Volunteering is a reward

By Travina Coleman
Phoenix Staff Writer

January 14, 2009 06:23 pm

— Mary Pat Cole has worked for 15 years at Muskogee Regional Medical Center, and they haven’t paid her a dime.
And she’s fine with that.
Cole, a volunteer at the hospital, said this is what she’s always wanted to do.
The 2009 annual Volunteer Awards Banquet will be taking place Jan. 15 at the Indian Capital Technology Center.
Cole, along with other volunteers, is being honored for the amount of time they have put in.
She has earned 28,000 hours volunteering on Tuesday and Sunday afternoons working the front information desk.
But it’s not always been that way.
Cole began as a junior volunteer in 1959, when she was barely 18, years old. She worked as a team with her mother the late Olivia Cole, a charter member of the Auxiliary Board.
Gay Bannon, of volunteer services, said Pat has always come to the hospital every Sunday afternoon and Tuesdays.
“It’s very hard to find someone who can volunteer on Sundays,” Bannon said. “She comes directly after church.”
Bannon said volunteers are important to the success of the hospital.
“The hospital has no back up positions to cover the volunteer positions,” Bannon said. “They are such a value to the hospitals and the patients.”
Vicki Cormier, coordinator for the Services, said Pat, is undoubtedly helpful.
“There is nothing a patient or family could ask for that she doesn’t find a way to accommodate them in some way,” said Cormier.
Cole has been a volunteer for 50 years.
“It’s something I have always done,” she said. “My mother and I were a team. We would deliver flowers from the church to patients.”
She is a member of St. Paul United Methodist Church. Although she claims being half Baptist.
“I am there so much,” she said. “I feel like I am half. But I am registered Methodist.”
Cole is also the historian for the Auxiliary Board, she took her mother’s position when she died.
“I have seen the hospital grow and grow,” she said. “It’s changed so much.”
When Cole started she was working from one desk.
Now the volunteer services is ran from 10 separate areas with several desks in each.
“It’s hard to believe I have been here that long,” she said. “I never thought about doing anything else. This is a good job. I have never wanted to do anything else. I wouldn’t do a thing different.”

Reach Travina Coleman at 684-2901 or tcoleman@muskogeephoenix.com.

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