Old St. Catherine's Hospital lives on through wicker furniture in museum

John Hubert accepts three pieces of wicker furniture, from St. Catherine's Hospital, to the High Plains Museum in McCook. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Gazette)

McCOOK, Neb. -- Three pieces of white wicker furniture that once graced the first-floor sun room at St. Catherine's Hospital have now found a home at the Museum of the High Plains Historical Society in McCook.

Bette Rice of McCook purchased the pieces from Carol Borgman, who was a registered nurse and director of nursing at St. Catherine's Hospital and Community Hospital of McCook.

Bette said all three of her children were born at St. Catherine's. Following the death in 1918 of Dr. D.J. Reid, who operated one of the town's private hospitals, the community of McCook and the Sisters of St. Catherine of Sienna in Springfield, Kentucky, cooperated to build a new city hospital.

The community would pay for half of a new $75,000 hospital and the Dominican Sisters the other half. The new four-story, red brick, 50-bed St. Catherine's of Sienna Hospital, in the 1200 block of West Fourth, was dedicated in September 1923.

The hospital, outdated by (according to hospital history) "government regulations, competition and Father Time," was replaced by the new Community Hospital of McCook, on East H between the Elks Lodge on East Seventh and the airport on Airport Road, in mid-1974.