95 years of healing: Sage Memorial Hospital’s journey from mud walls to modern medicine

By Jim Kristofic
For Sage Memorial Hospital

This year marks the 95th anniversary of Sage Memorial Hospital operating in Ganado, Arizona. The staff of the Navajo Health Foundation, the non-profit that operates Sage Memorial Hospital, is celebrating with an event to honor and explore the history of the institution that began as a four-room adobe mud building and has now grown to a 177 million-dollar, 140,200 square-foot facility with 25 hospital beds that serves more than 25,000 people.

A celebration of service and growth

People will gather at the hospital campus Aug. 1 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. to attend a job fair, listen to a live podcast of community stories, participate in youth wellness activities, a fun run and walk, and shop a farmers market. A complimentary lunch will be provided for people as a gesture of gratitude and appreciation of the community.

The hospital at Ganado began in the back room of the stone church at Ganado Mission in 1911, where an elderly doctor named James Kennedy used it as a place to dispense medicines to cure trachoma, a bacterial eye infection that caused blindness. Kennedy was known for walking for miles – sometimes as far as Chinle – to treat patients during the 1918 flu epidemic. Dr. Kennedy retired and was replaced by Drs. Alice and Gary Burke, who helped to build the adobe hospital at Ganado Mission. They logged more than 5,000 miles in their first year treating patients.

To read the full article, please see the July 31, 2025, edition of the Navajo Times.

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