They all laughed when Mike Taylor ambled over.
“Here comes trouble,” Linda Staddon said.
“What?” Taylor answered, in mock annoyance. “You guys weren’t talking about me, were you?”
Not to worry, Mike. It was all good. Besides, they were talking about everybody.
Everybody who makes up the volunteer auxiliary of Mon Health Medical Center, that is.
Taylor and Staddon serve on the board of the auxiliary, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
You’re invited to help the auxiliary celebrate today. A gathering will be from 3-6 p.m. in Mon Health’s main lobby.
The choir of Brookhaven Elementary School will offer a special performance.
Board members, meanwhile, were present in that same lobby on a recent weekday to talk about just what it is that their organization does — which is a lot.
Over the years, the auxiliary has raised more than $2 million for the medical center on J.D. Anderson Drive.
It’s hard not find a volunteer to assist you at Mon Health. They’ll cheerfully direct you to elevators and the cafeteria.
They’ll point you in the right direction for your appointment, and they’ll offer comfort and assurance — even if you don’t share the same language.
That’s what volunteer and auxiliary board member Susan Melenric did a couple of years ago there.
A panicked young woman who didn’t speak English had rushed her feverish and seriously ill baby to Mon Health — and then was struck by her powerlessness to communicate while the people in the white coats swarmed around.
She leaned against a wall and slid down, sobbing.
A woman in a maroon volunteer smock caught the moment.
Melenric went over, and, like the elementary school teacher she once was, knelt down at eye level.
Her eyes were soft, and her voice was softer. A gentle tone doesn’t need a translator.
“Honey, there are people here who are going to make your baby well.”
Smiles and gestures told the tale.
Two thumbs up: “No, that’s good news, honey. Good news.”
A cradling motion, with pronounced eye contact: “Honey, they still need to monitor the baby. Just a little while longer.”
A smile, and a wink: “Didn’t I tell it was going to be OK?”
Melenric stayed for hours.
“There was no way I was leaving,” she said. “I couldn’t leave. I had to be there for her.”
The decidedly bearable lightness of being
Up on the third floor, in the Infusion Center, Pat Coulter couldn’t agree more about being there for the patients — especially the ones who have just been diagnosed with cancer.
The Infusion Center is where Coulter volunteers, and it’s the destination for patients undergoing chemotherapy and other measures as they fight their illness.
“They’re scared,” said Coulter, who began her professional career as a librarian.
“They don’t have any idea what to expect. We’re with them the whole way.”
Right up until they ring the bell, she said. That act is the ceremonial sendoff after the final treatment in their chemotherapy regimen.
“I get attached,” she said. “I miss them, but I’m also glad to see them go, because this part is done.”
Coulter shares their buoyancy as they go through the exit doors. “I do feel ‘light’ watching them,” she said.
‘Thank you’
The auxiliary had a spring in its collective step in 1962 when it staged its then-inaugural Ball of the Year to raise money for a basic need.
Black-tie only, it was, in the former National Guard Armory, on Spruce Street.
There was psychology behind that, those early organizers said.
“We had to make it ‘fancy,’” the late Marca Papparozi told The Dominion Post in 2012, “so people would know it was important.”
The social event brought in $4,176 — nearly $36,000 in today’s dollars — and the money went for the installation of a women’s restroom on the maternity floor.
Those dollars built up a lot more zeros with each outing. And this year, the evening is circling back around.
The 2019 Ball of the Year will be Nov. 16 at the Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place.
Proceeds this year will go for the development of a community-focused perinatal depression program, which will benefit the emotional health of new moms across the region.
Mon Health will be just the 13th medical center in the nation to house such a program.
Melenric, in the meantime, always smiles when she remembers the scared young mom she helped comfort at Mon Health in her volunteer role.
Turns out, the woman had one phrase in English.
As she left the hospital, she looked at Melenric, and said, “Thank you.”
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