For 26 years, Sharon Dymnioski worked in the maternity unit at Ocean University Medical Center. She began in labor and delivery, taking care of the soon-to-be moms, and later moved into the nursery, where she attended to newborn babies.

After she retired, she missed the hospital and all her old friends. So she came back to the nursery, this time as a volunteer, to perform hearing screenings on newborns. “They call me a nurse volunteer,” she says. “Because I’m experienced in the nursery, I can do the hearing screenings as well as other things, like take vital signs on the babies and stay with the newborns when the nurses need to run to a delivery,” she says.

But her hospital service didn’t—and still doesn’t—end there. She currently serves as the president of the Guild of Ocean University Medical Center, a non-profit organization that funds educational and other health care-related services at the hospital and throughout the community. “We raise money for the hospital for smaller pieces of equipment, we donate to Common Ground Grief Center, which provides peer support groups for kids dealing with grief after a loss, and we help the Mental Health Association, which does suicide prevention work,” she says.

The hospital is a priority for Sharon—so much so that she recently committed to a $500,000 annuity gift to Hackensack Meridian Ocean University Medical Center Foundation. “As the hospital has grown, it’s become more endearing to me,” she says. “There are so many cutting-edge, innovative things available now that simply weren’t accessible to the local community 20 years ago, and I thought, ‘We just have to keep this going.’”

The donation will go specifically to the maternity unit, which offers a unique opportunity. “Sometimes, the maternity unit is the very first time a woman comes into the hospital. When she sees that it’s a place that's warm and comforting, she’s going to remember that,” Sharon says.

As for Ocean, they are grateful beyond measure. "Sharon is an incredibly generous donor, career nurse and long-time volunteer. She embodies the community-minded ethos and generosity of spirit at Ocean University Medical Center," says Jason A. Kreitner, FACHE, president and chief hospital executive at Ocean.

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