April 27
April 23, 2007April 25
April 25, 2007
John Fontenot, a recent transplant to Houma from Lafayette, experienced a trauma two-and-a-half years ago when his newborn son, Cooper, had open-heart surgery at Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans after doctors found arteries growing out of the wrong chamber in his heart.
Doctors successfully “rerouted the arteries,” Fontenot said. “We were fortunate.”
Partly out of the gratitude he felt to the nurses and support staff in Tulane’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) who helped him through the ordeal, Fontenot created the Cooper Life Fund in August 2005 along with his wife, Ashley, to assist charitable organizations dealing with heart defects.
Last Tuesday afternoon at Terrebonne General Medical Center’s Women’s Center in Houma, he gave a check for $21,000 to the hospital from the Cooper Life Fund.
All the money was raised from a five-kilometer race held in Houma on March 24, and “will be used to assist families of children who receive health care services at TGMC’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit,” according to a press release.
Along with his older brother, Remy, Cooper Fontenot attended the check presentation ceremony, looking high-spirited as he cavorted around the room while his father spoke.
“At Tulane, in the NICU, we got to know the nurses, and the babies,” Fontenot said.
“After a few months, we decided we wanted to do something,” he said. “Moms can’t be there, dads can’t be there.”
Fontenot said that he is an “avid runner-my wife is too-so we decided to put on a race, and donate the money.”
He lived in Lafayette at the time, commuting to his job at Seacor Marine in Morgan City.
Fontenot organized two five-kilometer races in Lafayette called the Super Cooper Heart Run to raise money for his fund.
After Seacor Marine moved to Houma, he moved to the city, and put on the Super Cooper Heart Race in March.
He plans to have the race in Houma every spring, while keeping the annual fall contest in Lafayette.
After the March race, Fontenot asked, Where would this money go?
“We decided to make the contribution here (at the center),” he said.
Fontenot’s donation will go strictly to “families with limited resources,” said Laura Poule, director of Women’s Services at TGMC.
“Some families have no needs,” Poule said. “John wanted to know how many families we could assist.”
“This is a brand-new initiative,” she said. “We never had a fund (like Fontenot’s) set up before.”
Phyllis Peoples, TGMC’s president and CEO who received the ceremonial check from Fontenot, said that the donation will help pay for families’ “lodging and food vouchers, gift shop vouchers, gas for people living out of town, long-distance calling cards, medical provisions not covered by insurance, and comfort measures as needed.”
His donation “will help families who have to stay unexpectedly,” she said.
To determine a family’s eligibility for assistance, “an initial assessment is done by nurses,” Poule said, “then they go to social workers who are members of the Social Services Department here at TGMC.”
“We serve 200 babies annually” at the Women’s Center, Peoples said. “A lot of bond is formed.
“On behalf of TGMC, we’d like to thank John and Ashley Cooper,” she said.
