By Luis A. Menendez
The University of Texas at El Paso's Institute of Oral History conducted an interview with former County Judge Woodrow W. Bean on August 9, 1968. The interview touches on many projects that Bean helped build for the people of El Paso, Texas during his term. Some examples include the Cordova Bridge and Transmountain Road. However, as Mr. Bean said, "I believe the most important contribution as far as the building and construction of El Paso, materially, was my project which concerned the building of Thomason General Hospital."1
Mr. Bean explained in the interview that the county saw the need to build a new general hospital due to the state of the existing one, El Paso General Hospital. He said, "if you could have only seen the old hospital, it smelled like a butcher house. The doctors didn't like to go there, people didn't like to work there, and to think we had allowed a butcher shop to operate like that until 1959 simply because the medical profession didn't care enough to bring public pressure on the people to build the hospital."2 The "medical profession" he spoke of proved to be a major hurdle in the process of building a new general hospital. Bean explained that once the plan was approved, the Medical Association pushed for the new hospital to be moved to a location which would be more convenient for the doctors, near Providence Hospital or Hotel Dieu. However, stated Mr. Bean, the editor of the El Paso Herald-Post, Howard M. Polley, argued that the new hospital should remain in the place of the old one because the lower-income people who needed it most lived near there.
Thomason General Hospital was built in 1963, and cost nine million dollars.3 It was named after Ewing Thomason, who was formerly a local judge in El Paso, and later became a federal judge. Oddly, Thomason was still alive when the hospital was named after him, to which he commented, "why don't you wait until I'm dead, because I might do something that might embarrass you later on."4
In 1973, Texas Tech arrived in El Paso and affiliated with the hospital. Thomason became the university's primary teaching hospital, a program which continues to this day. In 2014, Thomason General Hospital became the University Medical Center of El Paso (UMC).5 UMC is now home to the region's only Level 1 trauma center, and is celebrated for its excellent Mother/Baby division. It also houses a Regional Referral Center for high-risk pregnant women, a state-of-the-art Regional Laboratory, the West Texas Regional Poison Center, and affiliation agreements with over 50 of the region's education institutions.6
First Image: Thomason General Hospital, 1960s
Second Image: R. Ewing Thomason
Third Image: University Medical Center
Footnotes:
1 Interview with Woodrow W. Bean by Wilma Cleveland, 1968, "Interview no. 23," Institute of Oral History, University of Texas at El Paso.
2 Interview with Woodrow W. Bean
3 Ibid
4 Ibid
5 El Paso Museum of History. “R.E. Thomason General Hospital.” digie.org. Accessed May 17, 2023. https://www.digie.org/en/media/15001.
6 University Medical Center of El Paso. “About Us.” University Medical Center of El Paso. Accessed May 17, 2023. https://www.umcelpaso.org/about-us.
References:
El Paso Museum of History. “R.E. Thomason General Hospital.” digie.org. Accessed May 17, 2023. https://www.digie.org/en/media/15001.
Interview with Woodrow W. Bean by Wilma Cleveland, 1968, "Interview no. 23," Institute of Oral History, University of Texas at El Paso.
University Medical Center of El Paso. “About Us.” University Medical Center of El Paso. Accessed May 17, 2023. https://www.umcelpaso.org/about-us.
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