DUANE
Duane's take
Now, I'm tellin' this one straight from the official marker — so let's see what the Texas Gulf Coast has been holdin' onto all these years. Three brothers walked into medicine. That's not the setup to a joke — that's just the Spohn family.
A.E. Spohn was born in Canada in 1845, and by the time he was done studying, he'd passed through Michigan and New York getting himself properly schooled in the healing arts. Then, in 1868, the U.S. government pointed him south and said: Texas Gulf Coast.
He came as a surgeon in charge of military quarantine. Not exactly the warm welcome wagon, but it was a start. Now here's where the story takes a turn.
In 1876, A.E. Spohn married Sarah Josephine Kenedy — daughter of a man named Mifflin Kenedy, steamboat captain and rancher. Corpus Christi became home.
Dr. Spohn settled in, built a reputation as a prominent local physician, and threw himself into medical organizations the way some men throw themselves into cattle or commerce. But a doctor is only as lasting as what he leaves behind.
And what got left behind was a hospital. In 1905, Spohn Sanitarium went up on North Beach. The funds came from some of the weightiest names on the Texas Gulf Coast — Mr. and Mrs.
John Gregory Kenedy, Mrs. Henrietta King, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J.
Kleberg, and other leading citizens. Dr. Spohn's associate, Dr.
Alfred G. Heaney, admitted the very first patient. The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word operated the place.
It was, by any measure, something. Then September 14, 1919, came along. A hurricane hit that structure on North Beach.
Damaged it. And here's where you learn something about the kind of people who built things on this coast — they didn't quit. Mrs.
Henrietta King, widow of Captain Richard King, founder of the King Ranch, donated five acres at a new site. Five acres, just like that. A three-story brick building went up in 1923, and from that foundation, Spohn Hospital grew into a modern medical complex.
A.E. Spohn himself had died in 1913 — six years before the storm, twelve years before that brick building rose. He never saw what the hurricane would take, and he never saw what it would give rise to.
But his name was on it. Still is. Three brothers became doctors.
One of them came to Texas in 1868 and never really left — even after 1913. That's a kind of medicine too.
What the marker says
One of three brothers who became doctors, A.E. Spohn (1845-1913) was born in Canada and studied medicine in Michigan and New York. He came to the Texas Gulf Coast in 1868 as a U.S. surgeon in charge of military quarantine. He settled in Corpus Christi after his marriage in 1876 to Sarah Josephine Kenedy (1857-1918) daughter of steamboat captain and rancher Mifflin Kenedy. A prominent local physician, Dr. Spohn was also a leader in numerous medical organizations. The first hospital named in his honor was Spohn Sanitarium, built in 1905 on North Beach, with funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. John Gregory Kenedy, Mrs. Henrietta King, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Kleberg, and other leading citizens. Dr. Alfred G. Heaney, an associate of Dr. Spohn, admitted the first patient to the facility, operated by Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. After a hurricane damaged the structure on North Beach on September 14, 1919, Mrs. Henrietta King, widow of Capt. Richard King, founder of the King Ranch, donated five acres at this site for a new hospital. From a three-story brick building erected here in 1923, Spohn Hospital has grown into a modern medical complex. (1977)