How Hilton Head Medical Center helped make the island what it is today | Opinion

Hilton Head Island is not defined by its beaches but by its hospital.

This is not a measure of the staff and offerings of the 93-bed Hilton Head Medical Center, owned since last year by the not-for-profit Novant Health.

It is a measurement of how the hospital came to be in 1975.

Novant did a great job last week in celebrating the hospital’s 50th anniversary in a personal and comprehensive way. Hospital walls are filled with timelines, memorabilia and lists of names of long-serving staff, doctors and volunteers.

Novant hosted a gathering at the same spot that then-Gov. James Edwards addressed about 1,000 people for the dedication ceremony on Aug. 8, 1975 for a 40-bed hospital amid quiet pines on an island of 6,500 residents.

Charles E. Fraser, the visionary developer behind Sea Pines that kick-started the island’s modern era in 1957, said the island would never have become an economic engine for the impoverished South Carolina Lowcountry if not for the bridge, air conditioning, mosquito control — and the hospital.

Before the hospital opened, it was a harrowing hour-long drive on narrow roads to a hospital in Beaufort or Savannah, Georgia. Who knows how many babies were born in the parking lot of a fireworks stand on the way to Savannah.

The island hospital was ambitious, to put it mildly, when it opened on Aug. 10, 1975. It is telling that it admitted its first patient on Aug. 21. It was a young man from Ohio who flipped over on his bike in Sea Pines after shooting a 74 on the Atlantic Dunes golf course. The Island Packet reported that he was treated for a dislocated compound fracture of the wrist, and the Hospital Auxiliary’s Billie Hack brought him flowers and candy.

That fulfilled a dream by the brilliant and high-spirited Dr. Peter LaMotte. Joined by his wife, Beryl, and their young children, LaMotte left his leadership roles at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City and quit tending the legs of Willie Mays as team physician for the New York Mets to create a hospital in an unlikely place.

LaMotte was drawn to the island by Fraser, another brilliant and high-spirited man. They had the infectious passion to pull together talented people to make dreams come true — against long odds and despite many setbacks.

Island attorney Bill Bethea Jr. was a young man relatively new to the island when Fraser sat him down with Peter LaMotte and the two began to plan a hospital in a community then served by two doctors working out of a small clinic on Pope Avenue.

It required a new state law — ushered through the Legislature by state Rep. Brantley Harvey Jr. and state Sen. James Waddell, both of Beaufort. The Beaufort County Council had to endorse the sale of $11.2 million in revenue bonds, and a Hospital Auxiliary had to be created to raise money, provide hundreds of volunteers and turn the hospital idea into an urgent community goal.

It also required doctors elsewhere to take a chance and hop aboard what Bethea called the “LaMotte Mayflower.”

It required the deep pockets of the LaMotte family, including Peter’s parents, Louis H. “Red” LaMotte Jr., retired executive vice president and executive committee chairman of IBM, and Lois Gubelman LaMotte, who moved to the island and for whom the hospital’s medical building is named.

“Peter’s vision was not for an ordinary hospital,” Bethea said at the 50th anniversary event. “He wanted a Mayo Clinic type hospital with private rooms and all board-certified or board-eligible physicians and state of the art equipment and facilities.”

It wasn’t easy, especially when the hospital doors opened amid a faltering national economy bogged down by high interest rates and an oil embargo.

“We finally got the lights turned on and it seemed the world wanted to turn them off,” Bethea told me.

Perseverance is a lesson to be learned from this.

The hospital’s legacy is not only the economic engine of the area’s health-care services or the underpinning it provides to the real estate industry.

Bethea said the legacy is the can-do attitude that made Hilton Head what it is: The effort to aim high, keep at it, and enjoy the ride.

That resulted in $22 million that formed the beginnings of the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry when the hospital was sold in the mid-1990s.

Joel Taylor, president of Novant Health’s Hilton Head area, invoked the hospital’s opening ceremony in his remarks at the 50th anniversary celebration, almost 20 years after the passing of Dr. Peter LaMotte.

“It was a promise to this community,” Taylor said. “And it’s a promise we continue to honor today, with expanded services, advanced technology and a deep-rooted commitment to the people who live, work and retire to this incredible part of the Lowcountry.”

That was true 50 years ago. It is true today.

And, if we keep pulling together, it can be true 50 years from now.

David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@gmail.com.