It was Dec. 1, 1954, and Christmas was coming, so 22-year-old Ottis Arnold and his 20-year-old bride, Catherine Gregoire Arnold, were up on the roof of their Bedico home tweaking a display featuring Santa’s reindeer.
The holidays weren’t all that was coming, though.
Catherine was also nine months pregnant with the couple’s first child, and as they herded Dasher, Dancer and all the rest into place, she paused.
The baby, she realized, was on its way.
As luck would have it, that was the same day St. Tammany Parish Hospital first opened its doors. A day later, on Dec. 2, their daughter – Cathy Ann Arnold Kemp – became the first baby born at the then-new facility.
Seven decades and 60,000 babies later, Cathy Kemp and the hospital – the flagship facility of St. Tammany Health System – are both preparing to celebrate their milestone 70th year.
“My dad told me this story – he served in the Army in Korea, and the state of Louisiana was giving returning servicemen a $300 bonus check at the time,” Mrs. Kemp said recently in the lobby of the hospital, sitting just feet from where the original delivery room was located. “Dad sort of giggled at the story and said he got his check from the state of Louisiana and then he gave it to St. Tammany Parish Hospital because my bill was $300. He likes that little story.”
To this day, Mrs. Kemp’s mother and father, now 91 and 89, respectively, still relish their status as St. Tammany’s first family. In fact, although they live just over the Tangipahoa Parish line, they remain loyal patients of St. Tammany Health System.
“We cannot come to this hospital without whoever is the patient – my mother or my father – telling everyone they see,” Mrs. Kemp said with a laugh.
“A year or so ago, my Dad was a patient for a few days, and everybody that entered – whether it was a doctor or a nurse, someone taking blood, the sweet girl picking up the food tray – (he would tell them), ‘There she is! She was the first baby born here!’ It’s really been sweet and cute.”
Now retired after 30 years with Delta Airlines and another 14 with Aveda Institute, Mrs. Kemp said her parents chose St. Tammany Parish Hospital – as opposed to the tiny Wiginton Memorial, which operated in Hammond from 1942 to late 1959 – because their family physician, Dr. Jacob Kety, was among the first doctors on the St. Tammany Parish Hospital staff.
His business partner, longtime local physician Dr. Francis Rodwig, delivered the Arnold’s new arrival by Caesarean section, a fact mentioned in Dr. Rodwig’s 2000 obituary.
“My mother said, in her words, ‘I was pretty out of it,’ and my dad said everybody was just bustling around,” Mrs. Kemp said. “There were other people who had gone into labor, so it was sort of intrigue that I got to be the first one.”
By the time newspapers reported the next morning that the long-awaited Covington hospital had opened, it was still unclear who would earn the title of first baby. The St. Tammany Farmer had a pretty good idea, though, noting that Mrs. Arnold “was awaiting her first baby and will undoubtedly be the first obstetrics case.”
It was right. Little Cathy Ann Arnold was born Dec. 2, the first of eight babies born in the hospital’s first week of operation.
To mark the occasion, the hospital gifted the Arnolds with a small sterling silver mug engraved with her name, her birth date and the words “1st Baby,” printed just above “St. Tammany Hospital.”
She still has that cup.
It’s a little tarnished now. A little dinged up here and there. But it has pride of place in her home, just as it has for the past 70 years.
“Birthdays have always been a big deal to me,” Mrs. Kemp said. “It’s nice memories, especially for my parents. I love their loyalty.
“My husband and I lived in Hammond for 35 years, and we used a hospital there, our doctors were there. But my parents, all these years, always here. Always here.”