A little bit more than a year ago – in early August 2023, to be precise – two members of the St. Tammany Health System Communication Department were brainstorming ways to celebrate the health system’s 70th anniversary.
“What if,” one said, “we rounded up 70 artifacts that help tell our history and write short stories about each of them?”
“Seventy of them?” came the response. “Do you think we can come up with that many?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
As it turns out, there were exactly 70 weeks from the day of that conversation and the arrival this Dec. 1 of the health system’s 70th anniversary. Some might have written it off as mere coincidence. They decided to take it as a sign.
And that brings us to today’s final installment in 70 for 70, our history series started 70 weeks ago.
Installment No. 70: Yesterday, today and tomorrow …
Today’s artifact: A handwritten list, in pencil and bearing the scars of numerous erasures, used by the St. Tammany Health System Communication Department to plan and track its 70-installment series on the health system’s history – and, being unveiled today, a user-friendly digital version at StTammany.health/70th.
Why they are significant: From the beginning, the overarching goal of the 70 for 70 series has been to tell the story of the health system’s first 70 years but to do so incrementally, in satisfying, bite-sized chunks that come together to form a fully fleshed-out history.
Now, looking back on the entire project 70 weeks later, we would humbly argue that goal has been successfully achieved.
What’s more, because St. Tammany Health System’s story is so intertwined with St. Tammany Parish’s, those 70 articles – taken as a whole – serve as their own unique history of the last 70 years of life on the Northshore.
And although it was created as a planning document, that original list of artifacts – each marked with a red check mark when the researching and writing was complete, with a red circle added around the publishing date upon its posting online – serves as a makeshift index, one that is worthy of preservation itself.
Taking it to the next level, and looking to the future as we tend to do at St. Tammany Health System, we have also created the aforementioned online version, complete with links to each story, for the convenience of local residents interested in reliving the series at their own leisure.
We hope you enjoy it.
Meanwhile, we have some researching to do. After all, our 75th anniversary is just five years away.
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.
Last week – Installment No. 69: The (new) family stone