Early History
The organization began as the District Nurse Association founded in 1897 under the chairmanship of the late Hugh M. Kinghorn. The service provided a nurse upon which physicians could call for special nursing requirements, such as bed baths for individual tuberculosis patients housed in private sanatoria and nursing homes throughout the Village of Saranac Lake.
In April of 1907, a group of local physicians organized the Saranac Lake Society for the Control of Tuberculosis, Inc., with the late Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau as president. In order to avoid duplication of services, the District Nurse Association was absorbed by the new Society.
Financially, the Society spent its early years just scraping by with donations, the first of which came from Charles Henderson, who helped establish an office where he served as the first executive secretary, without salary.
A major financial boost came in 1910 when the first Christmas Seal Sale was launched on a national scale with participating societies keeping a major portion of the receipts for local operations. The Christmas Seal Sale was the only public appeal made by the Society and, with other private contributions and memberships, funded the organization.
Busy as it was, the organization struggled financially until the early 1920’s when bequests from former patients began to come in. Another substantial gift came in 1950 when Mary Prescott closed the Prescott House Sanatorium and turned over much of the profit from that closing to the Society. Those gifts were carefully invested in a security fund which remains the main financial driver of the organization to this day.
Original Services
The Society rapidly expanded to answer new demands for varying patient needs. It kept an annual listing of sanatoria, cottages and rooms, their prices and a description of their services – nursing or ambulatory, for the information of local and out-of-town physicians. It also rented cure chairs, fur coats and blankets to patients who came to breath the healing – but often sub-zero – Adirondack air.
In the early days, all applications for Trudeau Sanatorium and Ray Brook Sanatorium were processed by the Society. At the time, Trudeau was a semi-charitable institution for those suffering with comparatively mild cases of tuberculosis.
The Society reached its peak with the influx of World War I veterans from 1916-1918 when the organization staffed a fulltime nurse with two part-time assistants. With the trend toward hospitalization for acute illness following World War II, demand for the Society’s serviced dropped off, but its work continued in other ways.
In 1907, the Society purchased Saranac Lake’s first ambulance, a used horse-drawn vehicle from Bellevue Hospital. The ambulance was succeeded by numerous other vehicles owned and operated by the Society until 1969 when the service was turned over to the new General Hospital of Saranac Lake. The following year, they gave General Hospital a new two-bed fully equipped ambulance.
Adapting to Change
With the change in the medical character of the community, the Society adapted its focus to medically oriented interests as well as direct patient services. In 1969, the Society founded two scholarships for local students interested in studying the para-medical field at North Country Community College, which continues to this day.
In addition, grants to further research projects in the respiratory field have been given to the former Will Rogers Hospital, now an independent senior living center, and Trudeau Institute.
National Reorganization
The decline of active tuberculosis brought the closing of many small societies in the mid 1960’s, which was punctuated by the National Tuberculosis Association’s decision to combine the remaining societies into large districts. Saranac Lake was asked to join the Seaway District headquartered in Ogdensburg. Saranac Lake declined, and in doing so, lost revenue generated by the sale of Christmas Seals.
Once separated from the national association, the late Anthony Durell, then president of the Society appointed Dr. Richard Gould chairman of the committee to revise the local constitution with the assistance of Dr. Verne Hospelhorn, Arthur Wareham, and Irving Edelberg, the Society’s attorney.
The new constitution, which made no mention of tuberculosis, but remained dedicated to services to the sick, was approved by the Society’s membership in 1970. Early the following year it was submitted to New York State for approval as a charitable organization under the name of Saranac Lake Voluntary Health Association, Inc.
In the ensuing decades, in addition to its home nursing program, services were expanded to include a school dental hygienist and financial assistance for hearing aids and necessary dental care. In 2022, the organization began operating as the Saranac Lake Health Association.
