The Boys and Girls Club of the Mississippi Delta will soon move its administrative offices into a historic Greenwood building that housed three generations of doctors.
The club, which operates seven locations in the Delta, is in the process of purchasing the Physicians and Surgeons Building from Greenwood physician Dr. John F. Lucas III.
The building has been owned by Lucas III’s family since 1939 when his grandfather, Dr. John F. Lucas Sr., purchased it three years after starting his practice in Greenwood.
A doctor with the name Lucas practiced in the building until 2019, when Lucas III’s practice moved inside to Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
“I’m delighted that it’s going to be used and I think they’ll be good stewards of the building and they’ll take good care of it,” Lucas III said. “The Boys and Girls Club is a great organization and do great work. I’m pleased that they’re able to carry that on.”
David Dallas, the club’s executive director, and Cameron Abel, a member of the club’s board of directors, both said a long-term goal of the club was to secure an office the club could own rather than rent.
“It’s expensive to rent space and that’s just money we don’t see again,” Dallas said. “This is actually a nice way to invest for us.”
Founded in 2002 in Cleveland, the club’s administrative office is currently housed in Yazoo City.
Abel said the move makes financial sense and was a great opportunity.
“A lot of that has to do with it makes it more central to all the sites that are currently being run through the organization,” he said. “It just makes tactical sense to relocate.”
He said a move became possible when the club was informed by the Boys and Girls Club of America that the Delta organization had received a donation from MacKenzie Scott, who Abel said had identified the group specifically for the donation.
“When we got this donation, one of the things I felt like we could do was actually purchase a building,” Dallas said.
In 1929, the Physicians and Surgeons Building located at 501 W. Washington St., then owned by Dr. John Preston Kennedy, opened and was featured in the Commonwealth in June of that year.
“On the corner of Washington and Henderson Streets,” the story reads, “beautiful in its architectural simplicity, solid and staunch in its structural make-up, Dr. Kennedy’s Physicians and Surgeon’s building is the latest to denote the progression that embodies not only building construction but the advancement of the science of healing.”
The story lauded the building as housing “some of the most widely known and efficient practitioners in Greenwood.”
Just four years later, Kennedy would die and set off one of Greenwood’s most sensational stories.
In 1933, Kennedy had been living at a house owned by August Thalheimer since Kennedy separated from his wife a year earlier. He had become romantically involved with another doctor, Sara Ruth Dean.
On the night of July 28, Thalheimer discovered Kennedy in distress. Over the next few days, Kennedy’s condition worsened, and he admitted to his attending physician, Dr. George Baskerville, that he believed he may have been poisoned with mercury.
On Aug. 2, Kennedy, who was nearing death, told his brothers he believed he had been poisoned by Dean on the night of July 27 when the two had met at the Physicians and Surgeons Building. Kennedy said he told Dean he planned to reconcile with his wife. He said he tasted a “metallic taste” after the two shared one more glass of whiskey before departing.
Dean was indicted on murder and she was found guilty on March 2, 1934, though she was pardoned by Gov. Martin Sennett Conner.
Urologist Thomas J. Weldon, who spent several years working at the Greenwood Urology Clinic, became fascinated with the case and eventually came to have doubts about Dean’s guilt.
“All the evidence was circumstantial; that autopsy wasn’t really an autopsy; and Kennedy’s deathbed deposition? Nowadays that wouldn’t even been accepted as evidence,” he said in 2009.
It was in 1936 where a more familiar history of the Physician and Surgeons Building started. It was that year that Dr. John F. Lucas Sr. moved with his family to Greenwood and his OBGYN practice to the building.
Lucas Sr. would purchase the building in 1939.
His son, Dr. John F. Lucas Jr., known as John Fair, joined him at the building in 1963.
“They had different practices. My grandfather was obstetrics and gynecologist. My dad was a general thoracic surgeon,” said Lucas III. “They had some overlap and practiced in the same building.”
Lucas III, a nationally recognized vascular surgeon, moved his practice to the building in 1988.
He remembers spending much of his childhood in the building.
“It smelled like a doctor’s office,” he recalled. “It was that alcohol smell. Back then, they had glass syringes and they had needles that you reused and re-sharpened so they were all metal instead of metal and plastic. You didn’t have the plastic or rubber syringes. They were glass so you had to re-sterilize things and they didn’t really have autoclaves for offices so everything is soaked in alcohol.”
Since his practice left the building in 2019, it has remained vacant. In the television series “Women of the Movement,” which tells the story of the fallout of Emmett Till’s murder, the building was used for several locations, including serving as the Cook County Hospital in Illinois.
Lucas III said he still has a few medical records to dispose of. Dallas said the club hopes to have renovations for the building done so the club can move into the building by June.
Aside from a personal relationship — Lucas III and Dallas both attend the Episcopal Church of the Nativity — Dallas said he and the board recognized the building is in a great location.
“It was definitely a building that people would identify with in this community,” Dallas said. “It has such a rich history.” Dallas hopes to hire five full-time positions for the office.
Abel said the building was perfect for what the club will use it as — not too small and not too big for administrative offices.
In the west wing of the building remains a large brown desk that was used by Lucas III’s grandfather, Lucas Sr. Lucas III said he doesn’t have room to take it himself and is going to see if any of his siblings can take possession of it.
“If not, if David Dallas and the Boys and Girls Club can put it to use, I’d be willing to donate it to them,” he said.