The DeSimone Family Trust, established by long time past Suffield residents Jerry and RoseMarie DeSimone have donated $2.5 million dollars to support a neonatology intensive care facility and services in the newly built tower at Connecticut Children’s. In recognition of this gift, the 6th floor NICU will be named the Jerry and RoseMarie DeSimone Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The unit is state of the art and consists of 25 spacious private patient/family rooms. An additional 25 patient rooms on the 7th floor bring the total number to 50 private NICU rooms in the new tower.
Karen, Jerry and RoseMarie’s eldest daughter, and Don Naida, also former Suffield residents, with daughter Lauren and grandsons pose before the dedicated sign in the NICU.
I was fortunate enough to tag along with the extended DeSimone family as they took a guided tour of the facility, and it is awe inspiring! The building was guided by research which shows that premature babies can have better neurodevelopmental outcomes and a shorter length of hospitalization when the family can stay and bond with the infant. To that end the rooms are big enough for parents to spend the night. Additionally, we viewed a Fetal Care Operating Room which can accommodate up to 40 medical professionals at once, outdoor terraces, lounges where the family can relax, a human milk lab, staff lounges, family waiting rooms, and nurses’ stations right outside the infant rooms where cameras can monitor the patient, in addition to nurses directly obseving patient rooms.
Dr. James Moore, a neonatologist and President of the Connecticut Children’s Specialty Group, Dr. Jeffrey Shenberger, the Division Head of Neonatology and Marge Julian, Associate Chief Nursing Officer for the health system spoke to the group before the tour expressing profound gratitude for the “once in a lifetime opportunity” for staff to achieve great outcomes for premature babies.
So, how you may wonder did this donation come to pass? It is at its roots a story of love, family, hard work, and shared experience.
Jerry DeSimone was an only child growing up in Rhode Island when in a Hallmark movie moment, he attended a high school dance where he spotted RoseMarie across the room, pointed her out to his buddy and said, “I’m going to marry her some day!” Due to RoseMarie’s mother’s death shortly thereafter, the two were unable to get together for a while. Once Jerry asked her out however, romance blossomed and true to his belief, they were married while he was still a student at Brown University.
According to Joyce Langese, one of the DeSimone’s 6 children, the couple started out with nothing, using money they received at the wedding to pay their wedding expenses that night. Upon graduation with an engineering degree under his belt, the two moved to Long Island where Jerry worked for an engineering company. Not one to like working for someone else, he got an MS in Investments and Insurance from American College and made the $1 Million Dollar Club his first year. Joyce related that her grandmother once told her, “Your father could sell straw hats in a blizzard!”
Although Jerry continued to sell insurance for the rest of his life, his entrepreneurial spirit led him to become a real estate developer building luxury condos in Florida, recreational facilities including a training facility that the New York Islanders used, and several apartment buildings, including locally a 250 apartment complex (Woodgate)in Enfield and Vernon. Adding to his success, a penchant for stock option trading increased his wealth. “For all he had my dad was a product of the Depression and was very frugal. He never flew first class and even used Keurig cups twice” chuckled Joyce, “but he would spend anything for what my mother wanted.” Theirs was a love story that lasted almost 70 years before Jerry died.
Turns out that as one of eight children what RoseMarie wanted was a big family, and a big family they had. Trouble, however, was around the corner.
After her first child was born it was discovered that there was an RH incompatibility factor. Without going into the science of it, this became a problem not with the first birth, but with subsequent ones as the mother’s blood basically attacks that of the fetus and can result in death. Although it is not a problem now in the U.S., back when RoseMarie was having babies there was no advanced treatment. A baby would be observed only after birth and receive a transfusion, but many would die. Each of the DeSimone’s subsequent five children were all sick, with Barbara, the youngest and premature, spending several weeks in a NICU. Because of the worry and anxiety arising from their children’s hospitalizations, the family had a soft spot in their heart for people in the same situation.
Just prior to his death in 2021, Joyce, as manager of the family trust asked her dad if he would like to do something “life changing” with his money, and he agreed. Almost immediately after that conversation Jerry was hospitalized and died two weeks later.
In deciding where to make a significant donation, Conneticut Children’s became a family choice. “My mother has always just loved babies and even now that she has dementia, she just lights up when she sees one,” says Joyce who also serves on the Connecticut Children’s Foundation Board and is aware of the tremendous work they do. After polling her siblings and their children the family decided that donating to Connecticut Children’s NICU would best honor their mother and father.