Passing on the love

Will and Sherry Rosenfeld feel a strong connection with their neighborhood hospital. Will, a fifth-generation Oregonian, was born in the Wilcox Building of Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center; his father was born there, too. At 31, Will volunteered with the Associates of Good Samaritan. "I never left, I found it so interesting," he says. Later, he became a trustee for Good Samaritan Foundation, serving as chair for three years.

"I've always been involved in health care, " Will says. "Both my grandfathers were doctors, and at one point, I thought I wanted to be a doctor."

In 2010, Sherry spent countless hours at Legacy Good Samaritan navigating her parents' health care. "Good Sam is where I said my last goodbyes to them both," she says. Her parents, Ralph and LaVerne Dwyer, were married 68 years and died within five months of each other.

"I feel like I won the lottery when I got my parents," Sherry says. "They were very lovable." Her father valiantly battled stomach cancer, and Sherry believes her mother passed away from a broken heart.

To honor her parents, Sherry and Will made a generous donation of appreciated stock to Legacy Good Samaritan's Emergency Department capital campaign to name a room after them. "It's so meaningful," Sherry says. "I also see this as an opportunity to improve upon the emergency room that I was in so many times with my mother."

"And, the team in the Intensive Care Unit was so phenomenal", says Sherry. "They would say, ‘Ralph, what do you want today? Because whatever it is, I will do it for you—I will move mountains for you today.'"

As a proud Irishman, her father jokingly asked for a Guinness beer. "By golly, they sent a nurse across the street to the local market to buy a Guinness. They put a prescription label on it and handed it to him," Sherry chuckles. "He didn't drink it, but we have a picture of him with his Guinness." There are a lot of reasons why donors may want to give appreciated stocks. For Sherry, she had inherited a portfolio from her parents. Rather than pay a large tax on the gain, gifting the stock was a wonderful way to make a lasting contribution.

"It's very simple," says Will. "For a lot of older people who have held stock for quite some time, it's an excellent way to take advantage of that feature."