Foundation Stories
American Red Cross Fund
The State College Chapter of the American Red Cross was formed 92 years ago by Katherine Sparks, wife of Dr. Edwin Sparks who was then the president of the Pennsylvania State College. “Katherine was active in a number of organizations,” says executive director Virginia Brown “And she decided that it would be a good idea, locally, to form a chapter of the American Red Cross. So they met in the old chapel of the former Old Main Building in April, 1917. We actually still have the minutes book from that original meeting. I think a lot of chapters were founded in 1917 because of World War I, and people on the home front wanted to do something to help. The services were quite different, but I think the continuing thread is that there was a very heavy reliance on volunteer help. All of Catherine’s help in those days would have been volunteer, pretty much, and there are some pictures in the Penn State Room. In fact, we have some copies of them—the women folding bandages in the dining room of the president’s house, and that’s now the Hintz Alumni Center.”
This local chapter of the Red Cross, which joined the Centre County Community Foundation in 1982, merged in 1990 with the Bellefonte Chapter, and in 1993 with the Moshannon Chapter in Philipsburg. So, in addition to the entire Centre County region, the Philipsburg merger gave this chapter the eastern third of Clearfield County as well.
“The Red Cross has three programs: blood services, health and safety, and emergency services,” Brown explains. “Under emergency services, that would include disaster relief, service to military and also international services, We respond to natural disasters, and in our geographical area, that means primarily a fire. A residential fire. It might be in a single family home and it might be in a trailer, in a dormitory, in a high-rise apartment or a large apartment building. We are called out by the fire chief on the scene, and we provide support to the disaster victims and also provide mass feeding for the emergency workers, the fire fighters and the ambulance personnel. But we do provide direct financial assistance to help disaster victims, and we have mental health workers who can help the family deal with the trauma. We will also open shelters if the need is there.”
For the health and safety program, the Red Cross trains people in first aid, CPR, water safety, lifeguard training, baby sitting, how to administer first aid to dogs and cats, and how to use an AED (automated external defibrillator). “We have a variety of courses,” Brown says. “They run the gamut from training very young children who just might be in pre-school or kindergarten, on up to training a more professional rescuer. And even though we do work with ambulance companies and fire companies, our main focus is to train the man or woman on the street—the average person who just needs to know what to do if a fellow worker collapses, a family member has a heart attack, a neighbor’s child falls into a backyard pool. We just want people to know what to do until more professional help can arrive. We train perhaps 5,000 people each year in that program.”
The blood services program has always been well-known in the Centre County region, primarily because of Penn State University. “Last year in our chapter, we collected 17,914 units of blood,” Brown says. “That’s a lot of blood for a chapter of our size. But one reason that we have such a high collection is because we have a lot of healthy young students who are very willing to donate, and also because we do a lot of blood drives in schools and in the work place and try to make it very convenient for donors.”
The American Red Cross, Centre Communities Chapter Fund was the first fund established by the Community Foundation through the estate of Ruth G. Braman. Judge R. Paul Campbell, the founder of the CCCF, was a board member of the local Red Cross chapter and his wife, Ora, was a very active blood services volunteer. “Ora had pretty much stopped by the time I started,” Brown recalls. “I think she was no longer able to volunteer, or if she did she didn’t continue for a long time after I was there. But apparently she had a phenomenal memory. Ora always knew that a certain donor was about to reach their 10 gallon level, and in those days she would call the Centre Daily Times, and they would still send a photographer over to do a little story on the person, and she would order a cake. She knew the donors, all of the blood donors really well, and I think she was often pictured with them in news clippings. She also had a collection of toys that used to go out to blood drives. In the early days she would collect all of these little puzzles and hand games that you could play with. She thought it was good for the donors to have something to do, after donating, while they were sitting at the canteen table. And she always had these little toys on the table. I remember we called them ‘her toys.’”
