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:
“Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“It is an agreeable change to cross a lake, after you have been shut up in the woods, not only on account of the greater expanse of water, but also of sky. It is one of the surprises which Nature has in store for the traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water, was liberating and civilizing even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom—against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“When I received this [coronation] ring I solemnly bound myself in marriage to the realm; and it will be quite sufficient for the memorial of my name and for my glory, if, when I die, an inscription be engraved on a marble tomb, saying, “Here lieth Elizabeth, which reigned a virgin, and died a virgin.””
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“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)