Caregiver Feature 
With eyes ever fixed to the horizon, outgoing Monument Health Foundation Chairperson Sharon Lee never fails to see promise in each new dawn.
You might find it odd to be networking while perusing the produce section, but for Sharon Lee, it’s just part and parcel of a lifetime of passionate advocacy.
“I’ve always seen myself as an ambassador, so to speak, for the hospital,” said Sharon. “We’ve joked that I’m the institutional memory. And it’s true, depending on the situation. I can’t tell you how many times people have stopped me by the oranges in Safeway and had questions. And if I couldn’t answer a question, I always had a phone number to give people to say, ‘This is the person you need to talk to.’”
However, to take the true measure of Sharon’s mark as a community member, volunteer and philanthropist you must zoom out, to the entirety of Rapid City itself. A former speech therapist who spent 40 years working in the city’s school system, Sharon’s efforts and influence extend beyond the Foundation, all the way to her work on the Board of Education, to being a founding member and director of the Public School Foundation, to her role as a Rapid City Hospital Advisory Board Committee co-chair, to becoming board member for Rapid City Hospital for 13 years. In fact, it’s difficult to find a place of public importance that has not benefited from Sharon’s involvement.
Instrumental in the early days of what would eventually become Monument Health Foundation, Sharon recalled a much smaller affair than the full-fledged department as it exists today. “We didn’t have the dedicated and dynamic staff we have today. We had one person, and I think we had maybe a data entry specialist. But it was not anything like the amazing people that work there now, and so I was the liaison. When I went off the hospital board, I stayed on with the Foundation. And so I’ve been with the Foundation for over 10 years.”
The guiding principle and the source of Sharon’s boundless energy always seems to come back to one word: community, and there is attached to that word, a near sense of duty. “This is a community hospital,” she said, “I get enthusiastic, and I like to share it with people. I like people to recognize that this is Rapid City’s hospital and the system for the Black Hills. We’re all part of one community.”
Sharon isn’t content just paying lip service to the benefits of philanthropy, though, nor is she satisfied strictly soliciting donations over the phone. “Sitting on a board is one thing for me. I need action to go along with it. It’s much more satisfying to be an actual working part of it.” And so, if you zoom back in, you will witness the small, private moments of Sharon donating time to the Healing Hands program at the Cancer Care Institute, giving hand massages to patients awaiting chemotherapy or other treatment.
“There’s a lot of high anxiety, and it’s amazing just quietly visiting with someone and giving them a hand rub and an arm rub; how much they share with you. And we know that their blood pressure goes down.”
She’s also been known to spend Sunday afternoons rocking babies in the NICU. “There’s a lot of people who live in the Hills, and can’t always get down to the hospital to see their babies, but the babies still need that human touch. So that’s a lovely thing to do,” she said.
You might be wondering, “What’s in it for Sharon?” Thoughtful by nature, it’s something she’s often considered herself. “When you’re volunteering, it’s your choice how you spend your time,” Sharon said. “And so I choose to spend my time knowing that I’m helping my community. It’s important to me that the time I spend is positive, and I can see in some way that it makes a difference. Sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it takes a while.”
The most recent — and perhaps most impactful — realization, at least in part, of Sharon’s patience is the upcoming Children’s Expansion at Rapid City Hospital, a project in which she is heavily invested. “I still will be involved in some way with the Children’s Expansion, which is what we’re focusing on now, and have been focusing on for seven years. I used to joke about, ‘I hope I live long enough to see this thing come to fruition. I’m so happy to announce that our Foundation’s contribution goal of $7.1 million has been met … but we are going to keep fundraising because the project can use all the financial help it can get.”
At 83 years young, Sharon occasionally contemplates her legacy at Rapid City Hospital and the works of service she’s done for the Rapid City community at large. She puts the decision to finally step away from day-to-day volunteering efforts into perspective: “With age does come wisdom and a different pair of glasses, sometimes. You have a lot of time for reflection, to ask, ‘What have you done with your life? And are you happy with it? What could you do differently?’ I’m at that period of my life where I’m kind of slowing down a little bit and I have to be careful there, because I get really restless. I get energized with, ‘Oh, that’d be interesting to work on!’ But I’m actually not doing it. I’m just happy in my chair at home.”
“Sharon’s dedication to health care and the support of the Foundation is inspiring. Volunteers like Sharon are the backbone of our hospital, they provide a crucial aid and perspectives that contribute to our success.” – Hans Nelson, Foundation Director