For over three decades, the Stanton Hospitality House on Roxie Avenue provided affordable lodgings for the families of patients receiving long-term inpatient care at the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center.
The organization shuttered its doors nearly a year ago, but its mission survives through the Margaret Stanton Hospitality House Endowment.
The endowment is from the Cape Fear Valley Health Foundation, a philanthropic organization of Cape Fear Valley Health. A donation of more than $684,000 from the Stanton Hospitality House Board of Directors established the endowment, which continues the work Margaret Stanton, the founder of the Stanton Hospitality House, began.
“Since Cape Fear Valley Health provides healthcare to the region, we have many families who come from outside of Cumberland County,” Sabrina Brooks, vice president of the Cape Fear Valley Health Foundation, told CityView. “This endowment will continue to provide this capability for those families who do not have the financial ability to remain close to their children to do so during this stressful time.”
Brooks said the endowment, which Cape Fear Valley Health will continue to support, is expected to provide temporary housing for 175 to 200 families whose children are hospitalized each year. Social workers who meet with the families of every child receiving inpatient care at the medical center will determine who needs assistance.
Depending on their needs, families will be placed in hotels, motels, short-term rentals and other accommodations near the medical center.
Brooks said the endowment focuses on the families of hospitalized children to carry on Stanton’s legacy. Stanton started the Stanton Hospitality House out of concern for families of children receiving inpatient care at the medical center, particularly those with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The medical center is the largest Level III NICU in the Sandhills region of North Carolina. It has 44 beds and staff who can provide comprehensive care for seriously ill newborns with mild to critical conditions.
“She knew the importance of keeping those families close to their children during those times,” Brooks said.
It’s why Stanton started the Stanton Hospitality House in 1991. Before its closure in August, the house let families stay in one of its seven bedrooms for $20 per person per night, or $30 per couple per night. If a family couldn’t afford it, former Stanton Hospitality House manager Kathy Tyndall said, they’d stay for free.
“You just don’t turn somebody away because [they] can’t pay,” Tyndall told CityView columnist Bill Kirby Jr. at the house’s closing last year.
Cape Fear Valley Health CEO Michael Nagowski said the house never came close to covering operating costs after the Stanton Hospital House Board of Directors decided to cease operations. The building’s age and need for repairs and updates also contributed to the board’s decision to close the house and put it up for sale.
The initial funding for the endowment came from the proceeds of the sale of the Stanton Hospitality House and another house owned by the Margaret Stanton Hospitality House LLC. The board also liquidated all its remaining assets and donated the remaining board funds to start the endowment.
“Through generous gifts from Mrs. Stanton, Cape Fear Valley Health and donors, Mrs. Stanton’s legacy of providing temporary housing for loved ones of those hospitalized will continue,” William “Bill” Hedgepeth, president of the Stanton Hospitality House Board of Directors, said in a press release. “I am thankful to the Stanton House Board of Directors for their hard work over the past few months to ensure Mrs. Stanton’s legacy lives on.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.