It's time to say goodbye, fondly, to the old Harrison Hospital
As the day for demolition nears the old Harrison Hospital building on Cherry Avenue in Bremerton, I asked Virginia Mason Franciscan Health President Chad Melton if I could take a final look at the place where my dreams to become a doctor first began. He kindly allowed me to tour the facility and accompanied me along the way. I want to use this column to take you on my journey through a community icon, a place that many of us, including me, fought against closing.
Before getting started, I want to thank every nurse, doctor, tech, janitor, cook, pharmacist, and all who worked at or for Harrison Hospital since 1964. By serving this community, know that you leave a legacy for all of us.
I will start at the beginning, the laboratory and pathology area in the basement of the “old” hospital, built in 1964. Winding our way downstairs through the maze of dark hallways, it seemed to take longer to get there than I remembered. Though, as I entered the group of rooms, each filled with outdated medical equipment well past its prime and storage boxes stacked to the ceiling, my childhood memories came flooding back.
In the fall of 1980, my first-grade class ventured to Harrison Hospital on a field trip. I was not yet six years old. Dr. Keith Hallman was our tour guide. As he recounted later that year to my parents, he felt reticent to show the organ specimens and other artifacts to such a young group until his eyes settled on a little brunette with pigtails, bows in her hair, and a mile-wide smile, which bolstered his resolve. That girl was me.
I fell in love that day in 1980. With the basement. With the lab. With science. With the jars of preserved organs sitting on the black laminate counter. With the microscopes. And with the cells we saw on the little glass slides. My dream to become a physician was born, right there, in that very room, next to the sterilizing equipment and tiny test tubes, hanging on Hallmans’ every word. It was that night, according to my father, when I first said, “I was born to be a doctor” — as if there were no other option.
Heading upstairs landed us near old surgical suites. While home from college on break thirty years ago, I shadowed several surgeons, including: Dr. Donald George, Dr. Joe Jack Davis, and Dr. William Halligan just to name a few. Those surgery suites could never come close to passing code today. Taking in the missing ceiling tiles, exposed insulation, and ancient ventilation system, I realized creating a sterile operating environment would be next to impossible today.
Next, we entered what was left of the once bustling intensive care unit, a familiar spot in the fall of 2017 after my father suffered a massive heart attack. He stayed in the same ICU bed and room for more than three weeks before his death. As I toured the ICU, my thoughts were oddly similar to the ones I had every time I walked through the ICU’s massive double doors six years ago. Seeing my father lying in his hospital bed, hooked up to a ventilator, a device assisting his heart to pump blood, and countless tubes, lines, and drains, I knew our journey had reached its end. While neither he nor his doctors were quite ready to let go, the end was inevitable, whether they fought it or not.
While the ICU holds memories of the final days of our father-daughter collaboration, the next stop took me back to the first time “working” together. It was at the nursery where I spent many carefree Saturday mornings sitting on a hallway floor below a bank of narrow, rectangular windows spaced closer together than all the rest. It was there I watched my dad examine newborns, folded blankets for the nurses, and on one morning, saw my youngest brother for the first time. But, as I took in the worn-down floors, cracked paint on the walls, and the now obsolete, tiny patient rooms designed to house two laboring mothers at a time, I realized there is just no going back.
The hospital is beyond any meaningful use.
After leaving the building for the last time, I could really understand — perhaps, for the first time — how little remained of our beloved community hospital. That is not the fault of CHI, Common Spirit, or VMFH. Our enemy is time.
What's next for Harrison Hospital: Campus in Bremerton to be razed as work begins on new Silverdale tower
This hospital meant a lot to a lot of people. It meant a lot to me. While it is hard to accept a building that saved so many lives cannot itself be saved, we must. Time stops for no one.
While I will continue advocating for more healthcare options in Kitsap County, Harrison Hospital is not one of them. I want to extend my sincerest appreciation to Mr. Melton and his team for the opportunity to say goodbye to a place that holds a great deal of my childhood, teenage and collegiate healthcare memories. I wish to thank those working to tear it down. While no small job, it needs to be done.
Note to readers: The hospital has stripped everything of use and repurposed it somewhere in the community to support those in need, including St. Vincent de Paul, Birkenfeld Stella Maris House, Olympic College Nursing Program, Kitsap County Juvenile Detention Center, Suquamish Police Department, Bremerton Fire Department, and The Bridge Church in Belfair. In full disclosure, I have been given wall otoscope/ophthalmoscope units for my office, items I could not afford on my own.
Dr. Niran Al-Agba is a pediatrician in Silverdale and writes a regular opinion column for the Kitsap Sun. Contact her at niranalagba@gmail.com. If you have memories to share from the old Harrision Hospital, feel free to write letters@kitsapsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Memories of Harrison Hospital in Bremerton before demolition
