Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta impact felt in Southwest Georgia

MOULTRIE — In Southwest Georgia, the average family might not have a connection with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta unless a child born into that family needs specialized care the region’s pediatricians cannot provide.

Such children living today in the area are not the only ones impacted. The adults here have also felt it, and are still touched by it decades later.

After a fall in 1956, Joe Bolin, now 66 and a resident of Moultrie, began experiencing persistent hip pain. He was transferred to the original Children’s Healthcare location at Scottish Rite — then the Scottish Rite Convalescent Home for Crippled Children — to receive free medical care. The doctors discovered the ball in Joe’s hip was almost completely deteriorated.

He was diagnosed with what is today known as Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, a condition that would have left him unable to walk had it not been treated immediately.

“(The hip) was about 90 percent deteriorated,” Bolin said. “According to the doctors there, they caught it just in time.

“I spent a lot of time in the hospital; I had to walk with crutches. In the ’60s, they developed a brace that keeps (those diagnosed with Legg-Calve-Perthes) out of the hospital. They call it a disease, but they don’t know what causes it.”

Bolin was expected to remain completely off his feet. Like many of the other children, white socks were put on his feet so the nursing staff would be able to tell when he had been out of bed — and the nursing staff was not shy about being stern when it was necessary. The staff did a good enough job of keeping the genders separated that Bolin did not realize at the time girls were being treated in a different wing of the same facility.

Well into his adulthood, he nearly broke down when recalling the care he received there.

“They cared for us like we were their own children,” Bolin said in a recent interview with The Albany Herald. “It was an incredible hospital, and I’m sure it is today.”

He said he had direct contact with the doctors, who showed Bolin the X-rays and was frank when telling him what would happen without treatment.

“I’m sure they do something similar now,” he said.

After 2 1/2 years as a patient, Bolin grew up to play baseball in high school, serve in the Marine Corps and launch a 36-year career with the Department of Defense before his retirement in 2003.

He has been married to his childhood sweetheart, Sue Bolin, for 48 years. Together, they have three children and six grandchildren.

He’s also served as a Scottish Rite Mason, with part of his motivation for doing so being an eagerness to give back to an organization that helped him.

“The Scottish Rite Masons supported (the hospital). The doctors volunteered and weren’t paid, so (the Masons) raised money,” Bolin said. “There were other organizations that pitched in, but Scottish Rite was 80 percent of the funding.

“(Becoming a Mason) was as much of a need to give back as it was to make sure children there (today receive proper care). A lot of folks can’t afford it when their child has major problems.”

After some time to reflect on his commitment to giving back to someone who helped him, Bolin added that one does so “not because you are ‘obligated’ to pay back but because you understand the life change given to you and make sure that this facility continues into the millennia.”

His condition hampered his leg growth, resulting in his left leg being more than an inch shorter than his right. He had to wear a special shoe for a few years. By the time he joined the Marines, the difference in the two legs was half an inch.

Eventually, a difference was not felt at all, resulting in a quality of life he might not have had if he had been unable to get the problem treated.

“If it had not been for Scottish Rite, I would not have had the life I had,” Bolin said. “I would have been in a wheelchair now. It took several years for the growth to catch up, but it caught up at 18 and I was able to join the military.”

The population of families in Southwest Georgia whose children have special medical needs that need to be treated at a Children’s Healthcare facility are familiar with the organization. Bolin said he hopes those outside that group can be able to see what it has done for the families it has served.

“Most doctors know about it, especially pediatricians, but it needs to be shared as widely as possible what they are and what they do,” he said.

On the progress Children’s has made, Bolin remarked: “It’s tremendous, it’s unbelievable. It’s almost overwhelming to go into the facilities … and remember where it came from. They do specialty treatment in those facilities. I’d like to see them continue to grow.”

The hospital Bolin was in opened in its original location in 1915. In 1928, the Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children opened, followed by Hughes Spalding Pavilion in 1952. In 1976, Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital opened its current location, and in 1998, Egleston Children’s Health Care System and Scottish Rite Medical Center merged to become Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

In 2006, Children’s Healthcare signed an agreement with Grady Health System and assumed management of Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital. Children’s has clinic sites throughout the state, including a Sibley Heart Center Cardiology site in Albany located on Fourth Avenue.

As part of its 100th anniversary, Children’s Healthcare is recognizing patients like Bolin and inviting other patients and families to share their stories on the website choa.org/100years.