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Ronald McDonald joins Katrina Roberson and 8-year-old son Dacin, of McLeansboro, at a charity event. submitted photo
Home for families of sick children to open in fall
By PAUL LORENZ
Special to the Register-News
McLEANSBORO — Imagine being the parents of a baby just born 15 weeks prematurely, being told your baby has a 15-percent chance of surviving.
Now imagine having no place to stay while your baby is hospitalized for the next three months, an hour-and-a-half away from home.
That’s the situation in which a McLeansboro couple found themselves when their son — all 1 pound, 8 ounces of him — was born prematurely in 2001 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Evansville, Ind.
Dacin Roberson, now a healthy 8-year-old, spent the first 109 days of his life in that Evansville hospital.
“We had to seek out housing, hotels, and finally got a short-term-lease apartment for three months of that time,” Dacin’s mother, Katrina Roberson, said.
“I couldn’t believe they didn’t have someplace somewhere to accommodate parents,” she said of the hospital.
Well, that situation is about to change.
A Ronald McDonald House is scheduled to open later this year in Evansville, providing a temporary place to stay for families with seriously ill children in nearby hospitals or other medical facilities.
Construction started this spring and is 80-percent complete, said Roberson, a member of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Ohio Valley Inc. Board of Directors responsible for the Evansville McDonald House project.
For a maximum of $10 a night — but no family will be turned away for financial reasons — families get “a room to sleep in, meals provided and other families for support,” Roberson said.
The 10-bedroom facility — the smallest of 270 Ronald McDonald houses worldwide — will also have a Community Area for people who don’t need overnight accommodations, but simply a place to go to get away from the medical facility for a while, she said.
And though it’s located on the St. Mary’s Hospital campus, the house will serve children receiving medical treatment at any Evansville-area medical facility, including Deaconess Hospital, the Easter Seals Rehabilitation Center and the Evansville Psychiatric Children’s Center, she added.
Roberson wants Hamilton County and other area residents to be aware of the availability of the new facility.
She also wants Hamilton County-area churches, civic organizations and others to be aware of a volunteer opportunity. Volunteers pretty much run the Ronald McDonald houses, taking care of everything from registering families to helping cook meals and assist in cleaning, Roberson said.
“I’m hoping to get churches and clubs here involved, maybe take a week — McLeansboro Week — to volunteer at the house,” she said.
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