Sarah Dandridge

In Memory of Her Father

For Sarah Dandridge, part of moving back to Charlottesville in 1989 was renewing her connection with Martha Jefferson Hospital. Her experiences there trace back to childhood days as a doctor's daughter, when she would accompany her father, Harry Austin, MD, on hospital visits. During high school, she worked in his office.

In memory of Dr. Austin, Dandridge and her husband, Vic, established an endowed nursing scholarship. "We thought it was a nice way to memorialize him," she says, noting that their gift is a "transferable" way to support the hospital's caring tradition as it relocates to Peter Jefferson Place.

But Dandridge's support of Martha Jefferson extends even further. In 1993, Dandridge became the founding secretary and treasurer of the Women's Committee, which focuses on raising funds for the hospital's women's health initiatives. One of the committee's first undertakings was Martha's Market, now a highly successful fundraiser that brings in tens of thousands of dollars of community support for Martha Jefferson.

Though Dandridge "retires" from hospital volunteer work from time to time, her hospital community keeps pulling her back. After ending her tenure on the Women's Committee in 1996, she was recruited to serve on the Women's Steering Committee, which helps the hospital decide how to allocate the Martha's Market proceeds. In 1998, she was enlisted to serve as Market treasurer once again.

With the advent of the new Martha Jefferson Hospital Foundation, Dandridge found another outlet for expressing her support for "her" hospital: a term on the Board of Directors.

"I'm amazed by the quality of everyone involved with Martha Jefferson," she says of the Board. "Everyone cares. It's more than a saying. I've been a patient here, too, and I was pleased with Martha Jefferson's care."

Back to In Their Own Words