Much has transpired up here at 25 Wells Street since the days when the room rate ranged from $4 for a double to $8.50 for a private, the annual Telephone Service cost $435.07, and the annual cost for Maintenance was $3,167.95.

The Westerly Hospital turns 80 this August and a review of the Hospital’s history makes for some interesting local reading. While the Hospital was incorporated on June 17, 1921, and opened Aug 17, 1925, “as early as 1904 agitation in the community for a hospital was very strong and on May 24, 1904, the Westerly Pastor’s Association called a public meeting in the Library to which doctors and a number of leading citizens were invited,” according to a booklet written by Karl G. Stillman on the occasion of the hospital’s 25 th anniversary.

Mr. Stillman was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1939-1978 and served as President from 1953-1959 and 1964-1974.

This initial “agitation” for a hospital led to a fund-raising effort in hopes of raising the $15,000 estimated for construction costs. The effort apparently languished “until February 1910 when Dr. John Champlin Sr. recognized the need for a hospital and established a small unit in the rear of his Granite Street home at the head of Broad Street calling it The Westerly Hospital,” (though this site was not officially incorporated as The Westerly Hospital.) That site is the current home of Professional Planning Group.

“Others became interested in the need for a community hospital and on May 1, 1916, upon the death of Mrs. Louise D. Hoxsey, widow of William Hoxsey, Westerly Town Clerk for many years, a trust fund of $10,000 was established under the terms of her will called ‘Foundation Fund for a Hospital in Westerly.’”

Mrs. Hoxsey had been involved in the early efforts to establish a local hospital and was one of two women who played key roles in the project. The other was Clara Perry, whose husband Charles was a member of the 1904 planning committee. Mrs. Perry became seriously ill in 1918, the year of the worldwide influenza outbreak, and a doctor brought in from New York determined that regardless of whether she had the flu, she certainly had appendicitis.

In a sadly ironic twist of fate, Mrs. Perry died following surgery performed on her kitchen table for lack of a local hospital. In 1921 it was announced that Mr. Perry had purchased the William D. Wells property “east of Beach Street opposite the greenhouses” and that he would donate the land as a site for the hospital.

A formal fund-raising effort ensued in June 1923 with a goal of $250,000. The community exceeded that goal under the leadership of George B. Utter and raised $807,473.05. Plans for the hospital were approved in March 1924 and contracts with winning bidders were signed in the amount of $382,187.20 for the building and equipment.

In January 1925 Miss Ethel M. Doherty RN of Holyoke, Mass., was hired as the first Hospital Superintendent and “an office for her was opened in the Washington Trust Company Building from which she arranged the numerous details incident to the opening of a hospital,” Stillman writes. By the summer of 1925 the building was completed and an open house was planned for Aug. 10 and 11 of that year.

By sheer coincidence, a similar public celebration was held 76 years later on Aug. 11, 2001, when Hospital leaders hosted a “Start of Construction” ceremony for the Joseph J. Kirby Community Care Center, the latest in a series of additions throughout the 80-year history of the hospital.

The hospital was scheduled to open on Aug. 17, 1925, but the day before, David Titterington of Bradford was in dire need of an emergency appendectomy so he became the first patient and Dr. J. Gordon Anderson became the first physician to perform an operation at The Westerly Hospital. Operating room fees ranged from $5 to $15 and the “delivery room’’ fee was $10.

Today, the fee structure is a little different, appendectomies are considered minor surgery far from life threatening, and physicians in the cardiac cath lab can peer into the workings of a patient’s heart in the morning and let them go home in the afternoon.

We owe a lot to those who “agitated for a hospital” back in 1904 and pursued the mission with their own time and dollars and community contributions large and small. Because of them we are celebrating “80 Years of Caring.” And because succeeding generations took up the mission to fund additions and technology, we can truly say we are “80 Years Young.”