Photographs by William Taufic.
On September 25, 1995, Brenda Fareri’s thirteen-year-old daughter was admitted to Westchester Medical Center. She was diagnosed with rabies, contracted from a silver hair bat . Eight days later, the gifted and talented eighth grader was taken off life support.
It’s hard to imagine anything harder for parents to endure. Although Brenda emphasizes that the doctors were amazing, a grim, sterile environment in Maria’s hospital room, nothing but a chair for Brenda to sleep on, and restrictions on parental involvement in the care of an ill child made an unthinkably painful situation even worse. How could any good come from this event?
Brenda and her husband, John, made it happen, with inspiration from a wish their daughter Maria had made in a social studies project shortly before her life came to an abrupt end. Brenda explains, “At the wake, her teacher told me that when asked the one thing she would change in the world, Maria wished ‘for the health and well-being of all children in the world.’ I said to John, ‘I think Maria just told us what to do with her life.’”
Actually, they had already started on this mission when Maria was alive. Maria’s friends had made a video for her but the hospital rooms had no DVD players, so Brenda purchased one for every room in the children’s ward. John, who owns a construction business, had distracted himself at the hospital by knocking on walls—trying to figure out where a room could be built so families could talk privately.
On January 12—what would have been Maria’s fourteenth birthday—Brenda and John met with the head of Westchester Medical Center and set into motion a plan to overhaul the children’s hospital and create a place that felt whimsical, not medical; homey, not scary.
“Our biggest motivation was for it to be family friendly,” says Brenda. Maria’s older siblings—triplets who are now thirty-six—had been excluded even more than their parents. “We put together a family advisory board of parents of kids who had been in the hospital. We designed the rooms with this committee. Mothers, fathers, siblings, doctors—everyone worked together.”
Brenda, an interior designer for her husband’s company and a former nurse at Greenwich Hospital, learned how to be a fundraiser and public speaker. The Fareris also donated “millions” of dollars but won’t specify how many. In 2005, the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital opened, welcoming patients and their families with a real MTA train engine, a mini-golf course, the world’s largest doll house, a video arcade, NY sports memorabilia, a low child-friendly counter height throughout, and bedroom-like rooms with flat-screen TVs, webcams and sofabeds. “Nothing makes me happier than when I walk through the hospital and see a parent on the sofa asleep in the room with their child,” says Brenda.
Her son Michael says, “My mother put all of her grief, creativity and the limitless energy she is known for into the construction of the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, which has garnered global recognition and currently serves as the example worldwide of what a children’s hospital should and can be.” Hospitals in Chicago, San Francisco, China, Japan, the U.K. and Dubai have emulated this special place that grew out of a daughter’s beautiful wish and a mother’s giant heart.