A Generous, Lasting Reminder

A Saticoy couple’s bequest of nearly $6 million to Ventura County’s last two independent hospitals is a reminder of a couple of things worth remembering.

First, there was a time when a hospital was a cornerstone of a community, courted and supported by local residents with the same loyalty as the schools, the fire department and the library. In this era of corporate medical care and out-of-town ownership, such loyalty seems almost quaint.

Second, personal gifts and bequests can do a tremendous amount of good for local institutions, nearly all of which are struggling to make ends meet. Through thoughtful planning, even modest donations can go a long way toward improving life for generations to come.

The estates of lemon and avocado ranchers Ord and Laura Toomey, who each died at age 95, will give about $5 million to Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital and about $650,000 to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital. Hospital officials said the contributions are probably the largest single gifts ever received by the two institutions.

Community Memorial expects to use its windfall to build an 18-bed intensive care unit for newborn babies. Administrators of the 60-bed hospital in Santa Paula have several ideas for spending the Toomey donation plus a recent $250,000 gift from Fillmore seamstress Dorothy M. Duncan, including a new radiology lab, a new roof or partial payment on seismic retrofitting.

The Toomeys met in the 1920s while performing as singers in a play in Los Angeles. They married and returned to Saticoy to help Laura’s father, banker, farmer and state Sen. Walter Duval, run the family businesses. Laura Toomey worked as a volunteer at Community Memorial, where she helped start the hospital’s auxiliary 35 years ago. She died in 1995; Ord Toomey in February.

Lawyers said probate to distribute more than $10 million in the couple’s estates should be completed next year.

Support from private citizens is nothing new for either hospital. Santa Paula Memorial was opened in 1961 after the Santa Clara Valley communities of Piru, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Saticoy raised $1 million to build it. But in recent years, with patients increasingly funneled into larger hospitals by managed-care contracts, Santa Paula Memorial has battled to stay in business.

Community Memorial has also struggled with its bottom line in recent years as it stayed independent while the rest of the county’s private hospitals were purchased by chains.

Residents of Ventura County owe thanks to Ord and Laura Toomey for their generosity and for the reminder that although every life eventually must come to an end, a good deed can last forever.