For the Nurses' Home

Mrs. Sarah Shahla's journey to America to gather donations from the sons of the Arab colony

It is a beautiful dream, and rarely do dreams come true! But this dream is on its way to fulfillment, at the hands of Mrs. Sarah George Shahla and her companions in the struggle and in work, the founding members of the Nurses' Branch attached to the Alumni Association of the American University of Beirut...

The project, unique of its kind, is without parallel in the Near East. It aims at building a home to shelter every incapacitated nurse who has formerly served, not in Lebanon only, but in all the countries of the Arab East, without distinction of nationality or religion. So a welcome, in advance, to this all-embracing humane spirit in which the project was founded; were there no other guarantee of its success, that alone would suffice!

Nursing for women in Lebanon, like teaching, goes back more than half a century. We recall that the School of Nursing at the American University celebrated in 1955 the passing of fifty years since its founding — which means that from the harvest of those years we possess a very great number of nurses, working and serving in silence, love, and giving, in every country of our Arab world. And besides this school there are many others...

The Nurses' Branch was founded — or rather, their banding together first began to show itself in a modest way — in 1925. But the heated activity that has lately stirred and marched with strong steps toward carrying out the "Nurses' Home" project goes back three years, and is almost wholly the fruit of individual efforts made by Mrs. Sarah Shahla, chairman of the donations campaign, who — by way of contact with those she calls "her children," whom she tended for thirty years as supervisor of students' health at the American University — succeeded in gathering a sum of money that went toward the purchase of a piece of land at Sadd al-Bauchrieh measuring 3,500 meters: a beautiful plot of ground shaded by pine trees, lying in the neighborhood of the Adventists' Near East College.

In recognition of her services, and of the brilliant success she achieved in the financial campaign here, the Nurses' Branch has delegated Mrs. Shahla herself to travel to America for a second financial campaign, to raise the building. The "energetic volunteer" expects that in America she will approach none but the sons of the colony; and she has been furnished with letters of recommendation from the religious and civil heads to attest the importance of the work she has volunteered to serve to the very end — however long the time, however tangled the affairs — until the project is completed and she sees with her own eyes the "Nurses' Home" standing there on the green hill!!

It is a praiseworthy "Orthodox" stubbornness!

Mrs. Shahla will leave Beirut for America on the 9th of this April, and her journey will be prolonged according to the success she meets. She is most optimistic, and strong in her confidence in the worthiness of the mission for which she works — and, upon my life, a work such as this needs optimism and confidence!!

At the close of this talk, Mrs. Shahla set down a word of deep thanks to "her children," the students of the University, who appreciated her project and contributed to its accomplishment with their generous donations. She thanks likewise Mrs. Philomena Saad Jabbara, one of the graduates of the School of Nursing, now in São Paulo, who, with the help of the benefactors Rafael Jafet and Eduardo Sayegh, succeeded in collecting 1,216 dollars and sending them to the committee for the project...

And Mrs. Shahla says, finally, that but for the many calamities that have followed one another upon Lebanon in the past two years, and the material sacrifices the people have borne on their account, she would not have been obliged to travel to America, and she would have been able to raise the "Home" from the money of the sons of the Arab countries alone.

Mrs. Sarah Shahla, as she sets out today on her weighty mission, is spurred on by a deep faith in the value of the mission for which she has been delegated; and, God willing, she will achieve every success and good fortune, thanks to her faith, and thanks to her energy, her confidence, and her optimism — for whoever unites these qualities, and takes this positive direction, is bound in the end to succeed!