For Emily, it's helping to give newborns a warm welcome.

See how Emily Campbell carries on her grandmother's legacy and supports our Family Maternity Center.

Emily Campbell shares more than just a first name with her grandmother, Emily Tsoleas.

Only one – Tsoleas – grew up in poverty-stricken Greece. But what she learned during those lean years has persevered and lives on at Alice Hyde Medical Center, through the busy hands and sturdy knitting needles of her granddaughter.

Emily has spent nearly a dozen years at Alice Hyde, shepherding the hospital’s Human Resources office, its education programs, health and wellness initiatives and volunteer groups.

She moved to Alice Hyde from the manufacturing sector and quickly came to relish her role as an administrator.  Emily loves to watch and support the hospital’s employees as they perform “miracles,” every day.  “We get to see all the miracles performed here every day and help facilitate that,”  said Emily. “At Alice Hyde, we take good care of each other which helps us take good care of our patients and families.”

It’s that inspiration  —  along with a little  homespun wisdom from her grandmother —  that prompted Emily to quietly begin volunteering her own time to Alice Hyde.

Inspired by the work of the hospital’s Family Maternity Center, Emily was searching for a way to show support for the team of OB/GYN Physicians, Midwives and highly-skilled, experienced Registered Nurses that deliver roughly 250 babies per year.  For Emily, the department is a place of  nearly unbridled love and joy.

The Family Maternity Center’s aura of family evokes, for Emily, memories of her grandmother. She ultimately settled on a project that would make Tsoleas, a craft-maker and knitter extraordinaire who passed her love of making things on to Emily, proud.

For two years now Emily has been quietly knitting and delivering baby blankets for  newborns at Alice Hyde, at the rate of about one per week.

More than one hundred blankets later, Emily insists there’s no need to make a fuss over  her work. She just likes making new blankets for the new babies.

“It’s just a small piece of the greater mission that we have,” Emily said. “People have the most beautiful experiences here, so being  able to be a small part of that is so gratifying. It’s just a feeling of connection.” 

Emily knits the three-by-three foot blankets, made of super-soft yarn to be snuggly for the infants, in a variety of colors and patterns. They’re delivered with a handwritten note: “Congratulations on your new bundle! From the staff at Alice Hyde.”

For the Associate Vice President of Patient and People Experience, the gesture connects her not only with the staff members who inspire her, but with the families whose joy reminds her of the grandmother who taught her the power of making things for others.

“It’s just something small that I can do for a family that has just experienced the greatest joy,” she said. “I see the work the team does with patients and this is my effort to support a beautiful unit with fantastic staff.”