Some projects stay with you for a long time. The 75th anniversary of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth is one of them. We are sharing this story today, on Memorial Day, with both gratitude and a heavy heart.
When we took on this milestone in 2005, we knew we wanted to do more than celebrate 75 years of healthcare in Fort Worth. We wanted to honor it, which meant finding the people and stories that made that history real. One question kept surfacing: who was the first baby born at this hospital when it opened in 1930?
We started with the birth records. From there, we thought we might need a private investigator. Instead, a single Google search pointed us to a woman still living on the family land in Rockdale, Texas. We picked up the phone, dialed the number, and she answered. Yes, she said, she was the first baby.
She was Dr. Lucile Estell, born March 3, 1930, at Harris Fort Worth Methodist Hospital, the very first baby to arrive within those walls.
She had already returned for the hospital’s 50th anniversary, and she came back again for the 75th, joining us to share remarks with the audience gathered for the celebration. As the event unfolded, the chairman of the board of trustees presented her with a diamond heart necklace, a fitting tribute given that the diamond is the traditional anniversary stone for a 75th.
The afternoon was something to behold. We staged a fashion show featuring members of the public relations team modeling styles from each decade of the hospital’s history, from 1930s suits and gloves through go-go boots, shoulder pads, and into the fashions of the 2000s. We served a celebration cake for 5,000 guests. It was the kind of event people still talk about.
But the detail that made the whole thing resonate was this: Dr. Estell had become a history teacher and a historian. Of all the lives she could have built, she built one devoted to preserving the stories of the past. She understood, perhaps better than anyone in that room, why the afternoon mattered.
That relationship did not end with the event. She wrote the opening pages of the commemorative history book we produced, a project covered in a previous post. A signed copy sits with us today, and it means even more now. She returned again when Texas Health dedicated its senior health and wellness center, where she had the chance to meet a baby born on March 3, her own birthday. That moment said everything about who she was.
Over the years, what began as a search through birth records became something far more meaningful. Dr. Estell became a friend, a collaborator, and a living reminder of why the work of honoring history matters. We had the privilege of speaking with her not long before she passed. When we learned of her passing in December 2024, it was hard. It is still hard. It felt right to sit with that on this Memorial Day and put these words down, because she deserves to be remembered, and this is one small way we can do that.
She was 94 years old and she lived every one of those years with grace, purpose, and a deep devotion to the stories that connect us to one another.
The 100th anniversary will arrive in 2030, closer than it sounds. She will not be there in person, but her words open the history book, her presence shaped that celebration, and her legacy is woven into the story of that hospital in a way that will not fade.
This post is for her.
Relationships are the work. History is worth preserving. And sometimes, the person you are looking for is already waiting for your call.
In memory of Dr. Lucile Estell, March 3, 1930 — December 14, 2024.