When David and Martha Showers' first grandchild, Jeremy, was born in Ohio 17 years ago with serious health problems, he was transferred immediately to Akron Children's Hospital. “We credit Akron Children's Hospital with saving his life,” David Showers says. “We woke up to the fact that this terrific facility was available in our area.”
The family also learned how expensive quality health care is; patient payments often fail to cover the total cost of additional neonatal nurses, keeping doctors on staff 24 hours a day, and offering specialty care. Showers, then president and CEO of Wayne Homes, had long believed in giving time and money to charity, but that experience cemented the hospital as one of his family's top philanthropic priorities.
Their involvement with the hospital grew significantly greater several years ago, after Showers, by then retired from Wayne Homes, successfully battled colon cancer. With the firsthand knowledge of how cancer affects the entire family, Showers approached Akron Children's Hospital with an interest in helping to build a new pediatric oncology ward, just as the hospital was planning a major expansion project.
Showers' $3 million donation enabled the hospital to open the state-of-the-art, family-centered Showers Family Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders in 2004. The center includes an outpatient clinic, in-patient rooms—with pullout couches for parents to stay overnight—and a number of features that otherwise might not have been included without the Showers' generosity, says Bill Considine, the hospital's CEO. “Had we not had those dollars, I'm not sure we would have been able to include the HEPA filters [to filter germs from the air],” he says, “[as well as] things like art therapy, pet therapy—they're things you don't get reimbursed for.”
BIG FAVORS FOR LITTLE ONES: David Showers has dedicated his charitable activities to improving the lives of children near and far.
The Hearthstone Builder Award will enable the hospital to further upgrade the unit, as Showers is donating his $100,000 award to defray some of the $600,000 cost of building a new suite of outpatient blood infusion rooms.
But more important than the dollars the Showers give “is their visible belief in the mission,” Considine says. “It's beyond words what that means to the staff.”
LEADING BY EXAMPLEThough Akron Children's Hospital receives much of Showers' philanthropic energies—he's also a member of the hospital's board of directors—he and his wife have a long history of giving generously to a number of organizations designed to benefit children, both near and far.
“I believe that you have to give back. It's not just money. It's your time, talent, and treasures,” Showers says. In the early days, as he was growing Wayne Homes, he didn't have a lot of time to devote to charities, so he tried to help in other ways. The company became a sponsor of the Chili Open, an annual golf tournament benefiting the Akron Rotary Camp, which serves primarily as a summer overnight camp for children with disabilities.
In the years since that first sponsorship, Wayne Homes has gone on to become the title sponsor of the Chili Open, and employees frequently join together to volunteer in the community, an ethos Showers left behind at the company, now owned by Centex Homes. “Letting the world know it's important to give where we make our living is something Dave instilled in all of us,” says Dave Logsdon, Wayne Homes' current president and CEO.
It's a sentiment that is echoed by those who have benefited from Wayne Homes' generosity, too. “He created a sense of civic obligation at Wayne,” says Dan Reynolds, the camp's executive director. Adds Jack Harig, a member of the camp's board of directors: “It hasn't mattered whether the money was going to toilets. It's, ‘What does it take this year to make it better for the kids over last year?' ”