Hospital CEO recalled for passion

BY ROBERT L. BAKER

Sara ‘Sally’ Iveson, who tirelessly worked for decades caring for the rural health care needs ofSusquehannaCounty, was laid to rest Friday in South Gibson.

“TheBarnes-KassonHospitalwas her life,” Charles Aliano, who has served on the B-K board for 34 years, said.

Aliano added that he recommended hiring Iveson to be executive director in 1982.

“On reflection, it was one of the better decisions I’ve made,” Aliano said. “You could always count on her being among the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave.”

Until she stepped down four months ago, “she had the passion and foresight to take the hospital where it needed to be.”

“Some decisions were a little risky, but all turned out in the long run,” Aliano said. “The doctors would tell her we need to do this, but we’re not sure how we’re going to pay for it, and she was always saying don’t worry, we’ll figure out a way.”

Aliano noted that it always seemed the 58-bed hospital, which was the largest employer inSusquehannaCounty, was on the edge financially, “but we would make it, and she knew all along we would make it.”

During a memorial service at Hennessey Funeral Home in Susquehanna, family, friends and colleagues referred to the institution where she took what she thought was a temporary job in 1969 “as a hospital with a heart.”

“This was not about bricks and mortar, but the people who ran it,” Helen Foster said, recalling the care her husband received in his last illness. “They (Sally and her husband Bill who died in 2010) were top-of-the-line compassionate people.”

Dr. Bhupendra ‘Bob’ Patel recalled coming to Susquehanna 27 years ago.

“We had been raised in backgrounds half a world apart,” Patel said, “and I couldn’t believe how caring she was, personally taking me around my new community and then later just seeing how she cared for people she met on the street.”

Sally’s son, Bob Iveson, said his mom was always helping somebody, not because it made her feel good but because she could tell when somebody really needed help.

“It didn’t matter if you didn’t have the means,” Iveson said. “She showed us how you can help people without spending a dime.”

“To her, it was always today you; tomorrow me,” Iveson added, noting, “It really is true that the more positivity, more compassion you show, the more you get back, hands down.”

Another son, William Iveson Jr.,  shared some funny family stories including his parents and three siblings and later grandkids but noted there was always another family member never to be forgotten: the hospital.

“Her one true solace was keeping Barnes-Kasson going,” he said, “and in so doing she also provided a great example of just living beyond herself.”

In 1997, the Greater Susquehanna Chamber of Commerce recognized her as its Woman of the Year, and in 2003 the Boy Scouts’ Baden Powell Council named her as its Distinguished Citizen of the Year for all that she had done for the region.

At the time, then Susquehanna Community School District Superintendent Bob McNamara said of Sally – who graduated fromSCHSin 1965 – that he was reminded of a quote, “The man who says it can’t be done is interrupted by the person who says it can.”

He noted then that Sally was always the one saying, “It could be done.”

Aliano said he was pleased to hear but not surprised by the number of people he encountered this week who had their own Sally story, “about how she’d always been there for us.”

He said that Sally had personally helped his niece get medical attention in a dire moment, and if she hadn’t been there when she was, “my niece wouldn’t be here today.”

“There is no end to the people she helped that way,” he said. “She was just that kind of person.”