Pain of King-Harbor closing
Thirty-five years of political indifference, bureaucratic mismanagement and professional incompetence, coupled with happenstance and whimsy, brought me full circle last week from the March 27, 1972, opening of Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital to its Aug. 10, 2007 closing. Betty Pleasant in the Wave Newspapers.
I was there when that hospital — such a towering source of pride and jobs to a community in dire need of both — was dedicated and formally opened in 1972, and I was there again when it died from the incurable disease of abject failure. The hospital is located a couple of blocks from Sweet Alice Harris’ home and she, too, attended its opening ceremonies. And as luck would have it, the hospital’s final day found Sweet Alice, Eldora Winston and me on a serendipitous odyssey that ended with us being the unwitting witnesses to another historic moment.