Smithville Regional Hospital recently dedicated a portrait and plaque to the memory of Dr. James Winston Thomas who guided the planning and construction of Smithville’s first modern hospital on East Ninth Street which in 1972 became the flagship of the Smithville Hospital Authority, serving the community from 1958 until the new regional hospital was built in 1995. Many of Dr. Thomas’s former patients were at the dedication along with his son, Jim, left, and his wife Sherry.