A giving tradition: A history of St. Tammany Hospital Foundation

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Tuesday, January 26, 2021

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A giving tradition: A history of St. Tammany Hospital Foundation

Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

In 2003, St. Tammany Health System leadership asked local physician Dr. Adrian B. Cairns to steer the formation of the St. Tammany Hospital Foundation. It would become a passion. Cairns would end up serving as the organization’s first board chairman, a post he held until 2008, and then as chairman emeritus until his death in 2017. (STHS file photo)

Note: This story is part of an occasional series highlighting key moments in St. Tammany Health System history. Read the  health system's full history at www.sttammany.health/STHShistory.

The generosity was there. It always had been, dating to the beginning when St. Tammany Health System was founded in December 1954 as St. Tammany Parish Hospital.

Back then, just as the initial building was nearing completion, leaders of the effort to establish the hospital realized they had overlooked something important: They had raised enough money to construct the hospital, but they had forgotten to earmark money to equip and run it.

A call for help went out to Northshore residents, and they stepped up.

The Lions Club raised money to help furnish the pediatric ward. The Covington Rotary Club donated enough to outfit a double patient room. The Women’s Progressive Union of Covington, the Garden Club of Covington, and the Business and Professional Women of Covington each furnished a single room. The MCB Library Club in Covington raised enough to outfit the nursery in the new hospital’s maternity ward.

Fast-forward a half-century, to spring 2003. While that spirit of generosity throughout the community hadn’t waned, hospital leadership realized it would be a major benefit to establish a nonprofit foundation not only to corral that community generosity but also to raise the bar in an effort to make St. Tammany a healthier place.

The St. Tammany Hospital Foundation was born.

Local physician Dr. Adrian Cairns was asked by hospital leadership to steer the effort in those early days. It would become a passion for Cairns, who would end up serving as the chairman of the foundation’s first Board of Trustees and remain a key part of foundation leadership until his death in 2017.

But from the start, Cairns and other early foundation organizers knew it would take much more than one or two people to accomplish the foundation’s goals. This would have to be a community effort.

“They came up with the idea that they wanted a foundation, and then they went out and found people to be a part of it,” said local businessman Harry Warner, who was recruited by longtime hospital and foundation board fixture John “Pizzie” Romano to serve on that initial board. “I told them, ‘I’d be happy to work with you, but I’m just a peon.’ But Pizzie – he and I grew up together – he told me he’d beat me up if I didn’t get on it. So, I joined up.”

Among the things that impressed Warner the most in those early years, he said, was the diversity of the backgrounds represented on the board.

“That was a big key that I saw,” Warner said. “We were able to get ideas from all aspects of life in this area. We accomplished a lot. It was really an interesting time.”

The foundation has as its sole goal and sole mission to support the hospital by enhancing the care and quality of life in St. Tammany Parish. And that will never go away.” 

- Greg Pellegrini, STHF board member 2012-2020

It was also an important time in the growth of the parish, according to Greg Pellegrini, who served on the foundation board from 2012 to 2020.

“The founding members had tremendous vision and were able to found an organization with the goal of enhancing healthcare in St. Tammany,” Pellegrini said. “It’s one of the most important aspects of the quality of life in our area, and those founders saw the growth that was happening in St. Tammany and the need to grow the hospital.”

And it has, indeed, grown. As it has, the foundation has grown with it.

Current foundation Executive Director Nicole Suhre points, for example, to the foundation’s first capital campaign in 2012, which set an ambitious goal of raising $3 million to help fund the hospital’s Pediatric Emergency Department. With Pellegrini steering it, that campaign was successful, and St. Tammany Health System’s Covington hospital is now the only one in the region with a pediatric-specific ER.

“That was a huge win for us as a foundation,” Suhre said. “It really felt like we had taken things to the next level.”

It’s not just the big things, though. One of Pellegrini’s favorite initiatives is the foundation’s “Little Grant, Big Impact” program, through which hospital departments can apply for funds to purchase a piece of equipment or some type of patient-related item to help them better do their healing work.

“It could be a new chair in the infusion suite, a laptop in the ED – things you would never think of but which make their life easier,” he said.

Suhre is also enormously proud of the foundation’s Healing Arts Initiative, which, inspired by the positive impact of the arts on the healing process, has over the years resulted in the installation of art of all varieties throughout the health system’s facilities, from paintings to sculptures to aquariums to the player piano in the hospital lobby.

Without the work and vision of that first foundation board, she said, none of it would have been possible.

“Our fledgling foundation was blessed to have behind it the most influential and community-minded volunteers to serve as ambassadors for its efforts, creative and innovative leadership and skilled staff, all working together to drive its mission,” Suhre said. “Donors were not hard to find, and as the hospital expanded and evolved, more and more community members stepped up to support its growth.”

While the scope of the foundation’s work has grown over the years as new members have come on board, its focus really hasn’t.

For his part, Pellegrini doesn’t see that changing.

“The foundation has as its sole goal and sole mission to support the hospital by enhancing the care and quality of life in St. Tammany Parish,” he said. “And that will never go away.”

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