Basket Day
Date Posted: Tuesday, December 01, 2015|
Radiology Department members from Memorial, University, Hahnemann campuses and Mammography from Shrewsbury, Memorial, Hahnemann and Ambulatory Care Center joined together to collect 22 Thanksgiving "baskets" of food for needy families from the Belmont Street Community School and Girls Inc. The donations were collected on November 24 and given to the families in time for Thanksgiving. Key organizers for this charitable project were, Marcia Amaral, Kristy Mulcahy, Gail Bernard, Donna St Clair, Kara Wormell, Michele Foley, Darlene Lieske from Memorial; Diane Beaulieu and Deb Pellegrino, Steve Beaudoin, Kathy Green, Max Rosen, from University; Ginny Rollins, Mammography; and Linda Anderson from Hahnemann Around 20 years ago the Manager of Radiology at Memorial, Margaret Gniadek, started the project of giving to others. The staff gave at Thanksgiving and Christmas to those in need. Hahnemann merged with Memorial and they continued the projects and their numbers grew. Marcia Amaral took the project over when Margaret left about 10 years ago, as her position grew to include responsibilities in other modalities she invited them to join the project of paying it forward. Memorial recently invited the University to join them and over the past few years they have helped support the Thanksgiving project as well as adding other projects at Christmas time. Over the past 20-25 years contributions have been made to more than 200 families at Thanksgiving and over 200 children at Christmas. In addition to the Thanksgiving project with contributions to Belmont Street Community School and Girls Inc. the Memorial, Hahnemann and Mammo sites will be adopting 7 children to provide gifts at Christmas and the University Campus has selected Abby’s house for this year’s Holiday charitable project. In prior years Coat Drives, Basket raffles and a variety of other types of donations have been organized within the Department of Radiology. The basket raffle funds from Rad Tech week at Memorial have been used for many years to provide lunch to the patients receiving chemo and transfusion at ACC. Two letters of thanks: I just wanted to send out a note to say “thank you!” to all that contributed to the Thanksgiving baskets for the families of the Belmont community schools. For those of you that didn’t hear the truck that was suppose to pick up the baskets was in an accident, and therefore all the families had to come to the hospital to pick up their baskets. At the University Deb Pellegrino, Diane Beaulieu and Soni Torres waited outside in the cold to help these families with their baskets. As they came in one by one each family was very thankful for these generous gifts. One father came to us and said that he was here to pick up his basket…we told him to drive up to the front of the hospital and we would load the boxes in his car. He told us didn’t own a car and that he had walk here and he would carry the boxes home to his family. I told him to wait a few minutes and I would drive him home. During that 15 minute drive he told me that he had a nice state job as a welder got hurt and has been out of work for some time, and he also told me that Tuesday was his first day as a crossing guard for the Belmont school. I could tell they way that he talked about his job that he loved his first day at work, and for the rest of the ride he told me over and over again how thankful he was for the gift. For myself personally I am thankful for my family and my UMass family. Dear Marcia and Radiology Department Staff, On behalf of the residents of Bell Hill and the Community Relations Department, we thank you for the beautiful Thanksgiving baskets you provided to the families in our community and the sense of connection created between your staff and the parents. Because of your generous contributions and efforts year-after-year, our families once again enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at home with their children. Many thanks to your department staff who contributed at the University Campus and ACC. Our warmest wishes to all of you during this holiday season! Ana Rodriguez |
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