35 A history of family health care. In 1974, the new Family Care Center opened at Meyer Memorial and began registering patients. Occupying a large part of the old School 84 building on the grounds of the hospital, the center was designed to serve residents of the neighborhood and the East Side in general. The clinical staff included physicians in three medical specialties—pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and internal medicine—as well as dentists. Today, there are four family care centers at ECMC providing primary care. The Grider Family Health Center and the ECMC Family Health Center both offer a full range of important health care services for patients of all ages. In addition, ECMC’s VIP Primary Care serves as a first point of contact for many health concerns and illnesses or for general preventive care. Meanwhile, at the ECMC Internal Medicine Center, in addition to primary care services for adults, clinical and educational services are available to patients with diabetes and endocrine issues who have been referred by a primary care provider. Pediatric Clinic, 1970. Photo courtesy of the Buffalo History Museum, used by permission. EJ Meyer School of Nursing, Class of 1953. Photos courtesy Dolores Cippola. Dolores Cippola, Head Nurse at Meyer Memorial “At Meyer Memorial, we were the best nurses ever put on this earth. We were well trained and we worked hard. The other schools of nursing were like colleges. They went to school for two semesters and then were off for three months. We had no vacations. We had to be in bed every night at 9:30. We had housemothers that checked us in our beds. It was very, very strict.” Dolores Cippola wanted to be a doctor but family finances precluded that choice so, after graduating from Kensington High School in 1949, she applied to the E.J. Meyer Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. Told she was too young for nursing, she joined the Navy, at a time when women weren’t allowed on ships. After her hitch in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) Dolores finally got her chance to be a nurse. Although the entrance exam was scheduled on the day of her sister’s wedding in which she was to be the bridesmaid, she skipped the wedding, took the exam, and brought some other nurse applicants to the reception. “I was the first nurse offered a government grant to go to school fulltime to get my degree. From ’53 to ’59 I was going to school and working. From ’59 to ’60 I went to school fulltime and they paid for everything. I got my BSN in 1960. And the very next day I went back to the university and enrolled in the master’s program.” “Meyer Memorial was the place where UB students came for medical and psychiatric training because they couldn’t get it elsewhere. They didn’t have care for TB or infectious disease elsewhere. They didn’t have the worst cases in the city of Buffalo. We had them. Today they work with the high tech stuff. We did it from the heart and the body. We’re body and soul people, us old timers.” Meyer Memorial Hospital 1939-1978