The Name on the Hospital

The youngest, Guy Lincoln Kiefer, was the one Edgar called "the most distinguished of his brothers." He took a bachelor's degree at Michigan in 1887 and his medical degree in 1891, then studied in Berlin, Vienna and Heidelberg. In 1893 he married Josephine Henion of Dexter — "Aunt Jo" to the whole family.

As Detroit's Health Officer from 1901 to 1913, Guy built a modern public health department: medical inspection in the schools, a nursing division, prenatal and children's clinics, and milk inspection. When a dairyman sued him over the milk rules, Guy won — the papers ran the headline "Dr. Kiefer vindicated."

Detroit's old "pest house" for contagious diseases was little more than shacks. Guy turned it into one of the country's early tuberculosis sanitariums. Aunt Jo and a friend, Martha Baugh, spent weeks scrubbing and refitting it themselves.

In 1949, Aunt Jo told Edgar what happened next:

"They wanted to call it the 'Guy Kiefer Hospital' but Guy wouldn't have it and got them to change it to the 'Herman Kiefer Hospital' after his father."

The hospital opened under his father's name in 1911. Guy later served as Michigan's State Health Commissioner, from 1927 until his death in 1930.