Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa was opened in 1956 through public subscription as a memorial to soldiers lost in the Second World War. The suggestion that the memorial take the form of a children's hospital was proposed by Vyvyan U.T. Watson. Mr Watson, a prominent businessman, had lost his first born and only son, Peter Tennant Watson, at about four years old, to an outbreak of diphtheria in Cape Town. Mr Watson was a major force in steering the organization of the building of the hospital. The Peter Pan statue on the Hospital grounds, sculpted by Mitford Barberton, was donated by Mr Watson and his wife, Gwendolyn. Mr Watson was later President of the South African Red Cross Society. It is the only dedicated children's hospital in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only a few dedicated children's hospitals in the Southern hemisphere.
The hospital has academic links to the University of Cape Town's School of Child and Adolescent Health, the University of the Western Cape Dental School and the University of Stellenbosch; it is regarded as South Africa's leading centre for post-graduate specialist paediatric medical and surgical training.
Famous quotes containing the words red, cross, war, memorial, children and/or hospital:
“a flock of bright red lanterns
has settled.”
—Charles Reznikoff (1894–1976)
“In ancient times—’twas no great loss—
They hung the thief upon the cross:
But now, alas!—I say’t with grief—
They hang the cross upon the thief.”
—Anonymous. “On a Nomination to the Legion of Honour,” from Aubrey Stewart’s English Epigrams and Epitaphs (1897)
“... children do not take war seriously as war. War is soldiers and soldiers have not to be war but they have to be soldiers. Which is a nice thing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“It is indeed typical that you Earth people refuse to believe in the superiority of any world but your own. Children looking into a magnifying glass, imagining the image you see is the image of your true size.”
—Franklin Coen. Joseph Newman. The Monitor (Douglas Spencer)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)