Who knew a Topps Bubble Gum card from a 2009
series could be considered an historical gold mine for a local physician with a penchant for historical research?
But that’s exactly what the card for Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, one of the nation’s first Native American nurses, represented for Dr. Thomas L. Higgins, Baystate Medical Center’s chief medical officer.
Walking Bear received her nursing registration through Franklin County Public Hospital’s nursing program in 1927, when it was still known with that name. She went on to become a pivotal figure in the development of the national Indian Health Service and founder of the Native American Nurses Association.
Now, that story has been featured in a new book released this month by Higgins and his two colleagues, Gina O. Campbell, a registered nurse and the hospital’s regional director of quality, and Sandra W. Campbell, the executive assistant to the president of Baystate Franklin Medical Center and a local historian and genealogist.
The book, published as part of Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series, chronicles the hospital’s 122-year history, from the days when it was known as Franklin County Public Hospital to the opening of its shiny new surgical wing this year.
Higgins said he’s been an amateur historian for many years. His first book, which he wrote as a teenager in his hometown of Beverly, was about the old houses of Everett.
“I went around and I photographed all of the old buildings for the book, then I kind of put that aside for a long time, when I went to medical school,” he said.
Three years ago, he got back into historical research when the company’s flagship hospital, Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, was trying to come up with some sort of gift to give their residents upon completion of their training.
It was supposed to be just a four-page pamphlet on the hospital’s history. Then, it grew to 16-pages, then even more, until it was 128-pages long.
“It exploded into this huge book,” Higgins said.
Eventually, it was published by Arcadia as the “Baystate Medical Center” installment of the “Images” series.
When Higgins arrived at Baystate Franklin Medical Center, the hospital’s public relations coordinator, Phyllis Stone, tipped him off that the hospital had boxes of old pictures taken throughout its past — from 1894 to today.
“These were great photos that hadn’t seen the light of day, and we had to get them out there,” he said.
Drafting his colleagues, Campbell and Campbell, Higgins was off and running on his next project, a history of Baystate Franklin Medical Center.
In addition to the boxes in the hospital’s possession, employees, members of the Baystate Franklin Auxiliary and others began bringing them file folders filled with photographs and records they owned, once they’d gotten wind that a book was in the works.
“There really was a treasure trove of pieces of history on this hospital,” said Gina Campbell, who wrote the chapter on nursing. “It was really fun to go through the different pictures — so much fun that you actually had a hard time focusing on writing the book.”
Gina Campbell noted that many of the photographs that made it into the book contain images of people who are still alive and around the community today.
“They were amazing supporters of the hospital, so that was cool to see their part in the history of the hospital,” she said.
Indeed, Sandra Campbell herself makes an appearance as a newborn alongside her twin, Sue LaCoy, the first twins born in 1959. Both currently work at the hospital.
Despite the large amount of material they’d amassed, Higgins, Campbell and Campbell still had some holes to fill. That process took a little extra sleuthing.
“There were people who were in the story, and we needed pictures of them. Finding those were sometimes a challenge,” Higgins said.
To find a photograph of Percy Wadman, a former physician at the hospital, Higgins said he had to use Wadman’s position as a former president of the Massachusetts Medical Society as a clue to see if that organization might have a photograph.
“I called the society and I asked, ‘He was the president, you must have a picture of him?’ and they said, ‘No, we don’t know anything about that,’” Higgins said.
Then, last November, Higgins found himself attending a meeting with the society in its Percy Wadman boardroom — and there on the wall of the room hung a portrait of Percy Wadman.
To find a portrait that supposedly resided somewhere on the hospital’s grounds of Eliza Leonard, the only woman to serve as an officer of the hospital in the early years and one of its greatest benefactors, Higgins and his team scoured the facility from top to bottom.
Coming up empty in their search, they finally located the photograph at the Greenfield Historical Society, where it had, at some point, been donated.
For other photographs, Sandra Campbell spent a great deal of time on websites, like Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com, to track down possible family members that might possess them. She searched eBay.com for other items.
“Those were places to go to try and find some history of folks,” she said. They also visited local history museums, like the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, to see what they had.
Sandra Campbell said she was able to match up photos of graduating nursing classes, marked only with a year or date, with the names of the people in them by comparing the year to the list of names on a 100th-anniversary quilt that hangs near the hospital’s lobby.
Higgins, Campbell and Campbell also dated some photos based on parts of buildings that were present or visible in some photos and not others, or by the types — makes and models of cars that could be seen in them — Higgins’ speciality.
Many parts of the book are about the various construction projects the hospital has seen over the years.
“In some of the pictures, they were undated, but you could see the original South Building and it was a plain building. Then, suddenly there was a set of stairs on it,” Sandra Campbell said. “Or they turned the porches into patient rooms. You could tell.”
In all, the 128-page book took about nine months to complete, Higgins said. Much of the work was done on their own time, with piles of documents and photos spread across their kitchen tables.
Higgins said the team was only able to include in the book about 50 percent of the content that they’d unearthed.
Gina Campbell said producing histories like this are important to document the critical role that Baystate Franklin has played as the rural county’s only hospital.
“We have over 500 staff members and all of them touch the community. We are the community,” Campbell said. “Our slogan was ‘Neighbors Caring for Neighbors.’”
The book can be purchased at World Eye Bookshop in Greenfield, Barnes & Noble or at: http://bit.ly/2bIgn4r
Tom Relihan started at The Recorder in 2014, where he covers health, human services and education. He can be reached at
413-772-0261, ext. 264 or at:
trelihan@recorder.com