By Kathy Brown, Groveland Yosemite Gateway Museum/Southern Tuolumne County Historical Society
Finding a caring and well-trained medical staff for the hospital in a town with only a few hundred residents on the edge of the wilderness must have been challenging but they succeeded. The doctor and nurses were on call 24/7. To be nearby, they were usually housed in two of three small cottages on the hill behind the Groveland Hospital. Two nurses were on duty from 7 AM to 7 PM daily. One nurse had night duty. Nurses made about $125 a month with room, board and laundry provided.
Doctor John Paul Degnan, born in Yosemite Valley on Oct. 10, 1888, was the best known and longest serving of the doctors assigned to the three different Hetch Hetchy Hospitals in Groveland. He was the child of Bridget and John Degnan who had a bakery and store in Yosemite Valley where he grew up. He studied Greek and Latin and received a Master’s degree in English Literature under the Jesuits at Santa Clara. Doctor Degnan graduated from Stanford University’s Medical School in 1918 and interned in San Francisco. He married nurse Mae Barrett and served in the Army Medical Corps until the WWI was over. Degnan began work at the Groveland Hospital in April 1921, selected personally by the chief engineer for the Hetch Hetchy project Michael O’Shaughnessy. Having grown up in the wilderness and having some military experience made him the perfect choice for a job in the rough. His wife died in 1922 just a few months after the birth of their third child. Their children were then raised in Yosemite Valley by his sister Mary Ellen.
Doc Degnan worked around the clock doing everything from emergency surgery to delivering local babies. Occasionally a doctor from Sonora would come to operate or assist but usually it was just the doctor and his nurses. Through his years as chief of Groveland’s hospital, John Degnan operated on many workers suffering from serious injuries at the dam site or other work locations. Ted Wurm in his Hetch Hetchy Railroad book writes, “many remembered the time that Doc commandeered a ‘hot’ locomotive at Groveland during a snowstorm to rush off and deliver a baby at a lonely farmhouse far out of town.” Wurm also relates that one of the worst project accidents happened at Priest Portal. It was caused by the explosion of a previously set charge which had failed to ignite. “The accident happened at 7:30 on the icy night of Jan. 9, 1922. The Groveland doctor, Dr. John Degnan couldn’t be located immediately so nurse Mary Meyer was rushed to camp to administer morphine to survivors. Four badly injured survivors were rushed immediately to the hospital where Doc Degnan was now ready and started to work immediately. Mary Meyer remembered that he and the nurses worked until daylight before the final suture was tied, some of the damage couldn’t be repaired.” One worker lost his eyes and another lost his arm and had a chunk of rock imbedded in his hip. Tragically, the two others died.
Mary Isaacs, RN, was hired to work at the Groveland hospital on the same day as Doctor Degnan - April 1, 1921. She had answered an ad in a San Francisco newspaper for an industrial nurse. She intended to work in Groveland only a short while and return to the city but she met Gene Meyer, a Hetch Hetchy camp superintendent while she was working at the hospital. They married and she remained in Groveland.
Another well-respected member of the staff was Dorothy Glenn, better known as Glenn since nurses at that time were called by their last names. She and Cassie Munn of Coulterville met and became friends in nurses’ training in Los Angeles. Cassie invited Glenn to come back to Coulterville with her where Glenn met Dr. Degnan. The doctor asked Glenn to do private duty for one of his patients and that led to his offering her a position as his chief surgical nurse. Cassie was also hired to work in the Hetch Hetchy Hospital in March 1923. Glenn later recalled, “Doctor Degnan often made house calls and performed surgery for patients who were not employees of Hetch Hetchy and often could not pay him. He would say, ‘Oh, that’s alright. I am getting well paid by Hetchy. I get $900 a month!’ ” In 1927 Glenn married Fred Conwell whom she had met while he was visiting his uncle at the hospital.
After construction of the Hetch Hetchy pipeline moved down to the Central Valley, the project hospital was moved to Livermore. Doctor Degnan and nurse Dorothy Glenn Conwell moved with it in Aug. 1930. They cared for pipeline workers there until that hospital was also closed in Dec. 1934.
Upon the closing of the hospital the Conwells returned to Groveland. While being a mother to their children Glenn also cared for the health of the community, now without a hospital or a doctor. Mary Laveroni later wrote in an article about health care in Groveland area, “She [Glenn] was present at childbirth and also there to comfort the dying. Her gentle and cheerful manner reassured many a distraught mother with a sick child, and her calm presence in the face of death of a loved one sustained many a grieving family.”
Doctor Degnan remained in Livermore where he started a private practice. He lived there with his daughters until he retired from medical service in about 1956. He then moved back to Deer Flat and the De Ferrari ranch which he had acquired earlier. He spent his retirement years working on projects around the ranch and planted a large vegetable garden which provided his family’s restaurant in Yosemite Valley with vegetables. He died at the ranch in January 1974.
Jonny Degnan Court in Pine Mountain Lake is named in honor of this devoted doctor who could and did recite long verse and stories from memory, was most comfortable in bib overalls, and whose heart never left the mountains.
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