Merry Christmas from the Seavey-Dyer Cousins 1963

 

Back Row: Steve Dyer, Robyn Seavey, Pamela Seavey (me)

Front Row: Howard Seavey, Ellen Dyer, Laura Seavey

Treasure Chest Thursday - 7 Point Pupil

During the 1930's and 40's, the Maine Public Health Association ran a program in the public schools called 7 Points of Health.  As part of this program, public health nurses would visit elementary school children around the state, checking each child in 7 different areas: teeth, hearing, vision, posture, throat, growth, and birth registration. The last category probably required the child to bring some documentation to school.

In those days, children did not visit pediatricians on a regular basis, like they do today.  Sometimes, this was the only means by which parents could gauge their child on his or her growth and development.

For successfully meeting the requirements each year, children were rewarded with a pin and a certificate.

This is my father's pin from Grade 3 at Hutchins School in South Portland, Maine.  He was 10 years old.

My father's colored 7-point star, with his picture pasted in the middle.

My father's Seven-Point Certificate.

Those Places Thursday - St. Barnabas Hospital

    In the Portland, Maine of the late 1920's and early 30's, there were several medical facilities founded by individual physicians, and, as such, were known as their "private hospitals."  My mother, for instance, was born in 1931 in Dr. Leighton's Private Hospital on Emery St. in Portland.

    Dr. William Lewis Cousins also founded his own hospital, Dr. Cousins' Private Hospital, which later was named St. Barnabas Hospital, where my father was born in 1930.

As Harold Boyle described St. Barnabas, in the following 1978 "The Way It Was" article for the Press Herald, "many prominent Maine persons were born in it and it supplied the Woodfords area with its first emergency facilities."

Thank goodness my mother marked this clipping!

Three stories marked by a distinctive cupola, it stood at 231 Woodfords St., opposite the present-day Woodfords Congregational Church.  As described by Michelle Souliere, on her great blog, Strange Maine, "the hospital boasted a terraced lawn, a broad, glass-enclosed sun parlor, an elevator, and refrigerator ice gleaned exclusively from Sebago Lake."