Public Employee Press

Serving New Yorkers for over 70 years
Goldwater Hospital closing after generations of care
By DIANE S. WILLIAMS



As the Health and Hospitals Corp. moves forward with plans to modernize long-term care by relocating patients from Goldwater Hospital, for many DC 37 members who have worked at the Roosevelt Island facility, providing comfort and advancements in critical care, a chapter in their lives closes and another begins.

"I am a bridge walker," said Carolyn Jones, who first came to Goldwater in 1964 as a summer student. She recalls walking the 59th Street Bridge each day because public transportation to and from the Roosevelt Island was "horrible."

Built in 1939 in the East River where the city's insane asylum once was, Goldwater's nine-acre campus rests in quiet isolation.

Critical care

Jones was first hired by New York University, then the hospital's administrator, as a typist before HHC was formed and Goldwater employees voted to become unionized civil servants, and before the tram opened. With other dedicated Goldwater employees, she walked the bridge early mornings across the East River to care for the infirmed. "I saw miracles," Jones said. "Patients who had strokes or were in the iron lung, on ventilators, in wheelchairs, walk out of here. One man came in a wheelchair and could not speak English; he left able to speak and walk."

Goldwater Hospital let families participate in their relatives' care, something Jones experienced firsthand when her father was admitted to Goldwater. It played a major part in patients' recovery, she said, because they were not abandoned, they were loved. She visited every day with her dad until he died at Goldwater in 1994.

During the city's worst epidemics, DC 37 members were there to provide much-needed care. Goldwater was one of the first facilities to use the iron lung, a negative pressure ventilator used to treat polio patients. The facility specializes in geriatric medicine and rehabilitation and was at the forefront in HIV/AIDS care.

Dietary Aide Miguel Ortiz, who for 20 years has delivered meals to chronic and terminally ill patients, said, "I'm a tray passer. I bring food to patients in their rooms. I see what they are going through and try to bring a smile to their faces."

His compassion for patients goes beyond the work he and other Goldwater employees in DC 37 locals 420, 299, 768, 924 and 1549 perform and means a lot to the patients.

"I made friends with a lot of the patients. It hurt when so many with AIDS died," recalled Ortiz. During the AIDS epidemic, Goldwater took in hundreds of HIV-positive patients and maintained long waiting lists for others needing care in the early years when little was known about the disease and policy makers and doctors grappled with how to best handle HIV/AIDS patients.

"We treated them like family," Ortiz said. "We took them in, played cards, dominoes, everyone went above and beyond to make them feel better and comfortable. Their deaths were sudden. It was like losing family. It was hard to see them die such painful deaths."

The tranquil environment at Goldwater aided in convalescence, recovery and rehabilitation for chronic care patients and provided a secure campus where patients ventured solo and gained a measure of independence. Part of Goldwater's extensive care includes pet therapy, computer room and weekly art therapy for patients.

With professional grade art materials, Ron Becker, who runs to the art therapy program, said, "Patients draw, paint and do arts and crafts, which are very therapeutic. They express their feelings and their art helps with pain management. What they produce is so colorful and energetic; it is a way of expressing what they feel inside." The art of quadriplegics - who paint with brushes held in their mouths - hangs in the RIVAA gallery of local artists and is sold at annual charity auctions. "That some of the most energetic artwork comes from people who are dealing with severe medical challenges speaks to the power of art and self expression," Becker said.

A new beginning

For 47 years, Dietary Aide Osveldo Lynn has delivered food to patients with a smile and sometimes a song. "I started coming here with my dad's friend when I was 15. I didn't think I could work here seeing patients in this condition, but when I was 20, I took a job here."

For decades, Goldwater served fresh cooked meals on heavy metal trays that folded over reclining patients, Lynn said. Now, HHC's food comes prepared from contractor Sodexo and is microwaved at Goldwater. "The portions are smaller, the trays are lighter," Lynn said, "and we don't serve home-cooked meals like oxtails and rice and beans anymore."

Lynn also volunteers, singing Latin gospel to Goldwater patients. He brought his two daughters, now 38 and 34, to work with him on weekends. Lynn said he looks forward to walking the halls of the Henry J. Carter Specialty Hospital in East Harlem where Goldwater patients will be transferred for long-term care.

"I think the transition will be great, I will get to work in a new facility in a neighborhood I've known and lived in for years," said Lynn.

HHC built the new state-of-the-art facility, located on Madison Avenue and East 122nd Street, at the former site of North General Hospital in Harlem. The hospital and nursing home accommodates 365 patients, who, with Goldwater's loyal staff, will move into their new home in November.