“As Time Goes By,” “The Beat Goes On.” No, I’m not talking about the re-runs of the even older re-runs of the British TV situation comedy here. I’m talking about the former Montgomery Hospital in Norristown.
Many years ago, well in 1936, to be exact, I was born at what my mom always referred to as “the old Montgomery Hospital” — the smallish brick building that still sits on the southeast corner of Powell and Basin streets in Norristown that is attached to and partly houses Central Montgomery County Behavioral Health Services. Yep, it’s still there!
I have the original bill for the eight-day stay for Mom and me, which totaled $50. Dr. Joseph Barthold, a young family doctor who graduated from high school with Mom’s sister, Ruth Deihm Phillips, helped her deliver me there.
The total for his bill for the entire nine-month prenatal care, which included delivery was $35! Yes, I have that original bill, too! (Mom cherished a lot of great stuff, I know! She left me her inheritance of all that good stuff; so did my Aunt Ruth! No, please don’t have ‘The Horder’ van offer me a TV spot!)
It wasn’t long thereafter that the Montgomery Hospital on Powell Street between Wood and Fornance Streets was built. My Grandfather Deihm, an early camera buff, took movies of that building process and my sister still has those old reels. A few years ago she had them transferred to a DVD and gave me a copy for my birthday. No, don’t call “The Hoarders”….yet!
Fast forward … Einstein Medical Center Montgomery on West Germantown Pike in East Norriton went up. Ah, there went the golf course and farm stand. Well, the beat goes on. All is in the name of progress Hooray!
Jefferson Hospital thas teamed up more recently and so we transition. Hey, exercise is good for us all, right? So walking those parking lots is … yep, you’ve got the picture! Progress and change are.good for those aging muscles!
Since I’m reflecting on “old Norristown” here again and hospitals, I’m sure there are still many who are reading this who have similar stories about Sacred Heart Hospital on the corner of DeKalb and Fornance streets. I had my tonsils removed there when I was only 3.
The building looked like a beautiful old house in those days; and Mom and my Aunt Marie Brooks Entenman Fleming walked me out there and put my little hand in the hand of a nun (yeah, they dressed like nuns then); and Mommy told me she was taking me to Sunday School where my cousin “Romey” (Jerome Entenman) was waiting for me.
Hmmmmmm. Big surprise when they undressed me and put me in an iron crib next to a little boy in another iron crib — with about four young soldiers in the same room in cot-like beds lined up across the room. (It was 1940 and WWII was in full swing and hospitals were crowded.) After an overnight stay (the cost of which was $10 to the hospital, honest, I have that bill, too!), I was glad to return home where my Grandmom Brooks greeted me with a big doll in a blue satin dress and cap — and ice cream!
My dad, Gerald Ward Brooks, died in the modernized Sacred Heart Hospital in 1987. Now Sacred Heart Hospital is no more. A guy named Herman Hupfeld wrote a song for “Casablanca” back in 1942 …. OK, so I Googled it!…. that went something like: “You must remember this, the fundamental things apply as time goes by.” How things do change!.And the beat goes on. Progress!
Riverview Hospital, “down the East End,” grew and grew and moved, becoming Suburban General Hospital out at Germantown and DeKalb pikes. That hospital was later a Mercy Hospital and has changed quite a few times as we march along to today.
Well, as Sonny and Cher sang a million times: “Charleston was once the rage, history has turned the page, men still keep on marching off to war, electrically they keep a baseball score, grandmas sit in chairs and reminisce, boys keep chasing girls to get a kiss … “And the Beat Goes On.”
Times change. Life changes. It’s called progress. We need to stay flexible. A few years ago, we actually got our flu shots at a drive-thru, never leaving our car, in a church’s parking lot up in Fairview Village. I wonder if hospitals will deliver babies at a drive-thru anytime soon. Yeah, “And The Beat Goes On.”
Ruthmarie Brooks Silver lives in Lower Providence Township, Montgomery County.
