RI President for 2010 - 2011 Ray Klinginsmith has two rather special links direct with Grahamstown. When he was an Ambassadorial Scholar at UCT in the early 1960s, he visited Grahamstown’s Rotary Club and was the guest of PP Geoff Palmer, his wife Ann and their young family.
While in South Africa in November 2007, he repeated that visit on a nostalgia trip. The Palmer family, son and daughter-in law of (by then deceased) Geoff hosted him for a few days. While he was in Grahamstown we asked him to officially open a new Palliative Care Unit that the Grahamstown Club had established at the local Settlers Hospital and had just been completed. The Unit was funded by a Matching Grant. It has ten single wards plus ancillary services and was funded largely by the Arlington Club in Washington State, USA. Photos exist of the ceremony, attended by many local grandees.
The Unit has now been enlarged with a special Children’s Palliative Care Ward with 8 cots/beds, also funded by a Matching Grant, sponsored by a number of Clubs in the Thames Valley in England. The Unit supplies palliative care for cancer and AIDS victims of all races. |
