Cumberland Medical Turns 75, Wharton’s Work Remembered

As Cumberland Medical Center prepares for its 75th birthday celebration this week, the contributions of Dr. May Cravath Wharton will be remembered.

Cumberland County Assistant Archivist Lori Bowers said Wharton originally started several small clinics throughout Cumberland County to address the lack of healthcare access. Bowers said while working the clinics, Wharton got the idea to start a centralized hospital.

“Whenever they start running their clinic, they would travel into the rural communities in Cumberland County and even abroad,” Bowers said. “I think that’s where she really realized that bringing it centrally would be so important because some the roads they had to travel, she would travel on a mule sometimes to go visit.”

Bowers said when Cumberland Medical first opened in 1950, it was a 50-bed facility. Bowers said at that time, a facility that large was unheard of in a rural area.

“That just was not available to such a rural community,” Bowers said. “And I think that has been part of CMC all these years is offering a high quality of care to a rural area going forward and now into the 21st century it has just expanded exponentially compared to where it started.”

Bowers said Cumberland Medical has been an important piece to the area thanks to Wharton’s ambitions and an accepting community.

“She came here and she saw that there was a desperate need,” Bowers said. “And people were actually very accepting of that. You know, in a lot of areas people might not be as accepting of an outsider coming in and teaching health and hygiene, but this community was very open to the idea of having that healthcare, and you know, rural areas still to this day need quality healthcare and I think CMC is definitely holding up the banner for that.”