Founders' Day

^{Founders' Day Award}

Every autumn, Mission Hospital invites the community to pause for one evening to honor the men and women whose work spanning more than a century created the Mission Hospital and Mission Health System of today.

The evening offers a time for Mission's old friends and new leaders to gather in honor of our hospital's unique legacy, and to honor community leaders and physicians who have been instrumental in our growth, service and success.

Mission Founders' Day is a relatively new tradition. It was instituted in 2005 by former President and CEO Joseph F. Damore just months after he assumed leadership of our 123-year-old health system. But already it has become a cherished tradition.

^{Memorial Mission c1909}

Mission's roots in Western North Carolina begin with two groups of spunky women who were our original founders: The Ladies of the Flower Mission in 1885, and the Sisters of Mercy who established the tuberculosis sanitorium in Asheville, which became St. Joseph's Hospital in 1998. Today's health system is an outgrowth of these and several other community hospitals. Mission Health System now includes The McDowell Hospital in Marion and Blue Ridge Regional Hospital in Spruce Pine, and Asheville Specialty Hospital.

Each year one physician and one community leader or family is recognized with the Founders' Day Award. As a member of our community, you are invited to submit your nomination for next year's Founders' Day Awards.

The honorees to date are:

2009

Adelaide Daniels Key
Olson Huff, MD

2008:

John S. Stevens, Esq.
John Battle Haslam, MD

2007:

The Blomberg and Patton families
Robert Boerner, MD

2006:

the Charles D. Owen family
Lewis Rathbun, MD

2005:

The Ladies of the Flower Mission
The Sisters of Mercy
the George and Nancy Cecil family
John Russell, MD.

The history of Mission and its many antecedent hospitals is captured in a lavishly illustrated book written by Nancy Marlow titled "The Legacy of Mission Hospitals: 120 Years of Caring" available in the Mission Gift Shop.