WHEELING — To call a new documentary on the history of Ohio Valley General Hospital and the Ohio Valley Medical Center a labor of love to the people who produced it would be an understatement.

Mary McKinley and Betty Jo Sproull were among the many who spent decades working at the hospital. It was more than a job to them. It was a calling. And they wanted to show others the love they felt for the hospital and the people inside its walls.

McKinley and Sproull were admittedly a little nervous as they welcomed hundreds to Wheeling Park High School’s J.B. Chambers Performing Arts Center for the premiere of the documentary “Beacon Light: A History of OVGH and OVMC.”

How much did OVMC mean to McKinley and Sproull? The two were wearing their name tags from their tenure at the hospital as they welcomed guests at Saturday’s premiere. The hospital, they said, was and will continue to be a significant part of their lives.

“We grew up there,” Sproull said. “We were both nursing students there. We were 17 or 18 years old when we started at that School of Nursing and we stayed there for 40-plus years.”

The documentary looked at the 129 years of the hospital’s history, first as OVGH and then as OVMC. Opening as OVGH in 1890, OVMC closed abruptly in 2019 after Alecto Healthcare Services bought the hospital and quickly shut its doors.

The documentary includes interviews with those who worked there and other local historians, as well as historic photos that McKinley and Sproull spent countless hours at the Ohio County Public Library unearthing. The two also thanked Wheeling Heritage, which they said have been invaluable in helping this documentary make it to the screen.

Pieces of the hospital’s history were all around the Performing Arts Center on Saturday. A quilt celebrating the hospital’s first century was displayed in the lobby. Those viewing the documentary walked into the PAC on a green carpet – the official color of the hospital.

The closing of the hospital didn’t just affect the people who worked there, McKinley said. It didn’t just affect the Ohio Valley. People across the country who worked inside the hospital’s walls lost something when the doors closed.

The hospital buildings no longer stand. They have been knocked down to make way for a new WVU Medicine regional cancer center. McKinley and Sproull said the documentary was another way for people who lost a piece of themselves when the hospital shut down to have some closure.

“This has been a three-year project,” McKinley said. “And we’re really grateful we’ve gotten to the point to where we can show it.”