,” said Marian Jameson, retired vice president of nursing services, who worked at RMH from 1961 to 1995. “Over [the] years, nurses been elevated to the professional level that they serve and that they have earned.” More than 1,000 nurses graduated from the RMH School of Nursing between 1915 and 1977, when it transitioned to a four-year degree program at James Madison University. Jameson credited Virginia Reilly, superintendent of nursing and later director of nursing, with improving the school and nursing at RMH during her 30-year tenure that ended with retirement in 1972. “She was a woman before her time,” Jameson said. “You cannot [over-appreciate] what she did for Rockingham See 100 YEARS, Page 11
“Nurses did everything in the beginning … including preparing food.” — MARIAN JAMESON RETIRED VICE PRESIDENT OF NURSING SERVICES Photo Courtesy of RMH
In 1977, the RMH School of Nursing graduates its last class as the program transitioned to James Madison University.
Photo Courtesy of RMH
Miss Edith Shaw (left), with lab tech Miss Dorothy Kinkade, was director of the first lab to open at RMH in 1926.