Our End-of-Year Appeal

Dearest Friends and Supporters of Culmore Clinic,

We extend to you our warmest greetings this holiday season, knowing that many of you will not be celebrating as you would have liked, given the pandemic still in our midst. In the height of the surge a few months back, we talked of how we were all in the same storm, but each in a different boat. Today, we are floating in unsettled waters, not knowing whether a tsunami is approaching or what damage it might do. Perhaps we are all a little better prepared than before; but we are tired and ready to be done with this scourge. Ready to be truly connected to each other again.

But let us share this little bit of joy with you. Your support of Culmore Clinic throughout this tumultuous year has meant that 456 extremely low income, uninsured patients – in makeshift, leaking boats in this devastating storm – have remained connected to critical healthcare. Even those patients, who were afflicted with COVID-19, have survived. Because of you. Because you stay connected to them. And for that we thank you so much.

If you live close to the Clinic or visit the businesses of Bailey’s Crossroads and Culmore, please take a moment to look around you next time. See the day laborers hoping they’ll be lucky enough to get picked for a job that may even last a week; or the tired folks waiting for the bus, wishing they could go home, but are more likely than not heading to their second or third job of the day. In their hopeful or tired faces, imagine them as moms and dads, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, aunties and uncles, husbands and wives...precious humans who keep going, day after day, with so much stress on their shoulders.

And then think of this: many, many of those very same precious humans have one less stress to contend with because of you. Because you stay connected to Culmore Clinic. Because you enabled us to keep them healthy, so they could get up each day and keep those jobs.

Culmore Clinic was founded on a commitment to ensure no one in this community would suffer from lack of access to quality, compassionate healthcare. Just a small, part-time clinic, we were not really set up to tackle a pandemic; but when we called out "Mayday!", you threw us a lifeline, helping us stretch our services to meet the unanticipated need in what forever we’ll remember as a COVID hotspot.

As we brace ourselves for 2021 and a slow, but steady uptick in infection, and as we build out our clinical operations to accommodate both telemedicine and onsite, in-person patient care, we ask that you stay connected to us. We need you more than ever.

Wishing you and yours health and happiness this holiday season!

Faithfully,

Rev. Andrew Merrow
Board Chair

Anne-Lise Quinn
Executive Director