Recipes for Living Hospital Landmark Razed

As so often happens, another Osceola landmark is soon to be just a monument of memories of those residents who stayed there, worked there, were born there, or had appoinnuents there. Wrecking crews have begun dismantling the former Osceola Hospital and Clinic on South Fillmore where Dr. H.E. Stroy and his associates house a medical practice for the past 32 years.

The four-story edifice is old, nobody can deny that. Neither can anyone remember exactly when the building was constructed or for what purpose, and certain land and tax records are also void of such information.

It is known that the building was a hotel in the early 1900s, until being converted into a hospital by a husband-wife doctoring team, Drs. J. D. and Eva Shively, in the year 1920. Several persons have ventured a guess that the structure dates back to the 1880s.

For at least ten years, the building was the Central Hotel under the management of H. L. and Emma Hacker and was known around town as the Hacker House. Following a bout with the law and indebtedness in 1911, Hacker sold out and the Osceola Sentinel reports on March 30, 1911, that C. B. St. John, a Murray man, is reopening Hacker's Central Hotel for business.

A rapid succession of new owners follows until the doctoring team takes over and the building gets a face lift and a new identity as a medical center. This may have been in the 1930s.

The Shivelys called their establishment the Osceola Sanitarium and it was one of three private hospitals conducting a brisk medical trade in those days. A third and fourth floor were added, a building was attached at the rear for an obstetrics ward and the structure had a new look inside and out from its former days as a hotel.

In 1944, Dr. Stroy acquired the hospital building from Dr. Floyd E. Bates, a former missionary to China, who had taken over the sanitarium from the Shivelys in 1939. Dr. Stroy transferred his hospital and clinic from the upper stories of 107 South Main Street to the big building on South Fillmore Street and continued his medical career.

The move expanded the hospital's capacity from 12 to 27 patients in the midst of the medical heyday of the war years. Dr. Stroy recently recalled the busiest doctoring day of his career in 1943. During that day he performed five major operations, made 12 house calls, saw 40 office patients and treated four confined patients.

Was it hectic? Yes, but as the semi-retired doctor said, "Somebody had to do it," and he and Dr. C. R. Harken next door to him were the only ones who could.

THE GOOD DOCTOR IN HIS OFFICE: Dr. H. E. Stroy is pictured in his office in the old hosrital and clinic building. The physician has been in the medical field in Osceola since 1924. This photograph was taken in 1961.

Dr. Stroy's associate doctors over the years have included Dr. H.N. Boden, Dr. George Bristow, Dr. Frank Rose, Dr. Kitti Kalambahetti and Dr. Roy Bracken.

For anyone born in Osceola between 1944 and 1954, the odds are that their birthplace was one of the two hospitals located side by side on Fillmore Street. Dr. Stroy himself quit counting the bare baby bottoms he slapped after he got to 5,300 and is betting he's brought more babies into the world than any other doctor in Iowa.

A hospital stay in the 1940s cost $4 a day at Stroy's Osceola Hospital. A decent hotel room can't be found for that today. The operating room fee was an extra $10, with anesthesia running a $5 charge. Deliveries were also extra, and often the nurses were keeping tabs on three or four laboring women at one time.

The rivaling Harken and Stroy hospitals closed their doors to join the new Clarke County Public Hospital in 1954. The Osceola Hospital wards turned to serve the elderly and the building became the Osceola Nursing Home while the medical clinic continued to operate on the first floor of the building .

A blaze on the afternoon of Sunday, December 8, 1963, nearly destroyed the entire building and brought the end of the nursing home era for the structure. Twenty-two residents were safely evacuated from the smoke-filled rooms on that blizzarding day. Firemen from four towns battled the blaze that threatened to spread to nearby buildings:'The third floor nursing home facilities were heavily damaged by the fire that reportedly started from an over-heated fuse box in the basement and spread up the elevator.

The clinic sustained only minor damage and the doctors we able to reopen the clinic within a few days. The clinic remained open and Dr. Stroy's practice continued through 1976, when the doctor finally relinquished his office in the building.

The doctor moved many of his records and equipment to his home and set up a make-shift doctor's office in the basement, where he continued to doctor a few faithful clients.

Dr. Stroy made a gift of the building and property to two long-time employees, Stella and Tick Moran, several years ago and the site recently became an addition to Querrey Chevrolet.

An auction was conducted in April to dispose of miscellaneous' items from the clinic. For the doctor, it was a heart-breaking day, seeing treasures from his practice being sold for a fraction of their antique value. Many at the auction came to bid on some memento from the old hospital where they or their children were born and treated. There were wicker wheelchairs, baby scales, medical record boxes, eye charts, enamel tables and cabinets, prescription bottles and everything imaginable.

Soon after, the building was completely emptied and a fence erected to keep pedestrians away from the dismantling. And slowly, board by board, a piece of history in Osceola crumbled.