Jim Bordelon is a man with a plan. His plan is to ensure that the little babies in Texas Children's Newborn Center continue to receive the highest level of care and treatment for many years to come. In October, Jim, as he likes to be called, designated a gift through his will to Texas Children's Hospital to establish A Friend of Newborns Endowed Fund.
"I want to leave the world a better place than I found it," he says. "I don't have kids, so I can think of no better cause than these little guys. It just feels right."
Jim has been volunteering in Texas Children's Newborn Center over the past year, sometimes as a patient pal but primarily as a baby holder. "Fun in life is helping others. I'd rather hold a baby than play a round of golf," he says. He also is a "delivery driver" of burial gowns for Project Angel Wings. When Jim learned from a fellow Texas Children's volunteer about a need for burial garments for infants, he organized a group of ladies at his church to sew the bright white gowns with a pink ribbon for girls or a blue one for boys.
"My job," he says, "is to make sure the materials get to the ladies at church and the finished gowns get back to Texas Children's. I can't sew, but I can drive. So I can do something. Everybody can do something."
With a history of volunteering that began at the League City Animal Shelter and progressed to assisting patients and families at a hospice in the Texas Medical Center, Jim said he feels he has found a home at Texas Children's Hospital.
"The reasons I volunteer here?" he says. "Caring, strength and compassion- I get those from the kids.They look at you and it changes you."
For Jim, that change has been profound. He likes the hospital environment so much that he has decided to change careers. Having worked with computers at NASA for the past twenty years, he is now training to become a respiratory therapist. Once he completes his studies at Alvin Community College, he would like to work at a hospital in the Texas Medical Center.
Though ultimately, he says, it all comes down to giving something back. "There's something out there that is a way for each of us to give back and feel good about it.That's important."
It is certainly a notion Jim takes to heart. As a new member of the J.S. and Lillie Abercrombie Society, he is modest about being thanked or recognized for his good works and for his generous estate gift. Modest or not, he is making a big difference at Texas Children's Hospital—one that will continue for years to come.
