By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
STURGIS — When the last doctors, nurses and support staff walked out of the main entrance of Sturgis Hospital just after noon on Friday, they were met with a round of applause.
That applause came from a crowd of community members gathered just outside the entrance, all of which were there to see off the hospital and its employees on their final day of operation after 100 years of serving the Sturgis community.
Friday’s closure of Sturgis Hospital, which was suddenly announced just three days prior, and the impromptu festivities afterward, were equal parts a vigil for what was being lost in the community, a reunion of current and past employees, and a celebration of the nurses and staff that made the hospital what it was for just over a century.
However, the overarching feeling permeating the gathering was a sense of loss.
“This is a great loss for the community. I realize that we’ve been very blessed to have it for as long as we’ve had it, but not all small towns are able to have this,” Shirley Betts, a former employee who worked for the hospital for nearly 30 years and retired in 2014, said. “It will be sorely missed, especially for the elderly, and now we just have to learn how to do something without it.”
On Tuesday, June 16, hospital management announced the hospital’s closure, citing “ongoing financial challenges facing rural healthcare providers” over the past several years. The hospital was the first in Michigan to be a rural emergency hospital when it switched over to that format in 2023, and was the lone rural emergency hospital in the entire state as of January, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.
As previously reported, the hospital had tried for several years to remain financially afloat. Most recent of these attempts was in 2023, when they switched to the rural emergency hospital format and later that year, was sold to Asker Corp. In 2022, a $645,000 loan was approved by Sturgis city commissioners from their American Rescue Plan funds, which was intended to bridge the gap before an $11 million grant from the state they expected to receive.
Current and former employees said they understood there were financial challenges with the hospital, but that they didn’t see the closure coming so soon after it was announced.
“We knew, obviously, that we’ve been under some financial duress for many years, but we’ve somehow always still managed to tread water, doggy paddle, keep our chins up,” Heather Aker, a registered nurse at Sturgis Hospital who had been with the hospital since 2016, said. “We were not expecting this. We thought we had a couple years at least, with also the hopes that someone was going to swoop in and purchase us, too.”
Coming out to the farewell ceremony were a couple of longtime employees who had retired. One of them was Juanita Oldfield, who retired in 1997 after working at the hospital for 30 years as a house supervisor, and brought her old name badge with her. She was emotional talking about the hospital’s closure, but recalled plenty of memories she had there, especially getting to be with patients every day.
“I just can’t really describe the feeling of taking care of somebody because there’s more heart and soul involved,” Oldfield said. “I’ve seen people come and go; I’ve seen them expire. That was my favorite time of nursing is to help them cross over, and then the birth of the baby, because I tried to be both places. It was very heart and soul.”
Melanie Mann, who worked at the hospital for 40 years from 1978 until 2019, said she went through something similar when the obstetrics department and hospice program shut down in 2018, and called both that occasion and Friday’s closure “extremely sad.”
“I feel very badly for the community and for all the staff and for the dedication and the hard work and all the effort they put into this hospital to maintain it,” Mann said. “I’m devastated for the staff that has to come out and look for a job, especially for some of the older ones who worked here a long time, and now they don’t have any insurance and they have to go out and seek employment.”
Shortly after the employees left the building one final time, a brief ceremony was had to give out an award that hadn’t been given out in several years. The Faye Kerschner Award, which honored excellence in nursing at Sturgis Hospital, was given to Rebecca Miller, who had worked at the hospital since 1985.
Miller said the award, named after her aunt who passed away from cancer in 1988, was unexpected, but that she got into the job because she enjoyed caring for people.
“It was really gratifying living in the community where I took care of people,” Miller said. “I see people here that I’ve cared for, and so that’s what got me into nursing in the first place. … We are unified in the fact that we want to take good care of people when they come in. We have been, and that makes us more cohesive. We feel like our coworkers have become family. So, it’s a really hard day today.”
Tina Johnston, who worked as an outpatient nurse for the last 38 years, said Sturgis Hospital was akin to a second home for her.
“When you come here almost every day for 38 years, it’s like you’re home,” Johnston said. She also expressed her sadness at the closure, saying that when the announcement was made, “I honestly thought, tomorrow I’ll wake up and this was just a bad dream. I even told my husband at night, I think I’ll just wake up in the morning and it won’t be true.”
Many in attendance say they hope something can be done with the building in the future, with some saying they hoped a new hospital could occupy the building.
“If you have a heart attack or something like that, it’s going to be half an hour to get to a hospital, and for a lot of emergencies, that’s too long to get to an emergency care center,” Miller said. “I think it’s imperative that somebody do something to open or revive, at least an emergency room. I don’t know that that’s going to happen, but I think it’s very important for the community.”
“I would hope that somebody would want to buy it and put a hospital in the community,” Mann said. “I think a hospital is the center of a community.”
“It’s got a lot of potential, and we really need it for the community and the county for emergency care,” Oldfield said.
To commemorate the final day, everyone in attendance who had ever worked for the hospital made their way to the sign just outside the main entrance to get one final picture together. Some stood in front of the sign, some climbed on top of the sign, but the final picture signified one thing: the family that was forged over decades of the hospital’s existence.
And now, those decades of history sit empty on Myrtle Avenue.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
