Original Met

[Guest Edgy DC]

Peter LaMotte, the original Mets team physician --- including the 1969 championship team --- passes.

Founder of Hilton Head Hospital, LaMotte, dies at 78

By DAVID LAUDERDALE

dlauderdale@islandpacket.com

843-706-8115

Published Monday, December 3, 2007

Photo: Dr. Peter LaMotte died Sunday of complications following a fall outside his Bluffton home on the morning of Nov. 15.

Dr. Peter LaMotte, who opened Hilton Head Island to America's retirees when he founded Hilton Head Hospital in 1975, died Sunday evening at Hospice House in Savannah.

LaMotte, 78, died of complications following a fall outside his Bluffton home on the morning of Nov. 15, said his wife, Beryl.

"(Sea Pines founder) Charles Fraser said the things that helped Hilton Head evolve as a place that people would come to were mosquito control, air conditioning and the bridge," said Jim Chaffin, former Sea Pines vice president who was a young salesman when he introduced the LaMottes to the island.

"For it to evolve long-term as a real human settlement, rather than a resort destination, it needed quality health care. That's what Peter provided."

At the time, LaMotte was 41 and at the peak of a lucrative career in New York City as chief of trauma surgery and chief of orthopedic surgery at Roosevelt Hospital. He had been the physician for the New York Mets baseball team since its inception, tending some of the most famous legs in the business with players like Willie Mays. Legendary manager Casey Stengel once gave him the team's MVP (Most Valuable Physician) award.

Hilton Head, on the other hand, had no glitter when the LaMottes got their first peek in the fall of 1970 -- a year after the "Amazing Mets" won the World Series. Peter and Beryl LaMotte, who was seven months pregnant, dropped in while en route to Florida to deliver a family boat to LaMotte's father, IBM executive vice president and board member Louis H. "Red" LaMotte Jr.

Two days later, they owned property here. And two years later, they moved full-time to an island that was mostly woods. It had fewer than 3,000 residents, and two doctors working out of a small clinic on Pope Avenue.

Fraser asked LaMotte why he didn't open a hospital. The idea fell on fertile ground. Fraser introduced LaMotte to young attorney Bill Bethea at a cocktail party, and Bethea immediately bought into LaMotte's vision of a Mayo Clinic-style medical facility on the island.

"Peter's vision and his drive and his skill and personality made it possible for us to be a better community and a more complete community by adding that component of quality health care that we lacked and needed," Bethea said.