A Calming Influence at Cedars

Urban sprawl--and gigantic medical center complexes--were far in the future the year Margery Tyre moved here. “Fairfax Avenue was sort of the end of Los Angeles,” she says. “When you got past that, it was deserted.”

That was in 1932. Tyre, who grew up in the Hawaiian Territory, had just graduated from UC Berkeley. She was 22 years old.

Shortly after her arrival, she reported for her first day as a volunteer at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood.

“I came in trembling,” she recalls. “I had never been in a hospital before.”

A helpful doctor said, “Just relax. I’ll train you.” She learned to take patients’ temperatures, pulses and histories.

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It is a fall day in 1992, a Wednesday. Tyre, now 82, helps a tearful visitor in the surgery waiting room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

“They’re going through something heavy,” she says. “You have a lot of people whose relatives are going through brain surgery. We try to tell them their loved ones are getting the best care. We quiet them down.”

She has a lot of experience in comforting worried people. Tyre has volunteered at the hospital (Cedars of Lebanon became Cedars-Sinai in 1961) for 60 years.

She worked five days a week until she married, three days a week afterward, and cut back to one day while her two daughters grew up.

She took up her current post in the surgery waiting room 15 years ago. Although she had a knee replacement at that time, and her other knee is starting to hurt, she is still there every Wednesday.

She has had some time off--29 trips around the world--with her husband, Norman, 82, an attorney.

Of Cedars, Tyre, says, “I’ll be here as long as they can use me. Wednesday is my most important day of the week. I’ve been here so long I know almost everybody. When people see me they say, ‘Oh, is it Wednesday?’ I love being a part of this Medical Center.”

Tyre worked in hospital clinics from 1932 to 1971 and directed the volunteer program in the late 1930s and early ‘40s. She headed the Cedars-Sinai Women’s Guild from 1968 to 1974, when it raised $1.5 million. Tyre once sat as the only woman on the board of directors and is a lifetime trustee.

But it wasn’t high position that attracted her. It was service.

“It means so much to these patients and relatives to have someone to talk to,” she explains on the surgery ward. “They are so appreciative of anything you do.”