NORTHAMPTON — One day in 1997, Paul Mannheim came home asking his wife Susan if he could contribute a portion of his life insurance payout to Cooley Dickinson Hospital. After Paul died last March, Susan was shocked to see the payout amounted to $560,000 that will be reinvested into the hospital.
“He asked if he could take out a life insurance policy and name the hospital as the beneficiary,” she said, recalling that day. “I didn’t have any issue with it at all.”
When Susan and Cooley Dickinson’s Chief Development Officer Diane Dukette looked at the life insurance account together after Paul’s death, they found the grand surprise.
“I remember calling her [Susan] and telling her what the final amount was,” Dukette said. “And hearing that joy in her voice, that delight and astonishment of ‘Look what we did decades ago’ … it became this massive amount of funds that will benefit the hospital in our community.”
Cooley Dickinson is using the funds from Mannheim’s life insurance payout to establish The Paul and Susan Mannheim Endowment for Facilities Improvement. Dukette explained that the endowment will be reinvested in perpetuity to grow future funds for the hospital with Paul and Susan Mannheims’ names still attached as donors. The hospital will draw on the funds in moderation for future projects at Cooley Dickinson.
Susan said her husband was always a compassionate member of his community, looking for ways to give back. Paul and Susan Mannheim were married for 59 years, and while they moved away from the area after retirement, they were both longtime residents of the area raising their two children in Amherst.
Paul graduated from Amherst High School and attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, before he taught math. He later started a trucking company that he co-owned.
Susan said Paul’s education taught him to be good with numbers and see different ways to give back to his community creatively, such as the endowment.
“He was a visionary,” Susan said about Paul. “He could see things that you and I probably couldn’t see.”
Susan explained she and Paul always saw Cooley Dickinson as a place that they could give back to their community through. Paul’s first involvement with the hospital began in 1988, when he became one of the founders of the Golf FORE Health Committee which organizes the hospital’s annual golf tournament fundraiser, the Golf FORE Health Tournament.
Susan said Paul, a lover of sports especially at his alma mater UMass, was looking to merge his hobbies of golf and community involvement, through the tournament.
“He was passionate about giving back to the community and this was one way he figured he could do it,” she said about the tournament. “He thought it could be fun to do and it would help the hospital.”
JoAnne Finck, a member of the Cooley Dickinson Board of Trustees, said the golf tournament has turned into one of the largest fundraisers in the Valley.
“It’s probably the most successful golf tournament in the whole Valley. I think it sells out in a day, perhaps maybe two,” Finck said. “And we raise a lot of money.”
Finck explained that the tournament, which takes place in September each year, raises on average more than $150,000 for a specific Cooley Dickinson project each year. This past year, the 36th annual tournament raised $160,523 to support the hospital’s campaign for a new emergency department.
Finck serves multiple roles for the hospital but is not employed there. However, she sees Paul’s endowment as a prime example of creative ways that community members who are not nurses or doctors can give to the hospital.
“I could never be a nurse or a doctor, but I love our community and I love the community hospital,” Finck said. “So for me … I can help out by volunteering, by learning, by joining some committees, things like that and you get to learn, to see what the needs of the hospital are. That to me is very important.”
Paul’s contributions to the hospital didn’t stop there. Eventually, Paul made his way to becoming a volunteer and trustee of Cooley Dickinson, and was even honored in 1999 with the William E. Dwyer Distinguished Service Award, awarded by the hospital each year to outstanding individuals for their service.
Over the course of four decades, Susan and Paul have supported many capital projects at the hospital, including what is now the Main Entrance, Imaging and Childbirth Center, as well as the North Building and Kittredge Surgery Center.
“When somebody makes a legacy gift and they decide to leave the hospital in their plans, we are grateful for all gifts,” Dukette explained. “But these are some of the most meaningful gifts that we receive, because somebody is saying, ‘When I die and I’m no longer here, I am trusting you. I’m trusting you with my legacy.'”
Dukette said Cooley Dickinson takes that responsibility very seriously and the hospital will use the funds with care. She said this endowment exemplifies the work the hospital does and the way the community supports its mission.
Currently, Dukette said there are no projects planned with the endowment funds, but it will contribute to a multitude to future projects, which could include equipment improvements or capital projects, like the ones that the Mannheim’s have contributed to.