Speak Your Piece: Lower Bucks Hospital among many local triumphs of volunteerism
Volunteerism is always a good thing, but it’s best when it’s local. And Bucks County’s citizens are eminently generous with their time and money.
On Wednesday’s Speak Your Piece on WBCB 1490, we spoke with Shahzad Ahmed, MD, a cardiologist from Lower Bucks Hospital. We reviewed the history of the facility that straddles Bristol Township and Bristol Borough.
The roots of Lower Bucks hospital are deep in the community. It began with people, not government. It was an effort of local folks concerned about the scant availability of health care at a time when Lower Bucks was changing from rural to industrial (e.g., U.S. Steel and Levittown).
The year was 1950. Among the initial advocates were volunteers from the local rescue squad, including the future chairman of the Bucks County Republican Committee, the late Harry Fawkes and his wife, Mary. Families, small businesses, labor unions and hundreds of volunteers launched a massive fundraising campaign. And a group also paid a visit to Otto Haas, president of Rohm and Haas, who contributed $100,000 to the hospital building fund.
This truly grassroots movement — hundreds involved — led to groundbreaking on November 2, 1952. Two years later Lower Bucks admitted its first patient.
Today, Lower Bucks Hospital is a nonprofit acute-care hospital and a member of the Prime Healthcare Foundation. It maintains its historical reputation as a community hospital on its 36-acre campus, but continues to advance in medical care and technology.
Volunteers did it! Usually, volunteers are anonymous, but they strengthen our local communities in myriad ways by meeting needs that may not be met by paid services. The message today was: If you want to do a good deed, or you have time on your hands, volunteer opportunities abound in large and small agencies, such as United Way of Bucks County, Family Service Association, Bucks County Housing Group, food banks, child and elder care. Volunteerism is a Google search away.
The aforementioned organizations do amazing work from Quakertown to Bristol, supported daily by equally amazing volunteers, like the originators of the grassroots push for a hospital in Lower Bucks. Not big government, just people to the rescue!
Pat Wandling hosts Speak Your Piece from which this commentary is adapted, weekdays at noon on WBCB 1490.
