By day, she\u0092s a mild-mannered Pharmacy Department coordinator at St. Luke\u0092s Episcopal Hospital, but every Tuesday night Debbie Prout undergoes a metamorphosis. She becomes \u0093Dingie Debbie,\u0094 one of the volunteer on-air personalities and craft maker at Radio Lollipop, the radio station for kids at Texas Children\u0092s Hospital.
\nThe 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\u0092s an animated evening when Radio Lollipop is on the air, so lively that some young patients want to be hospitalized on those days.
\nWhy would anyone choose to be in the Hospital? \u0093At 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 \u0091shout out\u0092 to a friend or a favorite nurse,\u0094 Dingie Debbie explains. It\u0092s a high-energy, laugh-a-minute party geared to entertaining children, taking their mind off illness for a while.
\nDebbie recalls a youngster who loved the tune, \u0093Woody\u0092s Round Up\u0094 from the movie \u0093Toy Story.\u0094 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 \u0085 out of tune and at the top of his voice.
\nOnly later did Debbie learn from the boy\u0092s 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.
\nThat\u0092s the sort of incident that has brought Debbie back to Texas Children\u0092s, 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\u0092s activities since before the little radio station went \u0093on the air\u0094 in 1999. \u0093It\u0092s a great program,\u0094 she says. \u0093I love interacting with the kids, especially when we are able to get a child to smile for the first time all day.\u0094
\nShe enjoys the little ones telling jokes, especially \u0093Knock, Knock\u0094 jokes. \u0093Sometimes they don\u0092t know that they have to wait for a response to \u0091knock, knock,\u0092 and they run through the whole joke at once,\u0094 she laughs. \u0093Being silly is an asset for Radio Lollipop volunteers,\u0094 Debbie says.
\nNot all of Debbie\u0092s 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\u0092s one that Debbie relishes, even calling on her mother for new ideas.
\nShe 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. \u0093Interacting with teens is great,\u0094 she says. \u0093I enjoy watching them mature as they fulfill their commitments, and it\u0092s terrific to hand the volunteer baton to another generation.\u0094
\nOn the flip side of Debbie\u0092s \u0093dingie\u0094 personality, she also has volunteered for four years as a Child Advocate, acting as the voice of a child embroiled in a custody situation. \u0093I give the child a voice,\u0094 Debbie says. \u0093I am a neutral party who can speak to the judge in the child\u0092s best interest.\u0094 Partly as a result of her involvement, the children assigned to Debbie are now in loving homes.
\nAn employee of St. Luke\u0092s 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\u0092s off to the 16th floor and the little radio station that means so much to young patients, their siblings and parents. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By day, she\u0092s a mild-mannered Pharmacy Department coordinator at St. Luke\u0092s Episcopal Hospital, but every Tuesday night Debbie Prout undergoes a metamorphosis. She becomes \u0093Dingie Debbie,\u0094 one of the volunteer on-air personalities and craft maker at Radio Lollipop, the radio … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiolollipop.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}