A celebration of healthcare and hope: Gov. Healey attends Fairview Hospital gala

New Marlborough — Gov. Maura Healey (D) was the special guest at Fairview Hospital’s annual gala on Wednesday, July 17. In its 26th year, this year’s gala was held at Gedney Farm in New Marlborough.

According to its official history, the hospital was started in 1912 when local philanthropist Mary A. Mason bequeathed two houses on West Street, along with some land and $50,000 in cash, for the creation of a hospital. More than a century later, the hospital continues on at 29 Lewis Ave.

“Fairview Hospital is the jewel in the Berkshire crown,” Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli (D – Lenox) told The Berkshire Edge. “It’s profitable, personable, and it’s a family hospital which is what makes it special.”

Rep. Pignatelli said that he invited Gov. Healey to the gala. Gov. Healey has rarely made appearances in Berkshire County since being elected governor in 2023. “She is very pleased to come out here to this gala because she recognizes the importance of rural hospitals, especially critical access hospitals in rural areas,” said Rep. Pignatelli. “Her attendance here at this event is a validation of her support for rural hospitals. We are blessed to have Fairview Hospital in a geographic region that is as big as Berkshire County.”

“It’s important to support rural hospitals, especially in this day and age with people moving out from the city to the country,” said Fairview Interim Vice President Emmett Shuster. “Not only do we support the community here all the time, as everyone knows, there are a lot of immigrants that are coming into the community. An event like this gala is important because we’re able to raise some money to be able to take care of everybody because we’re always doing the insurance dance.”

Incoming Fairview Vice President Anthony Scibelli, who will start his role in September, emphasized the importance of maintaining and improving on services offered by the hospital. “Rural hospitals are very important given that if we were not around to take care of these residents, they would have access issues for healthcare,” Scibelli said. “It would be difficult for residents to have to travel over 30 miles for healthcare. Having this hospital in Great Barrington is a great thing. I also think that it’s great that the governor came here and spent some time in the South County of the Berkshires.”

“Today’s business of healthcare is the most complicated amalgamation of science and art, business, federal regulation, and government funding,” Fairview Chief of Staff Dr. Alec Belman told the audience in his speech. “It is a daunting amount of combating priorities that our healthcare system must negotiate just to get me standing next to you to stitch up your wound at three in the morning, or to take out your appendix on Christmas Eve.”

Belman told the audience that, instead of practicing his speech before the gala, he instead was called to help out in the hospital’s emergency department. “Today started out as just another lovely summer day in the Berkshires,” Belman said. “Then [the hospital received] seven ambulances before 10 a.m., then 10 patients walked in within 60 minutes [of] each other. We realized that we had to get this together, and we had to be creative. We opened up a second treatment area, and we pulled another doctor from their home and a nurse to help with this extra volume [of patients]. Then tragedy struck in this community, and a young person and their family’s lives changed forever.”

Belman added that the staff “pulled even more help from every corner of the hospital.” “Everything that could be done was done, and was done well, but some things cannot be reversed,” Belman said. “At the same time, literally, a young woman who was giving birth needed a C-section emergency. That team of people, the people that you see around you [at the gala,] came running in to make sure that baby had a chance to live in this beautiful world. As I was moving through the hospital making sure that everybody who works at Fairview had the resources they needed to do what needed to be done, the last thing I heard as I left the hospital today was the cries of that baby coming to life.”

Belman added “we are the smallest hospital in Massachusetts, but I guarantee you that we have enough caring and dedication in our hearts to fill every hospital in the Bay State.”

“To me, Fairview represents so much of what is good in Massachusetts,” Gov. Healey told the audience in her speech. “[These are] people with values, commitment to equity, and commitment to making sure that people are cared for and that the community is cared for.”

Gov. Healey said that both her mother and grandmother worked as nurses. “Watching my grandmother, I certainly developed from an early age an appreciation for those who deliver healthcare,” Gov. Healy said. “I could tell from [Belman’s] comments a little something about the incredible spirit of the men and women who work at Fairview Hospital who are there in moments of tremendous grief and pain, anguish and frightening moments, and who are also there in moments of joy and hope. Throughout it all, you have to be steady, and you have to keep it together, and you have to continue to find ways to deliver care and serve people.”

According to event organizers, the gala raised over $200,000 for Fairview Hospital.