VeNews November 2005

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Vesper Society celebrates 40 years

Vesper Society’s 40 years of devoted service to communities around the world were celebrated on Sept. 24, 2005, at the Stanford University Faculty Club in Palo Alto.

The formation of Vesper Society was inspired from the merger of three national bodies of the Lutheran Church in 1963, explained the organization’s co-founder Robert B. Cummings in a stirring tribute presented at the celebration. Read the address

Dr. Franklin C. Fry, the president of the merged bodies, known as the Lutheran Church in America, had directed two of his board members, Mr. Cummings and Eugene Heckathorn, to examine “problem situations.” Vesper Society was their response.

“We could see the idea of forming an organization that would be composed of lay people throughout the United States,” Mr. Cummings recalled.

Although its name invokes the ritual of nighttime worship, Vesper Society’s name actually came from the Vesper Club, a dining establishment in downtown Philadelphia where Mr. Cummings and Mr. Heckathorn had sketched out the framework for the new organization on the back of a placemat.

According to George Spindt, Vesper Society’s president and executive secretary from 1975 to 1985 and a current board member, one of the organization’s first missions was to help bail out troubled healthcare enterprises that had been established with federal Hill-Burton funds in the previous decades. As a result, Vesper Society eventually owned two hospitals in the Bay Area, San Leandro Hospital and Hayward Hospital. Mr. Spindt recalled that Mr. Heckathorn wanted to use the hospitals as a “springboard” for larger societal actions.

Vesper Society’s work eventually became so diverse that Mr. Heckathorn, when asked at the airport ticket counter his destination, joked “I don’t know—we have business everywhere.” Vesper Society projects in its early years included dental clinics in Africa and the Caribbean; creating “round table” discussions between the combatants in Guatemala’s long civil war; operating a convalescent hospital in Santa Barbara; and creating one of the first hospice care programs in the western United States. “We’ve put our money in helping people in particular situations overcome certain problems and develop their own resources,” said Barbara Varenhorst, a Vesper Society board member and its former interim president. Ms. Varenhorst moderated a panel at the evening’s festivities that included two other Vesper Society board members, Mr. Spindt and Robert P. Brorby. Current Vesper Society President Mary O. Baich also participated.

In 1984, Vesper sold its two hospitals for $40 million, leaving an endowment of more than $23 million. Over the past 20 years, funding has gone to projects as diverse as an urgent care clinic for the uninsured in Anitoch, California, in conjunction with Sutter Delta Medical Center; providing services for at-risk youth in Hayward in conjunction with the Silva Pediatric Clinic and Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center; and assessing faith-based healthcare assets in Africa to help battle that continent’s AIDS epidemic.

“I have a real soft spot for people who are underserved. When you travel to any place in the developing world with diseases such as HIV/AIDS, you know this doesn’t have to be,” Ms. Baich said. “They can live if they have the treatment they need.”

“Certainly, if Gene (Heckathorn) were here tonight to celebrate this event he would agree that the Society has expanded far beyond any expectation either of us could have envisioned in 1965,” Mr. Cummings said in remarks delivered at the celebration by his son, Robert Cummings II. “Each and every person in this room has had a part—an important part—in giving life and breath to this vital living entity—and when I multiply that by the number of persons with whom you have had contact about Vesper Society matters, then the number grows to almost unbelievable proportions.”

The evening’s speaker was Dr. Peter Benson, President of Search Institute. He noted the affiliation between Vesper Society and Search Institute during the mid-1980s and early ’90s. At the heart of the work of Search Institute is the framework of 40 Developmental Assets, which are positive experiences and personal qualities that young people need to grow up healthy, caring, and responsible.

Looking toward its next 40 years, Ms. Baich observed that Vesper Society will continue to serve its vision of a more compassionate world. “You bring compassion in a financial area, or you do what you can in a medical or health-related area and you help underserved areas get strong,” she said.

“The opportunities are limitless and multiply every day,” Mr. Cummings said in his remarks.

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Vesper Society, a private operating foundation, promotes social justice locally and globally by addressing critical social issues including the provision of health services for the underserved.