Volunteer "Icing on the Cake" at St. Luke’s

It is doubtful whether a better man could have been chosen recently as St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital’s Volunteer of the Year than long-time volunteer Dick Pariseau – heart-transplant recipient, computer wizard, businessman, and stained-glass artisan. As the new president of St. Luke’s Auxiliary, he has come to believe that much of the cynicism and despair found in people – young or old, rich or poor – indicates a need to feel wanted, important, useful, and to belong. As much as he appreciates technology and what it can do for mankind, the former systems advisor for Exxon realizes that working with the latest computer is no substitute for human relationships.

That understanding of the human condition plays a key role in his plans to recruit even larger numbers of volunteers to work within St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System. Helping people often overwhelmed by stressful concerns about their health or the health of their loved ones, he says, quickly washes away any feeling of being unneeded, unnecessary or obsolete.

"You can’t help but immediately have a strong sense of purpose when you see that you’re helping someone through a difficult situation," says the 58-year-old Pariseau. "In my volunteering with the Heart Exchange support group, I can’t tell you how good it makes you feel when you calm the fears of a patients and family by helping them understand what they’re going to go through, that life can go on."

Goodness truly is its own blessing.

Watch the relentlessly upbeat Pariseau visit a lady waiting for a heart transplant, and her face transforms at the sight of him. She is obviously very ill, pale and so, so thin. But the seemingly vacant stare changes into a smile as Pariseau booms, "Hey, how’s it going today? You ready to get on with it? When are you going to get out of here?"

"Talking with him makes me feel so good," she says. "He tells you all the practical things that the doctors can never tell you."

And just the sight of him, alive and well, laughing, she says, gives her hope.

"Seeing the hope in someone’s eyes heals me as much as it does them," Pariseau says later.

Back in ’93 when he got his heart transplant, Pariseau says, there was someone to help him out.

"In a sense I guess you could say I want to give back."

He is quick to say that volunteering with the Heart Exchange may seem dramatic, but that it is no more important than any of the other tasks that St. Luke’s 600-plus volunteers perform daily. For instance, he recently used his technological skills to install a computerized system that better tracks what volunteers do – a system that Pam Lemp, director of Volunteer Services, says is invaluable in using volunteers to their best advantage.

"When our volunteers at the information desks can decrease stress for people by letting them know where their loved ones are, how best to get there and give them a real sense of what’s going on, believe me, people appreciate it," she says. "And when we have people who can speak a visitor’s language or bring a smile to faces through pet visitation, it’s really meaningful. St. Luke’s is a hospital that cares about people’s emotional health. It’s a great feeling to be part of that."

Pariseau, who lost his wife to breast cancer 11 years ago, plans to step up efforts that will educate people on how to help others experience that feeling through the Auxiliary. More volunteers will go into the community on speaking engagements, more visitors to the hospital will be told, "Hey, incidentally, you can volunteer at St. Luke’s." He also hopes for an advertising campaign. With the opening of the new Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital – the Denton A. Cooley Building, combined with other new St. Luke’s Health System facilities around the city, Pariseau notes that more volunteers are needed than ever.

"Volunteers are like the frosting on a cake," he said. "They make things special. That’s why we need them so much."

Pariseau says St. Luke’s needs more people like volunteer Sue Baier – a woman whose caring he appreciates more every day. Twenty-one years ago she was afflicted with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition that within a day completely paralyzed her, but left her mentally alert and still able to feel pain. She worked excruciatingly hard to regain her physical abilities and has since dedicated much of her life to improving patients’ environments. She wrote a book, "Bed Number Ten," about her experience as a patient, and subsequently has been invited to serve on committees around the world that are dedicated to creating healing environments for patients. She currently serves on St. Luke’s Healing Environment Council and supports the hospital’s Guillian-Barre patients.

The fact that he’s working on a strategic plan to recruit more volunteers like Baier doesn’t stop Pariseau from running Glassworks, a store at 2503 Montrose that offers custom-designed stained glass, classes in the art form, as well as supplies. On this day, Pariseau and a Russian immigrant employed by him are laughing about how they work through the language barrier. Does it get in the way of communication? "Nyet."

Both carefully lay out designs with etching instruments.

"This is something that helps give me peace," he says, smiling.

If anything might have ruined Pariseau’s sunny disposition, it was the flood brought on by Tropical Storm Allison that left his house near Buffalo Bayou in ruins. It did not.

"It doesn’t seem like that big a thing when you’ve got your life," Pariseau says.

And your life, Pariseau adds, is never as full as when you’re sharing it.

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