After 100 years, no hospital in Mingo County

Williamson Memorial Hospital, the only hospital in Mingo County near the Tug River that separates West Virginia from Kentucky, closed its doors permanently Tuesday, April 21 more than 100 years after it was built.

My late wife, Monia Elizabeth Turkette Olesky, was born in that hospital, which filed bankruptcy last year.

I met “my Mona Lisa” in Williamson when she was living in the Cinderella coal camp with her parents. 
 
Hospitals also closed in Bluefield and Richwood.

Fairmont Regional Medical Center will close by June but at least West Virginia University Medicine will build a 100-bed replacement two miles away in a year to 18 months.

WVU Medicine has 11 hospitals in the state.

The Fairmont hospital is on the hill adjacent to Fairmont State University. I helped pay for my tuition at Fairmont State by giving blood at Fairmont General, as it was called then. 
 

At least 170 rural hospitals in America shut down since 2005.