New 'Bernie's Purse' Endowed Fund supports Blue Ridge Free Clinic patients

The all-volunteer staff at the Blue Ridge Free Clinic are expert readers of body language. Perhaps it’s a slight shift of posture or a glance to the side when a prescription is handed over or the suggestion is made to purchase special food or formula.

“They’ll look away and you can tell,” said Donna Reilly, a registered nurse. “And when we come back with some money, the tears flow. They are so thankful.”

For many years, that money came from an informal petty cash fund called “Bernie’s Purse,” named after the generous social worker who often dipped into her own purse to help patients in need.

Bernie Mathis, who died in 2012, is such a part of the fabric of the clinic that her portrait hangs in the hallway.

“Even our staff who didn’t know Bernie know what we’re talking about when we say, ‘Let’s use Bernie’s purse,” said Susan Adamson, a family nurse practitioner and the clinic’s volunteer director.

Gifts average between $10-15 dollars, with staff disbursing a monthly total between $500 and $700, she said.

Now, however, staff won’t need to ask donors to contribute to Bernie’s Purse, but can target fundraising towards other operational needs. An anonymous donor has established the “Bernie’s Purse Endowment” at The Community Foundation of Harrisonburg and Rockingham.

Supporting patients and staff

The fund will provide a monthly distribution, which will increase over time. Donations are tax-deductible and most welcome; the larger the fund, the more the distribution will be — and the more patients Blue Ridge Free Clinic can help.

The endowment is as much a gift to the hardworking clinic staff as it is to patients, said community foundation executive director Revlan Hill.

“Setting up a fund like this is a creative and smart way to address a financial need of our community, and to save time and energy of the people doing the valuable work of providing services,” said Hill. “It really allows the staff to focus on doing what they do best, which is providing the best health care possible to the patients, even if that requires some small financial support on their wellness journey.”

In many cases, these small donations are life-saving – recently, Bernie’s Purse helped a patient who couldn’t afford to buy gas to travel to a specialist in Charlottesville. (Making that effort to visit a specialist, Adamson said, has saved the lives of eight patients, all of whom were diagnosed with cancer that was caught early enough to treat.)

“There’s a warmth and a level of care here that is unusual, which is really why we all volunteer,” Reilly said. “We see patients for sometimes 45 minutes, rather than just 15, and that’s how we get to know their needs. They often want to keep seeing us and we wish we could offer that but that’s not what we do.”

The clinic’s goal is to be “a bridge to health,” addressing short-term medical needs while connecting the patient to longer-term care. But its holistic approach also informs and educates patients and caregivers on the journey to wellness.

Identifying needs

Social worker Lisa Hawkins, who did not know Bernie but fulfills a similar role at the Blue Ridge Free Clinic, meets with patients for intake sessions which help to identify social determinants of health such as access to education, economic stability, mental health and trauma response, and cultural challenges.

She and other staff are often able to identify a financial need that gets in the way of further treatment or recovery. That’s where Bernie’s Purse comes in – helping with a quick, one-time fix that might help clear the way forward for the patient or in classic Bernie style, buy some time so that staff can problem-solve for a better solution.

Mathis was devoted to her work, and was at the free clinic on the day of her diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor. She died just seven weeks later, leaving behind a husband, two daughters, her community at Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist (read two beautiful eulogies still posted on their website) and countless patients she touched with her compassion and generosity.

When the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Free Clinic closed in 2021, Adamson asked that the portrait come to the new building.

“When I saw that alcove there, I knew that’s where her photo should go,” Adamson said.

Like a guardian angel right in the middle of the pain, the suffering, the care and the love.

And what did Bernie’s purse look like? It was red leather with textured tooling, Adamson recalled. “And it was big. She used it to haul around lots of clinic paperwork.”