By POLLY SUMMAR Journal Staff Writer
Mary Amelia Whited-Howell hobbled into Vanessie on Friday night on crutches with no idea she was going to be presented with the second annual Philanthropist of the Year Award.
“I knew if we told you beforehand, you wouldn’t show up,” said Robert A. Glick, executive director of the St. Vincent Hospital Foundation, to the group of donors and supporters of the hospital’s campaign to build a new emergency room.
Whited-Howell nodded in agreement, later saying she didn’t like drawing attention to herself or to her broken foot, but told the group, “It’s our community, and we need to take care of ourselves and our community.”
As president and chairwoman of the board of the Frost Foundation, a small family charity, Whited-Howell has led the foundation to become more involved in collaborate ways in its grantmaking. She’s the granddaughter of the founder.
And the Philanthropist of the Year Award, a joint venture between St. Vincent Hospital and the Albuquerque Publishing Co./Journal Santa Fe, is awarded for just such innovative methods of philanthropy.
“Mary Amelia decided that instead of just giving grants, she would work with the institution,” Glick said. “For example, with a grant to help single mothers in cottage industries,” via the New Mexico Women’s Foundation supporting the Women’s Cottage Industry Program.
“And she worked with us at the hospital to develop a program for doulas,” said Glick of the support companions for pregnant women before, during and after birth. “The Frost Foundation put up the money so women who can afford to pay do, and that supports payments for those who can’t. It’s selfreplenishing.”
Glick said some 15 to 20 percent of the hospital’s patients are below the poverty level. “The Frost Foundation also gave the (hospital) foundation the first gift to the campaign for a new emergency room — half a million dollars — about three years ago,” Glick said.
The award, presented by APC’s director of marketing Dorothy Rosado, was an Edward S. Curtis original photograph of three San Ildefonso women in honor of Whited-Howell’s work on behalf of women.
Last year’s award winner was Fran Mullin, owner of Vanessie of Santa Fe. “For a week, he gives 20 percent of the profits of the restaurant to various charities,” Glick said. “And this (three-day) weekend, he’s giving the hospital 20 percent of the gross profits.”
After the ceremony, Whited-Howell said one of her first volunteering jobs as a teenager was as a candy striper at St. Vincent Hospital here, where her family had a summer home. In the 1980s, Whited-Howell and her husband, Philip Howell, owned the Garfield Grill restaurant.
“And I grew up next to (Guarantee owner) Abe Silver’s cousin” in Shreveport, La., said Whited-Howell, a coincidence that amuses them both. Silver, who was attending the ceremony, is a former chairman of the board of the hospital foundation.
Friday’s award ceremony fell on the final weekend of the hospital’s fundraising campaign. Today’s sold-out Bob Newhart fundraiser at the Eldorado Hotel is the last event of the foundation’s campaign to raise money for the new emergency room.
(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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