By Marilyn May
Milford History
Milford Hospital was built on the hopes of the community, and it independently served Milford and surrounding towns for decades because of dedicated people who raised money to build it, plus the many nurses, technicians and doctors who made it happen.
Two women who remember those early days when the first “permanent” hospital was built are Ruth McLaughlin and Alyce Merwin.
When Milford was a rapidly growing town with no hospital, critically ill and surgical patients were sent on arduous journeys to New Haven or Bridgeport hospitals. There were no surgeons in Milford.
The Milford Hospital Society was formed in 1920 to establish Milford’s first community hospital, first by setting up a “temporary” one, while at the same time planning to build a “permanent” one.
A “temporary” hospital with 15 beds and nine nurses was set up in 1920-1921 in the historic circa-1659 Clark-Stockade house on Bridgeport Avenue. An adjacent 3.5 acres of land was generously donated by Judge Charles Beardsley as the site for a “permanent” hospital. (Many wanted to call the new hospital Beardsley Hospital, but he insisted it be called Milford Hospital.)
After much fundraising and the pooling of community resources, a three-story, red-brick building was constructed and opened in 1923 as the first permanent hospital. In later years, this facility was added to many times until we had the hospital as we see it today.
Two hospital employees remember the early days and witnessed the many changes.
McLaughlin
Former nurse Ruth McLaughlin will be 94 in December, and former laboratory technician Alyce Merwin is 100 years old, although she’s quick to tell you she’s one third of the way to 101. Both lived in Milford. Their working careers overlapped, but it wasn’t until they joined a church fellowship group that they realized how much in common they had.
McLaughlin said she had always wanted to be a nurse, which makes sense considering her mother and two aunts in the Hokunson family were nurses at Milford Hospital. Her mother met her husband-to-be while he was visiting a relative there. Ruth McLaughlin herself was born in Milford’s maternity ward.
When the first permanent hospital was being built, she remembers taking her grandson there to watch the workmen.
She started her training at Bridgeport Hospital, where she worked with premature infants. Later she went to Milford Hospital, where she started in the medical and new surgical department.
In the early days, she said, only routine procedures, such as tonsillectomies and appendectomies, were done in Milford by surgeons who were called in from Bridgeport Hospital.
“Milford still had no surgeons in the early days,” she said.
Critical cases were sent to Grace-New Haven Hospital, a precursor to Yale New Haven Hospital.
“One day” she said, “someone asked ‘Who wants to work in delivery?’ So I said, ‘I’ll give it a try.’”
She spent much of her career as a pediatric nurse. She fondly remembers working with obstetrician Dr. Alvin Wolfson, who came to Milford in 1964.
“He would sing Happy Birthday to the infants as soon as they were born,” she said, smiling at the memory.
“I loved the babies. When I talked to them, they would calm right down and look at me. It was like they were trying to understand what I was saying.”
What job doesn’t have its amusing moments?
Her mother had worked in the operating room with Edith Oddy, who went on to become hospital administrator. Earlier, Oddy had the responsibility for the nurses who lived in a residential building that once stood in front of the hospital.
“There was a strict rule that everyone had to be in the residence by 8 p.m. and then the doors were locked,” McLaughlin recalled.
But it didn’t always work out that way. It seems Oddy’s brother was dating one of the nurses. More than once the couple arrived after curfew. The nurse had to be lifted up by the brother and pulled through a window by the other nurses.
Merwin
Alyce Merwin was a laboratory technician. She was born in Bridgeport Hospital but spent her life in Milford. Her father, Fred H. Merwin, was the owner and president of the Milford Rivet & Machine Co. located at 857 Bridgeport Ave., about where the recently closed Stop n’ Shop is located today.
Milford Rivet was founded about 1947-1948, and helped shape Milford’s postwar economy. At its peak, the firm employed 800 office and factory workers and annually generated $63 million in sales. Ask your oldest family members and you are likely to find a relative who worked there. The original factory closed in 1969. Today, refurbished Milford Rivet machines are still sold online.
Merwin went to Lauralton Hall, where she said she was one of six Protestants in a class of 26 students. From there she went to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida and was a graduate of the Class of 1947.
“They called Rollins ‘The country club of the South,’” she recalled. Country Club or not, she graduated with a degree in chemistry. “My last year in college they introduced a new course called clinical technique, and I was fascinated by it.”
That led her to taking a year of practical training at the Paine School for Technicians in New York. Eventually, she started working at Milford Hospital, which was not far from her home on Robert Treat Parkway.
She was on call two or three nights a week getting phone calls in the middle of the night to come to the hospital. Not even snowstorms stopped her from walking to work. What did stop, her, however, was that her father, being awoken so often, told her she had to get her own phone. Fred Merwin preferred daytime work, and later became chairman of the board of Milford Hospital.
After a few years, Ruth Merwin decided to travel and spent a number of winters in Arizona. But she eventually came back to Milford year-round.
Then another nighttime call changed everything. She guesses it was about 1958 when “Dr. Jack Parrella called me one night and asked if I would come back as a tissue technician.”
The late Dr. Parrella was a highly regarded, long-time general surgeon at the hospital. Merwin said she didn’t have to work, but she loved the job.
“I was ready to do something meaningful again,” she said.
Her early hospital work had been drawing and analyzing blood samples, but the new job had a new challenge. She was to learn to analyze tissue samples, so she went to St. Raphael’s for training.
When she came back to Milford, she said, “I had the honor of spending $10,000 for equipment.”
She was always ready to help wherever she was needed. One time, she remembered, “I was called into the operating room, given a fancy camera and told to take pictures.”
Another time there was an autopsy to be done. The regular forensic pathologist was not available, so someone else was called in from Bridgeport, and she was told to assist.
“I always separated myself from what I was doing. I had seen plenty of blood and guts in the operating room,” she said.
Her attitude was that “There was a job to be done, and that was it. It was part of my job.”
She may be close to being one third of the way to 101, but she still drives her 19-year-old Lexus SUV.
“I recently had to renew my license, and I was offered a two-year or eight-year license,” she said and laughed, remembering she told the clerk she thought a two-year license would suffice.
Her work was never dull. She went from lab technician to tissue technician and then was promoted to laboratory supervisor.
How did that feel?
“I was long past the days when I could be called in the middle of the night for something,” she said. The new position meant “I could play golf all the time that I wanted to.”
Merwin retired in 1970 and has the golf trophies to prove her love of the game.
Today, Milford Hospital is no longer an independent entity. In June 2019 it became a satellite campus under Bridgeport Hospital, which is part of the broader Yale New Haven Health network. Telephone calls to Milford Hospital now are answered by an operator who says, “Bridgeport Hospital – Milford Campus.”
Marilyn May is a lifelong resident of Milford and is on the board of the Milford Historical Society.