The Story of our Health Message

Another Seventh-day Adventist Hospital Opens

On February 16, 1964, with appropriate ceremonies the Charles F. Kettering Memorial Hospital was officially opened. The plaque in the lobby states that it is to be a memorial to Charles F. Kettering, the noble inventor. And this it is, but it is much more. It is a lasting memorial to unidentified nurses who missed their meals to minister to ill children in the hour of their desperate need. It is a monument to the “dedication of the workers” and the inarticulate spirit which possesses Seventh-day Adventist medical institutions as they glorify God by serving mankind. SHM 423.2

Thus the genealogy of the institution might read that the Charles F. Kettering Memorial Hospital is a child of the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital, which was in some part at least a child of the former Battle Creek Sanitarium and Hospital, which was in its day a child of the Spirit of Prophecy, which was a child of God. SHM 423.3

The hospital represents a total investment of thirteen and a half million dollars in buildings and equipment—the largest single gift ever to come to the denomination up to this time. The church has invested funds only to staff the hospital and provide its stock of supplies and to erect a complementary building on the campus for the housing and education of nurses. SHM 424.1

Institutions seldom stand still. They grow or they die. The rebuilt Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital, even with its 195 beds, soon was unable to meet the needs of those who sought its sanctuary. The community again rose to help and, with a further gift of one million dollars from the Kettering family, provided funds to expand facilities to 356 beds, its current capacity. SHM 424.2