SMMCnews
St. Mark’s Board Chairman Retires
In his recent article in the Fayette County Record, Jeff Wick covered the story of Chairman Weldon Koenig's recent retirement:
St. Mark's "Admiral" Retires
For 31 years J. Weldon Koenig served his country as a Navy officer.
For the past nine years, Koenig guided this community through a rough sea of obstacles to building a new hospital.
But Thursday Koenig, the first and only Chairman the St. Mark’s Medical Center Board of Directors has ever known, retired from that post in front of a packed room of well-wishers at the hospital.
“This is a bittersweet day,” Koenig said. “This place becomes part of you."
It was through Koenig’s leadership that St. Mark’s grew from an idea into a state-of-thee-art hospital that first opened its doors six years ago.
Because of term limits for all board members set in the initial planning stages of St. Mark’s, Koenig had no choice but to retire, though there was no one present Thursday that wanted to see him go.
“Without Weldon’s leadership, and the help of many others, there might not be a St. Mark’s Medical Center,” said incoming chairman Joe Bailey. “Weldon has the unique combination of the local boy...who also had the leadership skills, professionalism and charisma, that it took to pull off something that many people thought couldn’t be done, and that was to raise $6 million to build a new hospital for Fayette and Lee Counties.”
With that $6 million in seed money, Koenig and other locals travelled to Washington and convinced the Department of Housing and Urban Development to underwrite a bond issue for the rest of the $30 million hospital.
Fayette County Judge Ed Janecka read a proclamation designating Sept. 22, 2011 as Admiral John Weldon Koenig Day.
“Fayette County is a much better place because John Weldon Koenig came home,” Janecka said.
Koenig was born in O’Quinn and graduated from La Grange High School and the University of Texas before that naval career that included three Legions of Merit honors. He commanded the USS Simon Bolivar and Submarine Squadrons Six and Eight. For a decade after his military career was as a management consultant for companies in Hurst, TX and Illinois before he and his wife Nancy returned to the Koenig family homestead, the K-Bar K Ranch in O’Quinn.
“We as a community are so grateful that you chose to come back home and serve,” La Grange Mayor Janet Moerbe said Thursday.
Though Koenig is involved in several civic and charitable organizations, his role in the founding of St. Mark’s is one of his the most important.
Though it was a project that almost didn’t happen.
“There were moments when we wondered whether we could stay open,” Koenig said Thursday. “We struggled for the last nine years and now we finally have a few dollars in the bank.”
Friday, Koenig elaborated on just how tenuous St. Mark’s first few years were.
After St. Mark’s replaced the old Fayette Memorial Hospital, they needed to maintain a 27 in-patient daily census average to pay operating expenses of about $2 million a month.
Early on that census was about 20 patients daily, up from just 19 at Fayette Memorial.
“When we built the hospital we thought we’d have a lot more patients coming in,” Koenig said. “We went for quite a few years struggling to make ends meet.”
Eventually more and more patients have come to St. Mark’s (they are serving about a 27 patient average now) and the hospital has been able to cut expenses through a partnership with Community Hospital Corporation.
St. Mark’s can now purchase equipment and supplies at a lower rate because of that partnership.
“This whole thing was a lot more complicated than I ever dreamed,” Koenig said.
“But the hospital is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.” But now La Grange has a financially secure, 65-bed hospital, that most rural areas only wish they could have.
“You don’t get anything important without a struggle,” Koenig said.