Thompson Memorial Hospital is history

Molly Shore

HILLSIDE DISTRICT -- After providing medical services for nearly a

century to Burbank and San Fernando Valley residents, Thompson Memorial

Medical Center Hospital is being demolished.

The hospital was founded in 1907 by Elmer H. Thompson, a young doctor

who arrived in Burbank from Wisconsin two years earlier with his pregnant

wife, a French poodle and a bicycle.

Then known as the Burbank Community Hospital, the two-story building

at Olive Avenue and 5th Street was the first hospital in the San Fernando

Valley.

Throughout the years, the institution grew in size, but it still

remained a small community hospital that served generations of local

families. In 1991, 60 doctors purchased the facility, renaming it in

honor of the founder.

Richard Wineland, a doctor who was on staff at the hospital for three

decades, and his daughter Jennifer Shelton were among the many people who

had close personal ties to the facility.

“Tears come to my eyes, because I spent 30 years here,” said Wineland,

an obstetrician and gynecologist, whose daughter’s three children were

among the 3,000 babies he estimated he delivered at Thompson.

Wineland’s daughter, Shelton, worked at the hospital from 1985 to

1996.

“I began my nursing career here,” she said. “It’s really sad to watch

it being torn down.”

Although the hospital was small, it had several notable firsts.

In addition to being the first hospital in the Valley, Thompson

performed the county’s first Caesarean section there. Kent Darrow and

George Robbins, both staff physicians, performed the city’s first

open-heart surgeries at the hospital.

The hospital hit troubled times in 1997 amid bitter internal struggles

and the loss of Medicare billing privileges.

Mary Alice O’Connor, a long-time board member on the Burbank Community

Hospital Foundation which ran the hospital, says that when Thompson

Memorial could no longer receive payment for services rendered to

Medicare patients, it signaledthe hospital’s death knell.

“We did everything to make it last,” she says, “ but government

doesn’t like small hospitals.”

After being shuttered for three years, the Cusumano Real Estate Group

purchased the property in June 2000.

“We are moving forward to develop a 183-unit, active senior complex,”

President Michael Cusumano said.

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THOMPSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL TIMELINE

1907: Physician Elmer H. Thompson opens the 16-bed Burbank Community

Hospital, the first hospital in the San Fernando Valley, in a converted

two-story building at Olive Avenue and 5th Street.

1910: First wing of hospital is completed.

1925: Hospital is expanded to 50 beds and 15 bassinets.

1943: Thompson sells hospital to the Monte Sano Foundation.

1958: First open-heart surgery in Burbank is performed at the

hospital.

1991: Burbank Community Hospital is renamed Thompson Memorial Medical

Center Hospital after 60 physicians purchase the operation from the

Burbank Community Hospital Foundation, which retains ownership of the

facility and land;

1992: The medical center opens the area’s only 24-hour occupational

medicine program.

1993: Thompson Memorial becomes the first hospital in the San Fernando

Valley to allow chiropractors to use its facilities.

1997: Kentucky-based Vencor Hospital chain takes over the medical

center.

2001: Thompson Memorial is demolished.