An aerial view of the hospital complex, circa 1950 (Photo courtesy David Hodge)
Lt. Nora McCombs, from Baltimore and serving with the Army Nursing Corps, became a patient at Richmond’s new McGuire General Hospital during the summer of 1945 with what was obliquely described as a “foot ailment” by reporter Lloyd Bailey in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. McCombs developed the problem “hiking after forward-moving troops” in Europe during World War II.
She experienced several bombings during her assignment to the 45th General Hospital — a forward-lines care unit and MASH-style outfit staffed mainly by Richmonders. McCombs spent 16 months as a nurse during campaigns in North Africa and Italy before her injury. Bailey recorded 15 women then undergoing treatment at McGuire General Hospital with more than 1,000 beds. They came from the front lines with various ailments, from injuries caused by shell fragments and jeep accidents to “various tropical diseases and fever.”
Planning a Central Virginia location for a military hospital began in secret in April 1943 with meetings between the Richmond Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
A program from the 1945 dedication of McGuire General Hospital (Image courtesy David Hodge)
On June 1, the Times-Dispatch quoted an unnamed U.S. War Department source: “A 1,750-bed hospital to take care of war casualties will be built in Virginia, and the probability is that it will be located in Richmond. … A War Department spokesman said he understood the hospital would cost about $4 million.” U.S. Rep. David E. Satterfield Jr. announced two weeks later that there had been some confusion — the War Department at first located the facility in its plans for Henrico County, but they meant Chesterfield, though an exact site wasn’t then named.
Before its purchase for $80,000, the property, now 1201 Broad Rock Blvd., was owned by Thomas Marcellus Cheatham (1870-1945), who built a home there in 1892. Before and after the Civil War, the land gained a reputation for its horse racing track.
In August, the Richmond contracting firm Doyle & Russell made a sufficient low bid for the construction of what was then a 1,785-bed hospital and 69 related structures. Five buildings were to be permanent structures for use by the Veterans Administration post-war. Another section of “standard mobilization” single-story brick buildings was likely to be dismantled afterward. Doyle & Russell’s wartime projects included Camp Lee (later Fort Lee), the Richmond Quartermaster Depot (Bellwood) and Camp Peary. The hospital’s construction required around-the-clock efforts of 4,000 workers.
The hospital’s namesake, Dr. Hunter McGuire (right), with staff at Richmond’s St. Luke’s Hospital, circa 1895 (Photo courtesy the Cook Collection, The Valentine)
McGuire’s amenities included a gymnasium, a movie theater, an auditorium, a barber shop, a beauty parlor, a fire department, a power plant and a soda fountain. A post office routed mail received at Newport News for delivery throughout the country. The hospital staff numbered close to 1,000 people.
The Times-Dispatch described how the hospital’s radio system featured direct lines from WRVA, WLEE and WRNL. “The system has six channels, and their radio programs can be piped in as desired. Also, the hospital has a large collection of phonograph records.” And organist Eddie Weaver organized a band for hospital entertainment.
McGuire General Hospital became a receiving center for wounded soldiers. Once stabilized, patients were generally transferred to another medical facility. A rail line from Newport News allowed for transportation from ships directly to the hospital. McGuire offered neurosurgery, for which it became known, brain and spine treatments, and amputations.
Naming the hospital after physician Hunter Holmes McGuire (1835-1900) seemed a natural fit. McGuire had served as medical officer for Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s command, but despite McGuire’s expertise, the limitations of mid-19th-century science couldn’t save Jackson after his accidental 1863 shooting. The amputation of Jackson’s left arm and the struggle to preserve his life transformed the 27-year-old McGuire, and he parlayed the experience, and his acumen, into a prosperous career.
In May 1862 in Winchester, he arranged to have captured Union physicians designated as noncombatants. The action put McGuire in good stead when he was captured and released by Union forces in 1865 — in time to surrender at Appomattox. His advocacy, and that of others in Europe, in support of granting military medical personnel special consideration during wartime influenced the original Geneva Conventions and became a founding principle of the International Red Cross.
On July 30, 1944, the first casualties from the Normandy invasion reached McGuire General Hospital. The Richmond News-Leader raised $20,154 to pay for long-distance phone calls home from the wounded men recently admitted.
The hospital also temporarily served as a treatment facility for captured and wounded German soldiers.
A hospital patient pictured on Thanksgiving, 1945 (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
At the end of the war, 21,299 Virginia veterans were discharged from military service, with around 200,000 still in uniform. Thousands of men and women affixed a bronze discharge button to their lapels, and young men supported by canes or crutches or in wheelchairs were mute evidence of victory’s price.
On March 31, 1946, the hospital joined the Veterans Administration as one of its branches, and McGuire began accepting as patients the veterans who otherwise would’ve entered private hospitals. In time, the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center established a reputation for treating patients with spinal cord and brain injuries. The facility was the first Veterans Administration hospital to perform heart transplant surgery in the 1970s, under the leadership of thoracic surgeon Szabolcs Szentpetery.
Significant expansions and modernizations have grown McGuire in terms of size, systems and programs. More than 5,000 patients, visitors, employees and volunteers pass through its doors daily. In 2012, the 2-million-square-foot main building received a $30 million upgrade, doubling the size of its dialysis unit and adding 20,000 square feet to treat traumatic brain injuries.
McGuire’s mission remains the care and well-being of those men and women whose bodies and minds require healing after fighting the nation’s battles.
