Published in The Pride of the Prairie newspaper
By Tara Beitelspacher
On Thursday, January 31, the Bowdle Clinic was celebrated with a grand opening on Thursday, January 31. Tours of all the rooms were given by staff, and refreshments were served. A ribbon cutting ceremony took place at 3:30 p.m. with the staff, contract laborers, and local dignitaries, as well as about 50 people in attendance. Overall, over 200 people visited the facility for their tours.
Wayne Washenberger, P.A., started the ribbon cutting ceremony by saying, “It is a great day for Bowdle, the region, and all the communities in this area. It is a great day for our patients. For everyone who has entrusted us to their care, we appreciate every one of you. I know we see patients from Hoven, Lowry, Java, Selby, Mobridge, Timber Lake, Roscoe, Hosmer, Eureka, Aberdeen, and Ipswich. We have a large coverage area, and we love it. We love giving you the hometown touch with really modern care, and that’s what we do.
“I’d like to thank the City Council. This was a big undertaking for them. It took a lot of big gulps for them to decide to really pull the trigger on a very expensive project. It will be here for many years for you guys to enjoy it. I’d also like to thank all of the nursing staff from the clinic. They did an awesome job helping us get to this point. We had volunteers that made a big difference. We had Joel (Kennedy), Chad (Drewitz), Craig (Ullmann), and Vern (Grismer) put in numerous hours.
“I would like to thank Travis, our new P.A., for making the commitment to come here, Dr. Kessler to make huge commitment to come here as a doc who’s young, out of school, and to be here and be my boss. So it’s worked out very well, but again, it will bring us healthcare for years and years to come. Another person I forgot to thank is the most important person in this project – Mary Turner. She’s done exceptional job – sleepless nights, endless hours. There is nobody who could have done it better. Also, I would like to thank Sandy (Schlechter) and Kirby (Kleffman) for their part in this, too.”
“Many people may not appreciate their ability to communicate until it’s lost”
Next, the Project Manager from Hoff Construction, Chris Daniels, said, “It’s been a team effort with the community, the Board, the design team, Sandy (Schlechter), her staff. It’s been really a pleasure. Everybody knows we all have projects that we do at home and the stresses that they are. Don’t get me wrong – there were a few bumps in the road, but everyone had team atmosphere and worked together. Look at the quality product we put out there. We couldn’t have done it without everyone in this room. So, thank-you very much.”
Mayor Boschee thanked everyone for coming out and encouraged the crowd to make sure that they took some time to tour the facility. “It’s a great place. I think we need to give a big round of applause to the contractors, the architect – they did a wonderful job as far as getting everything laid out. We looked at a few different options, we looked at a lot of different ways to do it. I think we came up with something that will be able to work well. It really came out great. I think this is a good step for our community. I think it’s a good direction we are going in. I always say, if we aren’t going forward, we are going backward. We took a big step forward today.”
“On behalf of Co-op Architecture, we want to congratulate the Bowdle Healthcare Facility. We hope you are as happy, excited and pleased with how the project turned out as we are. We want to thank the construction manager, Hoff Construction and Chris Daniels, for bringing our vision from the paper to the built environment. We also want to thank Sandy, all her team, and the doctors at the clinic. It’s your collaborative effort that brought this together and created these successful spaces that will serve you in the future,” added Nate of Co-op Architecture.
Sandy Schlechter said, “Everyone has said a lot, but to sum it all up, it is very true. It’s been about four years in the making that we have been looking at designs as Rick (Boschee) has said. We worked with Hoff and Co-op trying to design it. The clinic has been instrumental in designing the way this clinic should look and function from the beginning from admissions all the way into the exam rooms. They were making sure that it was the right room that we need to provide the best service we can to our community. So it does, like Chris said, take teamwork to do this. It has taken everybody to do this and to make it function. We are also very blessed, as Wayne has said, to not only have the community of Bowdle, but our surrounding areas to be able to offer this wonderful project and this wonderful clinic to service and to be here now and into the future as we journey through life in serving our people from the beginning as newborns all the way to our 105 plus people in our nursing home. We are able to offer this to everybody here. We are located here half-ways between Mobridge and Aberdeen, and it’s a wonderful place. Without everybody doing what they can to provide the care that they do provide, we would not be who we are or where we are without each and every one of them. So I thank all the staff, all the providers, and everybody that helped put this project together.”
Regular hours at the clinic resumed on Friday, February 1, with a soft schedule. A full schedule began on Monday, February 4, with hours from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. through Fridays each week.