Maria Parham Guild Gift Gallery endows new VGCC scholarship in Carswell’s memory
Volunteers from the Guild Gift Gallery at Maria Parham Medical Center recently presented a gift of $25,000 to the Vance-Granville Community College Endowment Fund that will create a new scholarship. That brings the total to four such scholarships created by the Guild Gift Gallery in recent years. Since 2008, the hospital’s Guild has given over $100,000 to VGCC to endow the scholarships for years to come. The Guild has operated the Guild Gift Gallery with a volunteer staff since the 1990s, offering convenience items and gifts as a service to both patients and visitors. Profits from sales are used to provide scholarships to people entering the health care professions. The new VGCC scholarship will assist deserving students in programs such as Nursing , Radiography , Medical Assisting and Pharmacy Technology .
The scholarship will be named the Leslie Carswell/Guild Gift Gallery Maria Parham Presidential Scholar Award in memory of Leslie R. Carswell of Henderson. A longtime employee at MPMC, Carswell passed away in February 2011. Carswell was a nurse, co-founder of a home care and hospice agency, director of the regional home health care office at MPMC and manager of the hospital’s oncology department. She is remembered as a passionate advocate for patients, actively lobbying on their behalf both in Raleigh and on Capitol Hill. Carswell was twice the president of the Association for Home and Hospice Care of North Carolina and received their 2011 Home Care and Hospice Hero Award. She is survived by her husband, Fred, and two daughters, Meredith and Kathleen.
“We are so thankful to the Guild for establishing this scholarship, which will provide a wonderful opportunity year after year to help someone in the community go to school,” Fred Carswell said. “Our family feels overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and affection for Leslie from friends, neighbors and coworkers at Maria Parham during this difficult time. We feel very blessed to have such a loving community.” Fred Carswell is also a nurse at MPMC and a graduate of the Associate Degree Nursing program at VGCC.
“The Guild is proud to be able to honor Leslie’s legacy of service and compassion by helping college students who will one day carry on her work in health care,” Henderson resident and Guild president Anne Bunch said. “The Guild Gift Gallery is successful because of our regular stable of 25 loyal volunteers and our coordinator, Gean Bobbitt. They go above and beyond to provide a high level of service to our customers in a warm, friendly way, precisely because they are volunteers who love what they do. We also try to offer a variety of wonderful gifts and items that will appeal to our customers, and we get tremendous support from the hospital staff and visitors. We are an integral part of the hospital and the community.” Bunch added that it is important that “all the money we generate stays right here in the community and supports students who often end up working here at Maria Parham.”
Above: From left, seated, are Kathleen Carswell (daughter of the late Leslie Carswell) and Guild volunteer Roxanne Fleming. From left, standing, are VGCC Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Endowment Fund director Jo Anna Jones, MPMC Vice President of Operations Jay Kennedy, Guild Gift Gallery coordinator Gean Bobbitt, Guild president Anne Bunch, Fred Carswell, volunteers Linnea Westbrook and Jean Hutchin, MPMC Board member Nettie White, volunteer Sallye Lloyd and VGCC president Randy Parker.
(VGCC Photo)
