Roanoke ophthalmology pioneer Elbyrne Grady Gill was a Sunday school teacher, a fisherman and a Virginia Tech football fan, according to his grandson, Stan Breakell. He was always seen in a suit and tie.
Gill, who is from Bedford County, is best known in Roanoke for opening the first specialty hospital and first eye bank in the commonwealth. In 1926, he founded the Gill Memorial Ear, Eye, Nose and Throat Hospital on Jefferson Street.
Nelson Harris, a former mayor and a local historian, received approval from the Roanoke City Council on Monday to submit an application to the Department of Historic Resources for a marker recognizing Gill’s history in Roanoke. If approved by the DHR, the marker will be placed across the street from the original Gill Memorial Hospital, which is now the site of the Regional Accelerator and Mentoring Program, or RAMP.
Harris said he came across Gill’s story while doing research for his books on local history. He said Gill had an “amazing and fascinating” life.
Specialty hospitals were very rare at the time, making Gill Memorial “quite unique” for the time, Harris said.
Gill attended Vanderbilt Medical School, then worked in a number of places including New York and Berlin before going into private practice in Roanoke in 1919.
Breakell said he remembers his grandfather — or “Papa Gill,” as the boy called him — taking his tonsils out at that hospital, and treating him for head colds. A January 1944 edition of The Commonwealth magazine said through the Lions Club of Virginia, Gill performed eye surgeries without compensation for those who could not afford it.
“During the Great Depression, he would do surgery on people’s eyes and they’d give him a couple of chickens,” Breakell said.
In 1927, Gill began hosting conferences for physicians, and worked with big names in medicine. Guest lecturers included Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, and the Mayo brothers of the Mayo Clinic. He invited Hellen Keller to address the state convention of the Lions Club of Virginia, Harris said, and she later served on the board of the Elbyrne G. Gill Eye and Ear Foundation in Roanoke.
He offered the first post-graduate courses for ophthalmology in the United States, with the Mayo brothers and Fleming on his faculty, Harris said.
Breakell said he remembers going to the conferences at 6 years old, sitting in the front row with his grandfather and other doctors for photos.
“I remember being burning hot in the sun,” Breakell said, laughing, “but it was one of those things we had to do because our grandfather liked us a lot and wanted us to be a part of that kind of thing.”
Gill’s list of achievements and contributions extends past his hospital. He also founded the first eye bank in Virginia through the Lions Club in 1957 — the Eye Bank and Sight Conservation Society of Virginia.
A 1967 article in The Lion quotes Gill as saying, “Contributing enormously to the growth of our organization is, first, a genuine concern for the needs of others and, second, a determination to make possible the flowering of the human spirit.”
Other related positions he held include chairman of the Board of Health in Roanoke for 25 years; member of the board of the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind; president of the Virginia Society for Eye, Ear and Throat specialists and the Roanoke Academy of Medicine; and president of the Alumni Association of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
“When you really take all that body of work into consideration, he really did have clearly a local impact, but also a state and national impact upon that particular area of medical practice,” Harris said.
Gill died in 1967 from a heart attack. Breakell said his grandfather’s legacy lives on through the Gill Foundation, which donates to the Bradley Free Clinic and the Roanoke Rescue Mission.
Gill Memorial Hospital remained in independent operation until 1976, according to the Virginia Room archives, when it was acquired by Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
If approved, the historic marker would cost $3,400. Harris said the Carilion Clinic Foundation is contributing $2,500, and the Lions Club of Virginia is funding the other $900.
[Disclosure: Carilion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Harris said the highway marker application process is competitive — the DHR only accepts 20 to 25 applications per year. Harris has been successful with 10 applications in the city thus far.
He said at Monday’s council meeting that a marker recognizing Advance Auto Parts founder Arthur Taubman is on its way to Roanoke, and an application seeking a marker for pioneering educator Lucy Addison made it to the final approval step with the DHR.
