CHOC’s Ronald McDonald House : A Gift for Families of Sick Youngsters

It’s a long way from the black-tie dinner in Chicago where singer Barbara Mandrell entertains the likes of Nancy Reagan to the stark hospital room at Childrens Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), where about the only sound is the whir of medical equipment. But the connection is there.

Yolanda Linares, a Guatemalan immigrant, says she has hardly slept since her 8-month-old daughter, Nancy, was hospitalized four months ago for treatment of liver cancer. Since then, there have been four operations. The stress of watching her infant daughter spend half her life tied to life-sustaining machinery shows in the dark circles and tired expressions of Yolanda Linares’ face.

Thousands of miles away, at Chicago’s Hyatt-Regency Hotel, Mary Moore Young, the wealthly widow of Golden State Food Co. founder William Moore, is preparing to meet with Nancy Reagan. Although neither woman knows Yolanda or Nancy Linares, they will talk about tragedies similar to the suffering of the Linares family.

Moore Young, in her own way of saying “thank you” to the company that made her husband a rich man, will donate $500,000 toward building Orange County’s first Ronald McDonald House in Orange and another $500,000 to the Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities. Wednesday night’s black-tie affair honored her and 1,600 other people at a charity Awards of Excellence fund-raising dinner.

“It would be such a tremendous help,” says Linares about the Ronald McDonald House, scheduled to be built next year just three blocks from the cancer unit where her daughter is confined. The houses are for the families of seriously ill children.

“I have suffered a lot. I’m really tired. I’m here 24 hours a day,” she says. “As a mother, you never want to leave your child, and even less when she is in the hospital.”

Linares sleeps on a cot next to her daughter’s steel crib. Her husband, a gardner, brings their two other young children to visit each evening. When she does return to her home in Costa Mesa, it takes an hour and 15 minutes on the bus.

Orange County’s Ronald McDonald House, which should be completed about a year after construction begins in January, is supported by local McDonald’s restaurant operators and community donors and volunteers.

Ronald McDonald houses offer families of young patients a clean, pleasant place to stay at a nominal cost of about $5 a night. For families who cannot spare even that, the rooms are free. Because Ronald McDonald houses are close to hospitals, patients themselves can often visit.

There are more than 100 such houses throughout the world, 86 of them in the United States. In 1980, a 16-room Ronald McDonald House was opened in Los Angeles in conjunction with Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.

Moore Young, in a telephone interview from Chicago, says the idea of donating money toward building the $1.1-million Ronald McDonald House came to her after she saw an ad earlier this year that said, “Ronald McDonald Needs Your Help.”

“This just seemed like the best way to say ‘thank you’ to McDonald’s,” she says. “And it is such a wonderful thing to have a Ronald McDonald House in Orange County.”

Moore Young and her family have lived in Fullerton for 32 years. Her husband, who died in 1978, was an exclusive supplier of food and paper products to McDonald’s. His Golden State Food Corp. has McDonald’s distribution centers in Atlanta, Greensboro, N.C., Rochester, N.Y., Honolulu, Seattle and Phoenix, and a produce plant in the City of Industry.

Dr. Geni Bennetts, who is director of hematology/oncology at Childrens Hospital of Orange County and serves as president of Orange’s Ronald McDonald House Board of Trustees, says it was donations such Moore Young’s that have led her to never doubt the success of the project.

She says many people have offered their services free of charge to help to build the wood-sided, 20-suite building planned in the 300 block of Batavia Street. A $1,000-per-couple black-tie fund-raiser is planned for January.

“Now parents and families will have a place to stay,” Bennetts says. “These people are very stressed, and this will provide a place for them--to sleep, to take a shower, read a book, take a nap. There is a real need.”