Cross at Gadsden hospital to be updated

A landmark at Gadsdens first and oldest hospital will be getting a facelift of sorts.  Gadsden's Riverview Regional Medical Center will replace it’s trademark cross this month with a larger, more energy efficient version.  The hospital, will take down the old cross Monday morning.  A rededication service is scheduled for June 23 from 2 to 4 p.m.  The cross that's being replaced has been up since the 1980s, and is a 6-and-a-half foot LED light that blazes green. The new model will be 10 feet by 6 feet. But the cross has been a fixture over Gadsden for 82 years.  Riverview Regional was formerly the Holy Name of Jesus Hospital, founded by the Sisters of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, a Catholic order founded in Opelika in the 1900s. The order purchased the 25-bed Gadsden General Hospital and expanded it into a 120-bed hospital in 1931. The hospital was sold in 1991 to Health Management Associates.  Though the hospital's name changed, the cross remained a symbol of the hospital after public pressure when plans were announced to take it down in the 1990s.