 
The FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital Auxiliary has been around for almost as long as the hospital itself.
Within a few months of the November 1929 opening of Moore County Hospital (the hospital’s original name), a group of women had come together to support the work of the new institution. Before long, they had bought a cow and some chickens to ensure that parents of newborn babies would have milk and eggs to eat during those early days of the Depression. Later, they bought a station wagon to deliver groceries to poor families and to transport nurses between the hospital and the local hotel where they were housed.
Throughout the years, the Auxiliary set goals that were increasingly higher and more ambitious, and by 1934 its members had organized a Christmas Ball that netted what then must have seemed the princely sum of $1,000.
In 1937, the Auxiliary began moneymaking projects for kitchen and dining room improvements to the hospital, and by 1939, its members had collected $6,500 toward the construction of a nurses’ home.
It helped finance hospital air conditioning and allocated money to remodel the refrigeration system and buy soundproofing.
By the early 1950s, total Auxiliary contributions to the hospital had reached $65,000 and the annual Auxiliary Ball had become a highlight of the holiday season and one of the most successful fund-raising projects in the Sandhills.
A long-held philosophy
In 1950, then-Auxiliary President Katherine Mc-Coll expressed the philosophy behind her organization’s commitment to the community’s hospital.
“Our contributions have not been wholly mercenary,” she said. “We have tried to give the hospital something besides money, because it deserves more.
“Most hospitals are supported by taxes or institutions, or belong to private owners. Moore County Hospital is supported entirely by the generosity of donors. And generosity is one of the finest qualities of human nature. It should evoke from us an equally fine emotion, that of gratitude.
“We have reasons to believe that most of our members are grateful to the hospital and its benefits. They are proud of it, and they love it.”
Members of the Auxiliary have aspired to that simply stated philosophy for three-quarters of a century now, raising millions of dollars to help expand and improve hospital facilities, buy new equipment, award nursing scholarships and provide services for patients and families.
“It’s almost impossible to express just what the Auxiliary has meant to the success of FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital,” says Charles T. Frock, chief executive officer of FirstHealth of the Carolinas. “Throughout the years, the Auxiliary’s work has been significant and steadfast, beginning with the early gifts—modest by today’s very survival—to the multi-year, million-dollar pledges of recent years.
“The renovated and enlarged Child Development Center and the busy Outpatient Center and Community Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center at Moore Regional Hospital are obvious and visible monuments to the Auxiliary’s support, but there have been hundreds of less visible examples of Auxiliary giving, too.”
In the past year, the Auxiliary allocated in excess of $280,000, not only to complete the $1 million Child Development Center pledge, but also to several low-profile programs, including:
- Scholarships to the Child Development Center
- Sponsorships for the FirstHealth Response monitoring service
- Donations to the Moore Free Clinic and the Baby Bucks maternal/fetal program at the Moore County Health Department
- Materials for the Toymakers, a group of FirstHealth volunteers who each year make more than 6,000 stuffed toys for children who are in the hospital
“We haven’t forgotten the small things in the process,” says Mary Lou Vaughan, the Auxiliary’s current president.
While dedicating itself to meeting the needs of individual patients and hospital staff members, Vaughan says, the Auxiliary has developed into a fund-raising resource for technological and “bricks and mortar” advancements that has donated close to $4 million in funds and volunteer hours to support the hospital since 1930.
The commitment and dedication have not gone unnoticed. “If the Auxiliary’s support for the hospital seems boundless,” says Frock, “the same can be said of the hospital’s gratitude to the Auxiliary.”
A new pledge
As current Auxiliary members gather at the 2005 Holiday Ball to observe their organization’s 75-year history, they will announce a new pledge, this one tied to Moore Regional’s plans to build a Heart Hospital, Hospice Residence and Hospitality House.
Initial Auxiliary efforts will help purchase diagnostic equipment for the Heart Hospital, a project that will consolidate all of Moore Regional’s cardiovascular services under one roof. Subsequent-year efforts will support the needs of the other entities and programs throughout the hospital.
A Moore County native who has seen the hospital change and grow, Vaughan contrasts “a sweet hospital where all of the doctors knew each other” to the modern 385-bed facility that boasts an active medical staff of almost 200, 90 percent of them board certified in their medical specialties.
Noting previous pledges to the Child Development Center, the Outpatient Center and the Community Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center, she says, “I am proud to be a part of such an organization, because we are so proud of what the hospital has become.” |
Auxiliary highlights
1929: Moore County Hospital opens on Thanksgiving Day.
1930: Some local women form the Moore County Hospital Auxiliary.
1934: The Holiday Ball raises $1,000 for hospital projects.
1952: The Auxiliary begins an organized volunteer program.
1960: The Auxiliary assumes the responsibilities of the Moore County Maternal Welfare Committee, which aids needy mothers and babies.
1976: The Auxiliary fulfills a four year pledge to raise $100,000 for a pediatric intensive care unit.
1980s: The Auxiliary raises $285,000 for a Meyer Hall pediatrics renovation project.
1987: The Auxiliary pledges $50,000 to support the Little People’s Village, the forerunner of the current-day FirstHealth Child Development Center. The pledge grows by another $50,000 by the end of the year.
1990s: Auxiliary pledges help the hospital buy a linear accelerator, ICU monitors, stereotactic breast biopsy equipment and neonatal ICU monitors, and assist with the construction of a Cardiac Cath Lab, Cancer Center and Outpatient Center and with an Emergency Department renovation project.
2001: The Auxiliary pledges $1 million to the Child Development Center renovation project.
2005: The Auxiliary pledges $1 million toward a capital project that will add a Heart Hospital, a Hospice Residence and a Hospitality House to the hospital campus.
(Source: “In Love and Service: The Story of Moore Regional Hospital,” 1991) |
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