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When Mildred Walichuck left a charitable bequest in her will to Wayne Memorial Hospital earlier this year, she not only completed a lifetime of generosity but brought a family history full circle. Millie, as she liked to be called, was born in Honesdale and her father Emmett Turner, was one of the World War I soldiers and sailors in whose memory the hospital was originally dedicated. Though her father died when she was a baby, Millie did not forget Wayne Memorial Hospital.  Since 1950, she and her husband, the late Dr. John G. Walichuck, faithfully had given financial gifts to the Hospital. 

       “The Hospital is extremely grateful to Millie Walichuck for remembering us in her will,” said G. Richard Garman, Executive Director of the Foundation. “Her regular gifts would surely have been missed after she passed. I suspect Millie knew this and also knew how essential an end-of-life commitment can be.”   Garman noted that Millie herself had received critical financial support after her father’s death. Her education at Bucknell University was financed in part by his military life insurance policy and by a trust fund set up in his memory.  

      Millie’s siblings, who notified the Wayne Memorial Health Foundation of her bequest, recently visited the Hospital to see the bronze plaque honoring Emmett and other lost heroes of the 1917-1918 conflict.

      “My sister would be very pleased to know that the Hospital will benefit from her gift and that her father hasn’t been forgotten,” said Doris Burdick Soden of Honesdale.  Soden was accompanied by her brother Harold Burdick of White Mills. Another sister, Betty Burdick Barna, resides in Rochester, New York.  Their father, Bryan Burdick, married Millie’s mother, Geraldine VanGo