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Veteran's Group Hosts 59th Annual Christmas
Party for the J. D. McCarty Center
Despite a major
ice storm and lingering power outages, the 40
et 8 of Oklahoma hosted their 59th annual open
house and Christmas party for invited guests,
and the patients and staff of the J. D. McCarty
Center in Norman.
The 40 et 8 of Oklahoma
is an honor society within the American Legion
and the founding organization for what is now
the McCarty Center. The 40 et 8 established
this pediatric rehab hospital in 1946. When
the hospital first opened it only treated one
diagnosis…cerebral palsy. Today, the hospital
has treated more than 70 different diagnoses
in the developmental disability category.
The festivities began at
noon with open house. This was an opportunity
for guests to look around the hospital and participate
in the annual tradition of judging the office
door decorations. This year's theme was a centennial
Christmas and the winner, for the fourth year
in a row, was the administration department.
The decorating team for the winning door was
lead by Tina Martinez from human resources.
Just prior to Santa Claus
making his arrival at the party, there were
two announcements made regarding donations to
the hospital. The first announcement involved
the various 40 et 8 Voitures and Cabanes in
the Oklahoma City metro area that donated $4,280
to the hospital.
Amy Herritt, a junior marketing
major from Oklahoma City, made the second announcement.
Herritt was representing the Sooner Sleep Company,
a company formed by business students from the
IBC class in the Price School of Business at
the University of Oklahoma. Each year students
in this class form companies that develop, produce
and market a product with the profits from the
product sales going to a charity. This year
the Sooner Sleep Company chose to support the
McCarty Center. They sold OU blankets with the
slogan "Before there was a state, there
was Oklahoma football" printed on them.
Herritt announced that her student company would
be donating more than $13,000 to the McCarty
Center from the sale of these blankets.
Christmas cheer was everywhere
this day. Two blocks down Robinson Street from
the McCarty Center there was crew working to
restore electric power lines. The crew was made
up power crews from Houston, Texas, Tennessee,
and Eastern Oklahoma. The McCarty Center invited
the men to come to the party for lunch. Due
to work rules and a tight schedule, the crew
members weren't able to come to the hospital
for lunch, so lunch was brought to the grateful
crews along with heartfelt thanks for their
help in putting the area back together after
the ice storm.
The party concluded with
a visit from the jolly old elf himself. Santa
delivered presents to the inpatients of the
McCarty Center with the help of his 40 et 8
elves. As is a tradition at the 40 et 8 party,
all children under the age of 12 were invited
to go to Santa's toy box to pick out a gift
for themselves.
The J. D. McCarty Center
is Oklahoma's center of excellence in the care
and treatment of children with developmental
disabilities from birth to 21 years old. The
hospital is the only hospital of its kind in
the state and in an average year will see children
from 70 of Oklahoma's 77 counties.
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