Quick Take
John Friel was 46 when he first came to save Watsonville Community Hospital in 1991 as CEO tasked with helping to rebuild after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Friel died on March 21 at 79 after battling an illness.
John Friel was 46 when he first came to save Watsonville Community Hospital in 1991 as CEO tasked with helping to rebuild after the Loma Prieta earthquake. He was 77 when he returned to help save the hospital once again, this time as one of the first members of a board steering the hospital out of bankruptcy in 2022.
Friel died on March 21 at age 79, after battling an illness.
Relatives and colleagues told Lookout that Friel loved his family dearly, was a great skier and world traveler, and was passionate until his final days about ensuring Watsonville Community Hospital survived. He resigned from his seat on the Pajaro Valley Health Care District board just two days before his death. That same day, the hospital honored him in a ceremony naming the hospital’s board room after him.
Tony Nuñez, who succeeded Friel as the board chair, remembers Friel as a reassuring presence.
He recalls an early conversation with Friel in 2022 after they were both appointed to the district board. Nuñez confided in Friel that with his communications background, he felt out of place on the board alongside the medical professionals and administrators.
“So he told me, ‘Do not sell yourself short. Know your skills, know your capabilities,'” said Nuñez. “‘And whenever your opportunity comes to speak, make sure that you’re speaking for the people that you’re here to represent.'”
Friel was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, and received his nursing training from Massachusetts General Hospital. After working as a licensed vocational nurse at a hospital in Boston, he joined the nursing corps at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, where he treated patients coming in from Vietnam. From there, he got jobs in administrative positions and led hospitals and health care districts until retiring about three years ago.
He came to Watsonville Community Hospital in 1991 from Valley Care Health System, where as senior vice president of corporate development he helped to develop a 28-acre medical campus for the Bay Area hospital system.
Watsonville’s hospital was reeling from the 1989 earthquake and Friel helped coordinate a $73 million hospital replacement project.
“What drew me here was the fine reputation the hospital has had over the years, the community and the whole area,” he told the Santa Cruz Sentinel in March 1991.
His tenure as CEO lasted through 1999. Friel later founded a health care management consulting business and served as CEO of two other California health care systems – including the Catalina Island Medical Center.
Watsonville’s hospital, meanwhile, churned through 20 different CEOs in 20 years until declaring bankruptcy at the end of 2021. A group of local leaders came together and, along with a community fundraising campaign, worked to purchase the hospital out of bankruptcy.
Friel’s wife, Connie, remembers one day when he arrived at their Aptos home and told her he had been asked to become a board member. They had recently moved back to the area for their retirement.
“When he came home, he said, ‘I’m gonna serve on the board,'” she said. She was surprised, considering that Friel was, at that point, not far into retirement. “I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.'”
She said he told her he hoped to give back to the hospital, helping hospital leaders with his experience, background and contacts. He assured her the position would be temporary: “It’s only going to be one day a month.”
“Wrong!” Connie laughed. “I’d see him talking on evening phone calls and such, and I’d go look at him and just laugh and giggle. That was just him.”
Both avid skiers since they were young, Connie said they met at Palisades Tahoe when they were about 24 and 25 years old. At the time, they were both living in Larkspur, but hadn’t met.
One day while at Palisades Tahoe, Connie had just returned to a communal area near her cabin after a long day of skiing. She was starving and cold when she walked inside.
“I walked in and this beautiful man, in a red jacket and black hair and black mustache, had a plate of chicken,” she said. “He was adorable, and said, ‘Would you like something to eat?’ And I said, ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I do, and who are you?’”
They shared the plate of chicken – and fell in love.
“It was love at first sight, and bite,” she said.
Connie and John married soon after and raised two sons, Jonathan and Brian, who also both live in Aptos.
“I’m a very proud wife and have been with him for 55 years and have seen tremendous accomplishments in supporting different communities,” she said.
Marla Dickinson, a retired nurse who worked in Watsonville Community Hospital’s emergency department for nearly 40 years, met Friel the first year he was CEO at the hospital. Dickinson soon became an extension of the Friel family because their sons were best friends.
“He was a great administrator,” she said. “Mostly just because he was such a great guy, but he was also a nurse before he was in administration so he could see all the sides of all the issues.”
State Sen. John Laird said he enjoyed working with Friel and was thankful for his contributions to keeping the hospital open.
“I was just so grateful that he was willing to come back, at the key hour,” Laird said. “He was just so dedicated to saving the hospital.”
Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend said Friel was essential to the Watsonville hospital’s success after it declared bankruptcy and became a health care district.
“When we were bringing the hospital and the public back into public ownership, he was unquestionably the No. 1 person we wanted to serve on the board,” he said. “Because he was the through line from when Watsonville hospital was the true South County beacon for health to what we wanted it to become again.”
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