Rocky Mount Memorial Hospital – Tipping Our Hats To The Doctors Who Helped Keep The Community Well – Part 2

“GPs are almost the only doctors these days who understand all problems, can see the whole person…spend time with the dying…see things through to the end.”

Jane Wilson-Howarth’s quotation says it nicely for us when we consider the Rocky Mount doctors….way back when. Jane, is a writer who qualified as a doctor of medicine and worked in hospital medicine, obstetrics and gynecology in Swindon, Salisbury and Oxford. (I keep telling you one thing leads to another when you start down the research trail.) Jane didn’t know OUR doctors, but she describes how we remember them.

Yesterday, I wrote briefly about Dr. Marvin Lee Stone, who in 1941 built the clinic that became Memorial Hospital. He was a native of Vance County, son of John C. and Serbia Edward Stone. His sister was Altie Stone. His brother, Dr. Leslie Ogburn Stone, will be featured in an upcoming post.

Marvin was a Carolina man, who earned his AB Degree at UNC, and his MD degree from the U. of Pennsylvania. He came to Rocky Mount in 1928.

I hope you will try to picture Dr. Marvin Stone as a member of the Rocky Mount Elks Lodge, Benvenue Country Club, the Edgecombe Nash State and American Medical Association, as a member of 1st United Methodist Church. He was married to Mabel Dozier Stone. At the age of 74 in 1972, he died and is buried in Pineview Cemetery. These few details are meant to help us imagine his busy civic life, as well as his practice of medicine. Consider the setting I wrote about in Part I where Dr. Stone lived and worked. Think of the influence he brought to bear on the community, a man who looked after others health, but surely had his own days of worry as Memorial Hospital grew and changed.

Memorial Hospital: In 1946, Dr. O.E. Bell became associated with the hospital. In 1950, Dr. S.E. Way was added to the staff to do surgery. In 1954, beds increased to 25 and in 1957, beds increased to 40. When Nash General opened in 1971, the staff of Memorial closed its 50 beds and moved to the new Medical Arts Mall becoming the Memorial Clinic.  More to come in this series.

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                Stay in the mood with a quick run through opening lines of top 1940-49 music.                        You will love it!