photo by: Derek Redd (file)

The Ohio Valley General Hospital letters, shown here being removed from the building in September 2024, will be preserved by Wheeling Park High School career and technical education students.

WHEELING — The giant letters that stood out as a beacon of light at the former Ohio Valley General Hospital building in Wheeling will soon be in the hands of Wheeling Park High School students who will preserve them for future display.

Mary McKinley, an Ohio Valley General Hospital History Group member and former OVMC nurse administrator, said the letters, which were removed from the Ohio Valley Medical Center campus during demolition work, will soon be moved to the school for the students to work on.

She said after talking with Wheeling Park CTE teacher Aaron Fedorka, who checked out the letters in storage, he agreed they would make a great project for his students.

“I’m definitely excited,” she added.

Each letter is six feet tall and six feet wide and made of porcelain-coated steel. At night they were lit with neon and were affixed to the side of a tower on one of the original hospital buildings on campus.

McKinley, along with her fellow OVGH History Group members, have been working to preserve the many artifacts from and history about the hospital that healed people for more than 100 years before its closure. But it’s not just about the artifacts that were inside; it’s about remembering and honoring a legacy of caring and work carried out by the many employees who worked there.

“It was hard to watch it come down. We all feel like we made a difference,” she said.

To honor that legacy, McKinley said her group plans to have the letters installed at the future Robrecht Park behind the Main Street Bank building in the future. She said funds are being raised so the letters can be hung on a new tower. They also want to light them again so people can see them at night just as in past decades.

“It will be great. … We’ve been getting a lot of generation donations from people like Dr. John Holloway, the Bloch family, Dr. Howard Shackelford, the alumni nurses,” she said.

When the school is ready, city of Wheeling workers will take each letter out of storage and transport them one-by-one on the backs of trucks.

McKinley noted the idea to ask the students for help was when she discovered the new large letters at Wheeling Park on National Road were made by the CTE students.

“I love that logo they put there with the big letters,” she said.

The site of the former OVMC/OVGH has been cleared to make way for a new regional cancer center that will be operated by WVU Medicine. Work is expected to begin early 2026 and be completed sometime in 2028. The $122 million facility at 2000 Eoff St. will be named the WVU Cancer Institute St. Joseph Regional Cancer Complex.