08/29/2025
Celebrating our 50 Years birthday month with memories from Dr. Lappe about the first baby born at Garfield, the first year at Garfield Memorial, and community that built a rural hospital.
“It was a shock,” said Dr. Donald L. Lappe´. “I was a city slicker in rural Panguitch.” At that time Lappe´ had graduated from Princeton University, cm laude in electrical engineering. He had attended medical school at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and completed his medical internship at Dartmouth and residency at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester.
“The year Intermountain Health Care was founded (1975), I volunteered to be a general practice physician in Panguitch, Utah. It was the summer before we moved into the brand new Garfield Memorial Hospital,” Lappe´said.
The program that brought him was part of the National Health Services Corps, an arm of the U.S. Public Health Service. The program’s intent was to bring the most modern treatment and innovative care practices to rural Utah.
“The biggest reason I came, though, was Jim Yardley,” Lappe´said. “Jim was a county commissioner at the time, and he was so warm, hospitable, and inviting. How could I possibly say no? And it was one of the best things I ever did."
“The Yardleys welcomed me into their home for a few months until I found a little house to rent, north of town. The town taught me everything they knew from rural life: hunting, fishing, horseback riding, and adventuring in the wilderness with them. I like to think I might have taught them some city ways, too (he was born in Newark, NJ). The good people in Panguitch became, and still are, my extended family.”
Fifty years ago there was no Life Flight in Garfield County. “We had a station wagon with a bed,” Lappe´ said. “The hospital was a big old house with limited equipment. We set bones and delivered some babies there. Then in August of ’75 we moved into this beautiful facility with state-of-the-art everything.”
The county provided $500,000 for the new Garfield Memorial Hospital, the city $100,000, Panguitch Stake $60,000, Escalante Stake $40,000 and Health Services Corporation $300,000 for a total cost of approximately $1 million. Then Intermountain purchased it brand new as part of the fifteen hospitals owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“But as nice as the building was, what makes Panguitch great is the people,” said Lappe´. “Wonderful people like the Yardleys, Tom and Ron Hatch, Denny Orton, Dennis Moser and so many more. And yes, I delivered the first baby born at the ‘new’ hospital, but the amazing nurses were really the backbone of care. They knew everything.” Those three seasoned nurses were Cleo Henrie, Evelyn Rowe, and Louise Holman.
“With the expertise of these incredible nurses and the strong women in Panguitch, we were very good at delivering babies,” Lappe´said. “The tenacity and courage of the moms-to-be made deliveries amazingly smooth. They would come in almost ready to deliver and we would barely have time to get them in bed and hooked up to an IV before baby would arrive. I delivered about 25 babies there.”
Lappe´ also treated an equal number of patients who came in suffering from heart failure. “My first training was as an electrical engineer and you can see similar principles in heart function,” he said. “The heart moves; it’s different from the kidney, liver and other organs. I was fascinated by that.”
That fascination led Lappe´ back to Johns Hopkins after his Panguitch days, where he completed a fellowship in cardiovascular disease. He then returned to Utah and served as the Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Program at Intermountain Health, Chairman of the Cardiovascular Department, Chief of Cardiology and has published many manuscripts and abstracts. He has been honored with the William Osler Award by Intermountain Health in 2001, as a Health Care Hero in 2008 by Utah Business, and received the Distinguished Service to Healthcare Award in 2014 from the Utah Hospital Association. He said he is currently “mostly retired” as Emeritus Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Program and has been seeing many of his long-standing outpatients in clinic.
After 1976 Lappe´ never delivered another baby. However, every Pioneer Day when the Panguitch parade comes by the corner gas station, you might find him with Alice, his wife, and many of their other family members celebrating with the Garfield County folks who welcomed him into their hearts and lives fifty years ago. And at least a few of those were welcomed into the world by him.
