Markay Stuart
She's making Christmas special for families
Some of Markay Stuart’s favorite childhood memories are of Christmas.
She remembers waking up and finding plenty of shiny packages to unwrap.
As an adult, Stuart asked her mother how she pulled off such nice Christmases when the family wasn’t extremely well off.
She learned that her parents had actually taken out a loan for the gifts each year.
That got her to thinking of what those Christmases might have been without the gifts.
Would she have thought she hadn’t been good enough to get a present?
Not wanting any child to awake on Christmas morning without having a gift under the tree, the nurse at Mercy Hospital calls around to organizations each year and finds two or three families that she and others at the hospital can buy presents for.
“I don’t want children to think they weren’t good enough,” Stuart said. “As a parent how do you explain that?”
All of it is done anonymously. Not even Stuart knows the names of the families.
Although she organizes the gifts each year, Markay points out that it is not just her that makes it happen, but several individuals at Mercy.
Nurses, doctors, transporters and surgical technicians donate gifts and money to the project. It is because of them that Stuart says she has been able to complete the project last for 13 years.
Most years, Stuart has enough presents to fill the trunk of her car and more.
Barb Griswold, director of surgical services at Mercy, thinks Stuart deserves a big pat on the back for all the cheer she spreads.
“She collects the donations, purchases the gifts and delivers them to where they are needed,” Griswold said. “I have seen her with tears in her eyes as she shares the list of what we were able to purchase.
“It is also rewarding for the entire operating room department to know that we have made a difference in someone’s life.”
— Deanna Truman-Cook
