From the beginning, generosity has been key to the success of St. Tammany Health System.
It started with the generosity of those civic-minded local residents who banded together to advocate for the founding of the Covington hospital in 1954, and it continues today with the generosity of donors to St. Tammany Health Foundation.
But of all the donors who have rallied around the hospital’s healing mission, there’s a special place for those who have given the most priceless thing of all to the cause: their time.
That brings us to today’s installment in our 70-part history series spotlighting 70 artifacts that help tell the St. Tammany Health System story.
Installment No. 49: The first volunteers
Today’s artifact: A 1958 St. Tammany Hospital Guild membership card issued to Cecile Hebert, member No. 7.
Why it is significant: It’s easy to join a cause that everybody’s on board with. But Cecile Hebert was a St. Tammany Parish Hospital volunteer even before there was a St. Tammany Parish Hospital.
By virtue of her marriage to local pharmacist and early hospital advocate Oliver Hebert, who would become the chairman of the first St. Tammany Parish Hospital Board of Commissioners, Cecile spent much of those early years working behind the scenes on behalf of the effort.
That included volunteering her time on such things as a meticulously kept scrapbook in which she collected and preserved years’ worth of newspaper reports and other ephemera chronicling the hospital’s founding and through its first quarter-century.
Among those items she saved: the card noting her membership in the guild, which was originally founded in 1955 as the St. Tammany Hospital Women’s Auxiliary.
Dated Jan. 23, 1958, it includes her membership number, lucky No. 7.
She would remain an active member of the guild for years to come, a personification of the generosity and dedication on which both the guild and the hospital were founded.
Fittingly, on the same page of her scrapbook as that membership card, Cecile clipped and saved a typewritten Prayer for Hospital Auxiliaries, marked as the guild's "official prayer" in what is presumably her hand.
Even now, all these decades later, it serves as a pitch-perfect tribute to the hundreds of guild members who have donated their time to the hospital over the years – including the group’s nearly 100 current members. In recognition of the generosity of all of those volunteers, past and present, we reprint it below:
PRAYER FOR HOSPITAL AUXILIARIES.
Almighty God and Heavenly Father of Mankind, bless we pray Thee, our endeavors in those hospitals in which we strive to bring comfort and hope to all who are in distress of mind or body.
Guide us so that we may use the privilege given us to help the aged, the ill and the very young – with generosity, with discretion and with gentleness.
Give us the strength to labor diligently, the courage to think and to speak with clarity and conviction but without prejudice or pride.
Grant us we beseech Thee both wisdom and humility in directing our united efforts to do for others only as Thou would have us do. Amen.
Do you have a St. Tammany Parish Hospital story or item to share? We’d love to hear about it! Email us at CommDept@stph.org.
Next week – Installment No. 50: A quiet giver
Last week – Installment No. 48: Honor Red, White and Blue