MAUMEE, Ohio — When Dr. Thomas Boggs made the final call for St. Luke's Hospital on May 8, he was also signing out as the last doctor working in the hospital.
In the video of the final call, Boggs struggles to speak through the emotional intensity of the moment.
"It started off in the morning and it was a whole day's worth of work," Boggs said. "We did the progression with the nurses, doctors and firefighters, and the EMS came out and we all reminisced on our stories and our memories with this place."
Boggs had eight years' worth of memories as an emergency physician at the Maumee hospital.
He said watching his home away from home close its doors was hard, but he is now thankful to be the assistant residency program director at the University of Toledo.
"I'm going from working here where we did some teaching to being very involved in the education training and helping to produce the new rounds of emergency medicine doctors hopefully from here until eternity," Boggs said.
From patients to nurses to hospital staff, Boggs said he did his best to treat everyone equally. Theresa Konwinski, the former Vice President of Patient Care Services at St. Luke's, said.
"You know if you want to talk to someone whose opinion you can trust, Tom Boggs is the guy," Konwinski, who is now retired after working for 30 years at St. Luke's, said.
Alyssa Elinger, a former ER nurse at St. Luke's, said Boggs was an "open book" when it came to questions.
"From the moment I started in the ER, he was very welcoming," Elinger, who transferred to ProMedica Flower Hospital in Sylvania, said. "A great leader, a great educator."
Elinger was afraid St. Luke's closure would separate her from co-workers she had befriended over the years. But after transferring, she realized many of the St. Luke's were still in northwest Ohio, just a bit more spread out. It's different than working in the same building, but "no matter where we end up, someone should be with us from our family (at St. Luke's)," Elinger said.
Like any close-knit family, the former St. Luke's staff is planning a reunion on at the Springfield Township Community Homecoming Park from 3-9 p.m. on June 2. Konwinski said there will be food trucks and everyone with a connection to St. Lukes is welcome.
"Know that as a community, you are not forgotten," Boggs said. "You are always in our hearts and we are here to take care of you even though we are in different places."