Fitzgerald’s first general hospital was built in the late 1920s or early 1930s to replace Dr. Dudley B. Ware’s much smaller convalescent hospital on Central Avenue.
My grandmother worked here in the 1950s and my mother and father were born here. It was used by the community until 1974 when a more modern facility, Dorminy Memorial Hospital [now Dorminy Medical Center] opened. When I was growing up, the hospital housed the Cooperative Extension office and other governmental offices.
It was lost to arson in 2012.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 
I well remember Ben Hii County Hospital. I was born there. Dr. Ralph Robert’s removed my tonsils when I was 16 months old. I went to work there at the age of 15. I road my bicycle to work. I worked in house keeping for about three months. I knew I waned to do more than this. I went to the Administrator, Mrs. Katherine Hill and told her I wanted to make a change. In order to do anything back then in Nursing you had to take a course across the street with other Nurses for 8 weeks. I Loved my work all these years that I worked in our hospitals. I well remember the day we lost Ben Hill County Hospital. It was a very sad day. Over the years I made some Absolutely Great friends that later was my Family.
Do you have any information about a hospital building in Fitzgerald on the corner of Central and Gordon that MW Garbutt owned and converted into 4 apartments? I am researching Moses Wadley and Callie Garbutt for genealogy.
I was born there in 72
My mom worked there for years in housekeeping along with Thelma Palmer, Willie Baker, Eddie Paul (deceased), Tim Paulk (deceased), Jamie Brown and Gregory Spivey.. I had my tonsils removed at that hospital at the age of 8 years old…As a teenager I worked there 2 summers under the JTPA program under Mrs. Guiraldo when it became the Community Service Center that had a food bank and clothing bank….Oh I remember it oh so well.
My great- aunt, Katie Young, ran the LPN program and lived in the house across the street. My mother worked there and I was born there.
Our family moved to Fitzgerald in 1952 and our first home was a house at 507 Magnolia on the same side of the street and just across the alley from the hospital. We lived there for several years before moving over to the 400 block of West Central Avenue. Now the entire block is stripped.
I took my LPN training there, lived in the nursing home across the street in the front
Remember it well. My great aunt was a nurse there and my grandparents lived on that street