Dyersville Medical Community Puts Endowment Funds to Good Use

Oak Crest resident Friday Couchane may be nearing her 100th birthday, but that doesn’t stop her from staying active. She enjoys regular exercise on Oak Crest Manor’s low-impact NuStep machines, placed in view of the nursing home’s raised garden beds that grow tomatoes and cabbage. Both the exercise equipment and the view were purchased with the help of annual distributions from endowment funds managed by the Dyersville Area Community Foundation, an affiliate of the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque.

“Bill Heiderscheit and his late wife, Claudia, lived in Dyersville and spent lot of time volunteering here at the hospital, at Oak Crest and at the Ellen Kennedy Living Center,” says Liz Heins, director of the Dyersville Health Foundation. “They were very active volunteers and had a great passion, especially for our Oak Crest nursing home right here in the hospital.”

After Claudia died, her husband set up an endowment fund in their name that would impact Oak Crest annually, forever. From lift chairs and exercise equipment to Christmas decorations and a blanket warmer, the William and Claudia Heiderscheit Endowment Fund helps Oak Crest residents lead more comfortable lives. “Bill wanted to do something to benefit the residents. He was a farmer in Dyersvillle his entire life and those were his friends and neighbors, those were his people. He loved going there and volunteering and staying connected,” Heins explains. “He is still having an impact even though he’s not here every day and that’s what he wanted.”

Other endowed funds help meet specific needs at Mercy – Dyersville. The family of the late Patricia A. Gassmann, who was a CNA at the hospital, set up their own endowment to help the more than 50 CNAs working there further their educations and celebrate their work. “They wanted to do something in her memory that would benefit the people that are doing the work that she did, that she so loved. “A lot of these CNAs are studying to be nurses, so we try to help them as much as we can with the Gassmann Endowment proceeds. That’s what Pat would have wanted and that’s what her family wanted,” says Heins.

Annual distributions from the Dyersville Health Foundation endowment fund help cover the costs of large projects, like the renovation of the health center’s emergency department. “They took an existing treatment room and transformed it into a trauma bay to increase efficiency, and they also updated the emergency department waiting room and paved the emergency area parking lot,” Heins explains. Grants from the Dyersville Area Community Foundation and Theisen’s More for Your Community also helped fund the renovation.

Accessibility and safety were the target of last year’s fund distribution, which meant security upgrades like new cameras and monitors, a panic button, and automatic door openers throughout the hospital.

“We’re really thrilled to partner with the Community Foundation,” says Heins, noting that distributions have reached virtually every department in the hospital. “Whether it’s a piece of equipment or education, parking, maintenance equipment, housekeeping, nutrition – pretty much anybody that walks through the door is touched in some way by the funding from the Community Foundation.”