Working at the Edgewater Hospital by Robert Jewell

By Robert Jewell

I was born in June 1957 at the Edgewater Hospital. My younger brother, my older sister and my cousins were also born there. I had recently returned from Germany in Dec 1980 after a 3 year stint as a Military Policeman in the Army, and like many veterans of the timeframe, was briefly unemployed upon my return. The Army made sure you filed for unemployment. Their view at the out-processing station was that you had earned that unemployment benefit and if you didn’t use it, you’d lose it.

My intent was to apply for a position as a Chicago cop, but there was no hiring going on at that moment. I saw an ad placed by BW Levy Security and went to work for this agency in April 1981.

Levy had several security accounts. Some at what you’d recognize as video arcades today, some stores, and a couple of hospitals. One hospital was Edgewater Hospital, the other was Evanston Hospital.

My first assignment was at Edgewater Hospital. There was not much in the way of training. You kind of learned your job from others who were already working there. I don’t have recall of who I may have reported to at the time, and don’t recall being introduced to any specific hospital staff.

The intent was to provide presence at the Emergency Room and patrol the hospital. In contrast, when I went to work at Evanston Hospital, there were very specific tasks that had to be accomplished. Not so much at Edgewater.

I would typically sit inside the ER, near a set of what I recall were double doors that could swing in and out to allow gurneys access to the ER from the street side rear entrance as the ER was located at the rear of the building.

This was a busy place to be. People who had suffered any number of issues or accidents would be brought in to the ER. A number of these folks came in alive but would not leave that way. The bereaved family would often be in accompaniment. In the interest of all the patients who may have been in the ER, many very vocal families or friends of the victim had to be shepherded to the small waiting room at the end of the hall. This was a task I had to perform. While it may have been possible at the time, I never had need to restrain anyone while doing my job and never had any kind of altercations to deal with.

It was sad to watch someone come in, hold open doors for them so they could be placed into one of the ER rooms, occasionally see what was being done to them by the doctors and staff, watch as ER efforts ceased due to death of the person, and watch the person later being wheeled out.

I was able to visit other parts of the hospital while “on patrol”. I saw the room where I would have been presented to my father by one of the nurses when I was born. It was a large room with glass windows from about knee height to the ceiling. There was no particular security associated with this room as I recall. We did not have a security post up there, nor did we sit in proximity to the room for any reason. It had not changed much from my memory of how it looked when my brother was born and presented in the same room in 1961.

I can recall that on the main floor of the hospital there was a large set of color posters that spoke to a miracle drug called Streptokinase.

I can also recall that Edgewater Hospital did not have a stellar reputation with the Chicago Fire Department or the Chicago Police. It was said that it’s not the place a cop or fireman will want to be sent to if they needed emergency services.

One day, while on patrol, I saw a name outside of the door to the hospital records room. I had known 2 girls from my youth who had that surname, and was pretty sure this woman was their mother, so I went in and introduced myself. After talking about the old days, my parents, etc. I asked if it was possible to get a copy of my birth certificate. She sent her staff person in the back to go fetch it. I was given a thick sheave of documents. Upon later inspection, I saw things that you don’t normally see on a birth certificate, such as “was this a Legitimate or Illegitimate birth” all kinds of daily notes about my health, who the attending nurse was, and other details about my birth. In later years I found out this is data that is not to be shared with the birth person. So it makes for a treasured memory now. It’s unfortunate that someone out there knows more about yourself via these birth records than you know about yourself, but I am happy I have them now.

Sometime during my tenure at Edgewater Hospital, Levy’s security agency decided or wanted to otherwise provide a Crime Prevention service to the Edgewater community. This was in addition to the roles we played providing security. I believe at that time I had already been sent to Evanston Hospital. But in Sep 1981, a co-worker and I were sent to Louisville, KY to attend a week of Basic Crime Prevention Theory and Practice.

The intent was that we would come back, create content and offer up what we had learned in Crime Prevention to any resident within a perimeter of Edgewater Hospital. This would have been associated with what many refer to nowadays as Neighborhood Watch but on steroids, as the coursework showed (amongst other things such as lighting) how to bolster up the security of your home in mechanical fashion, and we would have pointed out areas needing that kind of attention to the homeowner if the homeowner wanted the service. To my knowledge, the Crime Prevention initiative did not come to fruition. My time with Barry Levy’s agency was to end a month after attending the Crime Prevention course and I moved on to greener pastures doing similar work for Loyola University’s campus on the lakefront.