The Mayo Brothers’ Legacy #throwbackthursdays
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Seventy-five years after their deaths, Charles and William Mayo's statues still stand in a vastly transformed Rochester. Buildings have come and gone around them, and the Rochester population has more than tripled.
The Mayo brothers' legacy has a significant impact on medicine and the foundation of one of the best medical centers in the nation. But few are left who remember the two great men simply as people, as brothers with faults and virtues, as husbands, and as fathers.
According to Dr. Edward Rosenow III, who is now retired but he still remembers what the clinic was like when he arrived in 1960, "One of the strengths at that time is we only had four elevators in the Mayo Building. Everything was in the Mayo Building, and in a day, you would ride up and down anywhere from two to six times, and you would inevitably see somebody you knew because you knew just about everybody."
Rosenow also recalls coffee breaks in the morning and the afternoon — they weren't rushed, and they didn't have the pressure to keep moving. Other physicians walking by would step in for a cup of coffee and share a few things.
"It was just a given that balance in our life was important. Now, balance is a difficult thing to define and accomplish," Rosenow said. "There was more time in the older days, time for more interaction."
Read the full story in the Post-Bulletin.
