 I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey. Today's journey is very very special and we are going to visit with Lee Gordon A. Schreiner from who is part of the organization that supports the hospital the Schreiner's Hospital for Children here in Honolulu and it is a very special visit and we want all of you to donate of course but there's more to the hospital than just donating Lee yes yeah there he is hi hi Lee Gordon is a dear dear friend and you all know I only talk to dear friends I have known Lee since I'm not going to try to remember how long it's been I do your daughter was two years old now I don't know she's a college graduate right yes but you actually knew me with my first daughter oh okay which who is a long since graduated from college so you're getting both mixed up oh okay well they're both pretty girls what can I say over 30 years we've done one another oh lord uh Lee so tell us about you and your position as a Schreiner and what does it mean being a Schreiner and how that fits into the hospital the Schreiner's Hospital for Children well that can be somewhat confusing for most people in that in order for a person to become a Schreiner they have to first become a Mason and you know with Masonry you'll see uh our emblem is the square in the compass so I first became a Mason and then I became a Schreiner so there's a saying that goes every Schreiner is a Mason but not every Mason is a Schreiner so the Schrein is actually the philanthropic portion of Masonry and how it came to be is that Masonry um to be quite honest with you can be a little bit boring you know we have a monthly meeting we do the same things over and over and over so back in the 1800s there were a group of doctors that were uh Masons in New York City and they thought you know this is kind of um boring let's do something fun so they created a concordant body and they named it the Schrein or for Schreiners and they took on the theme of the Middle East which is why we were a pheasants and if you look at some of the you know the drawings that we have and the paintings you'll see camels and sand dunes and so it was created for fun and they actually met in a bar in New York so that'll tell you what they were looking for so that's how it started well um Hawaii got its charter as a Schrein charter in 1901 and you know for years you know the partying went on everybody had a great time and then the polio epidemic hit which you know just devastated the country and in the world for that matter so children were dying they were having horrible deformities it was really um it was pretty bad so these doctors these very doctors with the Schreiners organizations said well why don't we start a children's hospital and treat these kids with polio so the first hospital was opened in Shreveport Louisiana in 1922 and to show you how much history Hawaii has with the Schrein the second hospital was opened in Honolulu in 1923 so we were the second of 22 hospital hospitals to be opened within the hospital system of 22 hospitals so we have an endowment fund that funds the hospital system and the endowment fund is worth about 10 billion dollars wow and yet we still the hospitals cost more to run than the than the endowment spends off an interest so we're always in deficit spending so we're always struggling trying to raise money so that we can provide these services for the kids now obviously polio is no longer a threat but um you know the Schrein system pretty much is a pediatric orthopedic hospital so any orthopedic issue that a child has we can deal with we also do cleft palate we have in Hawaii we have a dental clinic we have an injury clinic that's open every day for kids that may get injured in sports school and for a child that cannot afford to pay they don't have to pay so we provide the service we can't say we provided free of charge because if you do have insurance we'll accept the insurance and that's pretty much how the hospital works I mean I could go more into depth you know our hospital here has 165 employees we service kids from Samoa from American Samoa from Tahiti from Guam we have service some kids from the Philippines from Japan so you know the Pacific Rim is our geographic territory well uh my granddaughter one of my granddaughter's when she was just beginning to walk and oh I carried on about her legs they didn't look right what's wrong with her legs and I insisted so my daughter takes her to Schreiners and the doctor looked at me and he looked at her mother and he says two two those are just Asian legs there's nothing wrong with this child so so that was my experience with the hospital well if you have any other specific questions you know I could tell you a little bit more about the the facility here yeah we're located on seven acres of land right in the heart of Honolulu right across the street from Kapi'olani took women and children's hospital I think we have a picture of the hospital yeah and it is a marvelous facility yeah and that property was actually donated to the hospital in perpetuity by the Dalsett family so as long as it remains a hospital for children um we can we can stay there but as soon as that changes if we try to turn it into a hotel they can take it back but there's because there's nothing like it in the pacific at all no no so we can't yeah something else that differentiates us from the rest of the hospitals in our system is that we actually have a family center so we can house 17 families on our property so these families that are coming from far away actually have a place to stay because orthopedic issues are not it's not like an appendix or appendicitis where you go in one morning and you go home the next with us sometimes the kids are here three four months at a time as they're going after surgery through the rehab process so it it does get a little bit expensive and what the local Aloha Shriners organization as a fraternity is responsible for is paying for their transportation so the transportation cost to bring these kids here even from the outer islands and you know and like I told you these far away places we spend about $250,000 a year in transporting the kids and that is what the local Aloha Shriners fraternity is responsible for and you know they're not many of us they're only about 650 of us so it's a struggle for us to raise that year after year after year and you know our desire is to actually treat more children more more kids in more places and in order to do that it's going to take more money because we have to bring you know that means we'll be buying more and more airplane tickets so you know this appeal to the community to assess assist us in raising funds is is you know a sincere effort on our part to treat more kids in more places so couldn't you get what is it Hawaiian air or somebody as a co-sponsor oh that's a wonderful thought and believe me we've tried all of that but you know it's you know every now and then you know for a while Hawaiian actually had a mileage program and people could donate their miles and we could use the miles to transport the kids but I don't recall that that's anything we did last year of course last year you know COVID year things kind of dropped all crazy yeah so but you know the airline industry does what it can but you know there's so many nonprofit organizations that there's so many wonderful things for the community that if they do one something for us then they're doing it for everybody and then next thing you know everybody on the plane is fine for free so they're not up for that yeah uh now you know uh we did talk about the early days you said the charter in Hawaii was 1901 yes but now the but the king kawakawa was amazing yeah king kawakawa became a shriner actually just right before his death but he was a member of the shrine temple in san francisco because we hadn't been chartered when he became a shriner however he was extremely active in masonry here in hawaii he was the first 33rd degree mason and scottish right he was master of his lodge uh you know he's he's just done everything so you know we have masonry then we have scottish right york right and the shrine which are the three or the three concordant bodies and he was instrumental in developing all of those along with his brother while john dominus so the two of them did a lot to help masonry get a foothold here in hawaii so now there's you said shriner scottish right and what else york right yep you were scottish right i'm shriner scottish right and york right i'm in all of them now what was the the facility where you had an office in town not not at the hospital that's uh the scottish right building i'm the secretary for the valley of honolulu the valley of honolulu yeah that's interesting the valley of honolulu in the orient of hawaii and grand and and guam and illustrious uh andrew geyser is the deputy for our our orient so he's over everything from here to guam um well that's that's interesting that you all of that's connected oh yeah so you're connected all over the world i presume oh yeah it's an international organization and shriner's uh recent over the past few years changed its name to shriner's international so now you have that beautiful place in limanala what what is that uh that's our beach park and the beach park is available to the general public on saturdays for rent so a lot of major companies corporations in town will rent the property for their company picnics people will have baby luows we've had some people to actually get married out there so and then on sundays you know the shriner's are all masons don't believe in doing any work on sunday so sunday is the day we're all out of the beach so sunday is beach day at shriner's beach house so but do the children go out there or is this just a dog i mean the hospital the hospital children well we the families of shriner's go out there every sunday uh the kids at the hospital we bring them out uh occasionally the big time that we bring them is in the summer it's called the end of summer bash and we'll have a huge picnic with bouncy houses and clowns and they can go in the water and we feed them and some hold it's a big big deal but you know and seeing that a lot of them have orthopedic issues you know they're in wheelchairs on crutches so we have to bring you know the big buses that have the elevators in the bus to get them up and down so we don't transport them or move them around too much but we do bring them out there at least once a year for that well now how long i'm all confused about this the kids have they come from wherever even locally and let's assume that they were born with something not correct with their feet or let ankles and they need to be corrected so that they can walk perfectly how long does that take does it is a surgery is it what what goes on uh well i can vary uh but you know some issues especially the kids that are from here you know i think when you were talking about maybe their feet going in you know kind of towing in that's a club it's called clubfoot and that can be if it's not too severe it can actually be treated without surgery we can do that with casting but the surgeries you know like if we're doing a scoliosis case where we're doing the implanting titanium rods and their spine to straighten their back you know obviously that's pretty invasive and pretty serious and we can't just send them home right after that because infection is uh the big fear so they can be in the hospital sometimes for up to you know a month sometimes two months uh when we're doing lamb lengthening uh where you're making one leg longer like if a kid has a limp uh that can take a lot longer because we're actually there's a device that's put on the um leg called an alizarof and the leg is or the bone is actually cut and then it cranks out a little bit at a time each day and bone mass matter grows in as that's occurring so some those procedures can take two or three months oh i would think so that's a quite a that's fabulous that it it can grow on its own yeah that's amazing amazing what the body can do it is the we need to talk about raising funds so if people want to donate how do they do that well we have a development director at the hospital by the name of lori swan and if you call the hospital or you go to the website and try to contact lori trust me she'll call you back right now because of coven not it you know we we don't have people actually on site except for the nurses and the doctors and the patients to so but she does check her voicemail and email every day and she's a wonderful person and she we have so many different ways that you can contribute i mean you know it could be write a check or it could be you know like other organizations you could be a monthly uh taking out of your bank account of five dollars a month or you know whatever you want to do and some people actually will properties and cars and all kinds of stuff to the hospital so we're open to any type of contribution whatsoever even if we have to turn it to cash on our own about you know beyond that so like if we get a condominium donated to us you know we obviously can't maintain a condominium so it would actually be put up for sale and then the monies would come into our coffers to help with our cause so but lori is the specialist and can answer any questions you may have if you have a desire to donate to the hospital so now are there women members of the shriners well we have female organizations we have the ladies of the oriental shrine of north america we have the daughters of the nile and then not necessarily associated with the shrine per se we have the order of the eastern star which are women and then there are other organizations women's organizations that aren't represented here on hawaii uh but they're they are on the mainland like the like job starters i think some that i'm not that familiar with but we have an organization for women men girls the girls are rainbow girls young boys or demolay boys and this is all to you know with especially with the kids to build character to turn them into responsible citizens responsible caring citizens and uh anymore it's kind of hard to find people that care that's true and what about now with this virus and everybody's not gathering how do you have other organized things do you zoom meetings do you what else can you do since we can't go out and just i'm just about zoomed out so am i so so you you heard i'm in scottish right york right shrine and blue lodge and they each have meetings and then if you're on different committees you know they have meetings so and i'm kind of in all of it so there's at least one zoom meeting a day sometimes more sometimes more yeah well now after this but i as since you said it's been 30 years but as long as i can remember you have been involved in all kind of organizations and really doing and donating time and energy to so many organizations god love you well i just follow people like you that's not true but thank you it is true thank you so much uh but you now you as a business you tune pianos yes but let's not talk about that because i don't want any more piano customers i didn't know people still had pianos oh yes yes so the last time we talked about pianos the shell pianos were in such bad shape did they ever get that fixed oh no no they can't fix a bathroom how they're gonna fix a piano third list of priorities they've got new people in charge so maybe that'll help let's hope so yeah so that's too bad it's a lovely place to just let it go yeah yeah so we're not going to talk about pianos all right that's fine yeah that's fine yeah so what else are you doing um well you know obviously this was all around the shrine but you know we also have one of the organizations that i'm in which which we talked about earlier is the scottish rite and our philanthropy here is what we call the right care program and it's dealing with children with speech impediments that are preschoolers before they get into the public school system or private school system so and that's another scholarship funded operation that we have here so if you know of anyone that has a preschooler that's having difficulties with his speech we're the one we have extremely well qualified speech therapists here to work with them we have a question we have a question from a viewer did shriners have to choose to restrict their help because of covet did you help less kids last year than in 2019 yes we the answer is yes we we served fewer children because of covet and that's because all the surgeries that we do are categorized as elective surgeries and you know the government just kind of banned electric elective surgeries for a while um they we were just doing essential work right so you know gunshot wounds but we don't do that right so it really hurt us because you know everything we do is elective you don't have to fix our length of the limb you don't have to you know straighten the spine which is kind of crazy but it did have a negative effect on us plus a lot of the kids you know we have we service the whole state so kids coming in from Maui and you know we're restricted by the travel so you know no one wants to come over here for one day and then get quarantined for 14 days to go back home and then get home and have to quarantine for another 14 days you know so it has been very difficult for us but we've still managed to service the kids not as many but we've still serviced them well you mentioned scoliosis my uncle my father's youngest brother had scoliosis and um he's 17 years older than me and when I visit my grandmother so I was the only three-year-old that knew the word scoliosis that in those days he had to be in an iron lung and it's come so far since then yeah we don't do that anymore oh as a matter of fact we have an x-ray device it's called the eos x-ray machine which is a low dosage x-ray machine it it delivers 90 less radiation than a standard radiology visit and it allows us to actually do a to turn it into a three-dimensional picture so um yeah we have some really nice equipment we have our own orthotics labs so we make our own prosthetics and braces and everything right there at the hospital oh fabulous well listen sweetheart we are down to the very last minute but again tell us how to make a donation who do we call uh what you want to ask for lori suan and that's suan and if you give me just a second i'll actually give you the the telephone number sorry i should have had that queued up but uh oh and now i can't do it so i'm sorry but just shriners hospital honolulu and ask for the development office and that would be lori and we'll gladly take your call and help you set up a way to to fund our philanthropy well lee as always it's a pleasure spending time with you and we will look forward to seeing you after the covid is over when we can actually visit okay thank you thank you uh marcia for the opportunity to shine a light on shriners to the rest of the community well it's a fabulous hospital and thank you and we'll see you soon okay have a happy new year aloha