National Jewish Health Honors Andrew Young
Benefit gala at Woodruff Arts Center supported the nation’s leading hospital and research center for respiratory illness.
For its second consecutive Legends of Atlanta fundraising gala for National Jewish Health, the prestigious hospital and research center in Denver, local organizers put together a high-profile event honoring Andrew Young. In attendance for the tribute to Young were Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and former mayors, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin, Kasim Reed, and Keisha Lance Bottoms.
The $500 per plate red carpet event in the Woodruff Arts Center Galleria recognized Young’s extraordinary career of more than 70 years of service to the city and the nation. Over the years, his work to transform America’s racial landscape has been recognized by more than a hundred universities that have conferred honorary degrees upon him.
In recent decades, he’s been instrumental in bringing the Black and Jewish communities in the city closer together. Rabbi Peter Berg, Senior Rabbi at The Temple in Midtown, offered the invocation at the Jewish Health gala. His synagogue has a history of working closely with Black religious and civic leaders. He paid his own tribute to Young’s work.
“He has been a tremendous ally to the Jewish community,” Rabbi Berg said, “and has really brought Black and Jewish relations the forefront. He’s put it to the front of his agenda.”
Young, who was America’s Ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter Administration, also worked for closer ties between Atlanta, America, and the nations of the African continent.
His work paid enormous dividends locally, particularly when, as co-chair of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Committee, he was instrumental in securing the games during their centennial year. Among the organizers of this year’s Jewish Health event was Billy Payne, who was president and chief executive officer of the 1996 Olympics.
As part of this year’s fundraising event, Fay Gold, noted Atlanta art dealer, who was the honoree at the initial Legends dinner last year, organized an art auction. The woman who helped in the 1970s and 1980s to kickstart what is now a thriving community of art collectors was at the center of the action at the Woodruff Center Galleria.
“My evening was, very glamorous” Gold said. “We had a big art auction that night. I had about 20 of my artists donate important pieces, and I was the auctioneer, and that helped with the success we had in making a generous contribution to the medical center.”
Gold began working on fundraising for the Denver medical center in the late 1950s and was the chair of their committee in New York City before moving to Atlanta several years ago.
Many who work to support the group locally have been personal beneficiaries of the work the Denver medical center has done. Paul Hagedorn, whose father developed the Miracle Gro line of gardening products, had severe asthma as a child. He spent a year-and-a-half being treated in Denver, while he attended the elementary school that was established on the hospital grounds for those with respiratory problems that required more intense care. He presented Andrew Young with the National Jewish Health’s Humanitarian Award.
National Jewish Health, which has adopted a number of names over its 125-year history, started out as a 60-bed charity hospital which was built in 1893 by a wealthy Denver Jewish family and their rabbi. Its founding ideal that health care should be free for all was said to have been founded on Jewish spiritual teachings. The dedication came with this statement: “Pain knows no creed, so is this building the prototype of the grand idea of Judaism, which casts aside no stranger no matter of what race or blood. We consecrate this structure to humanity, to our suffering fellowman, regardless of creed.”
The initial aim of the project was to take care of the large number of people with tuberculosis who had travelled to Denver in the hope of relief from the deadly disease. There were no drugs that were effective at the time, but it was believed that the fresh mountain breezes of the Western city would help them survive.
Because there was no money left to run the hospital once it was built, the hospital stood idle for six years, Then, the B’nai Brith international fraternal organization stepped in with financial support that endured for more than 50 years. The medical center’s work is non-sectarian, but it has also benefited from generations of support by prominent Jewish families across the country.
Today, it provides care for nearly 40,000 patients annually and supports a program of over $43 million in charity care. It is the nation’s top-ranked center for respiratory illnesses, as well as a leading research and treatment center for a variety of other illnesses.
comments