As a girl growing up in the1890s, Miss Mabel Wilcox remembered watching her mother being ill and not being able help. “I remember thinking over and over again, ‘If only there was something I could do. If only I knew
As a girl growing up in the1890s, Miss Mabel Wilcox remembered watching her
mother being ill and not being able help.
“I remember thinking over and
over again, ‘If only there was something I could do. If only I knew what to
do,” Miss Wilcox was quoted as saying in a news story in the 1960s.
After
her mother recovered, Miss Wilcox held fast to the idea she would become a
nurse to help the sick of Kaua’i. As an adult, she carried out her dream: She
played a major role in building the foundation of Kauai’s health
system.
Before Miss Wilcox passed away on Dec. 27, 1978, at the age of 96,
she helped found Wilcox Hospital, helped establish and improve the public
health system, ran a tuberculosis nursing service and traveled throughout the
island to care for the sick.
“She had a social conscience that was
major,” said Pat Griffin, a Kaua’i resident who is writing a book on the
history of Wilcox Hospital.
Miss Wilcox, the youngest of Samuel and Emma
Wilcox’s six children, was born on Nov. 4, 1882, at Grove Farm in Lihu’e. She
attended Punahou School on Oahu, but lived with her uncle, Charles Hart
Wilcox, and his family in Oakland, Calif., while she attended Oakland High
School from 1897 to 1899. Her dream was to become a nurse, but her parents were
opposed to the idea.
But her mother gave Miss Wilcox hope and asked her
to hold off on her plans until she reached the age of 25.
Miss Wilcox
waited, and, in 1908, entered John Hopkins Hospital Trading School for Nurses
in Baltimore, Md., graduating with a degree in nursing in 1911.
The
school’s training defined her life-long interest in public health nursing. At
the time, the school encouraged nursing students to enter the field of public
health.
Miss Wilcox returned to Hawaii and became a nurse at Kawaiahao
Seminary for Girls in Honolulu. In 1913, Miss Wilcox returned home to Kaua’i
and took a job as a tuberculosis nurse with the Territorial Board of Health.
It was a daunting challenge. There was no public health nursing for
tuberculosis patents in rural areas.
But Miss Wilcox was able to do the job
because she was a kama’aina who knew the countryside and was able to relate to
the local people.
Among Hawaiians, she was known as Wilikoki, her family
name, or kauka wahine, meaning woman doctor or nurse.
“She would go back
into the country and work with families that had tuberculosis, Griffin said.
“It was dangerous work. She ran the risk of being exposed herself.”
She
waged a continual war against tuberculosis, a scourge brought to Hawaii by
earlier travelers.
Through the support of her family and the Territorial
Government, the 50-bed tuberculosis hospital – Mahelona Hospital – was built in
1917. In 1929, she also directed the formation o the Kaua’i Tuberculosis
Association. While she waged her war against tuberculosis, another war brewed
in Europe, World War I. In 1917, she enlisted for overseas duty with a John
Hopkins medical unit.
She served 18 months in France and Belgium and,
with other staff members, was decorated by the Belgian Order of Elizabeth and
by the French Order of the City of Le Havre.
Fo llowing the end of the war,
she returned to Kaua’i and took on a new job as a probation officer.
In
1924, she rejoined the Territorial Board of Health and worked to care for
mothers and their babies.
The following year proved to be significant for
Miss Wilcox and her goals to strengthen public health nursing on Kaua’i.
That year, Mabel Smythe became the Director of Nursing for the Territorial
Board of Health, and under her leadership, services for tuberculosis, maternity
and infancy on all islands were consolidated into a comprehensive public health
program.
Miss Wilcox was appointed field supervisor of the Board of Health
nurses on Kaua’i and held that position until 1935. She administered a
program that emphasized maternal and infant work, health supervision of infants
and school health service.
That same year, she planned the development of
Wilcox Hospital, a new concept for the time.
Small plantation hospitals
and dispensaries provided most of the medical care at the turn the century.
Lihu’e Hospital served primarily workers from Grove Farm, Lihu’e Plantation and
Kealia sugar plantations. As the medical needs changed with more people coming
to Kauai, the Lihu’e Hospital board worked with Miss Wilcox to restructure the
hospital.
The result was Wilcox Hospital, which opened with 86 beds in 1938
and was financed in part by a trust established by G.N. Wilcox, the founder of
Grove Farm in 1864.
In line with efforts to make the hospital a success,
Miss Wilcox recommended and implemented the:
* Development of programs for
maternal and child care.
* Hiring of new graduate nurses,
* The
hospital’s conforming with standards of the American College of Surgeons.
Hiring of local doctors.
She also involved herself in social work:
From 1932 to 1937, she served as a chairperson of the County Child Welfare, Old
Age and Indigent Board .
* She helped organize the Territorial Public
Welfare Work.
* She also served as a member of the Territorial Public
Welfare Board and chairperson of the Kauai Public Welfare Commission.
* She
was appointed to the Territorial Board of Health in 1953 and served until
1960.
Miss Wilcox also was involved in running Grove Farm. From 1922 to
1975, she was an officer and director and was a trustee of the G.N. Wilcox
Trust. In the early 1970s, due to advancing age, she began to reduce her
commitment to public causes.
Perhaps her biggest challenge at the time was
the transformation of the Grove Farm homestead into a living museum as a way to
remind people of the significance of the sugar industry and its lifestyle on
Hawai’i. Parts of the house date back to 1854.
Miss Wilcox never married
but was survived by many nieces and nephews and their families.
