As the hospital has grown over the years, the guild has kept pace, raising money to purchase needed equipment for the hospital and – since 1972 – awarding scholarships to hospital employees who are continuing their medical education.
In October 1995, the group took things to the next level with the opening of the St. Tammany Hospital Gift Shoppe, the result of some 20 years’ worth of fundraising and planning. As with the profits from its annual jewelry sale and linen sale, among other fundraisers, the guild plows the money it makes from the Gift Shoppe right back into the hospital through the nonprofit St. Tammany Hospital Foundation.
In 2019, the guild’s annual donation to the foundation was more than $65,000 and funded everything from an opioid intervention program to iPads for the hospital’s pediatric unit to rocking chairs for its New Family Center.
That same year, it also awarded $19,500 in nursing scholarships.
The real contribution, however, has been the time donated by the guild’s members, which just from 2010 to 2018 has been estimated to be 200,556 people hours and valued at $3,218,924, according to guild calculations.
“Our guild members are true champions. The services they provide to the hospital aren’t done for compensation. They volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts,” said Nicole Suhre, executive director of St. Tammany Hospital Foundation. “Their gift of time is a most precious one, and we are forever grateful for their time and the funds they raise for the hospital through the foundation.”
Doris Alexander, for one, agreed.
“I must say that aside from the discomforts of an operation, I enjoyed my stay in the hospital,” she wrote in closing her 1955 letter. “And in the evening after watching the sunset, through the gorgeous pines, I would … thank God for the wonderful people who worked so diligently to secure for us our wonderful St. Tammany Parish Hospital.”