“As Time Goes By,” “The Beat Goes On.” No, I’m not referring to the re-runs of the British TV show. I'm talking about the former Montgomery Hospital in Norristown.
Back in 1936, I was born at what my mom called “the old Montgomery Hospital” – the small brick building on the southeast corner of Powell and Basin streets in Norristown that is connected to Central Montgomery County Behavioral Health Services. Yes, it's still there!
I have the original bill for the eight-day stay for Mom and me, which was $50. Dr. Joseph Barthold, a young family doctor who graduated from high school with Mom’s sister, Ruth Deihm Phillips, helped her deliver me there.
The total for his bill for the entire nine-month prenatal care, which included delivery was $35! Yes, I have that original bill, too!
Shortly after, the Montgomery Hospital on Powell Street was built. My Grandfather Deihm, took movies of that building process and my sister still has those old reels.
Einstein Medical Center Montgomery on West Germantown Pike in East Norriton was built. Ah, there went the golf course and farm stand. Well, the beat goes on. All is in the name of progress Hooray!
Jefferson Hospital has recently teamed up, so we are transitioning. Exercise is good for us all, right? So walking those parking lots is good for those aging muscles!
I'm sure there are many who have similar stories about Sacred Heart Hospital on the corner of DeKalb and Fornance streets. I had my tonsils removed there when I was only 3.
The building looked like a beautiful old house; and Mom and my Aunt Marie Brooks Entenman Fleming walked me out there and put my little hand in the hand of a nun. Mommy told me she was taking me to Sunday School where my cousin “Romey” (Jerome Entenman) was waiting for me.
It was a surprise when they undressed me and put me in an iron crib next to a little boy in another iron crib — with about four young soldiers in the same room in cot-like beds lined up across the room. After an overnight stay (the cost of which was $10 to the hospital, honest, I have that bill, too!), I was glad to return home where my Grandmom Brooks greeted me with a big doll in a blue satin dress and cap — and ice cream!
My father, Gerald Ward Brooks, passed away in the updated Sacred Heart Hospital in 1987. Now Sacred Heart Hospital no longer exists. A man named Herman Hupfeld composed a song for “Casablanca” back in 1942, as I found out while using Google, that went something like: “You must remember this, the basic things remain important as time goes by.” How things do change! And the rhythm continues. Progress!
Riverview Hospital, located “down the East End,” expanded and relocated, becoming Suburban General Hospital out at Germantown and DeKalb pikes. That hospital later became Mercy Hospital and has undergone several changes as we progress to today.
Well, just as Sonny and Cher sang many times: “Charleston was once the craze, history has moved forward, men still continue to go off to war, electronically they keep track of a baseball game, grandmothers sit in chairs and remember the past, boys still pursue girls to get a kiss … “And the Beat Goes On.”
Times change. Life changes. It’s known as progress. We must remain adaptable. A few years ago, we actually received our flu vaccinations at a drive-thru, never leaving our car, in a church’s parking lot up in Fairview Village. I wonder if hospitals will start delivering babies at a drive-thru soon. Yeah, “And The Beat Goes On.”
Ruthmarie Brooks Silver resides in Lower Providence Township, Montgomery County.
