Saving our history

Caregivers take it upon themselves to salvage and restore a historic plaque at St. Charles Bend

Ray Millar, a maintenance engineer for CHC, remembers when construction crews were about to tear down the old flagpole in front of St. Charles Bend in 2003 as they worked on construction of the Center for Health and Learning. He and Tim Whitehurst, a landscaper in Facility Services, stopped the crew in order to save a plaque dedicating the hospital to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Tipton Indiana – the original founders of St. Charles Hospital.

“We told them, ‘We want this stuff. It’s our history,’” Millar said. “We pried the plaque up carefully and found there was a time capsule underneath it.”

The contents of the time capsule had been ruined by years of water damage, but Millar and Whitehurst kept the plaque. Over the past six years, the plaque has been stored in Facilities’ various shops, without a permanent home.

Recently Greg Hawthorne and James Lanier, both building specialists for CHC, found the plaque in the carpentry shop and decided to refurbish it.

“They took this plaque that you couldn’t read because it was so corroded over,” said Bill Danaher, a chaplain with the Spiritual Care department. “They cleaned it up, buffed it, sanded it and put a varnish over the letters so you could read it.”

With the help of Danaher and approval from senior leadership, the Facilities caregivers posted the plaque in a place of distinction, just outside the front doors to St. Charles Bend. The inscription reads, “For their gifts of faith, of hope and of charity, St. Charles Medical Center is respectfully dedicated to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Tipton, Indiana. October 12, 1975.”

“It was a group thing. There were a lot of people involved in it,” Millar said. “It meant something to us.”