I went with a friend to McCleary Healthcare Clinic recently. There were party hats and cupcakes in the lobby.

When we learned it was the one year anniversary of the new clinic I sat there, reflecting on the years I spent at Mark Reed Hospital as an employee. The memories are bittersweet because, as we all know, the hospital moved. The building is still there, and the memories will never leave, but the hospital is now in Elma.

My first association with the hospital was back in 1975. With my husband doing a tour of duty in Korea with the Army, the children and I waited for him in McCleary where my parents lived. I got a job at Mark Reed Hospital and quickly learned what a warm and caring place it was.

In December 1988 we were retired from the military and moved back to McCleary. In May I put in my application at Mark Reed Hospital. Ruth Melton, office manager, called me for an interview. I was hired.

Jean Roberts was the administrator and I soon learned that most of the managers, including Jean, had come up through the ranks. Everyone was close and the working atmosphere couldn’t have been better. Everyone wore several hats and pitched in where needed. I remember Jean helping shovel snow off the roof and Georgette Hiles shoveling the driveway before the snowplow could make it up the hill.

The hospital had a lot of financial ups and downs over the years. None as bad as stories I have heard from years gone by. Ruby Hyman, lab/X-ray tech, said every employee donated $100 back to the hospital out of their pay for several months to keep the hospital going in the beginning.

The stories Ruby Hyman could tell. Years ago, before my time, they had a portable X-ray machine they were trying to replace. But, as usual, money was tight. Somehow, the money became available when the old machine caught a patient’s pillow on fire.

As I said, we were all pressed into positions we would not have done at another facility. Most of the time we had one ER doctor and two nurses. If a particularly bad situation occurred I would be called on to chart the events. They gave me a clipboard, I stood in the corner and wrote down whatever they told me to and documented the time. My work was always reviewed by the senior nurse and signed off on.

During a bus accident at Capitol Forest we received a busload of patients, literally. As it happened many doctors showed up, having heard about it one way or another. We didn’t have digital X-rays then. We didn’t have a way for a radiologist to read them other than send them to Olympia. My husband ran X-rays back and forth, as needed.

I was put at the typewriter in the X-ray department and typed up orders as fast as the nurses could give them to me. Dave Gibson would come in and prioritize them from time to time. I just typed the one on top and handed it to Joy Iversen as she was ready for the next patient.

And there was the time a family was in a serious car accident. The baby wasn’t hurt so Jean Roberts and Terry Bariekman took care of the infant until the family was treated. The family had left everything in the car.

As Jean remembers: “I was standing outside the fence with the family’s car on the other side. It was next to the old McCleary Auction. They needed to get their belongings from the car, but the guy working there wouldn’t let them get into the car. He tried calling the owner of the impound area to get permission. A teen-aged boy — family member — climbed the fence. The guy called the police. Ersel May came and let the kid get the stuff. I drove the family to Olympia so they could rent a car.”

We had the Secret Pal club where we gave little surprises to our Pal throughout the year and then revealed ourselves at Christmas time. We had pot luck lunches that made us think we could open a restaurant.

See — history isn’t just about a building going up or coming down. It’s about love and friendship and practical jokes. It’s what made Mark Reed Memorial Hospital a home. It wasn’t hard to get up to go to work. It was a pleasure.

Linda Thompson is the editor of the McCleary Museum Newsletter. She has been a volunteer at the museum since 1990.