The Days of Flies and Deer

Curiosity about a building I'd seen was all it took.

The Virginia Historical Society's banner lecture was "Sheltering Arms: A Legacy of Caring" given by Anne Lower from her book of the same name, out this year on the 125th anniversary of the hospital.

If it weren't for one of my walks having taken me down Clay Street across from the Valentine where I saw a handsome three-story building labeled "Sheltering Arms," I doubt the lecture would have piqued my interest.

Lower had my attention immediately when she explained that the original St. James Episcopal Church had been in Jackson Ward before moving to the "west end," over on Franklin Street in the heart of what is now VCU.

I couldn't have been more surprised to learn that Episcopalians had once gathered in J-Ward.

That was relevant because Rebekah Peterkin was the daughter of Reverend Joshua Peterkin of St. James church and she was the founder of Sheltering Arms.

With the limited powers of a 19th century woman, she convened her sewing circle to help establish a hospital for needy patients in the city.

Their first building - Clifton House on 14th Street - located behind the governor's mansion was donated and opened in 1889.

Lower made it sound like a community effort with doctors volunteering their time and bringing their own instruments, even painting walls, while farmers donated food and hunters donated deer.

Women, of course, donated time and endless fund-raising efforts.

After Rebekah died in 1891, the hospital was moved to the stately Grant mansion on Clay Street, the handsome building that had first caught my eye.

In the old photograph Lower showed, nurses wore floor-length white uniforms and she told us that they lived on the third floor of the mansion.

We heard about the formation of the Florence Nightingale Auxiliary and their community efforts - scout canned food drives, the Bal du Bois ("the most beautiful of parties," Lower called it), sorority fundraisers - to keep funds and goods coming in to Sheltering Arms.

Showing a picture of the operating room on Clay Street, Lower pointed out the three big windows, "Opened for fresh air during surgery, but also letting in flies because there were no screens then."

She said the windows had a great view of the countryside looking east.

That's the kind of details I go to these lectures for. Imagine a time when  operating rooms were open to views and flies!

The rest of the history interested me less - the move to northside where they no longer delivered babies or did surgery, the decline in need for free care once Medicare was put into law and how Sheltering Arms reinvented itself as a rehabilitation facility.

All well and good.

For me, I have a new appreciation of the Grant Mansion and next time I walk by, I'll try to imagine those long-skirted nurses working and living in that lovely house.

I'll probably even try to figure out which windows were the operation room ones so I can envision the view.

And then when I get back to Jackson Ward, I'll completely suspend belief and try to imagine Episcopalians in my neighborhood.

It must be true. I heard it at a Banner Lecture.