Crane operators rarely receive much in the way of applause. It’s the nature of their business. They mostly get yelled at or otherwise directed with hand signals or horns.

So Wednesday’s round of applause as a simple, steel beam was lifted high overhead was a bit rare.

Truth be told, this was no ordinary beam, the signatures emblazoned on the sides symbolized decades of commitment and literally hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into the future of our community.

Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi marked a milestone Tuesday, erecting the final beam of its $300 million new Oxford hospital.

While the new facility is still roughly one and a half years away from seeing its first patients, Tuesday’s public relations event is a worthy one.

Residents have marveled at the new hospital’s enormous structure for months. With the final beam in place, the shape of the hospital’s core structure should be fixed.

We continue to be grateful for the significant investment Baptist is making into our community’s future needs.

We also remain excited to see how the rest of the facility shapes up over the coming months as the cranes and the rare sound of applause that follows them eventually give way to ambulances and patients’ vehicles.