Street Foundation nearly 50

Published 12:00 am Sunday, April 26, 2009

In the opening months of a decade burgeoning with promises of a new frontier, a dozen people in Vicksburg decided to extend some of that hope to local health care.

Though the mission of the organization they created has evolved with market forces and technology, memories remain fresh among current and some former members.

Early members

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The Street Medical Foundation, May 19,1960

* Dr. J.A.K. Birchett, board president, Mercy physician staff

* Dr. Augustus Street, Mercy and Street Clinic physician staff

* Dr. T.B. Dominick, Mercy physician staff

* Amelia Levy, 1420 Cherry St.

* L.B. McLain, of McLain Hereford Farms

* Mary Lee Newman, board secretary and co-namesake of the Mafan Building

* Robert C. Wilkerson, insurance agent

* L.C. Latham, of Rose Oil

* Louis Cashman Sr., publisher of The Vicksburg Post

* John Gill, administrator of The Street Clinic

* Judge R.B. Anderson

* State Sen. H.V. Cooper

Devices such as the heart-lung machine and the internal pacemaker were transforming health care in the spring of 1960 when Drs. Augustus and D.P. Street began a foundation to fund medical education, research and equipment.

Its effort funded by money invested in the bond market, The Street Medical Foundation began as a cross-section of local professionals and staff members of Mercy Hospital and The Street Clinic.

The original members are deceased, but the group’s efforts speak loudly through surviving records detailing the start of vital labs and life-sustaining CPB pumps, or heart-lung machines.

It was in late 1968 or early 1969 when surviving members and physicians of the era recall a milestone procedure paid for by the foundation — the first installation of an internal, heartbeat-regulating pacemaker in Mississippi.

A man in his late 30s began to have fainting spells after his pulse rate decreased to 22 beats per minute, said Dr. John C. Williams, who set the voltage on the device for Drs. Frank McPherson and W. Briggs Hopson Jr., who teamed on the procedure at Mercy.

“Nobody had implantable pacemakers,” Williams said, adding the man “was in full-blown cardiac block” due to his slow heart rate, lessened greatly from the normal pulse rate of 60 to 100 beats.

“They were about $9,000, just a fantastic amount of money,” Williams said.

“You had to open the chest up to implant them,” McPherson said, referring to a lengthy process to install the early, burger-sized pacemakers.  “It was probably about two hours then.”

“They were about seven to eight times the size they are now,” Hopson said. “Then, you had to tape a battery to it that was the size of a flashlight.”

Smaller modern-day electrical pacemakers are powered by lithium batteries and can be inserted in about an hour through incisions just below a patient’s left collar bone.

The man lived about 18 more years before his death from an unrelated disease, Williams said.

“He was in the right place at the right time,” Williams said.

As the years wore on, foundation money paid for maintaining efforts at Mercy such as its medical library. Some trips overseas were financed, usually to assist medical staffs in developing nations. One example was a visit by Dr. Joe Ross to Guyana in 1977 to train nurses.

A business report by the foundation from March 1980 shows a pronounced turn toward all things financial, as the ever-rising cost of supporting advances in health care became more evident.

At the time, the foundation had paid $3,000 for a cardiac rehabilitation unit at Mercy, with plans to add stationary bikes and treadmills. Donations of money to help pay for cardiac pacemakers was urged and transportation for patients needing specialized treatments were capped at $1,000 — an area deemed potentially costly by the board member Dr. Thomas Dominick in a board minute entry.

By the beginning of the 1990s, the foundation’s mission trended toward education funding and away from hospital-based needs.

“Medical research can get real expensive,” said former Mercy Hospital administrator Robert Quimby, who joined the foundation in 1977 and serves as its secretary. “I think that’s one of the reasons. We took a hit in the stock market, so we didn’t have enough for that.”

In 1993, the Street Medical Foundation Scholarship fund was established by the local group through the Hinds Community College Development Foundation. It provides scholarships for Warren County students in the practical nursing program or associate degree program at the Vicksburg Warren campus. Also eligible are students who complete practical nursing at Vicksburg and pursue associate degrees at other Hinds campuses and those enrolled in the LPN to RN Option Program at the Vicksburg Warren campus.

It provides need-based scholarships up to the $1,660 cost of full tuition for the programs involved, said Betty C. Carraway, special projects/donor relations coordinator for the HCC Development Foundation.

Students must be Warren County residents and maintain a 2.5 or better grade point average in high school and/or cumulatively at Hinds to qualify, in addition to clean discipline records and attendance at the scholarship recognition program each fall semester.

“It’s certainly very important to us,” Carraway said. “It very much helps students who need the money.”

In the past two academic years, the scholarships have paved the way for eight local students to pursue careers in health care — no small feat in light of a gloomy economy that has lowered the value of some of the bonds held by the foundation.

“It’s kind of where we put a great deal of our funds now,” said current president Charles Riles.

Two other examples of the foundation’s money at work include medical clinics aimed at those with limited access to health care or private insurance, established within the past five years at the medical and dental clinic at the Mafan Building — named in part for the Street foundation’s original secretary, Mary Lee Newman — and one at Good Shepherd Community Center.

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By Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com