Love of Haiti Inspires 30 Years of Service

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“There was a little boy who caught my eye. He reminded me very much of my son, Paul, when he was an infant. This little one was strapped to his crib with an IV in one arm, and he was crying his heart out. Unfortunately, his body was so dehydrated, he couldn’t shed a single tear. I went to unstrap him to pick him up, but the nurse waved me away. She was afraid that I would dislodge the needle,” writes JoAnne Kuehner of her first impressions of Haiti as a volunteer at the general hospital in Port-Au-Prince.

“… I no sooner turned around that I noticed several children over in the corner stacked up on the cold floor under a sink, so I ran over to see if I could comfort them. But the same nurse said, ‘Don’t worry about them. They’re dead,’” Kuehner continues. Later that day “… as I walked a short distance from where the bus parked to the hotel, a young girl about 12 tugged on my skirt, and, through a translator, said that she would like to go to school and asked if I would pay the fee so she could attend. With a flashback to the baby in the crib and the dead children on the hospital floor, I quickly answered, ‘Yes.’ … What I didn’t know at the time was that this was the beginning of a love affair for me with a country I hardly knew.”

Kuehner writes about her experiences during her 30 years of service to “the poorest of the poor” in her book, “Oh, for the Love of Haiti.” She read excerpts from her book at a Meet the Author and Book Signing reception hosted by The University of Scranton’s Panuska College of Professional Studies on Oct. 24.

Kuehner is founder of Hope for Haiti, an international charity that provides assistance to Haitians, particularly children, in the areas of education, nutrition and healthcare. She is a Dame of the Order of Malta, one of the oldest Catholic lay orders, whose mission is to care for the poor and sick of the world.

A resident of Lake Ariel and Naples, Florida, Kuehner received an honorary degree from The University of Scranton in 2001 and the University’s Kuehner Hall of the Loyola Science Center is named in honor of her and her husband, Carl Kuehner ’62, a former chair of the University’s Board of Trustees.

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