In February 1951, Pitt County Memorial Hospital was opened with 120 beds and named for the county's World War II veterans. A few weeks before, on January 18, Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall spoke at the dedication. A bond was passed in 1958 to increase the number of beds to 200. Its capacity was 205 by 1963, but the hospital was still too small. Local civic leaders, Charles Gaskins, Wilton Duke, and Joe Pou, helped facilitate the passage of a $9 million bond referendum for the construction of a new 350-bed hospital. The hospital employed approximately 80 physicians in 1972. The Department of Family Medicine was organized a year later.