The Story of our Health Message

The Kettering Hospital a Child of Hinsdale

The history of the church is but the annals of similar providences of God repeated in many places under a great variety of circumstances. One of the largest of such providences came to its fruition in the year 1964 in Kettering, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. But it was in fact born much earlier. SHM 418.2

In 1949 a tragic epidemic of poliomyelitis raged in and around Chicago. The dread disease was no respecter of persons, knocking alike on the doors of the rich and the poor. Hospitals were overcrowded. Many of the general hospitals, lacking equipment for the care of this type of patient, were obliged to refer these stricken children to the county hospital in Chicago. SHM 418.3

The Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital was operating in its old and time-stricken facilities in this rather exclusive suburb of Chicago. True to the traditions and heritage of our medical institutions, this sanitarium had a well-equipped physical medicine department, uniquely strong in hydrotherapy. These facilities were particularly useful in treating polio, and the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital opened its door and its heart to the little patients who came for care. SHM 418.4

Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Kettering and their three children lived not far from the sanitarium, Eugene being the only son of the famous inventor Charles F. Kettering. Society is debtor to this inventor for the self-starter common on our automobiles, the quick-drying paints, the application of the diesel engine to the railroads, ethyl gasoline, and many, many other inventions which have blessed our lives. He was a vice-president of General Motors Corporation. SHM 419.1

A kindly providence spared the Kettering children from the clutches of the disease, but Mrs. Kettering had friends whose children were not so fortunate, children who were brought to the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital for care and treatment. Frequently she was a visitor in the sanitarium and noticed the care given to her friends’ children. SHM 419.2

Being an unusually observing woman, she saw much more than routine care of children stricken by polio. Back of the care but shining through, she saw tenderness, dedication, unusual concern for others, a spirit of service which knew no bounds, and a firm belief in a loving God whose arms enfold the world. She saw nurses pray with praying mothers and weep by the bedside of little children with weeping fathers. She watched as nurses forgot mealtimes and changing shifts in order to continue their tender care of small suffering bodies. SHM 419.3

In due course the epidemic subsided, but the picture of the dedicated workers at the Hinsdale Sanitarium lingered in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Kettering. The contagion of poliomyelitis passed; the contagion of dedication and unselfish service above the call of duty continued in the lives of the Ketterings, and spread. Under their leadership and with their liberal support a community campaign was conducted which resulted in the raising of more than a million dollars for the complete rebuilding of the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital into a modern 195-bed institution dedicated to the glory of God through the medium of service to man. SHM 419.4