GREENSBURG – Santa, his reindeer, and even a few of his elves will help Decatur County Memorial Hospital usher in the Christmas season starting at 6 p.m. Dec. 7.
Games, treats, and Santa fun will make for a festive kickoff to the season, but the evening’s main event will actually be the lighting of a living spruce tree, the very type of tree Nancy Schmalenberg preferred for Christmas.
A living 12-foot spruce will be planted on the DCMH campus, and it will be accompanied by a landscape boulder inscribed with the Mother Teresa epithet: “Love has to be put into action to selflessly serve others, Mother Teresa” and the dedication, “In honor of the love and kindness wished by Nancy Schmalenberg.”
“Nancy’s Giving Tree,” the foundation created in Schmalenberg’s name, donated the tree and boulder; the hospital and Decatur County Memorial Foundation are providing the atmosphere and sweets.
DCMH Marketing Director Amy Shearer explained that the tree lighting ceremony is an annual event.
“Last year, we lit the tree in honor of our 95th birthday, and after Christmas the tree usually gets thrown away. For this year, we decided to plant a live tree so that at the 100th year celebration we can look back at how much it’s grown,” she said.
Schmalenberg’s obituary, written by daughter Allison Allen, read: “Nancy was a person who truly dedicated her life to serving others. She always offered her unwavering support, endless love, deep spirituality, and endless smiles to everyone in her presence. Nancy was always the very best role model to all of her family, friends, and the many lives she touched during her time on this earth. Nancy will forever be remembered for her extraordinary legacy of unconditional love, optimism, perseverance, and sincerity to the many lives she has touched.”
Allen told the Daily News that her mother loved the spirit of Christmas.
“She loved giving so much more than receiving, and not just the spirituality of it. She enjoyed making other people feel special, even people she didn’t know, people at nursing homes, people she’d just heard that needed something. It was always about giving for her,” Allen said. “And we will all be there – my dad, John, and my brother, Nick – to light the tree at the ceremony on Friday night.”
As an amusing side, Allen told the story of a room-divider screen, the type used in hospital rooms in days of yore to separate double rooms.
“It was one of the very few left from the old stuff at the hospital. Well, it was very ugly, and as a prank for Mom’s 40th birthday, her co-workers at the lab spray-painted it and put it on Mom and Dad’s porch,” she said. “So, I was up in her attic and I found that screen with a note attached to it in my mother’s handwriting. The note told about the spray-painting, and about the prank and that my mother loved that screen, even though it was very ugly. So, she had Dad take out the inner part, and they kept it.”
Allen, using a shower curtain with designs resembling the logo for “Nancy’s Giving Tree Foundation,” plans to refinish the screen and present it to be used as “Jessie’s Tree” at DCMH.
“People can write the names of needy people on paper ornaments, hang them on the screen and then other people can take those names and give those people gifts. Mom would have loved it,” she finished, laughing.
Contact Bill Rethlake at 812-663-3111, ext. 7011 or email at bill.rethlake@greensburgdailynews.com.