The Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital (SVMH) is a public district hospital in Salinas, California. Originally built in 1953, SVMH has 263 hospital beds and 1,800+ employees and primarily serves residents of the Salinas Valley. The hospital has partnered with local organizations such as NASA. History Around 1941, the newly formed Salinas Community Hospital Association began planning and fundraising for a hospital. Salinas at the time had a population of thirty-eight thousand, surveys done by the organizing committee decided that Salinas needed a hospital with 86 beds. It was also decided that the hospital needed to be non-profit, all income was to go back into the hospital, with no dividends and no federal income taxes. The Board of Directors will serve without compensation. The association was formed and led by businessman Bruce Church and Oscar R. Daley. The campaign organization was led by chairman Frank Cornell and Associate T.R. Merrill. Bruce Church donated a 4.58-acre tract for the hospital outright, property owners Emma E. Carpenter and Clarence A. Gordon negotiated with the board selling land on Romie Lane which was "situated midway between the junction of Highway 101 and the Maple Park district". Various fundraisers and memorials throughout the community raised funds. September 1942, California Senator Sheridan Downey announced that President FDR had approved a loan of $100,000 and a grant of $110,000 towards the hospital. The association advertised for bids in November 1942 to ready the property for sewer, a field office, and signage. The architect was Charles E. Butner. By June 1944, the association had lost the grant and loan from FDR because of provisions of the Lanham Act which the funds could not be used for a brand new building, approval would be pushed back until post-WWII. The hospital association, led by Church, Merrill, Louis Levy, Charles Butner, and Fred McCarger reprioritized by seeking to purchase the Park Lane hospital, modernize it and grow to 50 beds. The cost was estimated to be $260,000. With this change, the grant of $130,000 could be used. By 1945 and the end of WWII, talk began to change the name of the hospital from Salinas Community Hospital, to Memorial Hospital or as the editor of The Californian suggested, to Bataan Memorial Hospital, in memory of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines. By the end of 1945, the funding from the government had dried up due to "red tape and lack