For many years as a teacher, I used the play “The Miracle Worker” in my English classes.  There is a part that I always wanted my students to particularly notice. The teacher, Annie Sullivan, who is teaching a blind, deaf and mute  Helen Keller, is told by others that it was impossible, that she couldn’t succeed, that Helen couldn’t learn and that she should just give up.  Her response was that giving up was for her the worst sin, that she would not give up and would keep trying to get through to her student. And of course, she succeeded.

I think of that often when I am confronted with difficult situations in my personal or professional life.

Every Wednesday at 5 p.m., I have been meeting with like-minded people from the Save Our Hospital group. We stand at Denmark Park and hold signs, wave lights and continue to fight for our hospital. Sometimes the wind blows and the temperature drops, but we continue to come. 

A man came by last Wednesday and said, “I’m all for you, but you can’t fight Mayo Clinic.  They’re too powerful.” And of course, he has a point. Mayo is powerful and has many resources to get what it wants.      

But we have the community on our side. We know that a community of 18,000 people and a surrounding area of tens of thousands more absolutely can support a full-service, acute-care hospital. Many smaller communities are doing just that.

So we will continue to stand on Bridge Street, commiserate about the weather, stand up for our community and our hospital and not give up.

Please do the same. Do what you can. Join us on Wednesdays, give to the organization, write letters to the editor, come to community meetings.

Mayo has money and power on its side. We have us.    

Mary Hinnenkamp

Albert Lea