May 16, 2016
When Diane Butler started working for Marshall Medical centers, the old Guntersville Hospital was just three years old.
When patients went to the emergency room, they entered at the back of the hospital and rang a buzzer to let a nurse know they were there.
Four doctors rotated being on call. They were in the hospital only when they were called in or when they saw their own patients in the hospital.
A hospital room cost $10 a day for an adult and $2 a day for a baby to stay in the nursery.
Lyndon Johnson was president of the United States.
Butler started work on May 16, 1966 – 50 years ago Monday – and she has no intention of retiring any time soon.
“I will retire when I feel I’m no longer helping people,” she said. “I just appreciate being able to work at the hospital all this time.”
Butler, 72, is director of volunteer services at Marshall North. She has cut back to part time but still supervises about 50 hospital auxiliary volunteers, as well as the junior volunteer program for high school students and the Angels for Special People program, where volunteers read to patients who may be alone. She also runs two large jewelry sales and two book sales a year – both of which fill the hospital’s main lobby and raise money for hospital furnishings. She even helps out in the gift shop and information desk when needed, and puts together a budget for her department every year.
“Diane works tirelessly to promote good customer service and to provide leadership for our many volunteers,” says Cheryl Hays, administrator at North. “Her life-long dedication to patients and to MMC is evident daily in her interactions with patients, families, employees, and managers. She is loved and respected by all.
Butler feels the same way about her co-workers.
“I love it here,” she says. “The people make all the difference. They’re so polite. “It’s ‘Miss Diane this’ and ‘Miss Diane that.’ They’re really good to me.”
Butler moved to Guntersville from Alabama City in 1964. The Guntersville hospital was built the year before and was impressive, she recalls.
“It was really something,” she says. “Our hospital stayed full.”
Butler started out in accounts receivable at a time when every billing statement was written by hand and put in the mail monthly. She remembers when the hospital got its first computer.
“It took up a whole room,” she laughs. “We finally got an IBM.”
In the business office, the switchboard operators answered calls on a PBX machine. Butler and others had to train to use it too so they could fill in when the regulars were having lunch in the cafeteria. They also had to be able to work the window where patients were discharged. She enjoyed all of it.
“It always made you feel good to see the patients feeling better,” she says.
Later Butler did public relations for the hospital, then customer service. She handled patient concerns, mailed surveys and compiled results.
“When you took care of problems you could see it in their eyes that they knew someone cared,” she recalls.
When the hospital closed and combined with the Arab staff to form the Guntersville-Arab Hospital in 1990, the auxiliary volunteers came too. At least one of the original group is still donating her time regularly. Nada Hornbuckle of Arab has been a hospital volunteer for 44 years.
The auxiliary volunteers – recognizable in their pink smocks - stay busy. In addition to manning the stations where they’re assigned, they create tray favors for six holidays a year to decorate patients’ food trays. Many blue ribbons adorn Butler’s office from the state competitions her volunteers have won.
They also sew teddy bears at home to comfort young patients in the hospital. At one time, volunteers crafted tiny baby bonnets, one of which is displayed in a shadow box alongside a blue ribbon. Likely the most meaningful craft volunteers ever made is a quilt hanging in Butler’s office. Stitched together out of pink smocks – some worn in the old Arab Hospital – it was a Christmas gift from longtime volunteer Pat Henry of Arab, who runs the gift shop. It means the world to Butler.
“She put hours into that,” she says. “I couldn’t believe someone would give me something like that.”
Henry, part of the auxiliary for 16 years, said the smocks were turned in when volunteers passed away or became unable to work. They stacked up until she had an idea. The smocks bore embroidered names of their original owners and changed in style over the decades. For example, longtime Arab schoolteacher Lola Boyd’s smock was a pinafore-type with a square neckline like candy stripers wore. The late Bertha Phillips of Guntersville wore a smock with sleeves.
“I thought, ‘There’s a lot of history in these,” Henry says.
She took the fronts off the smocks and attached them with squares. She never expected Butler to hang it for everyone to see.
“I wanted to do the quilt as a remembrance of all her years of dedication to the hospital where she made an impression,” she says. “It’s my way of giving back to her for all she’s done for us.”
Auxiliary members do much more than sew and deliver flowers. They also make significant financial gifts from their fundraising efforts. The Marshall North Auxiliary contributed $50,000 toward the construction of the Cancer Care Center, and it awards scholarships annually to junior volunteers. They have bought recliners, chairs and food carts, along with countless items to make staying in the hospital a little easier.
“It all comes back to the hospital,” says Butler, who personally gives a scholarship each year in honor of her late grandson, who died as a kindergartener.
Butler met her husband of 27 years in the hospital. Otis Butler started work at the hospital as director of inhalation therapy and later became director of materials management. The co-workers went to see The Platters in concert on their first date and got married in 1988. He retired three years later.
There’s no question Butler loves her hospital, and is proud of the progress made since the early days of her five decades of service.
“We’ve grown so much,” she says. “All this state of the art equipment. I’m thankful for all the specialties we have and the cancer center so people don’t have to go somewhere else. I think God has blessed this community. I’m so proud of our hospital and the system. It’s just been a blessing to work here.”