KCUR: The Women Who Started Children's Mercy
By Steve Kraske & Claire Verbeck
At the turn of the 20th century, two sisters who were determined to provide medical care to Kansas City's underserved kids founded what became a local institution.
Children's Mercy's main campus is now on Gillham Road near Crown Center. But when it opened in 1897, its first bed was located in a women's hospital at 15th Street and Cleveland Avenue.
Listen to the full story via KCUR.
"For All Children Everywhere" is the story of Children’s Mercy and a story of unending love and persistence on the part of two sisters – Alice Berry Graham, a dentist, and Katharine Berry Richardson, a surgeon - the people who followed them and of the community that took their mission into its heart. Today, 12 decades after its humble start as “The Hospital of the Little People,” Children’s Mercy still brings healing to the poor, but also hope to all children and all families of the city and the region.
The founders of Children’s Mercy declared their hospital to be for children regardless of their address, their religion or their families’ pocketbooks. In the 1920s, when racial segregation ruled in public life, the leaders of the hospital believed they needed to address the health needs of non-white children, too. They found a way to work toward that goal, and declared the hospital “For All Children Everywhere.”
Learn more about the history of Children's Mercy by clicking here.