UPDATE

Shriners Hospital for Children Galveston was one of three burn centers financed with $10 million by Shriners North America in 1962. After visiting 21 university medical centers, Shriners chose the University of Texas Medical Branch for the first of the three and named it Shriners Burns Institute.

The institute opened in 1963 with seven beds at UTMB’s John Sealy Hospital while Shriners Burns Hospital was being built on land donated by the Sealy & Smith Foundation. Construction was completed in 1966.

Shriners considered moving the hospital to the Texas Medical Center in Houston in the 1980s, but decided to remain in Galveston after the Moody Foundation offered financial support for doing so. An eightstory hospital across the street from John Sealy Hospital was completed in 1992 with 30 beds, three operating rooms and a 163-seat auditorium.

Hurricane Ike damaged the hospital in September 2008, and the economic downturn a few days later caused a $3 billion loss to the Shriners fund that finances the operation of its hospitals. The national Shriners board voted to close the Galveston burn center and several other hospitals, but a membership revolt led by the 1,000-member El Mina Shrine, based in Galveston, overturned the board decision in July 2009 at a national convention.

The damage was repaired, and the burn center, now known as Shriners Hospital for Children Galveston, reopened in November 2009.