A couple of Latter-day Saint women in the 1920s — with some funding from the faith’s children — launched what would become a world-class pediatric hospital.
And now there is a second full-service Primary Children’s Hospital in Lehi called the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Campus. It provides nearly all the same specialty pediatric services that the young patients receive at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The new Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital in Lehi on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024.
[See more and learn more about Lehi’s new Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital.]
The first one was the brainchild of two female presidents of the Primary, the worldwide children’s organization in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Originally, Louie B. Felt and May Anderson approached then-church President Heber J. Grant about having a room in Salt Lake City’s LDS Hospital for convalescing children. He enthusiastically embraced the idea.
By 1922, the Utah-based faith opened a 35-bed pediatric care facility in the Orson Hyde home at 40 W. North Temple, across from downtown’s Temple Square.
“The church donated the building and equipment,” said then-Primary President Camille Johnson for the hospital’s 100th anniversary, “and the Primary paid for the expenses of caring for patients and of hospital administration.”
Grant dedicated it.
For decades, Latter-day Saint children were encouraged to give a penny for each of their years on their birthdays and other occasions. A massive fundraising effort, including the successful “Pennies by the Inch” project, was born. Money poured in.
The hospital eventually needed an expansion so the church bought land for a new facility on a hill in the Avenues, overlooking the city.
In 1938, well-wishers gave Grant “a chest of Utah copper made by local craftsmen and filled with 1,000 silver dollars” for his 82nd birthday.
(Utah State Historical Society/Tribune negative collection) President Heber J. Grant of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is surrounded by a group of children on his birthday in November 1938.
After Grant’s death at age 88, his resourceful daughter Frances Grant Bennett had the silver dollars made into paperweights and sold them for $100 apiece. She cleared nearly $100,000 and used the money to bolster her father’s favorite charity: Primary Children’s Hospital.
Until 1975, the Primary general presidency oversaw the hospital. At that time, the church turned over the hospital to a nonprofit organization. It is now run by Intermountain Health. Its flagship campus is nestled in Salt Lake City’s foothills on the University of Utah campus.
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