Lasting legacy
The area lost a great man and great fundraiser when Joe Hyder passed away in January, but his work for St. Jude Hospital will continue on.
WOONSOCKET — The late Joseph G. “Joe” Hyder wore many hats during his long career as an area radio and television broadcaster over the years, but it was his favorite role – that of fundraiser for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis – for which he is best known locally.
And that isn’t likely to change thanks to the local St. Jude Children’s Hospital fundraising chapter that Hyder founded and which is now moving ahead to continue his work.
Hyder died at home in Milford, Mass., at the age of 89 on Sunday, Jan. 14. He was the husband of the late Frances W. (Sherman) Hyder, who died in 2008.
The chapter’s volunteer committee voted on Wednesday to name Romeo Berthiaume as Hyder’s successor and also acted to dedicate its St. Jude Children’s Hospital fundraising breakfast in September in Hyder’s memory.
“I have big shoes to fill and it is going to be tough,” Berthiaume said in regard to his selection as the chapter’s new chair.
But helping Berthiaume along is the knowledge that Hyder wanted his St. Jude Children’s Hospital work to continue.
Berthiaume said he last spoke to Hyder when calling him at home on New Year’s Eve before heading off on trip to Florida.
They talked a little about the fall fundraiser, which Berthiaume has been chairing in recent years, and he said Hyder made a point of asking him about the breakfast.
“He asked me ‘Are you going to continue to do the breakfast in 2018,’ and I said we would,” Berthiaume said.
Then, with his well-known attention to all the details, Hyder told Berthiaume not to forget about the fundraiser that the students at the Good Shepherd Catholic Regional School conduct every December and forward the proceeds to the local St. Jude Children’s Hospital chapter. Although Good Shepherd usually raises about $1,000 through its fundraiser, Berthiaume said that when he contacted Jennifer DeOliveira, the school’s principal, he learned the Good Shepherd students had raised a total of $1,500 for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. The drive had been completed before Joe Hyder passed away, Berthiaume noted.
The show of support for his favorite charity was the type of giving that Hyder always seemed to be able to secure during his more than 40 years working to help the Memphis-based children’s hospital, founded in 1962 by the late Danny Thomas, a film and television entertainer, who, like Hyder, was of Lebanese descent. Hyder said last year that their shared ethnic backgrounds was an added reason for him to get involved with St. Jude fundraising when Thomas asked him to step up, given his work in radio and television in New England, and also for broadcast networks.
He ran a radio-a-thon for St. Jude’s for years and had started his breakfast fundraiser 33 years ago last September. Hyder not only chaired local St. Jude chapters in Woonsocket and Milford but also went on to become a member of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s board of directors, a role he filled with annual visits to Memphis before his retirement.
The reasons for supporting St. Jude Children’s Hospital were direct and simple for Hyder.
Thomas’ motto for his organization was that “no child should die in the dawn of life,” and he worked to create a hospital that offers children free care for catastrophic illnesses while also researching cures to childhood disease.
“You couldn’t say no to Danny Thomas,” Hyder recalled last year of his own commitment to the cause.
In 2017, Hyder’s breakfast fundraiser at the Par-X Club, at 36 Stanley Ave., brought in over $7,000 for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Of course, the Par-X Club donated all of the breakfast food as they always did and also cooked it to order for the breakfast patrons, more than 300 in all. There were the raffles of gift items collected by the committee and also the annual sports memorabilia items sold by silent auction that Hyder would secure through his longtime contacts with the New England Patriots, the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins.
Volunteers also showed up to help out with serving the meals, and local businesses like Valley Transportation stepped up to ease parking constraints with a bus shuttle to the high school parking lot.
Berthiaume said the work is already underway to repeat all of that for this year’s breakfast on Sept. 16. Club Par-X has committed to helping out once again and the breakfast’s volunteers are already on board to handle their roles, Berthiaume said.
Hyder’s family members, including his son, Joseph G. Hyder, Jr., and daughter, Roseanne F. Jessings, will all be invited to attend the breakfast as a special tribute to its founder, he noted.
“We have a great committee and we are keeping it going,” he said.
On Wednesday, the local chapter also acted to wrap up its 2017 activities by sending a check for $10,000 to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hos- pital.
“It takes a lot of work, but if we can do that every year that is a pretty generous donation from our area,” Berthiaume said
It is also in keeping with Hyder’s goal for the local fundraising organization.
“Oh, he would have loved to see that. It was exactly what he would have wished,” said Berthiaume.
The members of the local St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital committee are:
Berthiaume, Sandrina Baldelli, Rachel Thifault, John Powell, Chris Driscoll, Cathy Gagnon, Barbara Simmons, Nancy and Robert Phillips, Kimberly Blais, Tina Go, Gloria Jean Roy Lafond and Normand Lafond, Noel Pincince and Michele Bocchini.