Exit Interview: Heron Point’s Garret Falcone Takes a Bow

For Garret Falcone, the designation of Chestertown’s University of Maryland Shore Medical campus’ new status as Maryland’s first rural hospital came as kind of a retirement gift.

Falcone was a core member of the “Save the Hospital” committee who worked tirelessly to ensure the medical facility would continue to serve Chestertown and the Kent County communities.

As executive director of Heron Point retirement community, Falcone had a unique vantage point in understanding the significance of having a hospital with inpatient beds and services within fifteen minutes of a retirement community. He was responsible for the health needs of 300 people at the Heron Point campus.

Now retired from his leadership role at Heron Point, Falcone looks back at the fight with satisfaction and tells The Spy that the new message, “Support Our Hospital,” is as weighty: to build confidence in the new hospital after some years of the community seeking healthcare elsewhere.

The Spy recently interviewed Falcone to honor his work at Heron Point and his civic activism and, along the way, discovered his love for history and how it became integral to his deep care for his work in the health field. After all, each person in a retirement community comes with their own volume of history—and he wanted to read each one.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length.