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:
“Her fortune, too, lies there,
Converted into cool hard steel
And right red velvet lining;
While over her tan impassivity
Shot silk is shining.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Never expect any recognition here—the system prohibits it. The cross is not affixed to the genius, no, the genius is affixed to the cross.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“If we don’t end war, war will end us.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)
“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)
“Young children learn in a different manner from that of older children and adults, yet we can teach them many things if we adapt our materials and mode of instruction to their level of ability. But we miseducate young children when we assume that their learning abilities are comparable to those of older children and that they can be taught with materials and with the same instructional procedures appropriate to school-age children.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)