Remembering Nurse Radin

With all the excitement generated last year by the new Heart Center at Indian River Medical Center, it would be unfortunate if we overlooked the fact that 2007 is also an important landmark in the hospital’s history. For it was in the spring of 1932, 75 years ago, that a resourceful woman named Garnett Lunsford Radin opened the county’s first hospital on Old Dixie Highway in a building that burned down last year.

The story of how the hospital was founded is one of those inspiring tales of pioneering initiative that crop up frequently in Indian River County’s history. Mrs. Radin, a registered nurse, had arrived in Vero Beach in 1931, only to discover that it was 70 miles to the nearest hospital. To make matters worse, the journey consisted of driving on a two-lane road that, on some stretches, was not even paved.

 Read the entire article in the February 2007 issue