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With all
this heavy expense of running the hospitals,
some of our most valuable service and help
costs nothing. Each hospital has a
loyal corps of Gray Ladies who donate all
their valuable work; likewise, the busy and
talented member of the Board of Trustees
serve without pay. In addition, many
have made substantial gifts.
Attention of all people
invited to the bronze plaque on the wall of
each hospital near the entrance and on the
door of each endowed room. The names
of all the donors or of those in whose
memory the gifts were made are listed here.
These gifts are tax deductible, and the
donor's name is on this permanent honor
roll. Prominent in this list is the
Bryan Chamber of Commerce whose members were
responsible for collecting gifts totaling
$8,000 in 1956, to help in the purchase of
adjacent hospital ground for a building
site.
At the
time of the opening of the Bryan Hospital in
1936 and the incorporation of the two
hospitals in 1937, in order to start them in
business since they had no resources of
their own, I, as the sole owner, leased both
hospitals with their equipment to the
Corporation and underwrote all expenses for
a short time in return for a $200 monthly
rental for each hospital. Within a
couple years the hospitals were
self-sustaining and building up substantial
savings. I discontinued receiving any
rent and finally in November 1959 sold the
Corporation all of my hospital buildings and
equipment for a total of $51,000. This
was not over 25% of the actual cost.
In January
of 1959 I made a gift of 5,000 shares of
United States Steel common stock to the
Corporation, worth $100 a share at the time,
unfortunately worth less than half that now.
Later, 100 share of General Motors stock was
added to this gift plus 230 shares of
Medical Center Company stock of Fort Wayne,
and a 100 milligrams of radium.
Two years
before her death at age 82, my cousin,
Beulah Cameron of Edon, told me she was
leaving my brother, Dr. Angus Cameron of
Minor, North Dakota and me, roughly each a
half of her estate. I explained to her
that such a gift would soon be subject to a
double tax by the government, and suggested
she could will it directly, free from
taxation, to the hospitals here or to a
similar institution in Minor. She
never said anything to me again about it,
but after her death, a half of her estate
came to the Incorporated Hospitals and
amounted to over $60,000. In view of
this, I later had her name placed at the
head of the list of donors on our bronze
plaque. The annual dividend from these
stock gifts now is about $15,000. The
Corporation Board of Trustees and
Administrators of the Hospitals have faith
this endowment will grow, and so render a
better service to this community and a
better memorial than an expensive cemetery
marker or needless tax gift to Uncle Sam.
By the
strict rules governing not-for-profit
Corporations such as the Cameron Memorial
Hospitals, Inc., no potential profit may
accrue to the benefit of any individual, no
shares of such Corporation stock ownership
exist and all equity and income is held or
spent for new buildings or improvement in
equipment or service.
Three
years ago in 1964, after Dr. Ameter and I
had served continuously on the Board of
Trustees 27 years, since the hospitals were
incorporated, and I had reached the age of
75, we both resigned. We made way for
younger and better business men, and
eliminated any appearance of personal gain
which might be suspected with doctors on the
Board of Trustees. During the first 25
years of existence, the hospitals aided by
gifts had been entirely self-sustaining and
had built and paid for all their additions
and improvements.
In 1960
our status as a not-for-profit corporation
began to be threatened by increasingly
frequent and intensive investigations by
Internal Revenue Service personnel in Fort
Wayne and Washington. The I.R.S.
criticized us in letters to the Washington
office on a variety of irregularities,
ranging all the way from unusually high
income from our clinical laboratory to
obtaining too much of the doctor's income,
or possibly too little, in return for the
service and rent furnished them by the
hospitals.
Eventually, the I.R.S. sent us a letter
notifying us of a possible revoke of our
accreditation for receiving tax free gifts
and our not-for-profit status. This
notice threatened our very existence and
drove us into our most expensive protective
reaction. We retained two attorneys,
Norman Sugarman and David Fullmer, to
protect our rights, Mr. Sugarman having
previously been an I.R.S. employee in their
Washington office for 14 years. After
seven years of repeated investigations and
conferences and arguments with the I.R.S. in
Fort Wayne and Indianapolis and Washington
and Angola, we were permitted to retain our
original not-for-profit status, but only if
we would put the doctors on the conventional
status of detailed payments for rentals,
heat and telephone and clerical and
collections service and maintenance.
This requirement of the I.R.S. destroyed
much of the savings potential we had built
up by integrating common professional and
hospital services. The government
gained no additional taxes, the cost of
medical care was increased, and after it was
all over our bill for legal, accounting and
other services was $96,500.
In vain
hope our congressman might explain to the
I.R.S. that the hospitals were engaged only
in rendering a public service without any
personal financial reward, I wrote him for
help. He sent us blanks for
applications for Hill-Burton funds.
Perhaps we should have taken his suggestion,
or perhaps might still do so, as practically
all other hospitals do.
Space does
not permit naming here more than just a few
of the many hard working, loyal persons who
carried a heavy load of responsibility with
many years of service. Outstanding at
Angola were Ruth Libey, Bessie Cottrell,
Daisy McCallister, Irene Kenyon, Harriet
Angus and now Fred Schwerin as
Administrator; and at Bryan, Rose
Johnson, Jestine Flightner, Dorothy
Snyder, Harriet Angus and presently Howard
Wassenaar as Administrator.
Among
former Trustees were John Estrich, Maurice
McClew, Rev. John Humphreys, Jack Johnson,
Dr. R. K. Amerer, Howard Winzeler, all
serving without pay, as does the present
Board: T.R. Spangler, J. Robert Markey,
Grant Brown, James Hutton, Glen Beatty,
Carlton Chase, Dr. Richard Bateman,
Alfred Gurstein and Hermon Phillips.
And let us
remember with gratitude all donors who made
these hospitals possible and the growing
list of their names on the bronze memorial
plaques at the entrance of each hospital.
Don F.
Cameron, M.D.
November 20, 1967
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