One of the Angels

By Sandi Kahn Shelton, New Haven Register, Conn.

Jul. 14–If you could wave a magic wand and open your wallet to help solve some of the problems of the world, what kinds of things would you do?

This is something that Carol Sirot of Guilford thinks about a lot. Mind you, she doesn’t have a magic wand, but she is interested in philanthropy and loves the idea of reaching out to help people around her.

“This is something that has sort of taken over my life, as it were,” she says with a smile. “Every time I see or read something, I’m thinking: How can this bring benefit to people?”

Looking for ways to be helpful is a lovely way to look at life, and Sirot is clearly delighted with her ability to fix problems here and there that make a big difference in the lives of local people.

Take the stairs at the Yale Repertory Theatre, for example. Sirot says she heard that people were having difficulty with the rise and the slope of the stairs inside, so she donated money to have handrails installed at the end of each aisle. As a sufferer of fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome herself, Sirot says she knows what it’s like to have difficulty with something as straightforward as climbing a curb.

And then there is the waiting area at the Yale-New Haven Shoreline Medical Center in Guilford, where Sirot has occasionally been a patient. It’s a relatively new facility, but the wide-open layout made it impossible to register more than one patient privately at a time, so people needed to wait much longer than they should have.

Sirot donated $100,000 to have the space redesigned so that more than one patient can have privacy while their personal information is being taken by the registrar.

Sara Newman, patient service manager for the Shoreline Emergency Department, said the staff was so happy with Sirot’s bequest that they insisted on throwing a reception for her.

“It was like Christmas,” Newman says. “We’re so thrilled because it will make such a difference for the patients and the staff. But, mostly, we’re so thrilled that our patients see so much value in our department that they want to invest in us.”

Ruth Feldman, director of accessibility services at the Yale Rep, calls Sirot “our handrail angel.”

“Getting handrails installed isn’t the kind of thing you can just stand out on the street with a coffee can and ask for donations for,” says Feldman. “These bricks-and-mortar kinds of things tend to be really expensive. We had to create custommade handrails that were sturdy enough to help people and yet didn’t interfere with sight lines to the stage. They were installed a year ago last spring, and I am so pleased. Every single patron uses them every time.”

“It makes me happy to do this kind of thing — looking at needs that nobody else might pay attention to,” confides Sirot. “To me, it just doesn’t seem as useful to do what everyone else is doing. When it comes to larger problems, like Katrina, what I could do would just be a drop in the bucket. I like to do things where I can see the results for myself. And I hope that this kind of giving can be catalytic, that other people will see the needs around them and do the same thing.”

Sirot, an artist, mother and grandmother, was married to Gustave Sirot, a Yale Medical School faculty member and dermatologist. Together they raised two children and participated in social and political causes, traveling and attending theater and opera. Sirot was the president of the New Haven Wine and Food Society and an active member of the Yale University Women’s Organization.

Sirot studied art at Smith College and accepted a teaching fellowship at Oberlin, where she taught drawing, design and sculpture. At Yale, she studied with Josef Albers, whose seminal work, “Interaction of Color,” incorporated many of her color studies.

In 1980, Gustave developed aphasia which led to generalized dementia, and Carol Sirot became his full-time caretaker for 14 years. Since his death 15 years ago, Sirot has had to deal with health problems of her own, yet she says the joy she gets in giving has made her life so much better than dealing with her own aches and pains.

In addition to her local philanthropic work, she has donated money through Smith College to help a researcher who is studying autoimmune diseases. She has endowed scholarships to help midlife women return to school, through the Gustave and Carol Lynn Sirot Scholarship through YUWO. She’s also interested in a project that will enable aging people to remain in their homes.

Someday she hopes to create an outdoor meditation space at Connecticut Hospice in Branford — a winding, fragrant path, she says, large enough to accommodate wheelchairs and hospice beds so that patients and their families can go down to the water to enjoy the tranquility there. The project hasn’t materialized yet, but Sirot isn’t giving up.

“I hope that it can become what I want it to be,” she says. “It’s a mission I still have in mind. I’m a strong believer in finding a problem and then fixing it. People can be very effective when they’re determined. I see so many needs in so many areas that I can’t reach them all. Each of us is really just a speck of dust, but when we work together, amazing things can happen.”

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