I’m currently working on a book that will cover the history of Camp Hollis, the children’s camp located on Lake Ontario, in the town of Oswego. I’m researching the camp back to its earliest years, before it was known as Camp Hollis, when it operated as a Health Camp from 1928 until 1943. The founder of that camp was Dr. LeRoy Hollis, of Sandy Creek, and before he created the recreational haven devoted to children’s health, he was responsible for another facility devoted to the medical needs of the severely ill. It was known as the Oswego County Sanatorium.
Dr. Hollis’ sanatorium, located in the town of Orwell, was founded to battle a dreaded health concern in the early 1900s: tuberculosis. An infectious disease that primarily attacked the lungs, TB earned the nickname “The White Plague,” and mention of it still sends a chill up the spines of those who remember when tuberculosis had no cure. While it’s been a health threat as far back as recorded history stretches, it was during the Industrial Revolution, when overpopulated cities forced people into tight living quarters, that tuberculosis exploded into a major crisis.
Medical researchers were working toward a cure for TB, but in the early twentieth century, when Dr. Hollis had a well-established medical practice, effective treatment was still in its exploratory stages. As was true with other contagious diseases, the only “remedy” Hollis could offer his patients was prevention. At the first sign of the disease’s symptoms—a persistent cough, difficulty breathing and walking, or an unexplained loss of weight—doctors prescribed fresh air, good nutrition and plenty of rest in hopes of building up weakened immune systems.
To prevent further spread of tuberculosis, those suffering from it were placed in isolation, in facilities first known as “resorts,” though that term is misleading. Imagine, rather, something of a maximum security prison, where the diseased were quarantined and their daily activities restricted. As cruel as those conditions sound, people saw it as their only hope for recovery. To express their faith in this health regimen, doctors gave these institutions a name derived from the Latin word sano, “to heal.” Sanatoriums, medical professionals determined, were the best remedy for people living with TB.
Though not a cure for tuberculosis, doctors nationwide noted improvements for those isolated in sanatoriums. As the number of cases rose, the need for them increased and new sanatoriums opened, including a popular one in Saranac Lake, New York, in the heart of the fresh air-filled Adirondack Mountains. One hundred and fifty miles from Saranac Lake, at his office in Sandy Creek, Dr. Hollis studied the encouraging reports from the Adirondack sanatorium and knew that Oswego County residents with TB could benefit from such a facility closer to home.
Dr. Hollis found support for his sanatorium from New York state. By 1909, the state had taken action to assist in eradicating TB, passing a law to provide funding for county tuberculosis hospitals. A year later, Dr. Thomas Carrington, of the National Association of the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, visited Oswego County, urging officials to form a committee to oversee a county-run sanatorium. Dr. Hollis pledged to lead the local effort and then recruited physicians and several elected lawmakers from Oswego County’s Board of Supervisors. (Today the Supervisors are known as Legislators.) Together they formed the Oswego County Committee on Tuberculosis and Public Health.
The committee’s work was fruitful and in October of 1913, at a 160-acre farm on the western edge of the town of Orwell, seven residents were admitted to the Oswego County Sanatorium. By the end of its second year of operation, they were joined by nearly 100 TB sufferers.
For all the good being attempted at the Sanatorium, some carry haunting memories of seeing their loved ones housed there in isolation. Sandy Creek resident Margaret Kastler recalled what it meant to have a parent living there. As she rode with her family to Orwell, Kastler, a young child, was hoping to spend time with her mother, but “we had to talk to her through a screen door.”
Fultonian Bob Green’s memories are equally grim. When he was a teenager, Bob and his family traveled from Fulton to visit his older sister. “She took to shaking terribly and my father had taken her to the Sanatorium. After supper one night, she died of a heart attack. She was 21.”
By 1917, Dr. Hollis had been appointed superintendent of the Oswego County Sanatorium, which required him to give up his Sandy Creek medical practice. But LeRoy’s townspeople needn’t have been concerned that they were losing their doctor. When he began his new position, Hollis’ son, Harwood, who’d recently graduated from Syracuse Medical College, became the second Dr. Hollis to keep Sandy Creekers healthy. A third member of the Hollis family, LeRoy’s grandson Warren, would also serve as Sandy Creek’s loyal physician.
Though Dr. Hollis was pleased with the sanatorium’s expanding level of care, he had a special concern for one group of patients: children. While the disease threatened all ages, it was youngsters’ still-developing lungs that made them especially vulnerable. The Orwell Sanatorium provided children the same treatment—fresh air, clean water and plenty of nutritious food—as it did for adults, but the facility lacked the playfulness a growing child needs.
With that in mind, Dr. Hollis shifted his attention to finding a facility that could serve children at risk of contracting tuberculosis by combining healthy regimens with plenty of recreation. He began looking for the perfect spot for a children’s health camp, ending his search on the shores of Lake Ontario, where he led the development of a new program dedicated to children’s health. In 1946, after the Health Camp had been dormant during the World War II years, it became a recreational haven for all children. That same year, Dr. Hollis died and those leading the efforts to reopen the facility named it Camp Hollis, honoring the man who had devoted his life to Oswego County health.
Dr. LeRoy Hollis (far left) standing in front of the Oswego County Sanatorium, the institution he founded in 1913 to treat patients suffering from tuberculosis.