Don Freed

He claims he’s retired, but the staff and the more than 400 volunteers at Ronald McDonald House know better. "Retired" P&G professional Don Freed spends more hours volunteering than many people spend at the office. Monday through Thursday of each week, Don Freed is at Ronald McDonald House greeting guests, helping keep the House running, conducting tours and sharing a pat on the back or a supportive shoulder whenever necessary. (He spends Fridays and Sundays volunteering for Hospice of Cincinnati).

Since 1995, Don has given more than 12,000 hours of volunteer service to Ronald McDonald House. He averages 32 hours a week, which is enough to qualify as "full time" with many companies. But he doesn’t do it for pay – he does it simply to help provide comfort, hope and a "home away from home" to families during very difficult times. Ronald McDonald House Executive Director Jennifer Goodin says, "I don’t know what we’d do without Don Freed. He’s one of those people you can always rely on. No matter what the need is for a guest family, a staff member or the House in general, Don is always happy to take care of it."

Don first came face-to-face with the difficulties a family faces when a child is ill or injured when an employee’s six-year-old daughter was injured in a car accident. Don made frequent trips to visit the little girl and the family, who were living in Louisville’s Ronald McDonald House. He was so moved by the Ronald McDonald House, their staff and the services they provide that he decided that, after retirement, Cincinnati’s Ronald McDonald House would be his avocation.

Each year, 1,000 families come to Ronald McDonald House from throughout Ohio, across the United States and around the world. They come to Cincinnati Children’s seeking medical treatment for their critically ill children. They often arrive weary from travel, worried about their children and drained from the emotional and financial strains. But the services Don provides as a Ronald McDonald House volunteer go a long way toward easing the strain. Don can always be found making a guest room a little nicer and our families more comfortable.

Over the years, Don’s projects have ranged from coordinating the move from the original 21-bedroom House to the current 78-bedroom House. He assists in maintenance tasks. On cold winter mornings, Don is often outside the House before our guests awake - he wants to make sure the walks and parking lots are cleared as families make their way to the hospital. Don also helps with the collection hundreds of thousands of pop tabs, which are then recycled to raise more than $12,000 for Ronald McDonald House operating expenses. He makes coffee. He does dishes. He takes out trash. He shovels snow.

Don views everything he does at Ronald McDonald House as an opportunity to comfort a family. He says he was particularly moved by the mother whose eight-year-old son had a brain tumor. As Don was getting to know the mother, she happened to mention how often she looked out of her son’s hospital window and smiled at the beautiful garden at Ronald McDonald House, the garden Don tends. The mother said she would come and sit in the garden each day as a means of temporarily escaping the worries of her child’s condition. She said that garden gave her "a sense of peace and tranquility" during the most traumatic time of her life.

Don says the reason he devotes so much of his time to his volunteer service is for the families and the children. "I keep a prayer list in my pocket for the children. To me, our House is a safe haven where families can be in fellowship with others who enduring similar hardships. It’s a place where they can help one another get through all the stress and anxiety. If you take the time to get to know these families, you get to share in their joys and maybe help ease their sorrows. The more time I volunteer, the better I understand what we do here . . . offer hope to families in need."

Don has also on many occasions, expressed his hope for the future Ronald McDonald House. "We need to get the waiting list down," says Don. "That list bothers me. It must be so difficult for parents to hear, at such a painful and fragile time in their lives, that we don’t have room for them." And, thanks to the efforts of Don and countless other volunteers and donors like him, Ronald McDonald House broke ground February 18, 2008, on an expansion that will significantly reduce that waiting list, allowing us to serve an additional 500 families each year.

Very few people ever voluntarily give 12,000 hours of their time to a particular charitable cause. Even fewer do it as a second career. Maybe this is why Don Freed was the 2003 Ronald McDonald House Advocate Award. Stephanie Crellin, Ronald McDonald House coordinator of volunteer services, says, "Don’s hard work and dedication, not to mention his amazing good spirit, made him the obvious choice for our House Advocate Award. And I believe he’s an equally obvious choice for the Rotarians’ Jefferson Award. I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Don."

While the actions of Don Freed are local, their impact is certainly global. By helping to support the mission of Ronald McDonald House, families from around the world can come to Cincinnati Children’s for their children’s medical treatment and know that there will be an open door, a warm smile, a comfortable room, a home-cooked meal and a "home away from home" where strangers become family.