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Call is hospital's founding father
Doug Flanagan/Post-Register
Mark Call, right, holds a copy of the 1959 Quincy Valley Post-Register article announcing the opening of Quincy’s hospital. Don Condit, a hospital board commissioner, is on the left.
Mark Call served in the United States Army during World War II for three years as a surgical technician and medical evacuator. He was part of a unit that helped to remove about 30,000 soldiers who suffered casualties during that time period in North Africa, Italy, Austria and Germany.
One day, Call was huddled under the wheels of a boxcar in a field in Algiers, Algeria, when an air raid began. A bomb was dropped virtually on top of the boxcar. It didn’t go off, but at that moment Call started to put some things into perspective.
“That kind of thing makes you think,” Call said. “I decided right then that if I got through the war, I’d get home and try to do something good for my community.”
He did just that.
Call moved to Quincy in 1952, armed with not only that passion to improve his new hometown any way he could, but also with a degree in chemistry. He used both of those things to start Call’s Drug, which operated in downtown Quincy from 1956 until he sold the business in 1982.
His other, more lasting contribution was spearheading an effort to get a hospital built in Quincy. Call’s efforts were rewarded in 1959, when the medical center opened its doors for the first time.
“When I was in the war, I saw what a hospital can mean to an area,” he said. “That’s what made me interested in the hospital. A growing area needs good local care. I figured Quincy was going to grow and needed a hospital. We needed good doctors here.”
Call worked hand-in-hand with the hospital for several decades as its primary pharmacist, a role which Call, a small-town person at heart, grew to relish.
“I got to know people,” he said. “Everybody back then was from someplace else. They were broke or just starting out. I just liked the country, liked the people, the weather. I just liked it here. I saw it as a chance to grow with the community. When I started the store, I didn’t have much; I built the fixtures myself. I grew with the community.”
The hospital struggled at times to establish itself back then, but several factors contributed to its eventual stability, according to Call.
“Quincy, like most places, had its ups and downs, but we got something going when the Frenchman Hills tunnel project brought people in, as well as the two dams,” he said. “Drs. Stansfield, Tonto and Slusher went to Mattawa once a week to work in an outpatient clinic. We tried to establish the dam workers to trade in Quincy. That was a big help.”
Call is revered by current hospital staff as a pioneer, or founding father of sorts.
“Mark has been a fixture at this facility before the building was even built,” said Michele Wurl, the Quincy Hospital Foundation’s president. “Thanks to his vision, along with the vision of the other original board members, this hospital became a reality for the town of Quincy.
“He continued his support and involvement through his work in the hospital pharmacy and now his volunteerism on the foundation board. Mark brings a history and perspective which is irreplaceable. His dedication to this facility is inspiring. It has been a pleasure to get to know Mark and I look forward to many more years of working with him.”
Call was born in Rugby, N.D., and before the war attended Luther College in northeast Iowa, where he studied science and played cornerback for the football team.
“Football is my sport. Always has been,” Call said. “I remember one year we played Iowa State, which was in the same conference as Nebraska and other big schools. They wore us down pretty good and beat us. But we played in a pretty good conference ourselves with a lot of other Iowa schools.”
Call then joined the military and was assigned to the Fifth United States Army, one of the principal formations of the U.S. Army in the Mediterranean during the war. He became part of a small, 33-member unit that was tasked to recover casualties. Call estimates he evacuated between 5,000 and 6,000 soldiers during his three years overseas.
“It wasn’t pretty,” he said. “I wasn’t the shooting type; I just took care of the casualties. Our unit primarily helped the Americans, but we also aided the British and the Free French Forces that were short of medics.
“Our cars had no windows, and they were stripped so we could put stretchers on the side. We missed the invasion in North Africa because of a mix-up, but we were there for the invasion of Italy. I never even had a furlough. I was gone for four straight years before I got home.”
Call met his wife of 64 years, Lucille, growing up in North Dakota. They have four children — Karen (Spokane), Sonia (Medford, Ore.), Mark (Quincy) and Gretchen (Soap Lake) — and “a bunch” of grandchildren.
“(Marrying Lucille) is the smartest thing I ever did,” he said. “Although I thought she was going to leave me when we moved to Quincy. There wasn’t much here at the time. But after a year, you couldn’t get her out.”
Nowadays, Call spends his time tending to a 140-acre plot of apple orchards on Babcock Ridge, a hedge-row partnership investment he’s been involved with since the 1960s. “It keeps me busy,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in agriculture.”
He also still remains involved with the hospital as a member of the medical center’s foundation.
“The hospital has saved a pile of lives by being here,” he said. “I think there’s room for even more growth.”
