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In its heyday, Monsour Medical Center was ahead of its time, said Deborah Milito, who worked there for 26 years as a pharmacist.
“We were the neighborhood hospital before anybody else ever thought of the concept,” she said.
Milito has many fond memories of the hospital along Route 30 in Jeannette — it kicked off her career and she got to work with her late twin sister Denise Denunzio, who also was a pharmacist. The former employees have twice annual reunions.
“It’s from housekeepers to nurses to physicians to maintenance, it’s everybody, everybody comes,” she said.
A stone house built in the 1700s was transformed into a seven-bed clinic where Dr. Howard Monsour started seeing patients in 1952. He founded the facility with his brothers Drs. Roy and Robert Monsour. A fourth brother, Dr. William Monsour, joined them later, according to Trib archives.
Two years later, a 50-bed hospital was constructed next door. The iconic canister-like tower was added in the mid-1970s and the name Monsour Medical Center was born.
Denunzio started working there in 1979 and Milito joined her the following year. Milito, who lived not far away in Jeannette, remembered hearing helicopters bringing in patients to the emergency room and trauma center.
“It was nothing to get paged and go,” she said.
Milito’s role gave her an opportunity to learn in various departments and she credits her time at Monsour Medical Center with helping guide her career into working with the elderly. She is now president of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, an international advocacy organization that works to care for senior patients.
Her day job is chief antimicrobial stewardship officer and vaccine and therapeutics coordinator, along with director of consultant and clinical services, at Diamond Pharmacy in Indiana County.
When the hospital’s life neared its end, Milito remembered hearing about departments closing one-by-one. She recalled the Monsour brothers as fantastic clinicians. But the hospital failed a series of state inspections after years of financial issues, sealing its demise.
Milito and her sister were there until the end in 2006, filling the prescriptions for a dwindling number of patients.
“It was a very trying time,” she remembered.
Afterwards, the city condemned the buildings which became attractive to vandals. It was a years long process to get control of the property and tear it down. The Westmoreland County Land Bank bought it in 2014 at a judicial sale for about $15,000.
A $2 million demolition project, funded through local and state dollars, by the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp. started in 2016.
A $2.1 million sale agreement was approved in September 2017 with Colony Holding Co. The property was deeded to Jayhawk Commons, which was the name of an initial retail proposal. The 6.4-acre parcel has been vacant for years. A tenant has not been publicly identified.
Although the hospital buildings where Milito kicked off her professional career are gone, she holds on to the memories of the special coworkers who cared for the area’s ailing.
“They were like my family and they still are,” she said. “We get together and reminisce. I just think it’s so fortunate we all like each other.”