Mary Free Bed breaks ground on state’s first children’s rehabilitation hospital

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Construction on the first rehabilitation hospital in Michigan specifically for children officially started in Grand Rapids on Thursday.

The Joan Secchia Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital will be located on Wealthy Street, across from the existing Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital. The two will be connected by a sky bridge.

The hospital will be the first of its kind in the state and the ninth in the country.

“We’re going to be a leader,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who attended Thursday’s groundbreaking event. “I think this is a great opportunity for Grand Rapids, for treatment of children and I’m so proud that the state’s playing a role in this.”

Mary Free Bed said it will double the number of inpatient beds it currently has, allowing it to help 2,500 more kids per year.

“We’ll see kids coming from all over the country, all over the world to this location. There’s not a kid that we can’t take care of here meaning it doesn’t matter what the disability is, doesn’t matter the situation, with the clinical expertise we have here,” Kent Riddle, president and CEO of Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation, said.

The project is a collaboration between Mary Free Bed and Corewell Health Helen Devos Children’s Hospital. Leaders from both hospitals said they work together every day to ensure patients get quality care and this next project is a great way to continue that care.

“I’m hoping we can expand this because I really do believe, we’re opening 24 beds, it’s going to be full right away,” Robert Fitzgerald, the president of Corewell Health Helen Devos, said.

Eight-year-old Kaden spent weeks at Mary Free Bed after a case of strep and the flu turned septic, attacking his legs. He went through a double amputation and now has what he likes to call “robot legs.”

“Mary Free Bed was awesome to us,” said Kaden’s mother, Michele Stevenson at Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony. “They were very pivotal in getting him where he is now, just getting out of the hospital after his surgery, getting him stronger, help building his confidence, so this is amazing just to see where everything’s going.”

Kole, 7, also spent some time at Mary Free Bed after going into hydrocephalus following a brain tumor removal. He was not able to walk, speak or eat but is now able to do all those things and more, said his mother, Kelly Scarrow.

“Therapy really does make a world of difference. It is everything in a child … you might not think it when you’re in the middle of it but the end result is, it’s literally magical,” Scarrow said.

“They were amazing, the therapy doctors were awesome,” Kole recalled.

Both mothers said they would be forever grateful to the staff at Mary Free Bed.

“To get people like the nurses and the techs and the doctors … there are no words really to describe how amazing all of these people are. And I see them now as family,” Stevenson said.

“The people that have been a part of our journey and a part of our lives will forever be part of our lives,” Scarrow said.

Kole’s message to other kids in recovery: “I survived … and they can too.”

— News 8’s Amber Krycka contributed to this report.

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