Beloved founder of Ronald McDonald House set to visit
Doctor who made a difference to attend local home’s block party
In the late 1960s, Dr. Audrey Evans knew that families of her critically ill patients desperately needed a place to stay. But she never imagined solving a problem in her own community would launch a major charity that supports families around the world.
Evans, now 89 years old, is the founder of the Ronald McDonald House, an international charity that gives families an affordable place to stay, close to hospitals where their children are treated. She’s scheduled to make a rare visit to the northern Alberta Ronald McDonald House in Edmonton this weekend and on Sunday she will join a few thousand guests at the house’s block party.
As the first head of pediatric oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Evans developed the groundbreaking staging system that revolutionized treatment and conducted research leading to higher survival rates of children with cancer. But she also saw a need to help patients and their families find a comfortable, affordable place to stay when undergoing treatment.
In the late 1960s, Evans noticed many families coming from out of town slept in chairs in the hospital hallways to be close to their children who were being treated, often sustaining themselves on vending machine food. She realized they could not afford to stay in hotels and began to look into setting up a house for them.
A few years later, Jim Murray, the general manager of the Eagles football team in Philadelphia, donated a cheque to the Children’s Hospital and Evans said she asked him for $32,000 to build the house. Murray had already been working with one of the players, Fred Hill, whose daughter had been diagnosed with cancer, to raise funds for cancer research. Murray and Hill approached one of the Eagle’s sponsors, a local McDonalds restaurant, to help raise the funds needed for the house.
“(The house) is a cocoon for them to be taken care of in a social way.” FOUNDER DR . AUDREY EVANS
“They were doing some advertising for McDonalds, I think they were advertising green milkshakes or something bizarre like that,” Evans said with a chuckle. “We got the first Ronald McDonald house for children with cancer and then it took off.”
Today there are more than 300 Ronald McDonald Houses offering support to families of severely ill and injured children all over the world.
Evans credits her teacher, Dr. Sydney Farber, with giving her an education based on “total care” — a practice that made her appreciative of the role of societal factors, particularly family situation, in patient recovery. Ronald McDonald Houses helps to relieve many burdens families face by setting them up in a supportive community, she said.
“You aren’t alone, you aren’t the only person in the world who’s got a kid with cancer. You happen to have 35 people all around you that you can share with,” Evans said. “(The house) is a cocoon for them to be taken care of in a social way, not just in a medical way.”
Sunday’s block party will be used as an opportunity to unite the northern Alberta house community. The party, at 7726 107th St., which starts at 1 p.m., is open to all and will include live music, a mechanical bull, sumo suit wrestling and a bouncy castle.
Martin Dugas, CEO of the house, said they’ve organized a scavenger hunt where visitors collect stories of people, including Evans, who contributed to the Edmonton house’s history. They will also be unveiling a mural, featuring caricatures of people from the hunt, with room for more faces to be added in the future.
Evans’ caricature will remain on the wall permanently as a reminder of the woman who has made an difference in the lives of countless children, but Evans said she simply wishes to be remembered as “a woman who cared.”