| HOLYOKE — Giving blood regularly wasn’t enough for Kathleen Dzialo. She now spends two mornings a week volunteering at Holyoke Medical Center’s Information Desk and as a patient representative, solving problems large and small.
One morning while she staffed the desk, a member of the Holyoke Hospital Auxiliary Assoc. asked for her help organizing a bake sale. With an enthusiastic grin, the former metrologist said she’d look into it and then organized two very successful sales that raised much-needed funds for the medical center.
“Number one, I love people and I love this hospital. I’d love to volunteer in all the different departments if I had the time,” said Dzialo. “There are many places that need just a couple of hours of someone’s love and attention, including the Auxiliary.”
For more than a century, the completely volunteer-run Holyoke Hospital Auxiliary Assoc. has served as a major fund-raising arm for the hospital, utilizing its proceeds to purchase state-of-the-art medical equipment as well as contribute to major capital campaigns — including its present $300,000 pledge to the recently completed $11.1 million medical center renovation project.
“The auxiliary’s mission is vitally important,” said Auxiliary President Mary Kelleher. “We want to encourage new people to join the auxiliary, bringing their fresh ideas and energy by offering to oversee new and different ways to raise funds, while promoting camaraderie and helping the medical center to provide the highest quality of care.”
In 2004, the auxiliary donated $86,042 to HMC, and hopes to bring in about $85,000 this year, said Pauline Gruszka, auxiliary treasurer and finance committee chairperson. The auxiliary collects about $40,000 annually from HMC’s Gift and Coffee Shop, an auxiliary project, and from fund-raising events including home tours, its annual “Holiday Happenings” and its December “Tree of Love.” Its 2004 springtime gala, “An Elegant Affair” raised $10,000 toward the auxiliary’s capital campaign pledge, said Kelleher.
The auxiliary has recently purchased CPR mannequins for use in staff and community education; state-of-the-art cardiac monitor modules for patients on respiratory ventilators; an EKG machine for Cardiology; and vital signs instruments and blanket warmers for Oncology.
Annually, the auxiliary funds hospital lobby holiday decorations and the flowers on patients’ trays at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter; donates $1,000 to the Birthing Center; and gives a $500 scholarship to a college-bound high school student.
“Being involved in the auxiliary is a wonderful way to give back to your community and support your local hospital,” said Kelleher, citing likely volunteers as parents whose children are in college, people who have recently retired and those who simply want to give back, like Martha Fifield of Holyoke, who has volunteered at HMC for 25 years.
“It always gives you a good feeling to know that you’re helping somebody else,” said Fifield, Auxiliary Ways and Means committee chairperson who spends her time organizing annual employee sales (of uniforms, shoes, jewelry, books, baked goods, raffles and more).
Meeting people from diverse backgrounds who work as a team to accomplish great tasks for HMC is why 19-year volunteer Linda Porten, chairperson of HMC’s Gift and Coffee Shop, said she enjoys working for the Auxiliary.
“It’s knowing that by helping the hospital, you’re helping a patient or someone who’s coming in for a test. I feel like I’m doing something significant,” she said.
Connecting the hospital’s staff with the greater Holyoke community is most rewarding for Kelleher, who finds the Auxiliary’s century-old history impressive.
“To some extent you’re a bit in awe that something could have survived for so many years and contributed so much over that century of time,” she said. “It is quite a legacy.”
The Holyoke Hospital Auxiliary Association meets at 3:30 p.m. the first Thursday of each month from September through June. Anyone wishing to join the organization should call Mary Kelleher at (413) 534-2547, or call another auxiliary member. |
