Dick Gordon, host of NPR’s “The Story,” is based in Chapel Hill, but his path to Ann Arbor this month passed through Haiti. Last year, for a follow-up story on the deadly 2010 earthquake, Gordon went to the town of Leogane. One of the few institutions still functioning after the quake was the Faculte des Sciences Infirmieres de l’Universite Episcopale d’Haiti. The country’s first and only four-year nursing school, FSIL is supported by the Ann Arbor-based Haiti Nursing Foundation.
“The townspeople poured into the [FSIL compound]” after the earthquake, says Ruth Barnard, a retired U-M nursing prof and FSIL’s founder. “There were thousands, and they brought people on doors–there was no way to carry them.” Barnard had sent a batch of donated sutures to the school just before the quake. The students “didn’t just practice with them,” she recalls. “They learned suturing and cleansing wounds.”
“Leogane suffered some of the worst losses during the earthquake, and we knew that people turned to the nursing school for help, so it was an obvious destination for us,” Gordon emails. Joining the nursing foundation’s May 10 fundraiser (see Events) is Gordon’s own way of helping. “We’re not paying him anything,” says executive director Marcia Lane. “He is coming out of the goodness of his heart.”
