"This event gives us a chance to recognize, to celebrate, and to thank all volunteers for their time and commitment to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's patients and staff," said Jane Hedal-Siegel, Director of Volunteer Resources, in her welcoming remarks at the 34th annual Volunteer Recognition Ceremony in June in the Rockefeller Research Laboratories Auditorium. The event honored 104 volunteers who received United Hospital Fund Awards for 150 to 1,000 hours of service and 36 volunteers who received Volunteer Service Awards for five to 25 years of service.
Ms. Hedal-Siegel read excerpts from a letter she had received from a 15-year-old former Memorial Sloan-Kettering patient. "The companionship of the volunteers at Memorial helped prevent something that could only have made my pain worse: loneliness," wrote the young woman, who wished to return to be a volunteer.
Keynote speaker Mark G. Kris, Chief of Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Thoracic Oncology Service, recalled, "We'd just seen a patient during morning rounds, and we thought we'd done a lot of good for this gentleman. But then a volunteer arrived with an incredible bouquet of flowers -- and nothing we'd done made our patient's face light up more than having that lovely person bring those flowers. It made him feel normal again -- which is, more than anything, what our patients want."
