Hospital Volunteering Brings Real Retirement Rewards

For Craig Lefkoff and Joel Marks, who have had long and highly rewarding professional lives, the answer to a productive retirement has been found at the Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital.

It’s a large complex of buildings in the northern suburbs that is now a part of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. The 319-bed acute care pediatric hospital in Sandy Springs is a fully staffed medical center where nearly 700 physicians deliver care in 75 medical specialties.

For Lefkoff, who retired two-and-a-half years ago after 40 years as a business law and bankruptcy attorney and the managing partner of his firm, work as a volunteer has been a totally new experience. His new routine is four hours most weeks visiting sick children in their rooms on the various wards. It’s a sharp break from counseling clients in the midst of a Chapter 7 business meltdown.

“I’m not downplaying law at all, but the hospital, you really feel like you’re doing G-d’s work,” he says. “Because you’re talking about life and death and health and sickness and all the emotions that go along with all that, so, being in a hospital environment is really, really stimulating.”

He has been joined in bringing some light and perhaps a few laughs into this very serious world by Marks, who retired from a career as a financial services executive. He is well acquainted with the important work that hospitals like this one accomplish.

Marks is a former chair of the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. It supports such important community institutions as the local Jewish HomeLife organization and their several senior living centers. It also is an important funder of Atlanta’s Jewish Family & Career Services, which provides social and psychological counseling services to the community. Last year, Federation made grants totaling nearly $54 million to 1,300 organizations.

But working at the Scottish Rite Hospital with his longtime friend Lefkoff brings Marks a close-up view of how non-profits work day-to-day and the impact they have on young lives.

“It’s the most basic ground level work,” Marks observes, “walking into somebody’s most vulnerable time and being at their bedside and helping out. I’ve been involved in a lot of philanthropy for a long time, in a lot of Jewish philanthropy, but I’ve never had that instant sense of gratification and immediacy. Every day at the hospital I expect the unexpected.”

He says he has experienced firsthand healing by medical professional and also the fear and uncertainty that constantly accompanies parents caring for a sick child.

“In 99.9 percent of the rooms there will be a parent or grandparent in the room with the with the child,” Marks comments. “Because of our age we can understand their relationship with their child or their grandchild from a parent or grandparent’s perspective, and that’s really, really helpful.”

They bring their cart full of games, puzzles, and simple craft items into each hospital room to help take the children’s minds off their physical ailments. They keep their visits lighthearted, and although they don’t pretend to be a comedy team, they’re not afraid to mix in some silliness to give the children a smile or two.

Each has a brightly colored wardrobe of shirts that may be printed with a selection of dill pickles or characters from children’s animated movies. They help the children to forget, for a short time, the drab uniforms and hospital scrubs that are the usual hospital attire. It’s also a way for Lefkoff, who grew up as a doctor’s son, to remember how important it is to connect with these young lives.

“In the working world, you get two amazing things that you need in life, and that’s connection and purpose,” Lefkoff says. “It just comes with the territory of working. When you are retired, you have to reach out for connection and for purpose, but I think G-d gives us a world that is full of connection and purpose. It’s out there, you just have to go out and find it.”

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which manages the Scottish Rite Hospital as well as the Arthur M. Blank Children’s Hospital on North Druid Hills Road,  welcomes volunteers to assist administrative staff and in direct patient care.

To work as a children’s hospital volunteer, you must be over 18, agree to a weekly shift for a year, pass a background check, complete a volunteer assessment form and volunteer application, comply with the hospital’s vaccination protocol, and not be currently enrolled in a college or university.