Take a drive through rural America, and you will likely see many small-town mainstreets with empty buildings, boarded-up windows. Sadly, it has become an all-too-familiar sight.

But Callaway is different. It always has been. The people of this community are determined to not only keep their town alive, but growing and thriving.

A few weeks ago, the Courier featured an article about a local businessman who is renovating the former Masonic Temple to create office spaces in downtown Callaway. Adam Bailey had been renting office space in the building just west of Shotgun Annie’s, but was forced to relocate when that building was sold. Now the new owners of the building - Callaway District Hospital - have done a little remodeling of their own and repurposed the space.

“For the last year or so we have been looking for a place here in town for the purpose of housing students when they come in to do rotations here, bad weather if our staff needs a place to stay, or for a locum provider that’s covering the emergency room for a holiday or weekend or something like that. So we’ve kinda quietly just been looking to potentially purchase a house,” explained Brett Eggleston, CEO of Callaway District Hospital.

Eggleston said they looked at a few houses but did not find anything that met what they were looking for. It was at that time that Jim Jenkins approached Eggleston and told him he had a building in downtown Callaway and asked if the hospital might be interested in purchasing it. They were.

Between six and eight months ago, that sale took place, and since then the hospital has been doing some remodeling to create the space to meet their needs. “It will serve kind of two purposes. One will be for the on-call housing situation. It will have three individual bedrooms, a small kitchen, and two bathrooms,” Eggleston explained. “The second purpose will be to house the transportation office. Public transportation had been in an office in the clinic, so they have vacated that space and moved downtown.”

The new location allows the transportation office more room and also provides parking behind the building for the three vans.

A decade ago or more, the building had housed a dental office. When Jenkins purchased the building, he remodeled it and made office spaces available for rent.

“We are constantly trying to recruit new staff, so having a place where someone who is new to town to stay for a few months is really important,” Eggleston said. “We are actually doing some international recruiting now and looking at getting a lab tech from the Philippines. We go through the process to help them become a citizen, and part of that is that we have to provide some housing for them for at least the first six months. Basically they come with a couple of suitcases with some clothing, so they would need a place to land while they get acclimated to the area.”

Eggleston said recruiting in healthcare has become a whole new world. “We used to try to recruit locally and find people who have connections to the community, and we still do that, but there’s just not that same pipeline of people. So you have to get very creative,” he shared. “The state has been very good about vetting all of these international programs. Typically, you have to recruit in couples, but we got very lucky. The one we are visiting with right now wants to come over on his own.”

Providing housing is just one area the hospital tries to help international recruits with. They also work to help establish connections with others in the same profession and culture. “We try to just basically help them create a friend group,” said Eggleston. “The goal is that at the end of the two years, once they have their green card, that they would like it in the area and would stick around.”

The remodeling of the downtown building is now complete. What was once just a small kitchenette is now equipped with new cabinets, range, microwave, and refrigerator. A PA student is currently staying in one of the rooms for a few weeks, and the hospital has hosted some traveling staff as well.

“We have so many essential staff. You can’t run a hospital without doctors and nurses, lab techs, and x-ray techs, so when we have bad weather, we have to have some place for those folks to spend the night. We have to be here rain or shine,” Eggleston added. “We’ve had staff sleep in a hallway before if they had to. This just makes it a little more comfortable.”

Eggleston said a lot of places do not provide medical students with housing, so when recruiting, having a place for them to stay is really important. “They’re broke college students so they don’t necessarily have the resources to rent a hotel or a house for the six or eight weeks that they are on rotation,” he said. “They remember when they have a place that offers them free room and board. So when you start recruiting those individuals and you ask them to come back to your community, they remember Callaway. It’s an expense, but it pays itself back when you start recruiting medical providers. Those little things help make our town the kind of place they want to come back to and work.”