BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg gathered the Battle Creek Sanitarium staff for a photograph a century ago on October 26, 1920.
They assembled on the south lawn of the world-famous health spa, standing together with signs identifying their departments. Truck drivers, nurses, and students posed next to doctors, sheet metal workers and researchers.
They all looked at the camera, the photographer pushed the button and that moment was frozen in time. They were alive when the Titanic sank, lived through World War I and witnessed the 1918 flu pandemic.
As they looked into that camera 100 years ago they could not know that they were about to experience the roaring twenties, see the stock market crash and face another world war.
The building that is seen in the back of the photograph has changed hands a few times since the moment was captured.
The Sanitarium buildings were purchased by the Army in 1942 and became the Percy Jones Army Hospital treating soldiers through World War and the Korean War. After that, it was home to multiple federal agencies.
Today the building is known as the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center and is managed by the General Service Administration. The largest tenet is the Defense Logistics Agency including the Headquarters for Disposition Services whose mission reflects the building’s history of being repurposed.
DLA Disposition Services has 103 locations around the world where military units turn in and reutilize equipment.
A copy of Dr. Kellogg’s staff photo along with the building history is on display in the HDIFC’s history room.