Feb. 10 - Your View

From the heart

Our Sikeston community has benefited from many gifts from our founding families in the 1850s through the years to the present time. Whether they were gifts of donated cash, property or services, all have enhanced our common heritage.

However, it is the February 2002 opening of the Sikeston Little Theatre's new Albritton Mayer Center for Performing Arts that has prompted me to offer these thoughts to honor the memory of Imogene Ruth Albritton Mayer in celebration of her extraordinary generosity to her beloved home town, Sikeston.

My contact with this Jefferson City lady came during the 1990-1994 years as executive director of Missouri Delta Medical Center Foundation - a vehicle she often used to share much of her substantial wealth with Sikeston's citizens.

Imogene Albritton graduated from Sikeston High School in 1931, having played four years on the basketball team and helped organize the Red Peppers in 1928. The John Albritton family owned an undertaking establishment and florist shop during this time. Subsequently she was employed in a state government office at Jefferson City, where she resided until her death in 1996.

She was the widow of Joseph John Mayer, a lifelong Jefferson City hardware merchant whose pioneer ancestors founded this business in 1857. The family business prospered and, with astute investments, was considerable at the time of his death. Joe and Imogene were devoted to each other, enjoyed worldwide travel and became prominent benefactors in Jefferson City.

After the death of her beloved Joe, she became a recluse, childless, seldom leaving her home. Many of you will remember the eccentricities she developed.

I personally remember her hour-long phone calls from Jefferson City several times a week, always repeating that trivial chit-chat of her daily life and memories. But I developed an affection for this lonely octogenarian, as did MDMC's administrator Charles Ancell, realtor and friend Lila Bussey, and others. How could we begrudge her the long phone calls when her selfless philanthropic gifts to Sikeston (so welcome to us) gave her such joy? This February 2002, it seems appropriate that our residents be aware of some of her gifts, listed below:

Missouri Delta Medical Center

* The purchase and installation of cubicle privacy curtains and track for all semi-private rooms on 1F, 2F, 3F, 2A and 2E floors at our hospital.

* A gift of $167,000 to purchase new stereotaxic mammography equipment and the upgrading of the women's care mammography unit.

* Telemetry monitors for the cardiac wing, enabling cardiac nurses to gauge the heart condition of every patient from their central nurse station 24 hours a day.

* Remembering her long time friendship with the Dempster family, she offered to purchase exercise machines costing $98,000 for the exercise room of the Robert A. Dempster MDMC Restart Physical Therapy complex given by Robert and Lynn Dempster.

Sikeston Little Theater - $700,000 previously announced for the Performing Arts Center, opening this month.

Sikeston First United Methodist Church - church van.

Sikeston Humane Society - house and lot on South Kingshighway, later sold for construction of a new building in a properly zoned area.

Sikeston Public Library - $235,000 for purchase, construction and installation of a computer catalog center to inventory all library reading materials.

Sikeston Memorial Park Cemetery - money to blacktop the road throughout the cemetery and for the bell tower, chimes and landscaping.

Sikeston Public Schools

* Scoreboard for girl's basketball gym

* Generous scholarship trust fund managed by a Jefferson City bank's trust department, which reports investment income of approximately $17,000 annually for SHS scholarships each her, in perpetuity.

May this symbolic valentine express Sikeston's citywide appreciation for the limitless generosity, totaling over $1.4 million, of Imogene Albritton Mayer, who passionately loved her home town.

Very sincerely,

Jean Collins