Houlton dedicates lawyer’s vision for health care center

HOULTON – A Houlton High School graduate who advocated for thousands of people throughout her career as a lawyer will now help thousands more receive quality health care.

The Sigrid E. Tompkins Health Center was dedicated Friday as the newest addition to Houlton Regional Hospital. The facility, which contains both a pediatric and internal medicine unit, was made possible largely due to a bequest from Tompkins upon her death in 2005.

A large crowd of hospital administrators, physicians and colleagues of Tompkins attended Friday’s ceremony. Tom Moakler, the hospital’s chief executive officer, lauded the new facility, with 6,500 square feet of new construction and 6,500 square feet of renovated space.

Dr. Ted Sussman, who has been practicing at HRH for more than 25 years, said that the new facility will allow physicians to practice an old style of medicine in a new setting.

“This facility allows us to continue to practice the model of medicine that we prefer and that I think our patients prefer,” he told the crowd.

“This is a lovely facility, it’s big and we have room,” Sussman said. “I think that this will allow us to attract doctors to join us here so we can keep doing what we’ve always been doing … We have to be able to attract doctors, and this is a beautiful way of doing it.”

Born in 1917, Tompkins grew up in Houlton and attended Colby College in Waterville and Boston University School of Law. She spent her career with the Portland law firm of Pierce Atwood and maintained friendships in Houlton throughout her life.

Friend and former colleague Vincent L. McKusick characterized her as a “warm, caring and fun-loving friend.”

McKusick, who is also the former chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, said that he saw Tompkins’ gift of the health center as “Sigrid’s expression of thanks for what her hometown gave to her.”

“Nothing would have pleased her more than for you to see this facility as a token of that thanks,” he told the crowd.