Saturday was the anniversary of the accreditation of Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, reminding me of the long heritage of Arkansas' best known specialty hospital.
On Oct. 14, 1936, the American College of Surgeons accredited the hospital, an important milestone on the long road to prominence as one of the 10 largest pediatric hospitals in the United States.
This highly regarded hospital--with its prominent heliport but not so well known pediatric heart transplantation program--got its start as an orphanage in 1913. As is so often the case with the creation of great institutions, the vision of an individual lay behind the creation of the Arkansas Children's Home Society--Horace Gaines Pugh of Little Rock.
A native of Illinois, Pugh had great sympathy for disadvantaged children. His father died when Horace was a young teenager, forcing him to leave school to help support his mother and younger brothers. After settling in Little Rock, Pugh became involved in both real estate and printing.
Soon after forming, the society was moved to Morrilton (Conway County) in 1913 to take advantage of a recently donated Victorian home and 30 acres. More than 150 children were cared for during the first year of operation.
Dr. Orlando P. Christian took over leadership of Arkansas Children's Home Society in 1916 and soon relocated the agency to Little Rock, settling into a new building at Ninth and Battery streets, not far from the state Capitol. According to Ginger Daril, author of the entry on Arkansas Children's Hospital in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, "the roof line of the original building ... can still be seen in the center of the north side of the hospital, facing Interstate 630."
The Children's Home grew rapidly, and in 1926 it opened its own tiny hospital--an operating room and two patient rooms. That number soon increased to more than 50 patient beds, a laboratory, physical therapy, and radiology units. In 1929 the official name of the Home was changed to Arkansas Children's Home and Hospital.
The Great Depression was rough on the newly enlarged Children's Home and Hospital, and the agency was only 30 days from foreclosure when it made the fateful decision to hire Ruth Olive Beall as the new superintendent on Feb. 1, 1934.
Beall is something of a hero in Arkansas history for overseeing the transformation of the Children's Home into a modern pediatric medical facility. Born in 1896 in St. Louis, Ruth Beall was the daughter of a salesman, Charles Carlton Beall, and his wife Florence Walcott Beall.
Following graduation from Washington University in St. Louis, Ruth joined her family in Benton County, where her parents had recently settled in Rogers. For eight years she was director of the Benton County branch of the National Tuberculosis Association.
Ruth Beall came to know the Arkansas Children's Home and Hospital through her work with the TB Association. In January 1934, Beall took a small boy with tuberculosis to the Children's Hospital for treatment, but the child died within days. Betraying her tendency to speak her mind, Beall immediately complained about poor care to the hospital board chairman, Judge Thomas Humphreys. Beall was surprised when Humphreys countered by offering her the job as superintendent of the home and hospital.
Having found her calling, Beall threw herself into building the home and hospital. Her biggest challenge was raising money. The country was in a severe depression and the needs were many. Beall put the institution on a cash-on-delivery basis, operating out of a small metal cash box she kept hidden. Attorney Cooper Jacoway raised an incredible $16,000 from local businesses; the Masonic order raised almost as much. The Home Demonstration Clubs of Arkansas kept the home and hospital well stocked with fruits and vegetables.
Beall's tenure at Children's was a long one, lasting from 1934 to 1961. She was especially good at building public awareness and support. When President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Arkansas during the Centennial Celebration in 1936, Beall was able to wrangle a presidential endorsement of her work. She also acquired a large amount of New Deal funding in her efforts to rebuild the facility.
Beall was known as a hard-headed, plain-spoken woman who could seem outrageous at times. A feature article on her in the Saturday Evening Post in 1951 described her as "a vigorous, buxom, middle-aged woman with a Tullulah Bankhead voice which can rage with authority or coo a baby to sleep."
The board of trustees, with Beall's encouragement, closed the orphanage in 1954 and turned the children over to the state. That action allowed for focusing on one mission, and great growth ensued. Facilities grew dramatically to accommodate the growing range of services offered by the Hospital--a burn clinic, for example. Now known as Arkansas Children's Hospital, it's a 336-bed facility on 28 city blocks with a large pediatric trauma center as well as a neonatal intensive care program.
In recent years the hospital has received international acclaim for its pediatric Heart Center, including a heart transplantation program. For the past 25 years research has been a major focus of Children's, operating through the Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute. Another focus of recent years has been developing a branch of the hospital in Springdale in Northwest Arkansas.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 10/15/2017