This story has a happy ending.
That is worth pointing out, because it doesn’t have a particularly happy beginning. Things get pretty hairy in the middle, too.
But it ends happily. You may rest assured of that.
The date was Aug. 29, 2005, and like people throughout South Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Covington resident Lillie McClain and her three daughters were hunkered down – nervously, it must be said – as Hurricane Katrina delivered a lashing of historic proportions to the region.
Then, amid the howling winds, a crack and a thunderous crash.
A tree had fallen on the McClain home.
The two older McClain girls were unharmed, but to Lillie’s horror, 16-month-old Courtney was unresponsive.
So she did what any mother would do, dashing out into the teeth of the storm to seek help. A neighbor drove the family to St. Tammany Parish Hospital, where a team of care providers including pediatricians Dr. Margie Strong and Dr. Ann Kay Logarbo were on the job and ready to render aid.
Recognizing that Courtney needed a level of care they were not then equipped to provide, Strong and Logarbo enlisted the help of a Mandeville fire-rescue unit and evacuated little Courtney to Baton Rouge.
As they loaded the family up, however, Dr. Strong noticed Lillie McClain was crying.
“We had not noticed in all the excitement, but she had run out of her house without her shoes and was concerned about leaving without them,” Dr. Strong said later.
So, Dr. Strong slipped the shoes off of her own feet and gave them to Lillie. The ambulance then tore off into the darkness.
Thankfully, Courtney would recover, which brings us to the happy ending we promised – and this week’s installment in our ongoing 70 for 70 history series.
Installment No. 58: The shoes off her feet
Today’s artifact: A nine-minute segment from NBC’s “Today” show that aired live from New York on Sept. 27, 2005 – just less than a month after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall – and in which anchor Katie Couric hosts a reunion between the McClain family and the doctors who helped save Courtney’s life.
Why they are significant: Not to put too fine of a point on things, but stories like the McClains’ are precisely the reason residents of the Northshore rallied together to establish St. Tammany Parish Hospital seven decades ago.
“A friend of mine broke his leg and had to go to New Orleans for care,” remembered Norma Core, one of the hospital’s founders, in a newspaper interview published around its 40th anniversary. “It was raining, and on the horrible little road through the marsh, the ambulance wrecked. My friend lay in the rain with his leg in disarray. They got him to New Orleans, but he died soon after from shock.”
“I decided,” she would add, “we must have a hospital.”
It took years, and it took the concerted efforts of countless others, but St. Tammany Health System’s flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital would open its doors on Dec. 1, 1954.
It has been delivering world-class healthcare close to home for local residents ever since. What’s more, it has been doing it with the same care and compassion demonstrated by Dr. Strong during Hurricane Katrina.
And thank goodness, for Courtney’s sake.
Do you have a St. Tammany Parish Hospital story or item to share? We’d love to hear about it! Email us at CommDept@stph.org.
Next week – Installment No. 59: A man with a plan
Last week – Installment No.57: A father’s love