Re-Creating Mott
C.S. Mott and Carls Foundations provide crucial support for a new children’s hospital and women’s hospital at Michigan
“We approach all problems of children with affection. Theirs is the province of joy and good humor. They are the most wholesome part of the race, for they are the freshest from the hands of God.”
That quotation from President Herbert Hoover was one of Charles Stewart Mott’s favorites. It appeared for years on the stationery of the foundation that bears his name. It appears today on a plaque that graces the entrance of C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. And well it should. The hospital’s very existence is due in large part to the Mott Foundation’s generosity: Grants for $6.5 million (the equivalent of more than $34.5 million today) were crucial in leveraging the remaining funds to complete the $9 million project, which opened in 1969. In 1984, the Mott Foundation provided an additional $2 million for renovations.
An illustration from HKS Architects shows the new 1.1-million-square-foot C.S. Children's Hospital and Women's
Hospital |
Thirty-seven years after opening its doors, Mott’s floors bear the weight of equipment undreamed of when it greeted its first patients. The annual number of children who receive care at Mott has tripled, and demand for pediatric surgical services grows by 5-10 percent a year. Nearly every service the hospital provides is operating at or near patient capacity.
Having been very much present at its creation, the Mott Foundation is now a key player in its re-creation. Even before the Board of Regents’ approval of a $523 million building project to replace the current Mott and Women’s hospitals, the foundation had already committed $25 million to the project, the largest single grant ever to the U-M Health System and the largest ever awarded by the Mott Foundation.
“It’s an outstanding facility, one of the finest there is in the world,” says William S. White, president and chief executive officer of the Mott Foundation, “but it was quite obvious in our visiting the place that health care has changed dramatically since that building was constructed. The only way you stay at the top is to continue to invest and reinvest in facilities, staff and service.”
Even though the foundation doesn’t normally make “bricks and mortar” grants outside of its home town of Flint, “To me, it was absolutely a no-brainer,” White says. “It’s clear that they need a space for the 21st century.”
C.S. Mott’s interest in the welfare of children was both personal and passionate. The same was true of another Michigan industrialist, William Carls, the founder, along with his first wife, Marie, of the Detroit-based Carls Foundation. A German immigrant who arrived in this country in 1924 with a nickel in his pocket, Carls started an air valve manufacturing company, Numatics, 21 years later and built it into a worldwide leader in its field.
“He was a very down-to-earth guy,” says Henry Fleischer, a Carls Foundation trustee who worked with Carls for many years. “He loved America and wanted to give back to it. It might sound trite, but he was the salt of the earth.”
He also knew tragedy. Long before his business triumphs, he and Marie had a son who died in 1935 at the age of 18 months. They never had another child of their own, but the work of their foundation has blessed the children of countless others.
“Children’s health is probably the primary focus of our mission,” says Elizabeth A. Stieg, the foundation’s executive director, “and we generally give out capital grants. So when you combine the fact that it’s a capital grant with its impact on children’s health, it was a natural that the U-M would come to us and it was a natural that we would look seriously at the grant request.”
Not only did they look seriously at it, but the Carls Foundation, like its Mott colleagues, made one of its largest grants ever, $4 million, to the project.
“It’s clear that Mott is nationally recognized as a leader in the health care they provide for children,” Stieg says. “The fact that they have been able to maintain that level of excellence with the older hospital is a testament to the people who work there. When you think about how we would want to maintain the hospital because of its value to the community — locally, regionally and nationally — it just made a tremendous amount of sense that they would want to build this new hospital.”
“Mr. Mott felt that health was the absolute bedrock for children being successful in life,” says the Mott Foundation’s White. “Therefore if you help them in all ways that you can, ranging from nutrition to a safe environment, you have a much better chance of a healthy society later. He always wanted to focus on these most vulnerable of our citizens. It just felt right in my bones, so to speak, to be associated with this project.
“The projects which give me the greatest satisfaction are those where you can say that they’re going to continue to benefit people 20 or 30 years from now,” he adds.
Another accomplishment of these grants was to jump-start the fund-raising process. Local schools and youth groups, as well as large companies and community organizations, have all contributed to the campaign, led by U-M Regent David Brandon and his wife, Jan, and U-M head football coach Lloyd Carr and his wife, Laurie.
Personal experience also plays a role in the Brandons’ efforts. Their twin sons were born with a rare blood ailment in 1980, and they spent the first several weeks of their lives at Mott’s Holden Neonatal Center. “I guarantee that at least one of our boys would not have made it without Mott,” says David Brandon, “and our story is just one of thousands and thousands out there. I remember thinking that someday, when I had the chance, I’d give back to the hospital some way. Helping to raise funds for this campaign is something I’m thrilled to do.”
—Jeff Mortimer
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