Clara C. Frye

Clara C. Frye (April 17, 1872 – April 8, 1936) was an American nurse in Tampa, Florida who established the Clara Frye Hospital, where she worked for twenty years in the early 1900s. Frye's hospital admitted patients of all ethnicities. She was inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame in 2013. Early life and education

Frye was born Albany, New York and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, the daughter of Joseph Draughn and Frances "Fannie" Fordham Draughn. Her mother was born in England. She trained for a nursing career in Chicago and in Montgomery.

Career Frye moved to Tampa with her husband. In 1908, after doing some informal nursing for Black patients in Tampa, she opened a hospital in her home, making it Tampa's only hospital to admit Black people. Her dining room table was the operating table. A larger, separate building was secured in 1923 and was purchased by the City of Tampa in 1928. At the time, the Tampa Municipal Hospital, now Tampa General Hospital, did not admit African American patients. The children of Donald Brenham McKay were among her first patients,

Frye invented a hospital bed and submitted the design for a patent in 1907.

Personal life and legacy Clara Draughn married barber Sherman H. Frye in 1888. The Clara Frye Memorial Hospital that existed in West Tampa from 1938 to 1967 was named after her. The original Tampa General Hospital building was renamed after Frye in 1991.