HONOR NOVEMBER 11TH
DAVIS.......PG 8
Vol 22, No. 7 • November 2022
News You Can Use
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Whitfield Nursing Home: Almost 100 Years of Community Health Service By: Donna Langston It’s quite a history that from its beginning, spans decades and generations, and so it begins … “Benjamin Toy Whitfield met Sarah Bertha Loper” during WWI. He served in the Army’s famous First Division, “The Big Red One”. She was a Red Cross nurse, but when America entered that War, Red Cross nurses became the first nurses of the Army Nurses Corp. It was while Whitfield was a patient of Loper’s that the two met, later “married, and eventually moved to Corinth, MS.” They had two sons: Maury and Winston Whitfield. According to one of their granddaughters – Lynda Whitfield, RN, “At that point in time, nurses mostly did care in homes as there were few hospitals. Sometime between 1924-1927, [they] were approached by several doctors … who asked them to open a hospital. They added 10 beds, 10 bassinets, an operating room, and a delivery room, onto the back of their house. Over time, more additions were made until there were 38 beds. The original home [became] was what is now the two-hundred hall of [WNH]. Generations of people in Alcorn County and surrounding areas were born [here]. … [G]randmother became the Corinth Hospital Admin. in 1961, following the death of our grandfather, … and Return Address: P.O. Box 1292 Corinth, MS 38835
POSTAL PATRON
continued in that position until 1965 when Magnolia Hospital opened.” Lynda continued by explaining that it was then that her uncle, Maury, owner/operator of Whitfield Pharmacy in downtown Corinth, and her father, Winston, USA Hospital Admin. in Mobile, AL, converted Corinth Hospital into Whitfield Nursing Home (WNH). In 1977, Winston moved to Corinth and became Admin. of Magnolia Regional Healthcare (Hosp.), where
Jennie and Lynda Whitfield
he retired from in 1993. Recalling that when she was [a very young child], her family lived in a “… house on Lilac St., just across from what is now WNH. My oldest brother was born at the Corinth Hospital. I was able to unlock the [our] door, cross the street, and knock on the Hospital’s kitchen door.
The cooks would set me up on a stool and let me cut out biscuits or drop bread into the toaster. Nurse Dottie Murphy used to carry me on her hip as she made rounds with the doctors. I even rode my tricycle down the hallways. I have so many memories and experiences that helped make me the nurse I am today.” Additional memories included the following: “A daughter of one of our residents found her dad’s birth certificate and we learned our grandmother had delivered him. At another time, my father found a bill for the delivery of a baby … that lady was later a resident here. A bill for two weeks in the hospital was less than $20. They never turned anyone away. During the depression, they accepted chickens, vegetables, etc., in lieu of payment.” Like her grandmother, who became the Hospital’s Admin., Sarah Jennings “Jennie” Whitfield Hibbard, daughter of Ann and Maury Whitfield, eventually assumed the WNH Admin. position. As Hibbard tells it, it was on June 1, 1988, following completion of her Ole Miss education, “trial by fire” training, and under the direction of E. L. Burns, who was Administrator, and her preceptor, D.L. Westbrooke. She took over as licensed Admin. after passing her Boards July 1, 1989. Her mother, Ann Whitfield, passed 11/15/2012, at WNH, under Jennie’s care. Hibbard said, “I primarily grew up working in my father’s drug store, …, from about the age of 4 through college. That taught me the value of customer service and the importance of healthcare. Mother always said I was the last baby to be born at the Corinth Hospital. I have tried to find more poof of it than that, but from a young age, I visited the nursing home and remember many residents there. I recall that one time my parents see WHITFIELD.....pg 4