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20 December 2003  

For parents of children undergoing surgery at Miami Children’s Hospital, Donna Huck is the comforting liaison who calls the operating room to check on their child.

For bored young patients, she has been the one who brings them a book or reads to them. For newborns in intensive care, she has been there to rock and feed them. For doctors and nurses, she’s a volunteer who bakes cookies every December. And behind the scenes, she has chaired the hospital’s board, helped raise more than $2 million, and currently heads the U.S. Radio Lollipop organization, which helps establish in-house radio stations at children’s hospitals. In short, for the past 22 years, Huck has been there for Miami Children’s.

Huck fits in her 20 hours a week of volunteer activities along with self-employment as a headhunter for law firms and a partner in a clothing company that puts on trunk shows.

”She has a lot of intuitive sense about administrative responsibilities and can also give personal care to people in distress,” said Lynn Heyman, the hospital’s director of community and volunteer resources. “She’s also always willing to take on the big jobs. As volunteer director, you really try not to burn people out, but she never seems to get burned out.”

Huck is a fifth-generation Floridian who moved to Miami 22 years ago. Almost immediately, she went to Miami Children’s to volunteer. Previously, she had volunteered with the Lighthouse for the Blind, but she decided she wanted to work with children. ”Adults, quite frankly, can be a little difficult as they get older,” she said.

But before long, Huck’s volunteer duties expanded to involve adults. In 1982, she became a founding member of the Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation Community Council, a group that has raised more than $2 million. She served on the hospital’s board from 1986 to 1992, and again in 1997 and 1998, acting as chairman in 1991.

Seven years ago, Miami Children’s became the first U.S. hospital to broadcast Radio Lollipop, a 24-7 service for young patients that includes three days of live programming per week. Children can listen on their hospital televisions and take part in interactive programming. Huck chairs the U.S. Radio Lollipop board and helped open the second station in a Houston hospital.

In another pioneering role, she was one of the first liaisons between staff and parents in the surgical waiting room.

”The worst thing in the world is to sit in a hospital and not know what’s happening,” Huck said. So, every Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon, she sits with parents, occasionally calling the operating room and relaying any news. ‘Mostly, it’s `The doctor’s still working and the patient is stable,’ ” she said — but any word is a comfort to anxious mothers and fathers. She also knows when to let others do the talking.

“All of us have it in us to do something for other people, and if we don’t, there’s something wrong. I think what makes me a good volunteer is that I have the ability to listen,” Huck said.

(original story (c) Miami Herald)