‘if you can help, you should.’

Phyllis Gilchrist wanted a life full of adventure. She also wanted to help others.  

So, she joined the U.S. Navy in college as a corpsman, eventually rising to an operating room technician. The career took her across the United States from South Carolina to California. The job sailed her to Japan, where she learned Japanese alongside her children. At one point, she landed in Iceland, where she gave birth to her middle daughter.  

And when she was ready to retire, she found her dock in a second career as an administrative assistant at Children’s Health℠, where she served as a right hand for hospital leadership.  

“It takes a lot of people to make a hospital run, and I’m helping the physicians who work every day to care for kids. Everyone contributes to getting the job done, whether it’s administrative or clinical,” Phyllis said. “My three major goals in life are to support kids in our community, care for animals and improve health for all humans.”  

In July, Phyllis plans to retire from her 10-year career at Children’s Health. She doesn’t want balloons, a cake or a big hoopla. She’d prefer to exit quietly, leaving instead a legacy through an estate plan gift to the hospital that she has watched for a decade care for children in her community.  

But even before working at Children’s Health, Phyllis and her family understood the value of pediatric care.  

While stationed in Japan, her youngest daughter, Morgan, was diagnosed at 14 months old with retinoblastoma, an eye cancer. Phyllis and her then-baby girl were flown back to the United States, where Morgan underwent cancer treatment for two years at another pediatric hospital, losing her left eye and partial vision in her right eye.  

Now, Phyllis and her husband want to ensure that access to the care their daughter received continues to be available for children in their neighborhood.  

“Through Children’s Health, we have a great resource in the area. The hospital continues to grow, and that’s great for North Texas,” Phyllis said. “We wanted to do anything we could to help.”  

Phyllis’ unrestricted philanthropic support allows Children’s Health to fund areas of greatest need, enabling us to invest in new initiatives and potentially life-saving research.  

As a nonprofit health system, we depend on the generosity of donors like Phyllis to remain one of the nation’s leading pediatric hospitals. These undesignated gifts allow us to meet the urgent needs of kids today as we prepare to serve the growing needs of kids tomorrow. 

“If you can give, if you can help, you should,” Phyllis said. “My husband and I aren’t rich, but we can give a little to help somebody else.”