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Arno Grether Two lives saved
Arno Grether
Two lives saved.
Arno Grether has a strong connection to the hospital, both as a donor and as a patient.
The road was deserted. They were miles from the nearest hospital and Arno Grether feared his friend, Jerry Spoelma — with him in the truck — had died. In fact, Jerry was still alive, but was having a heart attack.
Arno was quick to respond. He drove to the nearest building and called out, asking someone to call 911. In the time it took for emergency services to arrive, Arno had also taken another important step to save Jerry’s life. “I’d had a heart problem myself, and had been living in a remote area, so I owned a defibrillator,” he says. “For some reason I still don’t understand, I’d slung it in the back of my truck that day and I was able to use it on Jerry.”
After Jerry was airlifted to the nearest hospital, his prognosis did not look good, but he ultimately recovered and was able to return home to Southern California. If Arno had not been able to provide prompt help that day, things could well have ended in tragedy — and he now credits the lifesaving care he received at Huntington Hospital with saving two lives: his own and that of his friend. “Thanks to the care I got, I was around to help Jerry in his hour of need,” he says.
A trusted institution.
Even before this incident, Arno had expressed his gratitude for care through his charitable gifts toward our work. Having grown up in the San Gabriel Valley, he says, he had always known and trusted the hospital. In addition to himself, other members of his family had turned to us for care. The Grether family — including Arno’s late parents, Elsa and Tom, his sister Sheila and her husband Mark Marion, as well as Arno himself — have all provided generous support. Gifts from the family supported construction of our East Tower and established the Grether Family Endowment to support nursing education, for example.
When Arno was diagnosed with coronary artery disease in 1993, he turned to us — and credits our care team with saving his life. After that, even though he By acting fast and using a defibrillator, Arno his good friend Jerry Spoelma (above). saved the life of had moved out of state, he continued to travel back to Pasadena to receive regular heart check-ups.
Some years later, Arno again became unwell. He was in pain, had a fever, and was experiencing a strange pins-and-needles sensation across his face. After a trip to his local emergency room in New Mexico, where he lived at the time, he decided to fly to California and come to the medical institution he trusted with his life.
His condition worsening, he met with Robbin Cohen, MD, our medical director for cardiothoracic surgery. (Though he was feeling very ill, Arno had not lost his sense of humor. “I have aliens in me! Get them out!” he told Dr. Cohen.) The biopsy Dr. Cohen performed revealed that Arno was suffering from histoplasmosis, a type of lung infection. It was progressing dangerously quickly. “I would have gone septic and died within a couple of weeks,” says Arno, who recovered after receiving advanced medical care and monitoring in our definitive observation unit (DOU).
Recognizing excellent care.
In gratitude for lifesaving care, Arno has been a longtime member of our President’s Circle, and has made many above-and-beyond gifts over the years. He and his sister also both continue to provide funding toward the Grether Family Endowment.
Shortly after his experience with histoplasmosis, he thanked members of our DOU team more personally, treating them to a day at the races. At the time, Arno was an avid racegoer and horse owner. “I decided to name a race for Huntington Hospital’s DOU staff in recognition of the excellent nursing care I received,” he says. Each year, he also sponsors a table at our Fall Food + Wine Festival and then donates it back for use by DOU staff, as an additional way of saying thank you.
