By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Despite Covid restrictions on gatherings this year, it was a better year for fundraising for the Olympic Medical Center Foundation than one might have expected, with almost $650,000 raised to benefit the hospital.
And now, at the end of the of the year, comes the most surprising news of all. Local benefactor Lloyd Bedinger has donated his late mother’s house, which sits adjacent to the hospital campus in Port Angeles, to the Foundation.
Foundation President Bruce Skinner announced the gift at the OMC Commissioner’s meeting on Wednesday. He told us the hospital has been working to secure properties around the campus for years for future expansion, but this gift came as a total surprise.
“So they were always prepared to purchase the house, and last March Lloyd Bedinger came into my office and said, “I’m not going to sell the house to the hospital’. And I was somewhat taken aback by that, but then he said, ‘I’m going to give it to the hospital’, which was totally unexpected. During a, you know, obviously difficult year, this was a great story for…in local philanthropy.”
Bedinger is the son of Helen Rice, who passed away in March at 106-years-old, after living in the house for over 60 years.
Bedinger’s family moved to Port Angeles from Illinois in 1956, and lived near the high school. He says when the hospital offered his mother a job in the cafeteria, she wanted to be closer to work, so the family relocated. He said, “Since the hospital offered my mom a job, I decided that I wanted to give the house back to them. I felt like it was the right thing to do.”
Skinner says no decision has yet been made about how the property will be used.