SYLMAR : Foundation to Honor Reagan’s Late Mother
The Olive View-UCLA Medical Center Foundation is honoring its most famous volunteer, Nelle Reagan, this weekend to commemorate her 15 years of service during the 1940s and 1950s.
The late mother of former President Ronald Reagan earned admiration from hospital administrators and others for befriending tuberculosis patients despite the risk of contracting the contagious disease.
“She’s a symbol for our time in representing a person who puts aside the risk to her own self,” said Dr. Irwin Ziment, the center’s chief of medicine. “She felt these people were neglected.”
From 1940 to 1955, Nelle Reagan traveled from West Hollywood every week to visit patients at the Olive View Sanitarium, which became the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. She died in 1962.
The former president and his wife, Nancy, will be on hand during a ceremony Sunday to unveil and dedicate a portrait of Nelle Reagan, which will be hung in the hospital’s first-floor lobby. The Reagans also plan to tour the center’s neonatal intensive care unit.
Beverly Froelich, the foundation’s executive director, said the invitation-only event will also serve to kick off formation of a Donors Club for supporters who donate money to fund health and education programs for the needy.
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