Lunenburg Health Service (LHS) Inc., a nonprofit which delivers assistance to people who need it most, is celebrating its 70th year in operation.

Janet Watson, office manager and secretary to the LHS Board of Directors, said the organization has been a unique health care service from the beginning.

“We are a tax-exempt nonprofit,” Watson said. “We operate off of a trust fund … We don’t get government funding. … It’s a pretty cool place.”

LHS offers a clinic that assists people with critical and chronic illnesses. Assistance includes changing sterile dressings, monitoring diabetes and diabetes care, helping recently hospitalized patients and conducting welfare checks after visits.

Most impressively, LHS-licensed Professional Nurse Deborah Craven noted that she and other nurses will often go to their patients’ homes to deliver care.

LHS also lends equipment to patients that they may need, including hospital beds, wheelchairs, walkers, crutches and canes. Craven said if LHS does not have the equipment on hand that it will redirect patients to the area department of social services for assistance.

The organization was founded in 1947, according to the LHS website. Robert Miles Williams, who was a prominent business figure in Victoria, founded the service after contracting polio and after his wife, Blanche Robinson Williams, a poet, began suffering from mental health issues.

Williams, who had to have extensive rehabilitation and was in an iron lung at the worst point of his illness, decided to establish a fund. When the site of the Lunenburg Health Service on Sixth Street in Victoria was dedicated in 1949, Williams created a fund that allowed for the building and services to be offered to the county. The fund came to $200,000, according to the website.

“It was Williams’ dream that all persons, regardless of their ability to pay, be eligible to receive proper health care and services when needed,” the website cited. “He did not want the health needs of anyone to be neglected because of their income.”

Craven said she has been at LHS for 17 years. Watson, she said, has worked at LHS for 20 years. She said throughout LHS’ history, there have been only six nurses at the organization.

“It’s a nice place to work, so we stay here for a while,” Craven said.

She noted that the organization is unique in delivering care in that its employees’ patients are often their neighbors or people they have known for years in the community.

“We feel like we can help people more in our own community get the services that they need,” Craven said. “You can take care of people better if you have a personal relationship with them, so you can go to their homes, see what they need and help them get the supplies they don’t have.”

To learn more about LHS, visit lunenburghealthservice.org or call (434) 696-4446.