Dr. W.E. Reid, Shreveport Charity Hospital’s Superintendent, proposed that the Shreveport Medical Society ask the legislature to appropriate funds for a medical school to be located at the Charity Hospital. In May, Dr. Joe E. Holoubek wrote a letter to members of the Fourth District Medical Society informing them of Dr. Reid’s proposal for a medical school in Shreveport. In his letter, Holoubek urged Society members to contact local legislators to support funding for this project. House Concurrent Resolution 12, introduced on May 25th, moved quickly through the legislature, only to be ignored by Governor Earl K. Long. Plans for a medical school in Shreveport were suspended.

Nearly four years after breaking ground in 1949, the new Confederate Memorial Medical Center (formerly named Shreveport Charity Hospital), located at the corner of Kings Highway and Linwood Avenue, was dedicated. Keynote speakers at the ceremony, Governor Robert F. Kennon and two former governors, Jimmie Davis and Earl K. Long, were all instrumental in making the new hospital a reality. Land was acquired under Davis’ administration, construction began while Long was in office, and the project was completed during Kennon’s term.

The facility was equipped to care for 950 patients, was staffed by 1,000 employees, and built at a cost of $10 million. The hospital was dedicated to the memory of the Confederate soldiers of the Civil War and was financed in part through the issuance of bonds secured by surpluses from the Confederate veterans’ and widows’ pension fund, hence the new name. It is interesting to note that the dedication took place on Confederate Memorial Day.

Within two weeks of the dedication, patients were moved from the hospital on Texas Avenue and Murphy Street to the new location of the Confederate Memorial Medical Center at Kings Highway and Linwood Avenue. In just one day, 335 patients were transferred to the new facility. The first patient to occupy a new room was 24-year-old Betty Fields, who had been hospitalized with polio since 1951. Fields was not inconvenienced by the move and even commented that “the move is like a treatment itself and it seems to be doing everyone good.” 

Members of the surrounding community assisted with the move. Barksdale Air Force Base and local funeral homes made available personnel and ambulances, while the Coca-Cola Bottling Company provided trucks equipped with hydraulic lifts.

Throughout the years, the Shreveport Charity Hospital (now the Confederate Memorial Medical Center) was accredited by the American College of Surgeons (ACS). In 1951, the American College of Physicians, the American Hospital Association, The American Medical Association, and the Canadian Medical Association joined with the ACS to create the Joint Commission of Hospitals (JCAH), whose purpose was to provide voluntary accreditation. On March 23, 1954 a JCAH representative evaluated the Confederate Memorial Medical Center. As a result of this visit the hospital received full accreditation on May 5, 1954. The hospital remains accredited by the Joint Commission today.

Built adjacent to the Confederate Memorial Medical Center (CMMC), the Nurses’ Residence was constructed at a cost of $2,000,000. This dormitory and educational building housed the nursing students in the Northwestern State College School of Nursing program during their clinical rotation. Students in this four-year baccalaureate program spent the first year on the Natchitoches campus taking courses, they received clinical training at CMMC and other participating local hospitals during the second and third years, and they completed advanced course work and field experience in the final year.

Five years following the demise of House Concurrent Resolution 12 in 1950, discussions of a medical school for north Louisiana were revived, but with a different focus. Dr. Edgar Hull, Assistant Dean of the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans addressed the visiting staff of the Confederate Memorial Medical Center (CMMC) at their May 5th meeting. Hull touted CMMC as an ideal site for a postgraduate medical education center for resident staff and physicians. A strong supporter of the cause, Senator Charles E. Tooke of Shreveport, introduced the necessary legislation to fund the project. Several weeks later, Governor Robert F. Kennon signed Act 30 into legislation, appropriating $1,750,000 for the construction of the postgraduate school. Architects designed a four story facility with a foundation that could support an additional four stories for a future medical school.

Progress was made with the establishment of the Department of Postgraduate Medicine at the Confederate Memorial Medical Center in Shreveport, headed by Dr. Edgar Hull. The Department, under the auspices of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans, consisted of 90 local physicians, known as the Visiting Staff, who volunteered their services.  

An early initiative of the Department of Postgraduate Medicine was to educate interns, residents and physicians through a series of one-day to five-day continuing medical education courses taught by members of the Visiting Staff. In November 1955, one of the first offerings was a refresher course in surgical diagnosis moderated by Dr. Paul D. Abramson, the Chief of Surgery. In subsequent years, courses were offered for various specialties including pathology, urology, pediatrics, cardiology, oncology and surgery.

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Louisiana State University Postgraduate School of Medicine at the Confederate Memorial Medical Center took place on April 22, the opening day of Medical Education Week. Dr. William Frye, Dean of the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, gave the keynote address. Longtime opponents of this undertaking, General Troy H. Middleton, Louisiana State University President and Governor-Designate Earl K. Long, were notably absent from the ceremonies.

Opposed to the establishment of the Postgraduate School of Medicine in Shreveport, Governor Earl K. Long influenced the passage of legislation in June 1958 that transferred the remaining $1,847,879 from the medical school building fund to the state’s general fund, thereby stopping construction.