Chuck Cummings is descended from a long and storied line of attorneys in his native Fall River, Massachusetts. In the late nineteenth century, his grandfather was the mayor of that town along the Rhode Island border for two separate terms. The Honorable John W. Cummings was held in such esteem that John Singer Sargent did a charcoal portrait of him, a copy of which hangs above the living room fireplace in the Brattleboro home Chuck made for his family more than 40 years ago.

Chuck Cummings

Leaving the family practice was never a question in young Chuck’s mind after graduating from Boston University School of Law, especially for a landlocked state like Vermont. Chuck had developed a passion for sailing at an early age because his family home was located on the Atlantic Ocean. He also loved to ski, however, and during a summer visit to Wilmington, where his college roommate was building Sitzmark Lodge, Chuck met John Kristensen, an attorney in need of an associate to join his burgeoning practice.

“He asked me the first day he met me if I would consider practicing with him and I said no,” Chuck recalls with a chuckle. It was a scene that repeated itself over several lunches that summer. As the weeks passed, Chuck made friends that would last a lifetime. Among those lifetime friends were Steve and Jane Baker, who helped him meet Ann, the woman whom he would marry and start a family with. He returned to Fall River for Christmas with serious thoughts of forging his own path.

“My uncle, a lawyer, God bless him, I thought he would be very upset,” says Chuck. “But not at all. He said you’ve got to do what you want to do, and I was back in Vermont and started in with John Kristensen on the second of January.”

From that time forward, Brattleboro became Chuck’s home and its well-being his cause. Over the years, he helped establish two critical nonprofit services: Rescue Inc. and the Prouty Center, and served as chairman of the board of the Brattleboro school board and on boards for Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and the Thompson House, among others.

Chuck credits his love of working with people for his level of involvement. “For a town to be successful, it has to have people participating. It wasn’t like I was putting myself out to do it, because I enjoyed it,” he explains. “It was also a sense of seeing some achievement. Like a painter, he can be artistic or he can be a housepainter, but he sees what he just did and that makes him proud. And I guess I could see differences being made because I, along with others, worked to get there.”

One of the differences he worked toward during his 11 years on BMH’s Board of Trustees was the renovation to the front entrance, which to his bemusement is being undone to some extent by the new plans to expand the hospital’s Emergency Department. Chuck cites his uncles as his inspiration for service on hospital boards. He remembers their own active service on behalf of two hospitals in Fall River.

“Financially supporting things that otherwise wouldn’t be available is the glue that keeps a town together, and that glue is important,” says Chuck. “Without a good hospital you cannot have a good, growing town. Brattleboro wouldn’t be anywhere near what it is if we didn’t have a hospital like we have. But we have it and we strive to make it even better.”

Chuck Cummings will be honored for his service to BMH and other Brattleboro institutions at the BMH 2012 Giving From The Heart Gala taking place at All Souls UU Church on Saturday, April 21. For more information, click here or call the BMH Office of Development at 802-257-8314.

Carol and Arthur Westing

Carol Westing says she fell in love with Vermont when she and Arthur visited on their honeymoon. The Michigan native had never been to New England until she and Arthur took that three-week camping trip. “I kept saying, this is it. I just know this is where we’ve got to live. Arthur had started a Ph.D. program at Yale, so it was natural that we would live in New England.”

They were able to settle in Vermont nine years later when Arthur, a forest ecologist, was hired by the recently-established Windham College in Putney. Carol obtained a Master’s degree in special education from Keene State and began teaching in the Windham County school system. The young couple bought a home in Westminster West and raised their two children, Jeanne and Stephen, there.

Their bucolic existence was interrupted by the Viet Nam Conflict. Arthur teamed up with a wildlife biologist from the University of Montana and traveled to the war-torn country to study the environmental impact of chemicals being used by the U.S. military, most notably a chemical named Agent Orange.

“We went over initially to look at the damage to the countryside. We started getting anecdotal reports that poultry and livestock were damaged and that people were getting sick,” says Arthur. They reported the findings to the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, a resident of Dummerston and coincidentally a friend of Arthur’s from their work with the Windham World Affairs Council. “We told him we were quite certain that these chemicals were causing human illness and possibly even death. He said, that’s nothing that we counted on. I’m going to put an end to it immediately. And he stopped it within days.”

Arthur continued to study the impact of military action on the environment for a United Nations-funded project, causing the Westing family to move first to Sweden and then to Norway. As a college student at Michigan State, Carol had envisioned a life spent in foreign lands. Her interest in politics and adeptness at learning foreign languages had her leaning toward a career as a foreign service officer. But after ten years in Scandinavia she longed to return to the state that had enchanted her years before.

“I always liked the way people cared about each other in Vermont, and I was still young enough that I felt I could get one more good job,” says Carol. She was hired by the Meadows School of the Brattleboro Retreat. The couple built a house in Putney and re-dedicated themselves to the community. Arthur served on the Windham Regional Commission and the Woodland Owners Association; while Carol, a breast cancer survivor, worked with Jane Baker and Jane Sbardella to start a continuing breast cancer support group at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.

“I had joined a Swedish breast cancer support group. It had meant so much to me that I wanted to help start one here,” says Carol, adding how responsive BMH was when the group approached it with the idea of establishing a comprehensive breast care program navigated by an oncological nurse, who eventually would take over our support group. “We couldn’t have asked for a more helpful, supportive hospital.”

The Westings’ appreciation for BMH has deepened during the past six months, as Arthur has had to make several overnight visits. The quality of care compelled them to make a charitable gift annuity to BMH, which they call a “win-win situation.”

“You give them the money, the hospital is able to use it, and while we’re still alive we get an income,” explains Arthur. “We hear horror stories about hospitals in other communities, but this one is very different. It’s part of the community, it’s well-staffed by good doctors and nurses and a fine staff. The experience there was really one we could praise and honestly tell our friends that the institution is truly worth supporting.”

Dr. Karen Hein

Karen’s illustrious career in health and health policy began with a domestic focus. In 1987, she founded the first comprehensive adolescent HIV/AIDS program in the U.S. and authored the book AIDS: Trading Fears for Facts. She also served as President of the William T. Grant Foundation, which strives to improve the lives of young people through investments in schools, neighborhood organizations and other social settings that influence youth. But her affinity for the communal lives found in central Asian culture — she cites the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi as a guiding influence — led her to devote a second stage of her career to international health and youth development though organizations that focus on Africa and India like the International Rescue Committee and Child Fund International.

“Indian and Asian cultures are proficient in making the elements of life and connections of family and community,” says Karen, who also uses it as a model for her home life. She raises Himalayan cashmere goats to harvest precious fiber for knitting and weaving and makes her own paper. “We try to live in a way that reflects our values. I also jog. I ski cross-country and downhill. I hike.”

A year and a half ago, Karen was jogging the three and a half mile uphill road that leads back home from the general store when she experienced “classic signs of angina.” It dissipated after a couple of minutes rest, but the same chest pains and shortness of breath manifested itself a week later while jogging the same stretch of road. “I thought: ‘Oh no! Not me,’” Karen says.

A meeting of the IRC brought her to New York around that same time. She had her former New York physician refer her for an angiogram that discovered an 80 percent blockage in one of her acoronary arteries and had a stent inserted to clear it. Then back home in Vermont, she wondered what else she might be able to do to strengthen her heart and discovered Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s Cardiac Rehab program.

Led by her cardiologist, Dr. Burt Tepfer, (coincidentally a former classmate), Karen went through the three-month cardiac rehab program, learning more about dietary implications of controlling heart disease, the effects of the medications she would be taking and about the critical importance of reducing stress. The 67 year-old Karen loved the experience so much she refers to herself as “the poster child for cardiac rehab. It’s such a great example of saving lives by having people live in a more healthy way,” she says.

Karen’s relationship with her family practitioner, Dr. Robert Tortolani, gave her the confidence that the BMH medical staff would share her perspective on health care. But her experience with the cardiac rehab staff compelled her to become a first time BMH donor with a gift to that department.

“Of course we’re very fortunate to have such an excellent facility as we have at BMH but it really is the team, their skill and dedication and their knowledge,” says Karen. “Their emphasis was on health and well-being and not on disease and disability. Everybody should go do cardiac rehab, so you can learn about being healthy.”

Of course, the story of the Baker family runs a corresponding line with the story of Brattleboro. Stephen can actually trace his ancestry back to the town’s founding, and both his parents were born and raised here. After deciding college life was not to his taste, Stephen’s father, James, borrowed money from his own father, to start a newspaper, magazine and stationery store on Flat Street in 1925. Two years later, Baker’s moved to the Main Street location it occupies today.

Stephen remembers his father joining BMH’s board of directors when he was 13, and his mother was so passionate about her role in the BMH auxiliary that she wanted to be buried in her pink smock. “I certainly grew up with them being involved with the community,” says Stephen, who has been a hospital corporator and has served on a number of committees, as well being a fundraiser for the addition of the Richards Building for outpatient services. “Also, part of my education at Choate and Middlebury impressed upon me that you can’t always take from a community, you have to give back.”

Jane Baker has also been an auxiliary member for over 50 years, following the example of her mother while growing up in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. But her indelible contribution to the hospital is the founding of the breast cancer support group, which she co-founded with BMH staff Dion Eleftherakis and community members Carol Westing and Jane Sbardella in 1993. This support group, which started as a result of Jane’s diagnosis of breast cancer, operated on its own with BMH’s blessing, meeting twice a month. After a short period of time the coordination was handed over to BMH with some financial support provided by a grant that Jane wrote to the Thompson Trust. Shortly after the forming of this group her daughter in-law was lost to the disease.

“When I first got breast cancer nobody talked about it. So this was a place where women could go and share their information. We had some tears but we also had a lot of laughter,” Jane says.

Given the Baker’s family history with breast cancer — in addition to Jane and her daughter in-law, one of Stephen’s sister’s in-law also recently passed away after being 25-year survivor — it is fitting that Stephen and Jane are being honored during a year when the Gala proceeds are directed towards BMH oncology services. Jane can not say enough about the wonderful care she has received from BMH and the oncology staff. From Dr. Joe Rosen and Dr. Greg Gadowski to Kelly McCue, Breast Care Navigator to Agnes Mikijaniec, Oncology Nurse Manager and Oncology Physician Dr. Letha Mills the care, support and guidance has been has been invaluable. “There are too many to mention, and there is always the fear of omitting someone, but no matter the person the care at BMH has been incredible.”

“I think that health care is really essential, and having local health care makes a big difference in the community,” Stephen says. “I remember pitching a development idea once, and told them that the quality of the hospital was one of the reasons Brattleboro is so vibrant. It’s one of the town’s largest employers and the area’s high quality-of-life attracts top-notch medical staff. It’s a great community asset.”

Paula Marie

When Paula Marie was a young girl, she would unwittingly upset her mother by telling her she was moving to California the minute she turned 18 years old. Now she’s 19 and on the verge of moving out of her family home in Guilford to an apartment in Brattleboro, and that might end up being far enough.

“I can grow into myself and still be doing things that make a difference in this area,” says Paula, clasping her knee to her chest. “You can make things to do.”

Making things to do has never been a problem for Paula. Babysitting gigs became opportunities to get kids involved in creative projects. Teaching her self to play the piano and sing was not just an outlet for songwriting and performing, but also a vehicle for staging concerts that raised money for local charities. Even her current job working in the kitchen at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital is a chance to reach out and interact with patients in a meaningful way.

“They want to talk about something other than their illness. They’ll be there for a few weeks and I won’t see any family or visitors. You can tell when they really want to talk to you,” she says. “Even though I deliver trays and I wash dishes I can be a part of that sick person’s day that doesn’t completely suck.”

Paula’s job at the hospital helps her pay for classes at the Community College of Vermont. She initially focused on early education thinking she would follow the same path as her mother, who teaches in Greenfield. But special education courses focused on integrating autistic children into mainstream classrooms eventually captured her interest.

“Being a teacher you’re obviously helping kids but it’s more rewarding being one-on-one rather than being one-on-twenty,” says Paula. “One of my teachers referred to it as being someone’s Jiminy Cricket, and I like that so I use that all the time.”

Paula isn’t overly concerned with how long it will take before she gets to play Jiminy Cricket. She knows what she wants to accomplish and understands it will be worth the time and money she puts into her goal. In the meantime, she continues to look at the big picture impact of even the smallest gestures, including giving back to the hospital by making a financial contribution to the patients with limited or no health insurance.

“Growing up my parents didn’t really have a great insurance plan. I watched them struggle. My family had some health issues that had come up. Even for just regular check-ups I watched them stress out all the time because we had this insurance plan that would cover your pinky and not your thumb,” recalls Paula. “So that’s why I chose to donate to the program for people that don’t have good insurance. I thought that was really noble and I could relate to it.”

Paula says the in-person appeal from BMH’s Development Office inspired her to make the contribution. If she had just received a memo in her mailbox, she admits she may not have given it as much thought. She sees that approach as the best way to entice other hospital employees and young people to do the same.

“If they thought of the hospital is a symbol of a community and something that everyone in the community needs at one point or another, maybe they would feel compelled to help out,” says Paula. “Just do little things to help someone and you feel good about yourself.”

Ron Romano has many blessings to count. Quasi-retired at the age of 50 and living in a beautiful log home in Saxtons River, he and Chuck, his partner of 24 years, can hike through their 21 acres of land or simply sit in their screened gazebo and watch the trout jump in the backyard pond.

But family is the blessing Ron holds most high. His parents still live in his hometown of Portland, Maine, and this past summer he was able to go up and celebrate their anniversary along with his two sisters, Mary and Rae.

“Many of our friends have lost their folks. It’s nice that I still have both. You have to cherish it,” Ron says while looking down at his brown docksiders, which he wears with no socks. “Unfortunately, it was the week after we were up there that they found a tumor on Rae’s kidney.”

Rae had already survived breast cancer, and it was in honor of her victory that Ron recently made a donation to the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital campaign to raise funds for purchasing digital mammography equipment. He credits Ellen Smith, the hospital’s Director of Development, with the idea of making the donation in her name, and expressed his appreciation that Ellen had gift and card in the mail to Rae immediately after hearing the latest news.

Healthcare had been Ron’s profession for 26 years. Fresh out of Boston University, he became an intern at a major nonprofit insurance company in Massachusetts, and worked his way up to vice-president. He was put in charge of the entire appeals process, as well as serving as ombudsman and privacy officer.

“My goal was always to resolve the problem. Not deny, but try to find some middle ground in what we do,” says Ron. “We had huge customer satisfaction, because our mindset really was all about taking care of the customers. As a result, our company was also financially very strong.”

Ron also spent five years as an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching graduate students how managed care works. He designed a course called “Basics of Managed Care” for the graduate track for folks who were going into health policy careers.

As much as he loved teaching and appreciated the professional achievements, he knew when it was time to walk away. He and Chuck were spending every weekend in Saxtons River at what was then just a summer getaway. But when Chuck was given early retirement from his position as a civil engineer, Ron frequently found himself making the Monday drive back to Boston by himself.

“I loved Boston but I had lived there for almost 30 years,” says Ron. “I feel blessed that I’m able to have left a great job and take this time to do what I want; poke in the garden, hike, kayak, travel a little bit. Some day, I might go back to work.”

Ron was already thinking about ways to shift his support toward causes in his new locale when he first received a fund request mailer from Brattleboro Memorial Hospital over a year ago. His experience with community hospitals compelled him to send a check.

“It’s important that we have strong hospital systems, especially in a more rural environment. You’ve got to be able to get quick care and good care,” says Ron. “So what we all need to do is chip in a little bit and make sure they’re funded.”

Jon Thatcher, MD

As a Dartmouth undergrad, Jonathan Thatcher mused on the possibility of living in Vermont. He made a few ski trips up this way while in high school and found the open landscapes preferable to his northern New Jersey home. But his path to a life in New England as an orthopedic surgeon started in an entirely different direction, geographically speaking, when he enrolled in St. George’s Medical School on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada.

“I sold my house and quit my engineering job to go down there,” he recalls. “Now it’s a huge success, but when I was there the institution had just opened the year before. They had a motel, an old campsite from the World Health Organization, outdoor lecture halls – there was no red carpet. It was really rough but I cherish the experience.”

Jon eventually transferred to Boston University for his last two years of medical school. He returned to Dartmouth for an internship in general surgery and then spent four years at the UMass Medical Center in Worcester for a residency in orthopedics. After that, it was time for him and his wife, Kathy, to try and find their way back to ski country.

There were two job opportunities to consider. The one with Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, New Hampshire appealed to the same sense of pioneering adventure that sent Jon to Grenada; he would be the sole orthopedic surgeon there. The one at the Keene Clinic offered stability and support. The choice became simple when they looked at a nineteenth century farmhouse for sale in Chesterfield, stepped on the back porch and took in the breathtaking view of Mount Snow in the distance.

“I see patients in the office, come home and go for a run, then relax here on the porch and do my dictation,” he says. They’ve converted a room upstairs into a yoga studio where Kathy, a Kripalu-certified instructor, teaches several classes.

When the Keene Clinic dissolved and became part of Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Jon decided joining Dr. Douglas Lily’s practice in Brattleboro would be a better fit. He liked the scale of Brattleboro and the control he could retain over his practice. Jon looks at the donations he makes to BMH’s annual fund and the contribution he gave toward construction of the Richards building where his offices are located as investments in a mutually beneficial relationship.

“When you’re in a community with one hospital, if they have a good reputation and good equipment it’s going to help your practice,” he says, shrugging off the notion that his donations to BMH are any different than the ones he makes to the educational institutions he attended. “There’s a cooperation and good feeling between the doctors and the administration. I appreciate they’ve set up a good space for me to rent for my practice. I give back to those that provided for me. It’s just the way I am.”

Sue Flagler and Jane Deubler wanted to make that clear, as the two sisters sat side-by-side on the living room sofa in the Deubler family’s Brattleboro vacation home. Jane and her husband, Tom, had come up from Brockton for the holidays, while Sue and her husband, Rick, drove over from their home in nearby Richmond, New Hampshire, so the four could catch a matinee.

For the past 40 minutes they had been reminiscing about their mother, Helen, who passed away in autumn 2008. But the memory of their father couldn’t help but insinuate itself into the narrative from time to time. After all, it was John Lord who grew up in the Brattleboro area. Helen was from Lake Placid, and the two met in Schenectady while she was in nursing school and he was doing his medical internship.

The Second World War intervened within months after they were married, sending John overseas for three years while Helen worked as a nurse in Schenectady. It wasn’t long after his return from the service, however, that the young couple moved to Brattleboro. John established a private family practice while Helen took on the full-time position of mother to three daughters: Nancy, Jane, and Sue.

“We used to walk home from school for lunch every day. She had a homemade meal ready every day, with cookies for dessert,” recalled Jane, while acknowledging that she wasn’t sure she could have done that with her two boys, Jim and John, both of whom are now adults.

Helen Lord surrounded by her daughters

Helen also played an integral role in the growth of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital in the 1960s. John would often bring doctors over to the house for dinner as part of the recruitment process, a kindness that was repaid this summer when Helen had to spend time in the Intensive Care Unit.

“When we were in the ICU waiting room, they would stop by and visit us. It wasn’t like we were holding court…,” said Sue.

“Well, Mom was,” Jane pointed out.

“Yeah,” Sue nodded. “The older doctors would stop by and talk about our parents when they were younger. And it was really very…I hadn’t thought about this for a while but it was great!”

“It was great,” Jane confirmed.

“We were sort of nourished by it,” Sue said, crediting the ICU staff. “The nurses were so competent and so on top of things and wonderful to Mom, really tuned into her and treated her respectfully. They were wonderful to us.”

The level of care given their ailing mother prompted them to seek ways to show their appreciation. Sue found information on the BMH web site about the Grateful Patient Fund and the family requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to BMH in Helen’s honor because, “she felt strongly that there was great medical care there.”

The family also made a gift to the hospital to have a plaque honoring their parents placed by a tree planted in front of the hospital’s new addition. John had passed away in 1993 from Parkinson’s, leaving Helen to look after herself in the Guilford home they moved to after his retirement. Not that she would have it any other way, according to Jane.

“She was tough. She had a helper who came in once a week who would drive for her sometimes, but she would also drive herself sometimes,” Jane said. “When she would lose power she would fill her bathtub with water and fill jugs with water. She was like a pioneer woman. We admired her.”

And with that the two sisters agreed to stop by and look at the plaque after the matinee. Because this time it was about Mom.

Jeff and Nancy Hagstrom

This past May, Jeff and Nancy Hagstrom celebrated 20 years as owners of Newton Business. Jeff says the company itself dates back to the 1950s, when Fred Newton “sold and repaired business equipment right out of his house on Route 30.” He’s not exactly sure when Fred sold it to Bob Parro, but he knew why he and Nancy bought it in 1989. They were making a choice to live where they wanted to live and to take control of their professional lives.

“When Jeff brought me up to meet his family in New Hampshire, I fell in love with New England,” says Nancy, who originally hails from Ohio and met Jeff at IU in Bloomington, Indiana. After an interim stop in Pennsylvania, Jeff took a job with Chomerics in Brattleboro, which was later AMP Inc. Nancy, a teacher by trade, continued to substitute while raising their three children: Julia, Nathan and Josh.

Jeff’s stint in what he calls the “corporate culture” came to an end when the company he worked for was bought by a competitor. The offices would be moved to the southern part of the U.S. as part of the sale. The Hagstroms decided to stay in Vermont and looked around for a business to buy. “Our consultants at the time led us to believe [Newton] was a good viable business to jump into — which it was; so we jumped into the pond,” says Jeff.

During their tenure, Newton Business has survived the ups and downs of the local and global economy plus the advent of office supply chain stores and online ordering. The Hagstroms have expanded the enterprise into what Jeff describes as “three and-a-half businesses”; the three being office supply sales, office machine sales and service, and a business interior design and furnishing service; the half being a local supplier and engraver of trophies and plaques. Their daughter, Julia, is part owner and works in the Brattleboro location while Nancy also owns a business interiors dealership in Hartford, Connecticut, managed by their younger son, Josh. (Nathan, who also lives in Hartford, is a pediatric oncologist.) BMH

When asked about the longevity of Newton Business, the Hagstroms credit the Brattleboro mind-set of supporting independent, local businesses. That mind-set is equally on display in how the Brattleboro merchants rally around civic organizations like Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. The Hagstroms show their support in several ways, from making contributions to the hospital’s annual fund and capital campaign to sitting on committees and helping with fundraising efforts. Both of the Hagstroms are also corporators of BMH.

“You have to respect the quality of a hospital and its physicians, but you also have to feel like it truly cares. And this one does,” Nancy says. “If their attitude wasn’t like that I don’t think they would get the kind of support from all of us that they do. We’ve both lost our parents and I’ve lost my brother, so we’ve both been in a lot of hospitals. There’s definitely an aura when you walk into a health care facility and you’re already scared. What they do over at BMH is make you feel less scared because you are in competent and caring hands.”

Nancy found herself getting a patient’s-eye view of hospital care following a horseback riding accident this past summer. “I broke my hip and few ribs were cracked, so I had surgery and was at BMH three or four days,” she recalls. “The level of care was incredible. They were right there making sure you were comfortable. There was compassion and laughter.”

Norman and Mary Mallory purchased Triple T from founder Larry Titus in the 1970s. (The company name derives from the fact that Titus had three sons.) Since then, it has grown from a single employee operation to 23. One of whom is general manager Peter Gaskill, whose environmental studies background has served him well in an industry that has evolved to include services like recycling and organic compost removal.

“In high school, when everyone would ask what are you going to do after you graduate, my joke was I was going to walk along the highways picking up returnables, and I’m kind of doing that on a larger scale,” says Gaskill, who’s desk, located at the immediate right of the entrance to Triple T’s office, seems to float like a harbor buoy inside the vast open room that has little other furniture or decoration save a long table strewn with blueprints and some NASCAR posters along a wall in the back corner.

The Mallory’s are both from local families – Norman grew up in Dummerston while Mary is from Winchester. Norman is president, Mary is vice president and they also have a daughter and two sons in-law who are integral parts of the business. Gaskill describes them as “under-the-radar people in town, content being hands-on business owners.” And while “hands-on” includes providing a good retirement plan and 100 percent health insurance for employees and their families, “under-the-radar” did not preclude the Mallory’s from recently making a charitable gift to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.

The importance of a strong community hospital hit home for Norman when he lost his father back in 1976, according to Gaskill. Ultimately, he decided that one of the best ways a local business can make an impact in a community is contributing to financial support to improve health care.

“This is a way of giving back to everyone in the area that has made them successful. It’s that cycle of keeping your money local,” says Gaskill.