For A Good Cause -- Ralph Hillman

Deepa Bharath

Ralph Hillman knows what it means to be a cancer patient.

He was diagnosed with renal cancer in 1993. His wife died of

pancreatic cancer in 1988. Hillman, 70, also lost his father to colon

cancer.

“I’ve been there and seen a lot of it -- all different kinds of

cancer,” the Newport Beach resident said. “I just don’t know why some

live and others die.”

So Hillman found a purpose, his mission in life. For seven years now,

he has been helping out and offering support to other cancer patients at

the Hoag Cancer Center, where he was a patient eight years ago.

“I became a volunteer because I thought it was time for me to give

back,” Hillman said. He works Tuesdays and Fridays anywhere between five

and nine hours a day.

The list of jobs he and other volunteers at the center do is endless

-- from cleaning the kitchen and brewing coffee to making sure there is

an adequate supply of forms, cookies, juice and warm blankets.

It takes a lot of routine tasks out of the nurses’ hands so they have

more time to devote to patients, he said.

“We would do anything to make our patients feel comfortable,” Hillman

said.

When he is not in the hospital, Hillman is tending to his 30 rose

bushes. Come Tuesday or Friday, he gears up to take his colorful,

fragrant flowers to the hospital to brighten the hallways with an array

of colors -- pink, red, yellow and peach.

He drives up to the hardware store the day before and buys plastic

pitchers, adds water and a preservative, and puts the roses in the

pitchers.

The next day, he packs them onto the floor of his car, carefully

wrapped in towels so they don’t tip over.

At the hospital, patients and caregivers alike wait for his roses,

Hoag spokeswoman Maria Nicklin said.

“He puts them all over the hospital,” she said. “Even when he is not

around, it’s like he leaves pieces of himself behind. And we feel his

presence all the time.”

Hillman said he had only six plants to start with, but now there is a

special reason to grow them.

“They love the roses at the hospital,” he said. “They seem to bring a

lot of happiness to all the people.”