Our History

How Johnston Memorial Hospital came to be

 

1920 – Five Smithfield doctors join together to charter Smithfield Memorial Hospital—so named to honor veterans of World War I. They choose as the site a vacant, two-story boarding house on the southeast corner of Second and Bridge streets in Smithfield. The hospital has three private rooms and three wards with three beds apiece. Patients start arriving almost immediately. The first suffers a ruptured appendix; the next four have gunshot wounds.

 

1926 – A group of private doctors builds and opens Johnston County Hospital at the corner of Hancock Street and Bright Leaf Boulevard in Smithfield. The two-story brick hospital, which has 20 beds, operates for more than 25 years. The building is now home to Johnston County Social Services.

 

1929 – Dr. Charles Furlonge, a native of the West Indies, opens a small hospital to treat black patients. The clinic, which has 15 beds and an operating room, is in a large house on Massey Street in Smithfield. Dr. Furlonge would later join a medical committee overseeing the opening of Johnston Memorial Hospital.

 

1947 – In the years following World War II, a strong grassroots movement in Johnston County supports the building of a newer, larger public hospital that would attract doctors, offer state-of-the-art equipment and space, and be accessible to all. A group of leaders across the county begins planning.

 

1948 – In a referendum, Johnston County voters approve borrowing $275,000 to build a 100-bed hospital in Smithfield. Federal and state funds would pay for the majority of the $1.25 million expense to build and equip the hospital. During a bond issue campaign, the hospital’s proponents persuade movie star Ava Gardner and popular North Carolina bandleader Kay Kyser to endorse the project.

 

1949 –A committee selects a site for Johnston Memorial Hospital. Construction on the five-story building begins in the summer.

 

1951 –With construction complete, the hospital holds a ribbon-cutting ceremony Dec. 15 and admits the first patients Dec. 20.

 

Source: From a story about the history of Johnston Memorial Hospital written by Julia McCullers and published Nov. 9, 2001 in the Smithfield Herald.