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Lifetime of Giving
By Pamela Roe
Ann Crowe Essig’s
compassion, strength and heart knew no bounds. Throughout her
life, Essig, BSN ’71, accomplished
a long list of goals that were for the benefit of those living
with cancer and other debilitating diseases.
Only a cancer survivor
can truly understand what others in this situation are going
through. She took her own personal story with cancer and made
it into something beautiful for others to embody as they sit
in one particular doctor’s
office.
She and her husband, LeRoy Essig, (a former
MU resident) worked together in their internal medicine and hematology-oncology
practice in Fredericksburg, Va.
“Regardless of all her activities,
which included financing, planning and working with the construction
crew of our own medical building, she was most proud of being
a nurse,” Dr. Essig
said.
Ann was a large influence on the building’s design.
She used her experience of sitting in dismal settings to undergo
chemotherapy to help design a medical building that featured
a far different setting for future patients.
“She designed and decorated our building
as she would have liked to have seen it while she received chemotherapy
for breast cancer in 1991,” Dr. Essig said.
The clinic’s
doors open out into a covered garden and courtyard with a small
waterfall. The scent and vision of wisteria-laden trellises fill
the senses of cancer patients and their loved ones.
Ann was an
enthusiastic breast cancer survivor and participated in the Komen
Cancer Walk that spans 60 miles between Baltimore to Washington,
D.C. She accomplished this even though she lived with debilitating
chronic back pain after the two spinal fusions she endured as
a child for a congenital vertebra abnormality.
Ann was the driving
force behind the formation of the Salvation Army’s Women’s
Auxillary in her hometown. After receiving their charter in 1986,
she served as the organization’s
first president and the group started “A Day in the Park” program,
which raised money for the Salvation Army.
After the second year,
she could see enthusiasm waning for this time-intensive event,
so Ann fine-tuned the idea and came up with “The Music
by Moonlight” concert. Now in its
16th year, the concert continues to raise money to send area
children with limited opportunities to Camp HappyLand. She served
as president for three terms as well as vice president.
In August
as she left the office for her daily walk, Ann was tragically
struck and killed by a car as she crossed at a pedestrian crossing.
Dr. Essig felt it was important to bury her with the two things
she was most proud of — her wedding ring and
her nursing pin.
In his wife's honor, Dr. Essig endowed a program
at the MU School
of Nursing, which has been named the Ann Crowe Essig Undergaduate
Nursing Research Mentorship Program. The program provides opportunities
for nursing students to participate in research projects with
faculty mentors. The MU
Nursing Alumni Organization also is honoring Ann with their
humanitarian nursing award posthumously.
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Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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