Fran Moore moved to Needham in 1975 with her husband and their eight children. That began a period of community service to the town of Needham that continues to this day. Fran was active in her church and in her children’s schools while they were growing up. She helped to run the church flea market, was an active member of the St. Joseph Women’s Guild and worked at the annual Christmas bazaar.
Fran began to volunteer at the Glover Hospital in 1979 and is still a volunteer there in 2005. She began by going in once a week to help run the coffee shop. In the late 1980s she increased her volunteer efforts to twice a week. Fran has volunteered close to six thousand hours at the hospital to date. She now opens the coffee shop each Tuesday morning and staffs it until noontime. Fran is responsible for shopping for the supplies for the coffee shop which she does every other week. With true community spirit, Fran says that she shops for the coffee shop supplies at the local Roche Brothers store as “they are so giving to our community that I wouldn’t think of shopping anywhere else.”
Fran volunteers at the hospital on a second day each week as part of the “transport” area. This means that she assists the staff in moving patients around the hospital as needed for such things as x-rays, laboratory tests or discharge. Fran also helps with filing in the business office when needed and helps to deliver items to different departments. In her early volunteer days at the hospital she used to make beds and help to feed patients. She describes her duties at the hospital as “basically I do whatever they need me to do to help out.”
Fran also volunteers one day a week at the Needham Community Council. She began helping at the Community Council in the early 1990s and works there as a volunteer every Friday. She is in charge of the medical loan closet, keeping the medical equipment in order, checking out and tracking equipment and making sure people get the equipment they need. She also fills in at the Council’s office whenever needed.
When Fran isn’t volunteering at the hospital or at the Community Council, she uses her spare time to make hats for needy infants. She sews multi-colored hats for newborns and sends them to be distributed at hospitals at a reservation for native Americans in the west. To date she has sent several hundred of her specialty hats for these newborn babies.
Fran is described by her fellow volunteers as someone who does her job quietly, capably and with incredible grace. They say that she does whatever needs to be done without being asked, without complaint and is always willing to help. Fran has now lived in Needham for thirty years and has been a community volunteer for over twenty five of those years. Our community is fortunate to have someone like Fran who is so dedicated to helping others. The Melick Foundation is honored to present the 2005 Melick Award to Fran Moore.