- April 19, 2024
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When Norma MacDonald first started volunteering for the Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center's auxiliary 50 years ago, she wasn't sure if the hospital was going to survive.
"It was so empty," she recalled. "One time there was only one patient in the whole hospital."
The hospital did indeed make it another half-century, along with MacDonald and other founding volunteer Dotty Welcher. They both celebrated this milestone along with their other auxiliary members Feb. 28 at Oceanside Country Club.
"We have a pact," said Welcher. "If one retires, so does the other."
When the auxiliary was first started, it was all ladies. So the uniforms were pink. That wasn't a problem until their first man signed up.
"Someone brought in their husband," Welcher laughed, "and said 'Now what are we going to do with him?'"
With many men now on the auxiliary team, the uniforms are a teal color — but that can sometimes present its own challenges
"If I wear my uniform to Publix, people start asking me where things are," Alice O'Shea said. "I have to tell them I don't work here."
When O'Shea worked as a nurse, she said the volunteers were a big help to her day to day job. So she vowed that when she retired, she would go back to the hospital to deliver that same kind of voluntary service. She's been a volunteer now for 15 years.
"Once you've worked in a hospital, you can't get out," the now Florida Hospital Oceanside volunteer laughed. Joyce Christian, also a retired nurse, agreed, she couldn't get enough.
"As support, I enable those I work with the have more time with the patients," she said. Christian has worked in the Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center's Cancer Center for five years.
Leeann and Don Cole started volunteering in 1996. While Leeann Cole remained in the birth care center, a.k.a. "the miracle place to work," Don Cole did a little bit of everything, from shuttle driving to working the cardiac floor, with a mindset of service always in place.
"I love working with patients and assisting them as much as I can," Don Cole said. "Sometimes I left really upset because I couldn't help the person, and sometimes I left happy because I could."
