May. 14, 2015
You may not know this, but I’m your uncle Bill. Or your nephew Bill, or your brother Bill, depending on which generation you call your own. But one thing is certain…if you love this profession as much as I do, we’re related.
Some people call us an R.T. community. But I’ll go one step further: To me, we’re a family. I’ve attended “family reunions” for the last 40 years at the ASRT annual governance meeting. We work hard and we play hard. Most of all, we reaffirm what being part of the R.T. family means to us and to the lives we change — the lives of our colleagues, students and patients.
The support shared between its members is what makes a family strong. That’s what has inspired me to volunteer over the years, from serving on the ASRT Committee on Student Membership in 1977 to being an Education Chapter delegate this very year. It has also driven my passion for educating the next generation of R.T.s.
When I served as president of the ASRT Board of Directors, it was a time of great change for the organization. One of the most positive changes during that time was our decision to create the ASRT Foundation. There was so much more that could be done to support R.T.s, and we knew we needed funding to do it.
Shortly after that vote, my good friend and fellow board member, Becky Kruse, asked to borrow a dollar. It might have been all I had on me at the time, but we were (and still are) close. She then made the grand gesture of donating the first dollar to the Foundation. Watch out for your aunt Becky.
It’s been said that I was the first donor and Becky was the first fundraiser. I like that. In the early days there wasn’t even a scholarship program because, in the first few years, we had to raise the money. I think back to those years and how overwhelming the task seemed. But, we knew where we wanted to get to and we knew the point of it all: each other.
Over the next few years, a lot of us lived paycheck to paycheck and I could barely afford an annual gift of $50. But the profession’s been good to me. Now that I’m getting close to retirement, I think more than ever about how I can give back in significant and lasting ways.
And I’ve seen how far the Foundation’s come. This once $1 organization has now provided more than $3 million to support and empower R.T.s — not only with scholarships and research grants, but also through international efforts spanning five continents. It has even bigger plans. But they won’t happen without the help of family.
There’s never been a better time for you to get involved. I hope you will join me in being part of the Positioning for Brighter Tomorrow celebration campaign in honor of the Foundation’s 30th anniversary. I’ve just made my pledge to be on the Donor Wall. It’s good to know that this gift will help create the first-ever endowment for the Foundation, making sure it’s around for the next 30 years and more.
The Donor Wall is also exciting because it’s near the entrance of the new ASRT Museum and Archives opening this June. It really feels like a historic time. I imagine the R.T.s of the future visiting the building decades from now and seeing my name on the wall. Maybe one of them will be a student of a student enrolled in my program this year, destined to follow my footsteps into teaching!
To me, the wall is more than a permanent "thank you" to donors. It’s an R.T. family tree. These are the people supporting one another and creating a future where R.T.s will always have somewhere to turn. I’m just thankful to be a part of it.
This article was originally published in the 2015 ASRT Scanner
, Vol. 47, No. 4, Page 18-19.