Mrs. Haycox’ answer to the liberationists–help do community service work

From “Club scene” by Eleanor Schultz
The Arizona Gazette, early 1970s

MRS. JAMES HAYCOX moved to town. Was bored. Stirred about. And next thing Phoenicians knew, there was the St. Luke’s Hospital Service League, an overnight success, complete with 200 members and 25 life members.

It’s Mrs. Haycox’ answer to liberationists.

“Somehow,” she said, “It never occurred to me that being a woman, assuming the family role of wife and clucking broody hen, weren’t reward enough. My mother always told me women in our family didn’t work: We enthusiastically served the community.”

Six children didn’t keep her from realizing she was a natural leader in community services.

“It’s a skill – like making a good lasagne,” she said.

And from San Francisco to Boston and back to Southwest Phoenix, she left a trail of community co-op nurseries; flourishing private schools, because of her fund-raisings; and numerous hospital auxiliaries including the most recent, the Service League.

The founder and first Service League president is the wife of Dr. Haycox, head of the department of psychiatry at St. Luke’s Hospital and coordinator of the Community Mental Health Program for the Inner City. And because she considers St. Luke’s “her” hospital, she found a quandary. “I couldn’t work for it. There wasn’t an auxiliary.”

She volunteered for auxiliary chores with the Good Samaritan Hospital, all the while nagging St. Luke’s administrators until she got the go sign. Then she collected women. She calls them “the warp and woof, the color, warmth and texture of a community.”

St. Luke’s, set in the Inner City, is surrounded by its own community with a theme – an outreach program. It reaches into the neighborhood, and the neighborhood is invited in to help.

The piquant leader said that “building an organization is like growing a family. You get such a tremendous feeling for each other.”

Because the Board of Visitors is St. Luke’s hospital fund-raising force and its royalty, the new league will concentrate on education of volunteers and the community and service to both hospital and community.

There will be workshops (to discuss mental and physical concerns of the aged, for instance), and field trips into the community to teach and learn.

Mrs. Haycox combines the Eastern influence – “you do not earn the right to live unless you contribute to society this day” – with her native Western zest and generosity.

As to liberation: Volunteer work is so rewarding, she said. “It’s richer than operating an IBM machine. And I’m too old to burn my bra.”

The Service League welcomes all women who want to serve.