Herstory of the City, Part II
Published March 8, 2022
A NOTE FROM THE WRITER: When I started disKCovery, it was not only about sharing my own journey to discovering Kansas City, but a way to push myself to continue being a tourist in this city that I am proud to call home. While that journey is largely about the Kansas City we know now, it can be difficult to understand and truly love a city without understanding the context of what we see today. So for this month, Women’s History Month, I am going to step away from my usual programming and share a series of essays that explore some of the kick-ass ladies who helped shape our city, our region, and the world. If you have not already done so, I encourage you to click HERE and read “Herstory of the City, Part I”.
There are a few reasons that writers write. As for me, this month, I am going to share the stories of some incredible Kansas City women. Whether or not you are entertained, persuaded, or informed; well my friend, that is up to you.
Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby once said, “People ask me what I do in the winter when there is no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” As a lifelong fan of the game, I know how he feels. So of course, with the labor dispute between the players and owners, it seems uncertain if and when the Kansas City Royals will take the field again, and that worries me.
If baseball continues to be locked out, I will most definitely miss “America’s Pastime”. But honestly, what I will miss most is one of the biggest events of the Kansas City summer calendar - Big Slick Celebrity Weekend.
Began in 2010 by Kansas City-grown comedy stars Rob Riggle, Jason Sudeikis, and Paul Rudd, Big Slick Celebrity Weekend takes place every June when these three, as well as Kansas City natives Eric Stonestreet and David Koechner, and a host of their celebrity friends descend on the metro for a weekend of events aimed at raising funds for a local charity. The highlight of this is always the Big Slick Celebrity Softball Game that takes place at Kauffman Stadium prior to a Royals’ home game.
Sadly, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Big Slick Weekend was forced to go virtual in 2020 and again in 2021. And frankly, it just hasn’t been the same. With the prospect of a locked out baseball season, there have to be some concerns that this amazing fundraiser could once again, not take place as originally planned.
Sure it’s fun to see some of Kansas City’s favorite sons return home to Kansas City every summer. And it’s really great to see other famous actors, actresses, comedians, athletes, and assorted stars descend upon our city for a magical weekend. But, at the end of the day, what really makes Big Slick such a fixture on the Kansas City calendar, is the cause. Big Slick has always been about raising funds for Children’s Mercy Hospital and it is that cause that makes it so successful.
Children’s Mercy Hospital is a not-for-profit hospital and is considered among the best pediatric care facilities in the nation. Every year they provide care to tens of thousands of children, many of whom would not be able to afford care otherwise. lTo date, Big Slick has raised over $13,000,000.00 for Children’s Mercy.
In the cold of Missouri and Kansas winter, I too wait for spring in the hope that it means the return of baseball, and the return of the Big Slick Celebrity Softball Game. I wait for spring because I know that with baseball season, comes hope for so many at Children’s Mercy.
Both Children’s Mercy Hospital and Big Slick Celebrity weekend are institutions that are embraced by the entire city. We all know the men who started Big Slick, but have you ever given any thought to how Children’s Mercy came to be?
Every summer, celebrities descend upon Kansas City to raise funds for Children’s Mercy Hospital. Kansas City’s own Rob Riggle (left), Eric Stonestreet (center), and Paul Rudd (right) are among the five local celebrities who host the event annually. PHOTO COURTESY OF: Big Slick KC
Part 2: Undercover Angel(s)
Throughout history, advances in technology, urban development, and access to education have all been hailed as the driving forces through which nations, societies, and cities move forward and flourish. During this series, we saw how Carrie Westlake Whitney made an impact regarding the latter.
Equally important, but often overlooked, is the role that health plays. More specifically, how advances in healthcare, healthcare infrastructure, and access to healthcare are a major proponent in the growth of any society.
What allows a society to flourish, more than anything, is people. And, what permits population growth are healthcare options that preserve the current population and ensure the arrival of a new generation. The notion that “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” holds especially true in this regard. A healthcare system and infrastructure is only as good as the options available to the supposed least of people. Nobody understood this better than the Berry sisters.
Kansas City’s Doctors
Alice Berry Graham (1850 - 1913) and Katherine Berry Richardson (1858 - 1933)
Alice Berry was born in Warren, Pennsylvania in 1850. Eight years later, her younger sister Katharine was born. While Katharine was still a toddler, their mother passed away so the role of raising both girls passed squarely to their father Stephen. The role of raising Katharine was shared by her older sister Alice.
Stephen Berry was a grain miller and an abolitionist. He fled his home in Kentucky prior to the onset of the American Civil War due to his strong anti-slavery beliefs. Stephen was a staunch community advocate who believed that, “the responsibility of an American extends beyond his own family.” He was a strong proponent for education for women and made his daughters’ schooling a priority. At a time when women rarely made it to high school, Stephen’s stance on education that he instilled in his daughters may have been even less popular than his endorsement of abolition. Running with that belief, instilled in them by their father, the sisters had their sights on much more than a high school education.
The sisters brokered a deal that they would help one another pay for their respective educations. Initially, it was Alice who chose to teach school in order to pay for Katharine’s education. Katharine received the equivalent of a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Mount Union College in Ohio before receiving her medical degree from Women’s College of Pennsylvania. Upon graduation, Katharine then taught classes to cover the cost of Alice’s education. Alice received her dental degree from Philadelphia Dental College. While receiving their educations, both women wed but sadly, like their father, both were widowed at a young age.
Upon Alice’s graduation, given the lack of opportunities for women in medicine in Pennsylvania, Dr. Alice Berry Graham and Dr. Katharine decided to head west. Flipping a coin over a map laid out before them took the Berry sisters to LaCrosse, Wisconsin in 1887. For whatever reason, in the 1890s, the sisters made their way to Kansas City, Missouri.
As a dentist and as a surgeon, Alice and Katharine, respectively, had opted to enter professions that were considered to be exclusive to men at the time. So, when the Berry Sisters did come to Kansas City, they found a medical community that was quite hostile towards the two of them. Kansas City hospitals did not permit female physicians on their staff so the sisters had to find other ways to practice medicine. At first, the sisters shared a home where Alice set up dental equipment in their living room and Katharine made house calls in the neighborhood and surrounding area. Often their patients were the people that no other physician was willing to see. It proved difficult as the women struggled to get necessary referrals of paying patients so that they could sustain themselves. The Berry Sisters yearned to practice medicine but still had not found a place to do so. Then, in 1897, the sisters found their calling.
A West Bottoms barkeep approached Alice with news of a young abandoned girl who was between five and six years old and needed medical care. The sisters rented a hospital bed at a nearby maternity hospital and treated the young girl back to health. It was at this moment that Alice turned to her younger sister and said, “It’s time that somebody takes care of these kids, and you and I are the ones to do that.”
Alice Berry Graham (left) and Katharine Berry Richardson (right) founded the Free Bed Fund Association for Crippled, Deformed, and Ruptured Children in 1897. Today, you may know this organization as Children’s Mercy Hospital. PHOTOS COURTESY OF: Children’s Mercy Hospital
“It’s time that somebody takes care of these kids, and you and I are the ones to do that.”
Since no hospital would hire women, the sisters aimed to start their own. On June 24, 1897, the sisters launched the Free Bed Fund Association for Crippled, Deformed, and Ruptured Children with an aim to provide necessary medical care to the disenfranchised children of the city.
Initially, the Free Bed Fund began with that same bed at that same maternity hospital. Alice, always described as a strong business mind, proved proficient at raising funds and appealing to local community organizations for aid. This allowed the sisters to rent more beds and even bring on staffers. At first, all of their hires were strictly female. In 1899, when the hospital folded, Alice and Katharine were able to lease the entire building. In 1901, inspired by the name of an organization they were part of called Bands of Mercy, the sisters renamed the Free Bed Fund, “Mercy Hospital”.
The Berry sisters began a training program for nurses at Mercy Hospital. As lifelong proponents of education, their hospital offered classroom and bedside teaching to make sure that sick children did not allow their education to suffer as a result.
While the medical community still ostracized the pair of female doctors and ridiculed them for hiring female staff, the Kansas City community did not. Word quickly spread about Mercy Hospital and this pair of doctors who were providing complimentary medical care to the city’s orphans and those children who could not afford it.
Katharine, or Dr. Kate, as patients knew her, gained a reputation in Kansas City for her proficiency in plastic surgery. She was especially renowned for her prowess in facial reconstruction and her ability to repair cleft lips and palates. Katharine would later express that she believed that women were especially suited for plastic surgery because of the skills that many women developed at a young age in fabric design and cutting as well as needlework. Mercy Hospital continued to grow and produce favorable patient outcomes to the point that even the medical community had to take notice of what the sisters were doing.
“The truly charitable woman is big enough to help children other than her own.”
Alice continued to appeal to the Kansas City community for funds and even launched a newsletter called The Mercy Messenger which detailed the types of patients they were treating and the need for funds. Katharine installed a chalkboard in the hospital’s lawn where she would post daily specific needs of the hospital such as food items, linens, or specified medical supplies. And the support from the community continued to pour in.
In 1903, Mercy Hospital moved into a larger building, in what is now the Pendleton Heights neighborhood, that had been donated by a Kansas City socialite. Eventually, the hospital began to employ male physicians as well. Even still, the sisters continued to petition the community for support and raised $375,000 for the construction of a new four story hospital building on Independence Avenue.
The new facility opened in 1917, but sadly, Alice did not live to see it. Dr. Alice Berry Graham died of cancer in 1913. At Katharine’s insistence, the cornerstone to the building was inscribed with, “In 1897, Dr. Alice Berry Graham founded this hospital for sick and crippled children - to be forever nonsectarian, non-local, and for those who cannot pay.”
In 1919, the hospital was renamed one final time to Children’s Mercy Hospital. Given Alice’s dental background, Katharine made it a point to incorporate dentistry into the new hospital - a tradition that continues at Children’s Mercy to this day.
Dr. Kate soldiered on in her desire to treat the city’s children. She once wrote in The Mercy Messenger that, “I have not served children until I served them all.” And for Katharine, described by many as “the social conscience of the city”, that truly included all children.
Katharine made efforts to desegregate her hospital but quickly learned that doing so would come at the expense of the children she already treated, as it would cost her many of her donors. Instead, she made the best of a horrendous situation and partnered with Dr. J. Edward Perry to open a Children’s Mercy ward within Wheatley-Provident Hospital, the city’s most prominent hospital for African-Americans. Katharine also began a program where physicians trained black doctors in pediatrics. In 1924, the first three black pediatricians graduated from her program.
Katharine was also innovative in terms of treatment. She expected her staff to have a bedside manner of sympathy and understanding towards patients which was not common practice at the time. Her hospital was designed to allow in abundant fresh air and natural light. She also filled her wards with toys and often hired entertainers and circus clowns for the children, understanding that treating the spirit was paramount to treating the body. In terms of medical care, for her entire life, she would remain a strong proponent for pushing the envelope of medicine and establishment of research hospitals.
Dr. Katharine Berry Richardson worked tirelessly for the care of all children. She never retired from the hospital and even performed surgery a few days before her death in 1933. Like her sister, Dr. Alice Berry Graham, Katharine never once collected a salary for the work she did at Children’s Mercy Hospital. Any paid work she did, was always secondary to the needs of Children's Mercy.
Shortly after Katharine’s death, the board of Children’s Mercy Hospital adopted a resolution. It read, “We pledge to our dead leader, because of her tireless activism, that we will keep the faith.” Children’s Mercy Hospital continued on as it always had. It was not until the 1960s that the hospital would accept any payment for services. In 1970, Children’s Mercy Hospital moved to Gillham Road where their Adele Hall campus continues to this day.
So, What Do I Do Now? The $375,000.00 Children’s Mercy Hospital building at 1750 Independence Avenue continues as the Administration Building for Kansas City University, a private medical school. You can still see the famed cornerstone that Katharine had inscribed in memory of her departed sister. Additionally, Children’s Mercy’s Adele Hall Campus features a three-dimensional exhibit on their ground floor titled, The Children’s Mercy Story, that tells the story of how a single bed rented out by the Berry sisters grew into the vast network of Missouri and Kansas hospitals and clinics that Children’s Mercy is today.
The Children’s Mercy Hospital Building that Dr. Kate opened in 1917 is still standing in Pendleton Heights. Today, it is the Administration Building for Kansas City University.
As Children’s Mercy hospital approaches its 125th anniversary this summer, it is still regarded as one of the top pediatric hospitals in the nation. In fact, U.S. News and World Report recognized Children’s Mercy in nine of the ten pediatric specialties that they rank. Today, Children’s Mercy Hospital employs more than 8,000 employees, including nearly 800 pediatric specialists, between their two hospitals in Kansas and Missouri, in addition to 16 other clinics and sites. It is the largest pediatric care provider in the state of Kansas.
Famously, neither Dr. Alice Berry Graham or Katharine Berry Richardson ever gave birth to a child. However, that does not mean the two women were without children. As their father Stephen had once said, “The truly charitable woman is big enough to help children other than her own.”
In their time, all of the children of Kansas City were the Berry Sisters’ children. During their lifetimes, they gave everything they had to give life and hope to thousands of children in Kansas City and beyond. For many of these children, their generosity was the only chance they had.
To this day, because of what the Berry Sisters built, they continue to do the same for tens of thousands of children, from all across the nation, every single year.
As winter makes way for spring, and baseball season hopefully approaches, five of Kansas City’s favorite sons will soon descend upon Kansas City once again, to honor the legacy of these two incredible women, and do their part to help continue the Berry Sisters’ mission.
Join me next week, as we continue of exploration of Kansas City’s herstory and the amazing women who made our city what it is today.
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Have a favorite icon of Kansas City herstory? Or maybe a fun fact or tidbit about the Berry Sisters and Children’s Mercy? Let me hear it in the comments!
Many thanks to my mother, Janell Dignan, for proofreading and editing these stories. I would not have pulled off this series without you!
