More to love: Ronald McDonald House opens addition to accommodate more families - Greenville Daily Reflector

It has been 31 years since the Ronald McDonald House of Eastern North Carolina opened to provide a home away from home for families whose children were hospitalized in Greenville. Today, there are 31 bedrooms set aside for keeping families close.

This week, the house celebrates the opening of a 10,000-square-foot addition to its Moye Boulevard location. With the 18-month, $4 million expansion and renovation, there is more to love in “the house that love built.”

The addition, which brings the total of bedrooms at the Moye Boulevard house from 21 to 25, is the second expansion in eastern North Carolina in seven years. In 2013, Ronald McDonald House of eastern North Carolina opened a location inside the James and Connie Maynard Children’s Hospital at Vidant Medical Center that includes a 2,500-square-foot common area and six bedrooms.

The latest addition includes not only more sleeping space but also a new kitchen and dining room, new playroom and spaces for offices, laundry and storage.

“Being able to have a space that's directly across the street from the hospital, that they can be only steps away from their child, it's a blessing,” Executive Director Meghan Woolard said.

“The very first family that checked in actually started crying,” she said. “They said the space was like a resort to them. They couldn't believe that our supporters and our donors and our community helped support us to help be able to build such a beautiful addition.”

Steve and AmberLynn Grzanka of Edenton were among the first families to spend the night in the new addition, which includes some bedrooms with space enough for seven family members to stay together. When the Gzrankas arrived at the house in January, it was their second stay since their son, Liam, was born. Five weeks premature, Liam required an eight-day stay at Vidant in October.

The Gzrankas had never heard of the Ronald McDonald House, which was inspired by Kim Hill, the 3-year-old daughter of Philadelphia Eagles tight end Fred Hill, in 1974. But they were grateful to be offered a room at the house at Vidant, where they could be a few steps away from their son in the neonatal intensive care unit.

“This was such a godsend,” Steve said. “It covered everything that you don't really think about when you're whisked away in an emergency situation, in our case miles away from home.”

The house provides families with basic necessities, a place to sleep, shower and do laundry, along with a hot meal each day, at no charge. It also provides a community setting where staff members and other families can offer emotional support.

While the average stay in the Ronald McDonald House is about 16 days, the Gzrankas went home after only eight. But several weeks later, they returned when Liam was diagnosed with viral meningitis. One of the first calls they made was to the Ronald McDonald House, which opened its doors to the family again, this time for a three-week stay.

“The Ronald McDonald House gave us a peace in a situation that no parent should go through,” Steve Gzranka said. “It was the small comfort of home that helped us remain strong. I truly believe this program and its benefits contributed to our son being home and healthy for a month now by keeping us together.”

More than a decade ago, Merrill Jones, who chairs the local house's board of directors, learned first-hand how a medical crisis can make it difficult for a family to stay together. He and his wife, Anne, spent nine weeks in the hospital when twins Thomas and Ellen were born prematurely.

“We were very fortunate,” Jones said. “We lived in town; we could swap off. We could go home, get a shower, go to bed at night, but we saw a whole lot of families that couldn't do that.

“That's what got us really interested in Ronald McDonald House was seeing the families that needed the house and understanding that people who lived in other places like Edenton, they couldn't just go home at night.”

Two years ago, there were many families that couldn't go to the Ronald McDonald House either. Woolard said that in 2016, despite the addition of the Ronald McDonald House at Vidant just three years earlier, nearly 100 families were unable to stay at the local houses simply because there was no more room.

“We were still seeing a need for more space,” she said. “We saw that we were continuously having to turn away families.”

With the addition of the children's hospital and patients coming to Vidant from half of North Carolina's 100 counties, Ronald McDonald House needed to grow. In May 2017, officials broke ground on the expansion, which was funded through donations from businesses, individuals and civic organizations.

A $1.4 million grant from Abbvie pharmaceutical company enabled the house to be able to update existing bedrooms, which had seen few renovations since the house opened in June of 1987.

First-floor updates in the original 15,000-square-foot structure also included renovations to common areas, along with a designated meeting space that can be used for family programs.

Almost no area of the house remained untouched, except for the Wall of Hope, a hallway display board filled with images of children whose families have temporarily called the house home. Kennedy Dean has four pictures on that wall, though it is hard to recognize her eight years after she was airlifted from Wayne County to what was then Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

Kennedy, now 14, had suffered bleeding in her brain caused by arteriovenous malformation, a rare, congenital disorder. She would remain in the hospital and rehabilitation center for more than 100 days. From September until December 2011, neither Kennedy nor her mother, Kim, would return to their home near Fremont.

As their daughter clung to life, Kim and Dwayne Dean declined the offer from Ronald McDonald House to leave the hospital, even for a single night. But after 11 days of sleeping on cots or in chairs and showering at Brody Medical School, they agreed to take turns sleeping across the street at Ronald McDonald House.

“This place is a blessing, and we don't know what we would have done without it,” Kim said. “They go above and beyond for all the families here to do whatever they can do to make it easier. It's kind of like it becomes part of your family, it really does.”

After Kennedy returned home, she wanted to give back to the house that had given so much to her parents during her stay at the hospital. So she began Kennedy's Butterfly Blessing Bags, which provide personal hygiene items for families staying at the house. Since 2014, she has donated more than 1,000 bags.

When the Deans learned about the planned expansion, they gave an additional donation to help fund the family pantry, an area where each family is given use of a small refrigerator and food storage area.

“(Having the refrigerator) makes it feel a little bit more like home,” Dwayne said.

Woolard said that is what the new addition is designed to do: give families some semblance of home until they can leave the hospital and go back to the homes where they belong.

“It's bittersweet,” she said. “We hate that we have to have families that have sick children and have to go through such devastating times, but we're glad that we 're glad that we can be able to offer a space for them to come for comfort and support while they're going through that.”

An open house and ribbon cutting to celebrate the expansion of the Ronald McDonald House of Eastern North Carolina will be held at noon Tuesday at 529 Moye Blvd. Tours will be available until 4 p.m. For more information, visit rmhenc.org.

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http://www.reflector.com/News/2019/02/24/More-to-love-Ronald-McDonald-House-opens-addition-to-accommodate-more-families.html

2019-02-24 05:19:35Z

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