Public H ealtli and Social W el/are Work
375
izens, G. H. Eubanks and Travis Lambert, each offered suitable sites for the projected institution. Upon examination of the sites, the Lambert tract, located about a mile from the city on the Port-Arthur-Beaumont high- way, was chosen. Ground for the new building was formally broken on March 17, 1929. by Most Reverend Bishop C. E. Byrne of Galveston, who paid a glowing tribute on that occasion to the memory of John Gates and his mother Mary, extolling at the same time the splendid work of the devoted Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. Thus St. Mary's Hospital, generally known to this day as Mary Gates Memorial, was begun. In 1936, it con- sisted of five units: the four-story hospital with one hundred fifty beds, the Chapel, the Sisters' convent, the nurses' home, and the utility building with wards for colored patients. Fully equipped and provided with every- thing needed in this modern day for the treatm~nt of the sick and the ailing, it has treated from 10 .to 12% of its patients on an average abso- lutely free. The Sisters treat all alike. regardless of religion, economic conditions, or color. 21 St. Theresa Hospi,tal, Beaumont, r934. The Sisters found in 1930 that Hotel Dieu, opened in 1897, was insufficient in spite of additions to care for the sick in the growing city of Beaumont. They offered their prayers to St. Therese of the Child Jesus to help them find the means for another hospital. In 1934 they were finally able to acquire by purchase the prop- erty of the Beaumont General Hospital from its Board of Trustees. It consisted of a four-story building with accommodations for one hundred patients, and two lots. Formal possession was taken on May r, 1934, and Right Reverend Monsignor E. A. Kelly blessed the building and cele- brated Holy Mass the next day in an improvised chapel on the second floor. The grateful Sisters renamed the hospital St. Therese and placed it under her protection. The former library was converted into a chapel and a beautiful statue of St. Therese was placed over the main altar. st Tke Sisters of Charity of tlt.e Incarnate Word of San Antonio. The heginning of the San Antonio Congregation has been briefly sketched in the preceding pages. 10 Within one year, after three Sisters were sent from Galveston under the direction of Mother M. Madeleine to found a hospital in San Antonio, Bishop Dubuis decided to make the new community an 2'/bia., 25-27. Its development to 1950 Is not given because orl_e;lnall~• this volume was to go no further than 1936. "Ibid., 27-28. Other foundations ~Ince I 936 are not included. 30/b;d.
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