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5 April 2006  

By day, she’s a mild-mannered Pharmacy Department coordinator at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, but every Tuesday night Debbie Prout undergoes a metamorphosis. She becomes “Dingie Debbie,” one of the volunteer on-air personalities and craft maker at Radio Lollipop, the radio station for kids at Texas Children’s Hospital.
The in-house radio station is operated solely by young patients and volunteers each Terrific Tuesday and Thrilling Thursday evening. Volunteers are being recruited this spring to put Wacky Wednesday on the air, too. It’s an animated evening when Radio Lollipop is on the air, so lively that some young patients want to be hospitalized on those days.
Why would anyone choose to be in the Hospital? “At Radio Lollipop, they can join the party in the radio studio and adjoining activity room, or they can call in from their patient rooms to request songs, answer quizzes, tell jokes or ‘shout out’ to a friend or a favorite nurse,” Dingie Debbie explains. It’s a high-energy, laugh-a-minute party geared to entertaining children, taking their mind off illness for a while.
Debbie recalls a youngster who loved the tune, “Woody’s Round Up” from the movie “Toy Story.” A frequent patient, he came bounding into the studio one evening, then into the adjacent activity room to make a craft project. Debbie remembered his favorite tune and put it on the air. Young Daniel dashed back into the studio, hopped up on the tall chair facing the DJ and began to sing along … out of tune and at the top of his voice.
Only later did Debbie learn from the boy’s mother that he was just being admitted that evening and that he begged his mother to drop him at the door so he could make it to Radio Lollipop while she took care of the admission procedure. He was that eager to play on the radio.
That’s the sort of incident that has brought Debbie back to Texas Children’s, week in and week out, for more than six years. Debbie is one of the original Radio Lollipop volunteers at Texas Children’s, and she has enjoyed each week’s activities since before the little radio station went “on the air” in 1999. “It’s a great program,” she says. “I love interacting with the kids, especially when we are able to get a child to smile for the first time all day.”
She enjoys the little ones telling jokes, especially “Knock, Knock” jokes. “Sometimes they don’t know that they have to wait for a response to ‘knock, knock,’ and they run through the whole joke at once,” she laughs. “Being silly is an asset for Radio Lollipop volunteers,” Debbie says.
Not all of Debbie’s 1,300-plus volunteer hours have been spent being silly on the radio. She also stepped forward to take on the role of Radio Lollipop Chairman, leading the self-managed volunteer cadre that plans themes for each week and crafts for each evening. Thinking up a weekly theme and two crafts weekly suitable for patients of all ages could be a challenge, but it’s one that Debbie relishes, even calling on her mother for new ideas.
She served on the board of The Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital for several years, acting as Advisor to the Junior Council, the teen volunteer leadership group that plans activities for patients. “Interacting with teens is great,” she says. “I enjoy watching them mature as they fulfill their commitments, and it’s terrific to hand the volunteer baton to another generation.”
On the flip side of Debbie’s “dingie” personality, she also has volunteered for four years as a Child Advocate, acting as the voice of a child embroiled in a custody situation. “I give the child a voice,” Debbie says. “I am a neutral party who can speak to the judge in the child’s best interest.” Partly as a result of her involvement, the children assigned to Debbie are now in loving homes.
An employee of St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital for 19 years, Debbie is the office coordinator in the Pharmacy Department, where she handles schedules, employee records and other administrative detail. Each Tuesday, she happily postpones a 45-minute commute home to don her volunteer uniform of jeans, Radio Lollipop polo shirt and white sneakers. Then, it’s off to the 16th floor and the little radio station that means so much to young patients, their siblings and parents.