Helen Marion Nelson, 'Nellie' as she is affectionately called, was born in the small New England town of Proctor, VT, the daughter of Swedish immigrants. She was admittedly a "terrible tomboy" who loved throwing a ball or jumping barrels on skates on the town's ice rink. At one point her mother asked her father, "Do you think she'll ever be a lady?"
The Great Depression hit the closely-knit town, headquarters of the Vermont Marble Company, particularly hard. "I was eight when Daddy came home and said he had a cut in his salary, and that a lot of people had lost their job," Nellie remembers those difficult days. "While my parents packed gift baskets of meats and canned goods for the people who wouldn't have Christmas, my father sent my sister and me to separate what we had into two piles—one to keep and one to give away. 'Don't put everything you don't like in one pile and everything you do in the other,' he admonished us. 'They must be equal!' I was so mad, I stomped up the stairs!
"But that was the beginning. You could see the difference in the town because of the layoff. And you understood that you had to give." It was the first of many lessons in kindness, compassion, and generosity that Nellie learned while growing up.
Resilience was another. "When I was sad about something or discouraged, Mom would say, 'Put a steel rod down your back and go one foot in front of the other.'" Sadly, Nellie's had to do that far too many times in her life. But remembering her mother's words gave her the confidence, strength, and courage to confront life's challenges, challenges that would have overwhelmed others along the way.
"No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering.
Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage,
From suffering can come strength—
If we have the virtue of resilience."
For Nellie, the greatest of those challenges was losing two of the three men she loved to cancer. She was only 32 years old with two young children, when Donald Anderson, her husband of six years, was diagnosed with melanoma, a then rare and fatal cancer. Although doctors gave him very little time, he battled the disease for seven years before passing away in 1964. Nellie was widowed again in 1989, when her husband of 23 years Wally Jones, who had lost his first wife to an inoperable brain tumor, succumbed to a cancer that moved with such devastating speed and ferocity that he died just four months after being diagnosed. It seems inconceivable that for a third time, Nellie's husband of 13 years, Charles "Tubby" McLendon, Sr., a widower who had lost his wife to uterine cancer, experienced a benign tumor before passing away in 2008 from a non-cancer related illness.
Each loss brought sorrow and grief; but with courage, optimism, and confidence in the future, Nellie said, "Life goes on."
"Investing in Life"
Shortly after Nellie and her husband, Wally, moved to Pinehurst from New Jersey in 1984, The Foundation of FirstHealth board chairman, Hal Stevens, asked them to join the Scroll Society, founded five years before. With the slogan, "Investing in Life," their goal was to increase the hospital's "margin of excellence" and secure its future.
At that time, Moore Regional Hospital was a small, rural hospital on the cusp of evolving into the top health system that it is today. "When there was a crisis that required something special, we had the option to 'go up the road,'" Nellie explains, "but we felt we shouldn't need that option. We should have something better here. I didn't want to have to go anywhere else."
She, like other early members of the Scroll Society and later the Legacy Circle, was of the generation that had learned at an early age that "you don't deserve things if you don't participate. We understood the need for giving and what we could accomplish together." These dedicated philanthropists supported campaign after campaign, raising tens of millions of dollars to build the 21st century health system that exists here today.
Now, Nellie is sharing her experience and providing guidance to a new generation of Foundation leaders and philanthropists as they embark on yet another hospital expansion—the building of a comprehensive cancer center. "There's no doubt of its need in this area," Nellie says. "We need a good cancer center and all that goes with it. We must be able to attract the doctors that we need, the specialists. People who are not just good doctors, but excellent doctors who have a vision themselves.
"Cancer is complicated. It's something that's with you all the time. You're better, but how long will that be and to whom do you turn? We need to support families and caregivers. Support comes in so many ways. It can be emotional support or practical everyday types of support. But more of it has to be something that will last. Spiritual is one word for it. Something you can hang your hat on. I know there are people, and I probably fall in that category, who, when cancer strikes and it's obviously the end of things, become very independent. But they've got to have help, too, psychologists or psychiatrists, or social workers. But I think they need to address all the emotions—and that is a big list.
"Of course, the only way we're going to have all of this is if people will participate. People want a hospital. They need it. It should be here. And it should be very good. But they do not understand that in order to have that facility, you have to have the will. You have to want it so badly, and you have to work for it.
"I think you have to take yourself out of the picture. What do you want for this community? What do you want that you could have a small part in, that would make it better? I don't think we can ever say, 'We're finished now.' If we can just keep looking to see what we're missing or what would add to our hospital and our community.
"I've had the pleasure of seeing FirstHealth take leaps and bounds. As for me, there is no doubt, I don't need to go anywhere else. So why wouldn't I want to continue to do something for the hospital? I just hope together, we can keep going."
Throughout her long life filled with love and purpose, Nellie has responded to life's challenges with humor, optimism, and most importantly, with resilience. For more than three decades, as an early member and leader of The Foundation of FirstHealth Scroll Society, she has given her time and treasure to improve health care in our community.
Though no longer with us, Nellie left a legacy of impact on our community through leadership and philanthropy. For more information on giving opportunities like the Scroll Society through The Foundation of FirstHealth, please call our office at (910) 695-7500.
