Don Grove Shawnee Mission Medical Center
Don Grove tries to say, “Good morning” to every patient and employee he passes as he walks through the halls of Shawnee Mission Medical Center. Since 1982, he has volunteered more than 23,000 hours at the hospital and spends a significant portion of that time simply talking with patients. “A lot of people are lonely,” he observes, “they like to talk to you.”
Grove, 84, retired from his post office job in 1980. At his wife, Wanda’s, suggestions, he started volunteering three days a week at Shawnee Mission Medical Center. He helps various departments in the hospital, including Nutrition Services, assisting out-patients in the Recovery Unit and restocking supplies for the Pain Management clinic.
Over Christmas, Grove and his wife, also a volunteer at Shawnee Mission, pass out ornaments and crosses that are hand-made by Wanda. On Wednesdays, Grove spends half his day on the cancer floor as a Patient Advocate, meaning he mostly sits and talks with patients. He relates that one woman in the waiting room told him, “'You got us so interested in what we were talking about, I forgot what we were here for.'”
Above all his weekly duties, Grove most enjoys “just being around people. People appreciate things you do for them.” When one staff member joked about putting Grove on a pension plan for his 23,000 hours (and counting) of service, Grove joked back, “I’ll settle with you for a buck an hour.”
Patty Frank Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center
Patty Frank describes her work and the workof those she volunteers with at the Service Partners Organization’s Gift Shop at Baptist-Lutheran Medical Center as a “service of heart. There is nothing morevaluable than following your service.”
Frank started her self-described “non-salaried professional career” at Baptist-Lutheran in 1996. She generally spends up to 60 hours a week at the hospital, 35 to 40 of those hours spent at the Service Partners Organization (SPO) Gift Shop, where she serves as coordinator. Since HCA's acquisition of Baptist-Lutheran over a year ago, the SPO has operated as a separate, non-profit entity, and, with Frank’s leadership, has expanded into the community to raise money to support education, healthcare and crisis funds. Recently, the SPO merged with Trinity Lutheran to even greater expand its service into the community. All proceeds from the gift shop go toward the SPO. In fact, Frank describes the gift shopas an “ongoing fundraiser for the organization.”
Aside from the gift shop, Frank is involved with several community and school boards, including serving on the PTA, the Band-Aids and the Guidance Advisory board at Center High School, where her son attends. She also subs for former Kansas City Chief Deron Cherry’s Score 1 For Health organization. When Frank takes a breath to consider all of the volunteer work she is involved in, she admits, “Man alive, am I busy! No wonder I’m tired at night!”
Hazel Hendrix Olathe Medical Center
Hazel Hendrix’s approximate 30 years of banking experience have contributed significantly to the current volunteer work she does in the finance office and in her role as gift shop treasurer at Olathe Medical Center (OMC). Her duties include preparing and sending bills to different vendors in the finance office and overseeing bills and making deposits for the gift shop. “I feel like my job is needed,” Hendrix says, “because [the staff] don’t have the time to do these things.”
In addition to her work with OMC, not to mention raising eight, now-fully grown children, Hendrix has chaired the Margaret Deshler Scholarship Committee for seven years. The committee reviews applications from students with one year of medical training and awards the winners with a $1,000 scholarship. Four students were awarded Margaret Deshler Scholarships in 2004. Hendrix also serves as treasurer for the Olathe High School Alumni Association and on the Worship Committee at St. Mark's Lutheran.
For all her dedication and work at OMC, Hendrix was voted Volunteer of the Year in 2004. As busy as her volunteering duties keep her, Hendrix enjoys the work and her co-workers. “I like to stay active,” she says. “A busy person is a happy, healthy person.”