On May 19, 1960, the front page of the Boothbay Register featured a picture of Dr. Philip Gregory holding a shiny new key in his hand about to open the front door of the gleaming new, $910,000, brick, St. Andrews Hospital. 

A thousand onlookers, doctors, state senators, congressmen, businessmen and citizens, young and old, stood watching. In the following week the paper reported that four babies had been delivered in the new facility. 

But as a following August 18, 1960 editorial made very clear, the now nonprofit, “charitable” medical institution faced financial difficulties from its beginning. 

Initially, the problem stemmed from a deficiency in the expected federal support from the 1946 Hill-Burton “Hospital Survey and Construction Act,” a critical piece of legislation that, after World War II, provided federal grants and loans to improve the nation’s wartime-deprived hospitals. 

Most Hill–Burton money went to big cities such as Philadelphia, Boston and New York. It is a tribute to this community and to the political acumen of its civic leadership that some of that Hill-Burton money went to little Boothbay Harbor.  

Alas, as we will see it was not quite enough! However, this first crisis underscored just how very deeply the 1960 community believed in the value and importance of its new “community hospital” and in its founder.

The August 18, 1960 editorial
“The Meaning Of Our Community Hospital”

The trustees of St. Andrews Hospital are now asking or $60,000 in additional donations. Why was this not included in the original request for the much greater sum needed in 1957? It is because of the then reasonable anticipation that $420,000 would be forth coming from the Federal Government. 

In fact, the Federal allocation was $365,000. Unexpectedly, because of a reduced congressional appropriation, there was a nationwide 10 percent cut under the Hill-Burton Act.

But the hospital itself is built and functioning strongly. It has a staff of surgeons and nurses of which our community may well be proud. It has a Board of Trustees including some of our ablest businessmen and doctors who serve without pay and really put their heart and soul into the advancement of this great community project.  

In what sense is this a community hospital? It is not owned by the town, and it is not administered by town meeting. Yet, in a very real sense it is a community hospital.

For one thing it was made possible by over 1,000 donors; and these have naturally a heartfelt interest in it. Again, it is a part of the community in the widest sense. Our schools for example provide education for our young, but these make a part only of our total. 

But day and night the doors of the St. Andrews Hospital stand open to meet the needs, often desperate, of every last man, woman and child of our community.

The young and vigorous think of a hospital as a place where they come to bring flowers and lean over the beds of their sick elders. And then in a split second they may be in an automobile crash, and transported to the hospital where before they may have been casual visitors. Here is the close-at-hand skill and equipment to deal with their trouble. 

Literally nobody can say the time will not come when he may come to this.

When the original St. Andrews Hospital was built by Dr. George Gregory, he was not at all sure that a private hospital could be made to pay or even break even. Hence he had the building so designed that it could either be a hospital or a summer boarding house.

Fortunately for this community he made a go of the hospital. His son Dr. Philip Gregory took it over on this death in 1946, and except for living expenses turned back his earnings into additions like the clinic, the Nurses’ Home and new equipment.

But costs increased faster than surplus earnings. At the same time it became apparent that a larger and more modern hospital was urgently needed. 

Furthermore, it was plain that this could no longer be a private hospital. It must be organized as a charitable, and nonprofit organization operated for the benefit of the community. In this form individual gifts might be solicited; likewise Federal aid under the Hill-Burton Act.

An independent appraisal of the hospital property was made: it was valued conservatively at $150,000.

Dr. Gregory agreed to sell at this figure, taking his pay in serial notes maturing at the rate of $7,500 per year over the next 20 years.

But he went further than this. He made a unique agreement whereby he himself in his professional capacity would earn the money to pay these notes. By this contract with the trustees, Dr. Gregory was to act as Medical Director at a salary fixed at about 2/3 of his average earnings over the past five-year period. All fees for his surgery and for attendance for patients at the clinic were to go directly to the hospital.

For five years now this method has been operating. Meanwhile, the stock of the St. Andrews Hospital is by state law held in trust by seven trustees for the benefit of the citizens of the Boothbay Region. This trust has made possible the donations by which the new hospital, one of the finest of its size, has been built.

St. Andrews is no longer the dream of a few dedicated men; it is a hospital in being, of brick and mortar, flesh and blood, and we must rally to its support. 

Expenses nowadays are lightened by Blue Shield, Blue Cross, and other forms of insurance.  But quite apart from the cost there was the old fashioned dread of hospitals which kept people away.  That dread is mostly gone. People who have some lurking ache or pain are no longer afraid to come and learn the truth about themselves. X-ray and fluoroscope penetrate deep. Fear is a lightning artist, and many times paints pictures far uglier than the facts warrant. Often these patients nowadays go away rid of a nagging burden of apprehension treading the daisy tops.

Finally our babies are mostly born here, with everything to favor successful delivery. What can be more vital to us that an institution that is our close friend and guardian at the beginning of life, and constitutes its ministrations through the whole of life?

Such are some of the reasons which must lead us to think that our hospital is one of our greatest community assets. Can anyone advance a reason on the other side?