What started as frustration for Mary Woods over a daylong journey with her child to the county health clinic in Valhalla for a regular checkup some 50 years ago has blossomed into a sprawling network of  50 community health clinics located throughout the Hudson Valley, New York City, and Long Island. 

That auspicious beginning was marked by an  anniversary celebration Saturday, August 2 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the organization’s first location, the Jeannette J. Phillips Community Health Center (now Sun River Health) on Main Street.

In a video produced by Community Health Productions in 2009, the story of the founding of the health center is recounted by the founding mothers.

The day after Mary Woods spent hours in Valhalla with one of her four children, she lamented to her friends Pearl Woods, Jeannette Phillips and Willie May Jackson that there wasn’t a clinic in Peekskill. Many families had to travel by bus to Valhalla and wait for hours to be seen.  

There weren’t a lot of options for people to get health care in Peekskill in 1971. Either they spent the day on public transportation to the county clinic or the small clinic in the basement of City Hall where there was very little privacy with people’s names being bellowed out and mothers trying to pacify sick children. 

The four women, known collectively as the “founding mothers” used fried chicken meals as a means to get people from the community to come to organizational meetings where they plotted how they were going to open a health clinic in Peekskill. Circulating a petition by going door to door, the group asked people what kind of services they wanted to see in Peekskill. 

Getting people at the county level involved and writing grant proposals was the next step and a three-year $385,000 grant funded the renting of space and recruiting staff in Peekskill. Three years later, in 1975, the county agreed to provide in-kind services for well care checkups for children along with dental care.

Today, that health center is known as Sun River Health Care and occupies an entire block on Main Street off Bank Street and serves some 250,000 people annually throughout its 50 centers.  A staff of 2,000 doctors, nurses, and health care professionals offer primary, dental, pediatric, OB-GYN, and behavioral health care with the goal of increasing access to comprehensive primary and preventive health care and to improve the health status of underserved and vulnerable communities. 

After Saturday’s ceremony inside Sun River’s offices and a ribbon cutting, across the street in Pugsley Park, visitors enjoyed a festival that included food trucks, arts and crafts, face-painting, a petting zoo, live magic, raffles, and performances by E-Mazin Entertainment, Cesar Vele, and DJ Berry Blendz. Various community organizations, from the Peekskill Youth Bureau to the Field Library had booths that offered information and giveaways. 

The event occurred during National Health Center Week, an annual week of celebration and awareness created by the National Association of Community Health Centers to highlight the commitment and passion of community health center staff, board members, and supporters, as well as spread the word about the vital services health centers provide in the communities they serve.