Mary Imogene Bassett was born to Doctors Wilson and Mary A. Bassett in Mount Vision, NY in 1856. In 1874, the family moved their growing medical practice to Cooperstown. They practiced in a house that still stands on lower Fair Street and treated their patients for $6-$12 week -- including room and board!

Bassett Healthcare is named in honor of a physician who devoted herself generously for many years to the sick and unfortunate of Cooperstown and the surrounding region. The hospital's first Physician-in-Chief, Dr. Mary Imogene Bassett died in 1922, but is still remembered as a wise and skillful physician and a devoted and unselfish friend.

At a time when few women found recognition in medical careers, Dr. Mary Imogene Bassett distinguished herself early. She was only 31 when she graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She received further training and became an Instructor in Nervous Diseases at the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine. She published several articles in that field and was subsequently elected delegate to the Philadelphia County Medical Society and the American Medical Association (AMA).

After the death of her mother in 1893, she abruptly turned to a rural general practice in Cooperstown with her aging father. Her father died in 1905 and Dr. Mary Imogene continued alone. She had a very active practice in and around Cooperstown. She was a beloved, dedicated physician who was called "Dr. Molly" by many of her patients.

Among Dr. Bassett's friends and patients was Edward Severin Clark. He had great admiration for her. According to anecdote, he heard her express a wish for a laboratory to provide scientific data with which she and the other Cooperstown practitioners could better care for their patients. Mr. Clark granted her wish, building not only a laboratory, but a fully-equipped 100-bed fieldstone hospital building. Named "The Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital," it was meant as a living memorial to Dr. Bassett.

In 1918, the hospital was nearing completion and was offered by Mr. Clark to the US Government for use as a temporary convalescent home for aviation officers until late 1919. The public opening of the hospital came in June 1922, with Dr. Bassett serving as Chief-of-Staff. Tragically, she suddenly died of a stroke at home in October of that year. Mr. Clark directed that the light in the cupola be lit every night in memory of her -- and it is to this day.

Soon after Dr. Bassett's death, the hospital began struggling to keep its doors open. The 100-bed hospital proved too large for the small village and its local practitioners to support and the facility closed in 1925.

"Is it visionary to think of the hospital of the future and perhaps the not very distant future as a socially progressive health center?"

• Dr. George Miner Mackenzie, Director, The Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, 1929-1947

As the story is told, one day, several senior residents at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City (located then on East 70th Street) were discussing their hopes to work in a rural hospital. A junior resident, Dr. Henry S. F. Cooper, overheard their conversation and mentioned that he knew of a vacant, state-of-the-art 100-bed hospital in Cooperstown, New York. Dr. Cooper was a descendant of Judge William Cooper, who had founded the village of Cooperstown in 1787.

The residents were intrigued. Within minutes, Dr. Cooper had crossed the street and was sitting in the home of Stephen C. Clark, Sr., who had become interested in the empty hospital his brother Edward had built. Dr. Cooper suggested the idea of reopening the Cooperstown hospital, with Mr. Clark's support.

On the following day, the residents and Mr. Clark traveled by seaplane, landed on Otsego Lake, and began planning for the revival of The Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital. In March 1927, the hospital reopened with Dr. Mackenzie assuming directorship in 1929. He served as both Director and Physician-in-Chief for the next 18 years.

Dr. Mackenzie envisioned an ideal rural hospital dedicated to patient care, education and research, where the practicing physicians were full-time and salaried. His guiding philosophy was to create the strengths of a university hospital in a rural region. His vision, which shaped the hospital's original mission, continues at Bassett today.

Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Mackenzie developed a revolutionary self-insurance plan, an early version of today's health maintenance organizations. This plan was developed to help people pay for medical services. Subscribers paid in advance an annual premium of $25 for a single individual or $100 for a family of four or more. Full coverage was provided for hospitalization, all doctors' fees, preventive care, surgery and specialty care. Starting in 1930 on an experimental basis, the plan operated for nine years. During this time, it seemed to be successful -- subscribers were satisfied and the hospital found it a convenient and financially viable method of providing medical care. The plan was reluctantly terminated in 1940 at the urging of the New York State Department of Social Welfare, backing at that time the establishment of a Blue Cross Plan.

Just before his retirement, Dr. Mackenzie also established a formal link in 1947 between The Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital and Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. This agreement furthered Bassett's development as a strong academic institution and gives many members of the Bassett medical staff faculty appointments at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"Construction at The Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown of proposed facilities for the critical administration of total-body radiation to man, should expedite the clinical development of this promising field."

• Editorial, The New England Journal of Medicine, September 12, 1957

After Dr. Mackenzie's retirement in 1947, Stephen C. Clark again played an essential role in the hospital's development. He personally recruited Dr. James Bordley III from Johns Hopkins University to head Bassett Hospital.

Under Dr. Bordley's leadership, education and medical research began to grow, as did Bassett's reputation for innovation and leadership in rural medicine. Dr. Bordley expanded Bassett's education programs to include nurses. In response to nationwide nursing shortages, Bassett initiated undergraduate nursing education affiliations and the student nurses were housed in the former Cooperstown Academy building, remodeled and named Bassett Hall.

In 1953, the Bassett Auxiliary was formed and in October 1969, the Friends of Bassett became officially recognized. Both groups actively raise funds to enhance Bassett's patient care, research and education endeavors. In the 1990s, the Friends of Bassett raised over $7 million during the first capital campaign to help fund the construction of the Bassett Clinic in Cooperstown.

Research boomed in the 1950s with the award of numerous grants and the assembly of a pioneering group of researchers including Dr. Joseph W. Ferrebee, Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, Dr. Theodore Peters, Jr., and Dr. David A. Blumenstock. In 1956, these Bassett physicians completed the first bone marrow transplant in history. The bone marrow from a healthy twin was transfused to a twin with leukemia, after whole body radiation had wiped out the sick twin's malignant leukemia cells. Landmark work in heart and lung transplantation was also done at Bassett during this period. In 1990, Dr. E. Donnall Thomas received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering transplantation work, which has led to the successful treatment of leukemia.

"Every statistic shows that rural medicine lags far behind what is available in urban areas...But Cooperstown...is a remarkable exception. Reason: it has The Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, a mini-medical center that ranks among the best in the US."

• Time, January 25, 1971

The 1960s brought the opening of the Bassett Research Institute and in 1967, ground was broken for a new inpatient building that doubled the number of hospital beds and provided a new cafeteria and pharmacy. Dr. Bordley's successor, Dr. Charles Ashley, undertook significant expansions in staff, buildings, specialty services and nurse-staffed health centers. During his directorship, the number of outpatient visits increased from 60,000 to 140,000 per year and the overall Bassett staff tripled -- from 400 to 1,200. In 1973, the first Bassett nurse practitioner was established in Edmeston and in 1978, a second community health center opened in Cherry Valley. This innovative solution to the shortage of physicians in rural areas marked the beginning of Bassett's regional health center network.

In 1970, the Carnegie Commission called for drastic improvement in the quality of US rural medicine and pinpointed one existing hospital as the ideal prototype -- Bassett. One year later, Time magazine featured Bassett as a model of rural health care delivery.

Farmsafe, the predecessor to the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) was established in 1980 to reduce the incidence of farm-related injuries and illnesses in the region. At the same time, the Bassett Research Institute began conducting some of the first major population studies of rural Americans.

Bassett continues to welcome affiliations with a number of medical, nursing and allied health programs and schools, all of which help attract practitioners to this rural region. In the 1990s, the Research Institute, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Pearson, continued its studies, presenting at medical conferences around the world and regularly making news headlines.

Cooperstown's hospital offers a Birthing Center, Special Care Units, Dialysis and Intensive Care Units. Advanced cardiac care arrived in the region with the opening of the Bassett Heart Care Institute (BHCI) in 2003. From prevention and detection to surgery and rehabilitation, BHCI offers a complete range of cardiac and coronary care services. Bassett is also a designated Area Trauma Center and Stroke Center.

By the mid-1990s, Bassett had developed a fully integrated system of health care delivery serving the people of Central New York, a system that now includes four affiliate hospitals: O'Connor Hospital in Delhi, Cobleskill Regional Hospital in Schoharie County, Little Falls Hospital in Herkimer County and Tri-Town Regional Hospital in Delaware County.

Today the cupola light continues to burn in Dr. Bassett's memory and the missions of patient care, research and education remain unchanged. The visionary goals of Bassett's former leaders, educators, researchers, physicians, employees and volunteers continue to guide the organization through growth and change.

Just as generations of patients and families have passed through Bassett's front doors, so have generations of dedicated employees, health care professionals and other supporters whose compassion and caring will long be remembered. These individuals have always been the heart and soul of Bassett and will continue to distinguish Bassett as a health care tradition for many generations to come.