A descendant of Erlanger Health System’s first benefactor and namesake gazed at a sculpture of her great-grandmother at the hospital’s downtown Baroness campus Monday during the Englishwoman’s first visit to her ancestors’ legacy hospital.
“It’s just so touching that the family lives on,” Minnie d’Erlanger Churchill said after a morning tour of the facility and a ride in a Life Force medical helicopter. “I just feel so proud of the family. I just wish my great-grandfather was here to see it.”
Churchill is the great-granddaughter of Baron Frederic Emile d’Erlanger, a German-born developer and investor, and the Baroness Marguerite Mathilde Slidell d’Erlanger, who was a native of Louisiana. The baron ran a syndicate that helped develop Erlanger, Ky. – named for his family – and he held a stake in what now is Norfolk Southern railroad.
During an 1889 visit to Chattanooga, while on a tour of his railroad’s stops, the Baron donated $5,000 toward the founding of Chattanooga’s first hospital.
Today, Erlanger is a five-campus health system with 819 acute-care beds and 50 long-term care beds. The system, which treats more than 250,000 patients annually, employs 4,500 people and is a Level I Trauma Center and academic teaching center.