Highline Hospital is celebrating 50 years of service to our community this week. At the same time, it is moving forward with a huge expansion of the emergency ward.

The little hospital on the hill, overlooking Sylvester Middle School across the street, has come a long way since a few citizens came up with a big idea in the early 1950s

The biggest obstacle to a hospital-- other than lacking huge sums of money-- was the lack of a sewer system south of the Seattle city limits in White Center.

The Southwest Suburban Sewer District, managed by former state Sen. Andy Hess, was actively trying to locate a treatment plant at the mouth of Salmon Creek.

I attended many a meeting of this group held in White Center as a neophyte publisher of the News and was there one night meeting when a decision was made to seek a funding source by forming its first Local Improvement District.

This was a new and bold bonding system and meant a public vote, which enabled the sewer commissioners to deal with investment bankers who loan huge sums.

I remember running a full page in color in the White Center News and the Highline Times of a drawing of a proposed hospital with a big letter X across it that said, "No SEWERS, No HOSPITAL."

The citizens passed it easily.

There was a subsequent victory party at a home in Seahurst and I found myself mingling with people from Boston named Saltonstall and Lodge.

From then on, the community kept growing and so has the demand for a first class hospital.

My part was mostly as an observer and scribe, but I am proud of what has happened to our little hospital on the hillside