VA Long Beach Healthcare System

Rosemary walks with her family in front of the old building that once served as employee apartments.

The date was June 1, 1950, a few years after the end of World War II. The entire hospital and staff of Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys (San Fernando Valley) were being relocated to a deactivated U.S. Naval Hospital in Long Beach. This new location, originally built in 1943, became what we now know as the VA Long Beach Healthcare System.
 
Rosemary Dodgen was here to see the doors open in 1950. Over 400 patients arrived that hectic day, she recalled.
 
“Many of them brought their own cars, and there was a stream of ambulances,” she said.  After her first week as a nurse working in neuropsychiatry, she was moved to SCI. There, she worked with Ernest Bors, M.D., the first Chief of Spinal Cord Injury, after whom the SCI unit is unofficially named.
 
It had been decades since Rosemary had seen VA Long Beach when she stepped on grounds last Friday morning. She, her three daughters, and her son-in-law joined Richard Beam, Director, Public Affairs for a tour of the facility.
 
Their first stop was our Lloyd Pantages Theater. Many of us are familiar with the Pantages, where we hold events like workshops and celebrations throughout the year. But many of us are unfamiliar with its glamorous background. Celebrities once graced its floors with their presence, including Bob Hope, Shirley Temple, Eva Gardner, and Bing Crosby. The Pantages was used as a legitimate movie theater, with the projection room rolling out films for patients to enjoy.
 
“The Pantages - sister and brother - came out constantly. They were very kind,” Rosemary said. "They're the ones that brought the first-class movies. The [Veterans] saw those before the public did."
 
Rosemary walked to the stage of the theater and looked back toward the projection room, tears in her eyes, as she recalled precious moments long passed. She noted that she would sit in the back of the room with the rest of the nurses, all dressed in white scrubs and caps back then, while the patients sat up front to enjoy the shows.
 
One of the major figures to visit the Long Beach Veterans Hospital was Bob Hope, a successful entertainer and the first and only honorary Veteran of the United States Armed Forces. He performed several live radio broadcasts in the Pantages, with fellow celebrities like Dean Martin and Phyllis Diller. Hope was also active in ensuring that our Veterans were entertained regardless of disabilities. Rosemary described one such instance involving “iron lung” patients. “Iron lung” is a nickname for negative pressure ventilators, a form of non-invasive therapy used during the height of polio outbreaks in the 1940s and 1950s to assist patients who had lost their ability to breathe on their own.
 
“He came maybe a couple of hours ahead of time before he was going to do his show,” Rosemary said. “He went into the room where we had our iron lung patients. They said, ‘We can't go,’ and he said ‘I'll be back.’ He had some workers, and he said ‘They're gonna go to the show.’ So they took long extension cords, they unplugged the tanks, and went along the lines here and plugged them in. They cleared the room so [the patients] could see. And [Bob] kept asking, ‘Can you see?’ And they would say, ‘Yeah we can see!’”
 
Besides the star-studded scene of the early Pantages Theater, Rosemary was happy to describe her other experiences at VA Long Beach. They range from memories of living temporarily in employee apartments on-site to developing her own set of training material for nurses prior to the existence of official Policies and Procedures.
 
Upon being told that our Spinal Cord Injury unit was named after Dr. Ernest Bors, Rosemary shook her head.
 
“He wouldn't have [wanted that] at the time,” she said. “He wouldn't have wanted that publicity.” She spoke on his commitment to increasing his patients' quality of life and the frustrations which came with convincing those who were discouraged to feel otherwise. “He would just get so mad at [the patients]. He always felt that, no matter how handicapped they were, they had a life.”
 
Upon visiting the SCI unit, tears were again in Rosemary's eyes. She laid her eyes on the plaque honoring Dr. Ernest Bors and the glass case with his original instruments in the main lobby.
 
From there, the group walked over to view photos posted of 1950s VA Long Beach in the hallway between Bldgs 126 and 164. Rosemary pointed out three buildings in the back of the facility that served as Mental Health before being demolished and paved as present-day Parking Lots P and R. She also noticed Bldg 47, which is now abandoned, which served as temporary housing for employees.
 
The group ended the tour with a visit to Bldg 47. They got their shoes dirty in the leaf-covered lawn to take a look at the abandoned two-story building. The main door is boarded up. A few windows are still left open on the second floor, with the wind blowing the curtains back into the dark, unlit rooms. Rosemary once stayed on the second floor, next to the balcony where employees would have a smoke.
 
As they prepared to head home, Rosemary and her family expressed their gratitude in being able to share a part of her life with us. We also thank Rosemary for her brilliant stories and graciousness in sharing tidbits of VA Long Beach's history.