The news stunned me: Hamilton Mercy Hospital will close June 1.

        After my immediate emotional reaction (I was born there, and my parents died there), I wondered: What's next for downtown Hamilton? What effect will the closing have on health-care options in a city of 60,000 people — who've been lucky to have hospitals on both sides of the Great Miami River?

        I don't know the answers.

        But when Mercy closes, Second Street could have another massive empty block that will be difficult to fill. On Third Street, there's already the block — more, even — that Ohio Casualty left so unceremoniously.

        What's more, there's the huge International Paper office on Neilan Boulevard, near the campus of Miami University Hamilton.

        Need some wide-open office spaces? Come to Hamilton. Please.

        Someday, I fear, the only people left downtown will be lawyers and civil servants and a hundred bored geese.

        If forced to guess which businesses and institutions would leave downtown, I wouldn't have thought of Mercy. After all, it has been around since the 1800s. Somewhere I have a few postcards of old Hamilton, including a Victorian Mercy Hospital that has long since been built upon and covered by remodeling.

        I thought the hospital would be around for the foreseeable forever.

        The news of Mercy's closing took many other people by surprise, probably because a hospital is one of those institutions we take for granted. Something that has operated for your lifetime and your parents' lifetimes and longer, you expect to stay.

        But the times have changed.

        Until the last few years, we didn't even associate hospitals with the usual financial market fluctuations and trends that come with other businesses.

        I realize a hospital's closing does not evoke the same reaction as does, say, an old theater or school — places we associate with personal good times. Memories of a hospital, for the most part, are ones we try to forget.

        Still, you can't forget.

        And you wonder: What's next?

        HAMILTON — The Lindenwald Kiwanis Club will hold its 47th annual Anthony P. Cecere Memorial Pancake Day 6:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 7 at Pierce School. Children's activities will be 9 a.m. to noon.

        This is the club's main fund-raiser. The group helps support schools.

        The club has grown to 100 members who have adopted Pierce and help its teachers.

        This year, the group will award five scholarships to graduating seniors.

        Donations: adults, $3.50; children under 6 get in free.

        Information: Jane Johnson, 863-8210.

        HAMILTON — Author Tony Lamke of Wilmington, Ohio, will speak at 7:30 p.m. April 2 in the meeting room of the Soldiers, Sailors and Pioneers Monument, at High Street and Monument Avenue.

        His topic: “Growing Up in the 2nd Ward in the 1940s and '50s.”

        The free talk is sponsored by the Butler County Historical Society. He is the author of My Pal Grubby, a book about growing up in Hamilton.

        Parking is available next door, in the lot of the Fitton Center for Creative Arts.

       Randy McNutt's column runs Saturdays. He may be reached at 860-7118 or at The Cincinnati Enquirer, 4820 Business Center Way, Cincinnati, OH 45246.

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