photo The late Sharon Spriggs-Flanders was featured speaker at the 2014 gathering of the Circle 100 Club.

Circle 100 Club will hold its next “One & Only Annual Meeting” Thursday, March 19, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the conference room and cafeteria at Wallowa Memorial Hospital. Women interested in participating are asked to RSVP to the Wallowa Valley Health Care Foundation, 541-426-1913.

The club, now in its fifth year, is a giving circle of women from Wallowa County whose only requirement for membership is to attend the One & Only Annual Meeting and give a check for $100.

“We want everyone to know you do not need a formal invitation to join,” said Wallowa Valley Health Care Foundation board vice president Saralyn Johnson. “And if $100 is too steep, you can split the membership with a friend, and together you make one member.”

About 50 women attended the first meeting in 2011, and word spread quickly about this new club, where nothing but a check for $100 was required. “I love that you don’t have to worry about being asked to bake cookies or make a centerpiece or man a booth at some event,” said Kathy Drake, who has been a member since the first year. “It’s just so simple.”

The main business at the Circle 100 Club’s annual meeting is to decide what to do with the proceeds raised. The purpose of the Wallowa Valley Health Care Foundation is to help improve and expand health care services in the community so foundation director Stacy Green works with the Foundation board and chief nursing officer Jenni Word to look for appropriate projects to fund. “Our goal is to find something that will improve patient care and satisfaction, and provide a new service in the county that wasn’t previously available,” said Word.

The first year, the group donated $10,100 to the chemotherapy and infusion therapy department, including paying for training for four nurses in chemotherapy and investing in two more heated massage chairs to allow more patients to be treated at the same time. That helped expand the department and serve more patients locally. “We had one patient tell us that he would have refused treatment had he had to drive out of the county,” said nurse Traci Frye.

The second year, proceeds reached $13,000 and were invested in new equipment for the physical therapy department, to help patients better recover from strokes, injuries and surgery.

Year three, the request for support came from the imaging department, to invest in stress echocardiogram technology to allow ultrasounds of the heart to be taken during stress tests. This program will serve as many as 200 local residents annually who need this test, according to imaging director Sarah Johnson.

Last year, three choices were presented to the attendees at the meeting, and a state-of-the-art incubator for newborns and infants was chosen. A special presentation was made by Sharon Spriggs-Flanders, who spoke of what she had learned about healing through her battle with ovarian cancer. Sadly, Sharon passed away just weeks later.