Mercy Development Foundation awards St. Augustine Award for Distinguished Service to Jack Liberator

Friday, October 05, 2018

Tags: Mercy Medical Center , health care

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On its recent Founders Day, Mercy Development Foundation’s annual donor recognition event, the foundation awarded Jack Liberator its highest honor—the St. Augustine Award for Distinguished Service. This annual award recognizes individuals whose leadership and vision has impacted and helped transform Mercy Medical Center.

Liberator began his career in the 1950s as an emergency department nurse at St. Francis Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he discovered his passion for emergency response training for fire fighters and other first responders. He went on to accept a faculty position at Ohio State and developed Ohio’s EMS training protocol—the first statewide training program in the country. Earlier this year, the State of Ohio EMS Board gave Liberator the first state award created in his honor: The Jack B. Liberator Lifetime Achievement Award.

He was a charter board member of Mercy Development Foundation and served Mercy Medical Center as a member of its administrative staff for 16 years. During that time, Liberator assisted in the opening of Mercy’s state-of-the-art dental clinic and general practice residency program that was structured as a dental safety net program serving the general population, underinsured and underserved in the Stark County area. 

Mercy Development Foundation Board Member Thomas Paumier, DDS, worked closely with him on the dental clinic project and, in his Founders Day remarks, described Liberator as a visionary who saw the acute need for a dental service component in a hospital setting. 

“He recognized the significant need for a dental safety net program to address the #1 unmet healthcare need for children and the poor and underserved in our community,” said Paumier. “He worked diligently with Dr. Joe Carpenter and myself, leaders in the Stark County Dental Society, and Mercy administration to take a concept from a mission statement to a construction plan to a state-of-the-art dental facility that is supported by a general practice residency program.”

Mercy Dental Services is now in its 11th year of operations and has provided nearly 100,000 patient visits, trained over 40 dentists using attending teaching faculty in all the dental specialties, offered outreach to the community via screenings and health fairs, and raised more $5.5 million philanthropic dollars to support these efforts.  

Founders Day 2018 Marks Mercy’s 110th Anniversary

Each year, Mercy Development Foundation recognizes the founding of Mercy Medical Center by the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, who opened the hospital’s doors on September 24, 1908 – the Feast Day of Our Lady of Mercy and exactly 57 years after the Sisters left Boulogne sur Mer, France, to care for the orphans and sick of northeast Ohio. Founders Day Donor Recognition is also a time to honor and thank the foundation’s many supporters.

In September 2011, Mercy formally and publicly launched Mercy Development Foundation as a separate, non-profit, fundraising arm of the hospital with a sole purpose of enhancing Mercy’s capabilities, allowing it to be responsive to the health-care needs of our community, and helping it continue the mission established by the Sisters of Charity 110 years ago.

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About Mercy Development Foundation
Mercy Development Foundation, a separate non-profit corporation, helps Mercy Medical Center meet its future needs through charitable gift planning. The foundation exists solely to benefit the patients, programs, services and capital needs by enhancing the financial capabilities of the hospital while continuing the mission and philosophy of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine. The foundation not only oversees the solicitation of funds and gifts from individuals, organizations, corporations and foundations, but receives, receipts, records and acknowledges all gifts, and then manages and invests these funds in order to disburse them in the best interests of the hospital.

As a Catholic health-care organization, the mission of Mercy Medical Center and Mercy Development Foundation are the same: to continue Christ’s healing ministry by providing quality, compassionate, accessible and affordable care to the whole person – regardless of ability to pay. For lasting support and ministry, please consider leaving your legacy by remembering Mercy in your will or estate plans. For more information, visit cantonmercy.org/giving.

Pictured: Mercy Development Foundation awarded Jack Liberator (left) its St. Augustine Award for Distinguished Service to Mercy Medical Center. Together with Thomas Paumier, DDS (right), and many others, Liberator assisted in the opening of Mercy’s state-of-the-art dental clinic and general practice residency program in 2007.