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Wilson N. Jones and his Hospital continued

An End and a Beginning
When Wilson N. Jones died in 1901 at the age of 74, his estate was conservatively estimated at more than $200,000. His lengthy will began by describing him as "an Indian and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, even though he had been living in Sherman since 1894. In fact he requested that he be buried in Sherman and that his last wife, Eliza, and eventually Nat, be buried with him.

His Sherman home (located on the present site of Grayson Bank's main office) was to go to Eliza, along with an annual sum. Nat would receive the bulk of the estate in increments: only personal expenses until he was 21, a lump sum of $10,000 at the age of 21, a further $25,000 at 24, and the remainder when he turned 30.

If Nat died before then without leaving legitimate issue, the estate would go to "a trust fund for the establishment and maintenance of a hospital in the city of Sherman, Grayson County, Texas to be known as Wilson N. Jones Hospital... (it) shall be a hospital established and maintained primarily for the benefit of the City of Sherman and its citizens and in which the sick and wounded of the City shall receive surgical and medical aid and attention and proper food, care and nursing..."

Why did he choose to endow a hospital rather than a school? Family legend says he made the decision after a relative was turned away from an Oklahoma hospital because he was an Indian. And why a hospital in Texas? The pragmatic answer to that one may be that Texas laws at that time strictly governed hospitals, while Territory law did not.

On Jones' death in 1901, Eliza immediately contested the will, claiming that she was entitled to half under Choctaw community property law. She won in court and even succeeded in overturning other provisions, burying Wilson N. Jones in Oklahoma and reducing by half the amount he had specified for his monument. C.B. Dorchester, one of the estate trustees, stated later that only $70,000 was left after Eliza took her half and the estate absorbed major losses in notes, stock, and property.

Of that amount, Nat received more than $35,000 before he died in 1916. But Jones, and later his Trustees, had invested wisely and the estate grew during the years of litigation that followed his death. Despite court suits and settlements, the trust quadrupled in size by 1928.

Establishment of WNJ
By the time Jones' estate was settled in 1928, there were already two hospitals in Sherman. St. Vincent's was organized in 1901 by the Catholic order, the Sisters of Charity. Two years after Nat's death, in 1918, the Sisters had proposed that the trust be used to establish a ward for "Jones Fund" patients at their facility. They estimated that the $100,000 in the trust at the time would endow a ward of 13 beds. The Trustees denied the proposal since a lawsuit was then pending against the estate.

Dr. J. Neathery, born in Van Alstyne, organized the second facility in 1913 as the Sherman Hospital Company. Over the next year, the Company built a 42-bed facility on what is now known as Hospital Hill. In 1928, in fulfillment of Jones' will, his estate Trustees purchased the Sherman Hospital and its nursing school from Neathery for $100,000 and renamed it Wilson N. Jones Hospital. C.B. Dorchester, the last living executor of the estate, was elected first president of the Board of Trustees.

Growth and Change
Like many other institutions, the new hospital had a tough time weathering the Depression and actually operated at a loss for several years. Three prominent physicians - Dr. Stout, Sr., Dr. Enloe, and Dr. Ridings - kept it open during the Depression, even buying x-ray equipment which many small Texas hospitals did not have at all. By the mid-1950's, however, it had grown to the point that the Trustees undertook a $900,000 expansion program which added a four story wing and a new entrance. Two more additions in 1964 and 1969 increased capacity by another 116 beds.

The WNJ School of Nursing, affiliated with Austin College, continued in operation until 1950, graduating 230 Registered Nurses. Two years later the school started an LVN program.

In 1974, the issue of consolidating Sherman Community Hospital (the former St. Vincent's) and Wilson N. Jones arose but was rejected. Instead, Community's owners built a new facility on Gallagher Drive and WNJ embarked on a $5 million expansion.

Even as that expansion drew to completion, the need for additional beds and clinical space was again apparent. A two-phase construction project was designed which would enable the hospital to respond to the rapidly changing health care environment - making room for high-tech equipment and services, creating the only separate medical intensive and surgical intensive care units in North Texas; opening a new Birthing Center; and realigning the hospital for outpatient and rehabilitative services. Phase I opened in January, 1986, with one of the largest open house turnouts Sherman had ever seen. Phase II was fully completed early in 1990, by which time the entire first floor of the Hospital had been rebuilt, all the new construction finished, and almost all of the rest of the hospital remolded or renovated.

C.B. Dorchester, and officer with Sherman's Merchants & Planters Bank, was on of the executors of Governor Jones' estate. When Wilson N. Jones Hospital was organized in 1928, Dorchester was elected president of the Board of Trustees.

More than evident physical changes, the Hospital's Board of Trustees has guided WNJ into state-of-the-art medical care through bold commitments to high technology thus completing the goal set by Governor Wilson N. Jones ninety years ago: that a hospital be established to provide high quality care to the people of this area.