Weems Memorial celebrates 65 years of service to Franklin County

Mrs. George Weems cutting the ribbon at the official opening of the George E. Weems Memorial Hospital June 21, 1959.

This year, Weems Memorial Hospital celebrates 65 years of continuous service to the citizens of Franklin County and the surrounding area. Weems opened June 21, 1959 in its current location on Washington Square, but it was not Apalachicola’s first hospital. Historians note that Apalachicola’s first hospital was actually a renovated Army barracks building at the airport with 13 beds, a small obstetrical wing and a procedure suite. That hospital provided care from 1948 until Weems Memorial was completed and opened with 25 beds at the present site in 1959.

The site of the current Weems Hospital was once the site of the original Franklin County Courthouse. The courthouse structure was later converted into the health department and operated as such until it was demolished in 1957 to make way for the new hospital which exists there today.

Weems Memorial Hospital was named after Dr. George Emberson Weems who began his medical practice in Apalachicola in 1909 in the rear of Robbins Drug Store. Dr. Weems exemplified the role of the country doctor by seeing many patients in their home, and his dining room table was even used for late-night emergency surgeries.