PITT
COUNTY
MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
By May 1988,
the Service League had raised about $1 million through its projects, and
used the money to fund equipment purchases for PCMH. There was much to commemorate
at its annual luncheon in May 1988, concluding its celebration of its 50th
anniversary. As usual, two service awards were to be given, the President’s
Tray to a member of the board of directors, and the Ormond Service Cup to
the member who had shown the most interest in league projects.Even the
semicentennial observance could not overshadow the league’s first celebration,
the first Benefit Ball, held in 1939. Mrs. Brown said, “The ball was
held at East Carolina Teachers College auditorium, and music was provided
by Dean Hudson and his Lance Band. The cost per couple was $1.50. Newspapers
from as far as Raleigh covered the event, and ‘a gay time was had by
all.’” That year the Laughinghouse Hospital Bed Fund was established
in memory of Dr. Charles O’Hagan Laughinghouse, whose daughter, Helen
Laughinghouse Stokes, was first president of the league. The annual Charity
Ball started the following year. The league’s members agreed that they should try each year to meet one major need in the community. Their first major project was the Thrift Shop located over Guaranty Bank on Dickinson Avenue. Here the ladies sold used clothing and household articles, their main customers being needy residents in the area. They remembered with affection one of their charter members, an old gentlemen who purchased a china cup, remarking, “Now I don’t have to drink out of a tin can any more.”
The focus
of the league’s efforts became providing transportation for blind people,
mothers in need, and others who lacked transportation. The league participated
in the World War II “Bundles for Britain” by rolling bandages.
They collected sugar ration stamps from those who did not use them and made
cakes for bake sales. They published a cookbook “Grandmother-Granddaughter,”
with a section of no-sugar recipes. On the corner at Penders Store on Evans
Street, they sold 25-cent bunches of flowers gathered from members’
yards. Each year the league gave a Boy Scout and a Girl Scout scholarship
for summer camp. The group supported Community Chest and other drives, provided
Christmas baskets each year, and set up the Lending Chest. All these projects
had continued through the years to 1988. In 1951,
the group opened the hospital Coffee Shop. Each league member volunteered
to work during nine months of the year and to pay workers to run the shop
during the summer. The food was prepared in the members’ homes: chicken
salad, pimento cheese, vegetable soup, country ham sandwiches, chili for
hot dogs, cup cakes, and brownies. So many people bought the food by the
quart to take out that overworked members complained they were in the catering
business. Profits from the coffee shop were used for hospital activities,
chapel expenses, and hospital equipment. Later, the league leased the space
for the coffee shop to a private firm, turning over all the income from
the lease to the hospital.In 1976 the
league established a Gift Shop separate from the Coffee Shop, with a cart
that was pushed through the hospital twice a day with magazines, paperbacks,
toiletries, and other items. Members also served in the nursery, attended
to patients’ flowers, placed pictures in hospital rooms, and did needlepoint
for the chapel. In1984, the
group made its largest contribution to date, $190,000, to be used for purchasing
advanced heart monitoring equipment for the new cardiac surgery intensive
care unit. This donation put the league’s total contributions to the
hospital over the half million mark. In October
1986, Dr. Ulrich Alsentzer, medical director of the PCMH Regional Rehabilitation
Center, and Deborah Davis, vice president of rehabilitation services gave
a report to the league on special programs that the center would offer.
The league had donated $125,000, with a further $50,000 to be given in the
spring, for purchasing equipment to be used in three new programs: an orthotics
and prosthetic program, an electrophysiology laboratory, and a rehabilitation
engineering program. The Daily Reflector stated that no other hospital in
the state had a support organization like the Greenville Service League.For the annual
awards luncheon in 1993, two special requests for funding from PCMH were
approved, including a mobile intensive care unit to transport critically
ill patients from other regional hospitals, and an Extra-Corporeal Membrane
Oxygenation Unit, to be used for children or babies in preparation for surgery
or following heart surgery.On the day
before the luncheon, Jane Whichard, past president and Service League board
member, described in an interview some of the projects that the organization
had undertaken over its 50-plus years. Its seal, which showed “a woman’s
hand holding a lighted torch to light the way to service,” she said,
expressed its unchanging purpose. “The league furnished the first critical
care unit in Pitt Memorial Hospital . . . In May 1964, members voted to
give $4,500, the cost to furnish the unit. This money was provided through
profits earned in the hospital Coffee Shop. Members further voted to give
additional funds to the unit when requested by hospital administration.”Another contribution
to the hospital facility was the furnishing of the chapel in both the old
and new hospitals. The chapel provides a quiet place for hospital staff
as well as patients and their families. A personal touch was added when
members used their needlepoint skills on cushions for the pews. League volunteers
cleaned the chapel twice weekly.
The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University
600 Moye Boulevard
Greenville, North Carolina 27858-4354
P 252.744.2240 l F 252.744.2672