72 Years Later, Former Patient Helps Celebrate Shriners Hospital’s Anniversary
Polio may have limited Gordon Friberg’s agility, but it did not sap his spirit.
Today, the 78-year-old retired Valley junior high teacher will be one of more than 1,000 supporters and former patients of the Shriners Hospital for Children who are expected to gather for the hospital’s 75th anniversary. The four-hour celebration begins at 1 p.m.
“They’ve done a lot of good,” Friberg said.
As a 6-year-old Coeur d’Alene boy, Friberg became the 112th patient treated at Spokane’s Shriners Hospital. Doctors at the hospital straightened Friberg’s left foot, which had not grown for a year and a half while he battled polio, and fitted him with an orthopedic shoe.
Friberg spent about seven weeks in the hospital during two stays, leaving both times with his left foot in a cast.
During his first stay in 1925, doctors made several large incisions in his foot to straighten out a limb that had turned inward. Friberg was ready to go home after about three weeks, but stayed a fourth while doctors treated an unrelated illness.
“I was getting along fine until my tonsils flared up,” Friberg said. “So the doc said why don’t you stay a while longer and we’ll take them out.”
Friberg returned to the Shriners Hospital three years later for another operation on his left foot and stayed about three weeks. Periodic checkups followed until Friberg was about 16.
But Friberg’s memories of his hospital visits are as much about horseplay as of treatments.
He fondly recalls tooling around the hospital in a wicker wheelchair with other children. The idea was to get up enough speed to use the chair’s rubber wheels to generate static electricity from the heavily waxed floor. They would then get a jolt out of touching the steel-framed doors and windows.
“I can remember falling twice,” Friberg said releasing a chuckle and a boyish grin. “The chairs didn’t balance and they’d dump you over.”
Most of the doctors and nurses were good sports about the hijinks, Friberg said. That attitude helped keep the mood light and keep the patients jovial, he said.
“They’ve always got a smile on their face,” Friberg said of the patients. “It was the same then.”
Like most boys, outside the hospital Friberg longed to run and play. Football. Basketball. Baseball. Anything, it did not matter.
“I’d have gotten into any of them if I could have,” Friberg said.
By the time Friberg entered high school, the bone in his left hip had begun decomposing, forcing him to walk with crutches or a cane.
Friberg served as track team manager during his first year of college, but was beginning to set his sights on working with his hands. After graduating from the University of Idaho with an education degree in 1944, Friberg took a year of industrial arts training from Oregon State University and a career was born.
He would spend the next 28 years teaching wood shop and mechanical drawing, including 26 years in Valley junior high school shops. Friberg taught at North Pines, Greenacres and Bowdish junior high schools.
During school vacations and on weekends, Friberg built kitchen cabinets for friends and family members, and worked on other projects around the house. None were enough to draw him away from teaching.
“I always got along with the junior high kids,” Friberg said. “They’re a special breed of cats.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo