Young Women’s Club of York ends 60-year tenure running York Hospital hospitality shop
The Young Women’s Club of York were operating the hospitality shop at York Hospital as captured in this photograph in this mid-century York (Pa.) Chamber of Commerce publication. (See below for a view of the hospital in that era.) Also of interest: York Hospital’s, WellSpan’s beginnings: ‘A man named Small acted upon a not-so-small idea’ and West Side Sanitarium, later West Side Osteopathic and later Memorial Hospital born in The Avenues in York and Mount Wolf’s Frances G. Wolf a 20th-century mover in the York County community.
One of those unsung moments that carry lots of meaning came recently with the report that the Young Women’s Club of York would stop operating the York Hospital hospitality shop.
Starting this month, the hospital is operating the shop, which ran under the stewardship of the Young Women’s Club since 1947.
In a sign of the times in which volunteer service is declining, the club could not keep up with demands of operating the shop… .
York Hospital sits atop the hill at mid-20th century. Its School of Nursing, established in 1894, is seen at right.
“All civic organizations are declining in terms of their volunteer base,” a hospital spokesman told the York Daily Record/Sunday News in a May 24 story. “As they’ve had fewer volunteers to focus their time on the shop, and we’ve looked ahead and said, ‘How are we going to meet these growing needs?’ We felt the need to remain friends, but move in different directions.”
This scenario is being played out throughout York County, as many venerable service and religious organizations are scraping for new members.
The Young Women’s Club, like many organizations, is no longer young.
But the club will continue to meet and serve.
“Now we can raise money,” club co-president Susan Ritchie told the newspaper, “and help the York community outside the hospital.”
Also of interest:
– Re-printed cookbook filled with ‘tried and tested’ York County, Pa., recipes.
