Our beautiful and beloved St. Luke’s Hospital began as a clinic upstairs above the A&P store, now Owen’s Pharmacy. Drs. Allen Jervey and Marion Palmer opened the clinic, and my grandmother, Mattie Sue Jones Rippy, was their first patient. She was apparently between a rock and a hard place, for if one of her problems were treated, the treatment would make the other one worse. The doctor attending her must have got it right, because she survived.

When I was 5 years old (1935), I jumped off the back porch and broke both bones of my forearm in a bad landing. With Mama Rippy holding me in her arms, they got me to the hospital on Carolina Drive south of Tryon. Dr. Jervey used a fluoroscope to set my arm, and I was fascinated with seeing my bones so vividly outlined on a screen. With a cardboard splint and a sling, I was sent home to heal.

Shannon Meriwether designed the big addition to the rock building (immortalized in a drawing by George Aid) in brick, because brick masons work faster and cheaper than rock masons, and Meriwether was a practical sort (and designing to a budget!). Young Holland Brady had recently graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and came home to join Meriwether in the design of the additions to the hospital and to Tryon High School on the hill.

While I was away, the hospital outgrew its buildings and a nice new one was built atop a hill near Columbus, completed in 1972. I asked Holland if he had designed it, and he told me that hospital design had become so regulated and rigorously specified that specialist architects are required. I also had learned from my architect friend, Jack Blackwood, that school design had also become equally specialized.

It is also understood that hospitals cannot function without the legion of volunteers and the additional dollars provided by the associated gift shops and thrift stores. St. Luke’s Thrift Store was but one of the many successor “businesses” that occupied the site where my grandfather, T. A. Rippy, built a Sinclair Service Station in the mid 30s. It became the Trailways bus station in the mid 40s, and a host of other things before St. Luke’s Thrift Store moved out and one Melanie Archer transformed it into a restaurant.

Next, the Town of Tryon took over and did a more extensive transformation that included a pergola and a water feature. I suggested to Crys Armbrust that they name the place Rippy Plaza in honor of my grandfather, who was a presence in Tryon for so many years. However, Crys pointed out that St. Luke’s had offered the Town such a good deal on the property, that he felt it should be called the St. Luke’s Plaza. And so it is, and some confusion therefore results. Another case of the Golden Rule, which I learned in engineering, that “He who has the Gold, makes the Rules.”

With the coming of the delightful young orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Brian Rosenberg, soon also came a requirement for more hospital to accommodate his patients. I was among his first ones when a cheap table saw cut off half of my middle finger left hand and mangled others. Thus began a happy relationship with him as his practice grew beyond his wildest dreams. He had worried about whether he could make a decent living in such a small town, not realizing that his demonstrated skills would soon be bringing in patients from a much larger radius.

The new wing of our hospital is state of the art and a joy to behold. Completed in December 2013, it went to work right away. It has six private patient rooms with baths, and there are facilities and staff for the many kinds of therapy needed by orthopedic patients. Therapist Karol is helping my wife Fran now after her second surgery to improve the function of her thumb joints. I have to do her work as well as mine while she has use of only one hand. She supervises my cooking attempts, but does not play well with her klutz husband. We both hope she gets her left thumb back soon!