Out of the Pit: Today, Two Hospital Towers Dominate the Skyline of the Campus and Surrounding Inland Valley

The featured image for this blog is a composite of two photos taken several years apart. The first image dated April 21, 2017, was taken in the pit with a 360-degree camera which now perfectly frames the July 14, 2021 image of the completed Loma Linda University Medical Center and Children’s Hospital on the Dennis and Carol Troesh Medical Campus.

Memories of the Pit

I remember one hot summer day while there was still dirt in the bottom of the pit one of the hard hats came up to me and asked, “Do you think we’ll ever get out of this pit?” A phrase I heard more than once while down in the pit, went something like, “Another day, playing in the dirt.” I remember a laborer who looked down at his buddy shoveling dirt out of a long narrow electrical trench and asked a very profound question: “Do you think anyone knows we’re down in this dirt hole?” A few months later, after the foundation floor had been poured, I was standing at the southeast corner of the project taking photos of the Medical Center and Children’s Hospital with the pit in the foreground. One of the hard hat laborers walked past me and said pointing to the Children’s Hospital, “Hey boss, I’d like to stop and chat, but today, I’m building a hospital for those kids over there.” And then there was a hard hat bent over with his head in a large wooden box. After watching him fumble around for some time, I asked what he was looking for, without missing a beat, I heard a muffled “Brains, Brains man, I heard there was some in here.”