» A magazine for and about Oregon Community Hospitals. OREGON NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYS TO HOSPITALS AS COVID CASES SURGE Grateful staff say guard members have been a blessing. By Ben Hellwarth If you happened to walk through the main doors of an Oregon hospital recently, like Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, or the much smaller Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, you might have been surprised to find a handful of Oregon National Guard soldiers staffing the front desk. Their desert-hued camouflage uniforms, a striking contrast to the river-blue scrubs and snow-white lab coats common to hospital attire, are more often associated with scenes of natural disasters, urban unrest, and foreign war zones. Yet the National Guard, whose military roots predate the founding of the Republic, can be called up to help contend with domestic crises of any kind—thus the Guard motto: “Always Ready, Always There.” So, when a summer surge in sickness related to COVID-19 infections put an 12
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