A school fire that claimed the lives of 92 children and three sisters–the memory will forever haunt us. Dec. 1, 1958, when the usual school day became a quick, roaring inferno for the students of Our Lady of the Angels grammar school on Chicago’s West Side and the B.V.M. Sisters who taught them, became an indelible part of our own little world of St. Anne’s Hospital.
It began as an ordinary day in the extraordinary life of a 322-bed hospital. At 2:52 that Monday afternoon, when the first alert sounded, the disaster plan brought physicians from their offices; nurses, technicians and office personnel, about to finish the first shift, stayed on to join the incoming staff. The scene’s unfolding horror intensified with each agonizing hour. The staff unselfishly suspended the safe haven of home and family to care for those who eventually might have neither.
We had a particular hero–husband, father, physician–who could only cling to quick telephone calls for the assurance that all was well on the home front–our five children, the eldest 8 and down the Irish-Catholic step-ladder, were safe and sound.
That time, that place, when the practice of medicine was personal, the doctor’s office, the original place “where everyone knows your name,” was typified in that hospital, that familiar part of a typical neighborhood. The circular driveway, the friendly lobby, the marble St. Anne, welcoming arms outstretched, the swinging doors of the emergency room, the sounds, the smells, were all a constant assuring presence in the life of a contained little world. The medical staff was as modern as the old, red-brick hospital was sturdy. Names of attending physicians, who represented all specialties, were prominently listed in the lobby’s bronze plaque which read: “In recognition of dedication and service. Those who embrace the weak and the suffering shall know the silent gratitude of the afflicted, the aged and the dying.”
The same inscription on a smaller plaque, with individual name and date included, was ceremoniously presented to each physician to commemorate 25 years of service. Our plaque, a little scratched now, readable still, is forever etched in memory.
The years of service by my husband, Thomas J. Moore, M.D., turned out to be almost 45, when death gave voice to the silent gratitude; mourning patients came in long lines to honor the physician, friend, confidant, to remember the shared times of renewed hope and other times, those dark midnights of despair, when medicine could neither change nor prolong the final outcome when the terminal patient’s quiet, merciful leave-taking was inevitable.
The times have changed. The respect for physicians has plummeted to bewildering depths. A veneer of bureaucracy seeps over all medicine, insidiously increasing the distance between physician and patient. Medical insurance, meant to be a comfort, has become a confusing challenge. Too many competent physicians, obscured by the alphabet of conglomerate and government intervention, reluctantly settle for early retirement. Health care is out of control, unreachable by many, unaffordable by most. But if medicine is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.
To the front now come the highly educated, finely honed specialized physicians to grapple with the awesome, scientific advancements in sustaining life, the new frightening genetics of almost creating it. The price is high. The patient may live, but at times question the prize; the physician succeeds but often may question why.
Much hope, however, lies ahead. The progress of medicine, like a meteorite, burns brightly, illuminating the future with its incandescence. The unreachable heights are now commonplace, the impossible dream ordinary. To these physicians the crown has been passed, and heavy the head, and heart, on which it rests.
The old neighborhood hospital is gone now, its staff mostly forgotten, lost to time, spotlight on the suffering and death of too many victims, and the compassion and dedication of all the heroes.
Our old, bronze plaque, with its timeless dedication remains, newly polished and returned to its place of honor.
