Jesse was four months old when a disastrous fire struck his home. Today, at age 11, he’s healthy and adventurous, and determined to be a policeman or firefighter when he grows up.
But for the two months after the house fire, Jesse was undergoing intensive treatment and multiple surgeries at Monroe Carrell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“Three times a week we were learning how to help Jesse be the best Jesse he could be,” his mom, Candace Gossett, told The Rotary Club of McMinnville at its weekly luncheon Thursday at First Presbyterian Church.
She was referring to the follow-up rehabilitation sessions at Monroe Carrell — two and a half hours each way from their home in Cumberland County.
Jesse and his siblings came to Candace and her husband by way of the foster parent program administered by the Tennessee Department of Human Services. The couple proudly boasts of their 12 children, including Jesse, a sixth-grader in the Cumberland County school district where Candace serves as a special education assistant.
Monroe Carrell Jr Children’s Hospital “has given us so many opportunities we would not otherwise have had,” she affirmed to the Rotary audience. One of those benefits has been vital rehab therapy that restored Jesse’s lung function damaged in the fire. Skin grafts and cosmetic surgery were essential to the child’s recovery and progress toward a normal, fulfilling life.
The nationally ranked, 315-bed hospital aggregates scores of pediatric medical and surgical specialties at the main hospital in Nashville and several satellite clinics and physician offices in Tennessee, Jim Hollender, chief operating officer (COO) at Monroe Carrell, explained in his turn at the Rotary podium Thursday. Of the approximately 6,000 hospitals in the U.S, only about 250 are devoted solely to pediatric care.
The venerable online news magazine, US News & World Report has ranked Monroe Carrell “among the best in the nation for 17 consecutive years,” citing especially the vast range of specialties that are coordinated inside the hospital to produce the best outcomes for patients, ranging from newborns to teenagers.
With origins dating back to the Junior League-sponsored Crippled Childrens Hospital in 1923-24, the present institution admits more than 17,000 patients a year. More than 19,000 surgeries are performed at Monroe Carrell, and the main campus and its outlying clinics host 428,600 patient visits a year, Hollender noted.
Warren County residents were served in some 5,000 patient encounters in 2023-24, the latest data point in a steadily rising trend that recorded about 2,900 visits 10 years earlier, the hospital officials related.
“A little over half of our patients are from economically disadvantaged families,” Erin Morrison shared with the Rotarians. She is associate vice president for development at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“We always want to say ‘yes’,” in accepting young patients suffering from traumatic injuries, birth defects, acquired diseases and other live-threatening or life-altering conditions.
Charitable foundations, for-profit corporations, individuals and civic organizations step up to underwrite the uncompensated services Monroe Carrell provides, making that “yes” possible in most cases, Morrison emphasized.
Warren County emergency agencies and first responders pitched in to make Thursday’s Rotary visit especially memorable for Jesse.
Chris Centracchio, a Rotary director and technology manager at Ben Lomand Connect, made his own connections with local emergency services to donate branded memorabilia. Contributing items to Jesse’s swag bags were the McMinnville Police Department, McMinnville Fire Department, Warren Sheriff’s Office, the Centertown and Morrison volunteer fire departments and Warren County Emergency Medical Service (EMS).
Expressions on his face confirmed his delight with the surprise gifts, some of which may find practical use in his future career.
Jesse, Candace, Morrison and Hollender join in an animated conversation airing this week on WCPI’s FOCUS interview series. The extended interview aired Tuesday at 5 p.m. with a repeat Saturday, about 9:30 a.m.
