COLUMBUS UNCOVERED DOCTOR FOOTBALL

Columbus Doctors in the 1950s created an elaborate system to catch Buckeyes Games, while on duty

By John M. Clark Photos courtesy of The Ohio State University

Story Design by Bryce Patterson

John M. Clark is a Columbus author and historian. Every month in (614) Magazine he recounts an interesting and unusual story he’s dug from the city’s fascinating past.

Ohio State University’s medical center is known worldwide for its many innovations in health care. Hanging bed sheets from hospital windows is not considered one of them, but perhaps it should be.

These days, you would be shocked to see a hospital doctor without a pager or a cell phone. But in 1951, “beepers” were little more than a novelty, and cell phones were beyond most people’s imagination. If you were an on-call OSU obstetrician, Saturday afternoons in the fall could be excruciating. You couldn’t attend a game at the “Horseshoe” for fear that you would be needed back at the hospital.

That is, until some enterprising doctors and staff members at the newly opened University Hospital (now known as Doan Hall) came up with a brilliant idea. An on-call doctor would register with the staff to let them know he (or she) was going to the game. If a game-attending doctor was needed to deliver a baby, he would look for a certain number of bed sheets hanging from a fifth-floor window at the hospital. For example, Dr. Smith would know that one bed sheet hanging from a window meant he was needed immediately. Two bed sheets meant Dr. Jones was needed. →

In the 1950s, staff were generally seated at Ohio Stadium’s 45-yard line. From there, they had a clear view of the hospital, just a quarter-mile south.

But, only so many white bed sheets could be hung at one time from hospital windows. And more and more doctors were wanting in on the arrangement. So, the staff began introducing colors. Dr. William E. Copeland joined the obstetrics staff in 1953. He recalled his code in a 1999 interview with the Columbus Dispatch – two green sheets and one white one.

In the 1950s, staff were generally seated at Ohio Stadium’s 45-yard line. From there, they had a clear view of the hospital, just a quarter-mile south. This was long before the building boom that saw a number of classrooms and medical buildings being constructed between the two.

The system worked well for more than a decade. But by the mid-1960s, the shine on the bed sheet “paging system” began to dull. Wireless pagers – though weak of signal, initially – had become

widely available. Stadium announcers started making coded announcements for doctors who were needed back at their stations. And when a national magazine got word of the bed sheets, an embarrassed OSU administrator pulled the plug on the unusual alert system.

OSU hospitals weren’t the first to use electronic pagers to summon doctors. That honor went to New York’s Jewish Hospital. But leave it to OSU to devise an innovative use for them. In 1984, as kidney transplants became more common, OSU doctors gave pagers to patients on their transplant list. This allowed them mobility, as harvested kidneys have to be transplanted into recipients within 24 to 36 hours … whether it’s a football weekend or not.

For more stories like this, check out Clark’s book dedicated to unusual local history, “Columbus Uncovered