Pebbles placed on Jewish graves are a sign of respect. Pebbles placed on the grave of a non-Jew are extraordinary. There is a story behind every pebble and this story; the story of Charleen Kirkpatrick is unique to PEF.
At Arlington National Cemetery there are two non-Jewish gravestones which have the distinction of bearing pebbles. One is that of Orde Wingate; a British Army officer and deeply religious Christian who fell in love with the Zionist effort and helped mold the emerging Israel Defense Forces, then known as the Haganah.
The other gravestone at Arlington to bear the distinction of Righteous Gentile is that of Charleen Kirkpatrick.
Charleen passed away on July 6th 2003 and left PEF grants of $6,700,000 to be given to Soroka Hospital. The grants were invested by our investment committee and distributed quarterly. This month we made the final distribution, contributing a total of $7,800.000 and fulfilling Charleen’s desire to support anesthesiology and patient care in the South of Israel.
For those interested, here is a link to a tribute to Charleen written with the help of then Executive Director Penny Waga and delivered by our trustee Chaim Edelstein at the dedication of the Kirkpatrick Anesthesia Wing. The tribute provides details of where Charleen and her husband Lyman David Covell, CAPT US Air Force made their fortune, how they fell in love with Israel and Soroka and where their contributions have been applied.
As a young trustee assigned to manage this fund I learnt a lot from Charleen. I learnt foremost about the kindness of strangers but also about anesthesiology, the doctor shortage in Israel and the special challenges faced by those living in the Negev.
I learnt that the highest suicide rate in the medical profession is amongst anesthesiologists who have easy access to drugs, are the last to “lose” a patient during an unsuccessful operation and are rarely given the credit for a successful operation. There is a real shortage of anesthesiologists in Israel along with other foreign trained Israeli medical students many of whom never return to Israel and if they do, gravitate to the large cities in the heartland.
As a direct result of Charleen’s generosity and insight PEF has worked with Soroka in elevating the working conditions, continuing-education and prestige of anesthesiologists at Soroka. Our aim is to draw more medical students to this field, to Soroka and provide a paradigm for the rest of the country, showing what it takes to support anesthesiology. We have created programming, housing assistance and scholarships for medical students to insure that they complete their studies, settle in Beersheba and work at Soroka.
The measure of a man or woman is not the monuments they leave behind but the lives they touch. The pebbles Jews leave on a gravestone are an expression of those lives touched. Each pebble bears witness (see Genesis 31:47-48) to an act of kindness or foresight, or in the case of Charleen… to both. The pebbles left on the gravestone of a righteous gentile such as Charleen give testimony to the lives of those living in a different country, culture and tradition that she and her husband touched.
There is a modest monument to Charleen at Soroka, not because she ever desired recognition or publicity (she did not), but because in a country whose citizens often feel delegitimized by the world at large, the kindness of a stranger like Charleen is validating and empowering. Charleen embraced the people of Israel and they embraced her back.
Just as Orde Wingate changed the way generations of Israeli officers lead their troops to battle, so too, Charleen Kirkpatrick has changed the way anesthesiology is practiced and the regard that anesthesiologists are held, first in the Negev and soon, all over Israel.
May her memory be a blessing and may the endowment and programs put in place by Soroka continue for many years to come.
Geoffrey
