There they all stood in the light snow of a Sunday afternoon in front of Indiana’s new children’s hospital, which had opened a year earlier. The picture is gray and faded and easy to overlook in the photo collections of Indiana University Indianapolis Special Collections and Archives. But it’s there and if enlarged a bit, it’s still possible to see them all as they stood, wrapped in winter coats to raise the American flag Dec. 6, 1925.
As Riley Hospital’s centennial year comes to a close, this post and this picture are a perfect capstone to the 100 years of remembering and celebrating Indiana’s first children’s hospital.
All that was said on the back of the faded gray tone photograph was “Flag raising ceremonies Sunday afternoon December 6, 1925. Flag presented by Arab Patrol Murat Temple.” The Indianapolis Murat Temple’s Arab Patrol was an elite marching unit. The Indianapolis Murat Temple, built in 1910, is still a part of the national network of Shriners International. But here, the Arab Patrol stood together, in front of Riley Hospital for Children, with no public fanfare, honoring James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children with the quiet act of raising a flag to a new chapter in Indiana’s care for children.
The simple act by the Indianapolis Murat Temple’s Arab Patrol of raising the American flag was a fitting tribute to the hope that this new children’s hospital represented then and still represents now. Most of the founders of the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children were veterans of WWI, one of the Spanish-American War. Others had used their leadership skills to help support the war effort. WWI, the “war to end all wars,” was still a fragile and temporary hope just seven years after the Armistice was signed in November 1918. In the quiet of that December afternoon in 1925, with only the sound of our country’s flag being raised, this one simple forgotten act of symbolic hope for the hospital’s future still stands today to remind us why Riley Hospital for Children opened in 1924, how it has lasted for 100 years and now is moving into its second century of caring for children.
--Compiled by the Riley Hospital Historic Preservation Committee
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