To the Editor,

In this Resurrection season, when we are focused on love and hope spring which reminds us of renewal, I am happy to announce that almost all of the hurdles to the reopening of the Belhaven Hospital have been overcome.

The last obstacle to the rebirth of the Hospital is an organization called Pantego Creek, LLC. According to local officials, this organization is led by four individual managers, who are Brantley Tillman, Deb Sparrow, Darren Armstrong and Lynn Ross. The LLC is now in control of the actual hospital property. The property was given to them by agreement when Vidant Health closed the Belhaven Hospital. Our research revealed that these managers have no personal money in the facility and therefore have no reason to not return it to the very people who paid for the facility, the people of the Belhaven community.

The North Carolina NAACP is dedicated to aiding the people of northeastern Beaufort and Hyde counties in reopening their hospital. We are in constant contact with the leaders in the Belhaven area. The North Carolina NAACP is ready to lend our people power and legal team to accomplish reacquiring of the hospital property. Potential action will include all the methods of direct action including organizing a march with representatives from across North Carolina. We will be conducting non-violence workshops in the community over the next month to prepare the local people to conduct local actions. The local actions could include information pickets at homes, churches and places of businesses of the above named managers and others directly involved.

We are praying for a reconciliation within the Belhaven community. This is a moral issue. In the Bible, Luke 4:18-19, of the great moral mission of God is articulated as healing the broken hearted, recovery of sight for the blind and liberty to the bruised. It is time for Belhaven, a community that has been broken-hearted and bruised by the closing of its hospital because of the blindness and the greed of a corporate hospital conglomerate, to be made whole.

Due to the long struggle to reopen the hospital and the obstacles the residents had to overcome, Belhaven has become a national symbol for saving rural hospitals. This struggle, however, is bigger than Belhaven. The LLC managers need to realize this and give the entire nation reason to hope that people can work across political, race and generational lines to accomplish great things for the people and the community as a whole.

 

Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
President, N.C. NAACP