Army of volunteers help keep RAM clinic operating

WISE, Va. – Ray Guin, an optician in Richmond, is in his 10th year volunteering at the Remote Area Medical clinic with the Lions Club, helping people get eyeglasses. He also is part of a three-generation family unit that volunteers with the Lions.

Guin’s 13-year-old granddaughter runs the whiteboard that announces to patients when their glasses are ready – by herself – grandpa said. And Guin’s daughter is an optician working with them.

“It’s a job you wouldn’t do for money but you do it because you make a difference,” Guin said. “We’re making a giant difference. How many things in your life can you do that make this much difference? We get more out of it than [the patients] do.”

Working with Guin and the Lions Club was California-based optometrist Mary Schmidt, who for three years has flown to Southwest Virginia for the clinic, which has been held at the Wise County Fairgrounds for 11 years.

Schmidt said her mother is from the South, so she feels a connection to the patients at RAM.

“My feeling when I saw these people was that they could be my cousins, my family,” she said.

As thousands lined up to receive medical care Friday, the army of volunteers that make the event possible were ready – and offering everything from oral surgery to free credit report checks and school clothes for children.

“It’s gone unbelievably smooth,” said Theresa Gardner, executive director of the Health Wagon, the clinic that spearheads annual free clinic. “It’s a testament to the quality of our volunteers.”

Shawn McKee, who helped the Lions Club with sight, hearing and glaucoma testing, has worked with RAM since it began 11 years ago.“Where else in this area can you help thousands of people in three days?” McKee said. “You get people from Kentucky, Ohio, this is their one-shot chance to do this.”

Ray Shelburne, a retired dentist who is on is seventh tour at RAM, said the best part is how everybody pitches in to help.

“You have the gamut of people,” Shelburne said. “People who’ve been practicing [medicine] 40 or 50 years and the new people.”

“Some of the new people, dentistry students, can team up with the older men who have actually been through the trenches,” Shelburne said. “It gives them an opportunity to see the impact they can have on the people they serve, not necessarily in training but in their mindset.”

A number of students were on hand Friday, from James Madison University, The University of Rochester, East Tennessee State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the Medical College of Virginia and Virginia State University.

The University of Virginia brought a team of about 240 physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and medical students to run the general medical tent.

“For some [people], this is their annual trip to the doctor,” said Thomas Saul, who works at the UVa Medical Center. “Well see about 1,500 people over the next three days. It is a very humbling and rewarding thing to be a part of, to get to see how groups from across the state work together.”

In addition to medicine and healthy-living booths, patients could receive free books, free school supplies, free clothes and check their credit report online for free.

“I don’t see how they pull it off,” said Candice Calloway, a mother of three from Glade Springs, Va., who found a bagful of clothes and shoes for her children to wear back to school in the fall. “It makes life a little less stressful for me.”

BB&T offered the free credit report checks in an air-conditioned bus, which manager Cheryl Jackson said the company offered because so many people do not have access to the Internet.“This is a great opportunity to do more than just medical,” she said. “We can offer other services [people] might not have otherwise.”

Other volunteers helped by walking people to different tents to receive aid, or distributed food and water to those in line.

“These people, it just comes naturally to them,” dental patient Georgeann Wampler, of Dryden, Va., said about the hospitality she witnessed Friday.

Volunteer Jessica Martin said, “it’s basically humanity at its best.”

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