I lived at J.N. Hospital with my father, mother and two sisters in 1939 through 1943. My father, Selim H Dik was a medical doctor there and we lived in the medical quarters. We ate in the dining room and sledded down the hill on the back road in winter. It was such a beautiful place. The air was so clean and pure. When I went away to college I would come home for the holidays and sleep on the porch under a pile of blankets and smell the wonderful clean air. In summer we would walk up the back road and pick berries growing there. Friday nights was great fun as there was always entertainment which some group from Buffalo would sponsor and we would see celebrities perform.
Many rules were ordered which I follow today. We had to wash our hands frequently and cover our mouth when coughing or sneezing. I remember when my father was being interviewed for his job. The superintendent, Dr. LoGrasso invited us to eat in the medical dining room. He stood at the door and said "Wash your hands, first, please". I was very surprised because as a teen I was feeling that my father was a bit old fashioned as he was always telling us that. But here was a perfect stranger telling us the same thing! When my friends asked me where I lived and I told them at a t.b sanatorium, they would cringe and ask if I were contagious. But I assured them that the hospital was more sanitary than school or their homes.
I graduated from Gowanda High School in 1941 but the time I spent at J.N. Adam Hospital in lovely Perrysburg was the happiest in my youth.
In the research of J.N. ADam Hospital, there was reference to the Lincoln Family. I knew Bess Smallwood Lincoln and Ivory Lincoln. He graduated from Syracuse Univ in 1918. He married Bess Smallwood. They had two daughters, Bula Lincoln Palcic and Ruth Lincoln Bury. Ivory Lincoln had a jewelry store on Main Street in Gowanda. They lived on Center Street and Mrs. Smallwood lived next door. She had the first indoor bathtub in Gowanda and it was copper in a nice wood frame. I still remember seeing how shiny it was.
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