Generosity That Goes a Long Way

All throughout the spring, donors to the foundations met so many needs, both financial and physical, for hospital patients and front-line workers.

There are so many examples. Willett Distillery in Bardstown provided 100 brown bag lunches to Flaget Memorial Hospital every day for three weeks. The Kentucky Castle in Versailles cranked out roughly 300 meals per week for months to feed the staff at Saint Joseph East and Saint Joseph Hospital.

“The Kentucky Castle is thrilled to be providing meals for essential medical personnel and first responders,” Christie Eckerline, chief operating officer of The Kentucky Castle, said in April. “We hope that the meals we provide will support them to care for the sick and show our appreciation for their sacrifices and selflessness. They are true heroes and we are honored to be able to support them!”

In Lexington, East End Tap and Table delivered 500 meals per week for four weeks to our staff at Saint Joseph Hospital. At Saint Joseph Mount Sterling, staff was blessed with hundreds of meals from Sterling Meadows Mount Sterling.

London-based American Scrub Company, in cooperation with Cherokee, donated scrubs to each of our facilities.

“We appreciate everything that the health care workers have done during this pandemic, and we are honored to be a part of the Saint Joseph Health support system,” said Melanie Hester, director of sales and marketing at American Scrub Company.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky Inc. donated 5,000 face shields to Saint Joseph Hospital. And at Saint Joseph East, Advance Auto Parts gave 3M safety kits, gloves, shoe covers and coveralls.

Distilleries also answered the call. Beam Suntory provided our hospitals with N95 masks, nitrile gloves, gowns, and 60 large bottles of hand sanitizer, equivalent to approximately a month’s supply.

“Beam Suntory is focused on giving back to the communities where our employees live and work,” said Kevin Smith, vice president of Kentucky Beam Bourbon Affairs at Beam Suntory and incoming board chair of the Flaget Memorial Hospital Foundation. “We are grateful to the men and women at CHI Saint Joseph Health and are proud to donate our hand sanitizer to support their efforts.”

Heaven Hill Brands in Bardstown provided Flaget Memorial Hospital with 4,800 bottles of hand sanitizer.

“CHI Saint Joseph Health and Flaget Memorial Hospital are important cornerstones of the Nelson County community in the fight against the coronavirus,” said Max Shapira, president of Heaven Hill Brands. “We have the capacity to address a critical need to combat the coronavirus and we take great pride in providing assistance during a time like this, especially when we know these supplies are going into the hands of our friends, families and neighbors.”

A version of this article originally appeared in the Summer 2020 edition of Spirit of Health. For more stories like this one, subscribe to Spirit of Health magazine today.