Partnering to Benefit Children

Our 125-year history of serving children would not be possible without the legacy of generosity by families like the Halls, Sunderlands and many other community champions. Like you, they rallied behind the cause of the Berry sisters and continue to fuel our mission today. Amazing outcomes are made possible by amazing people. This has always been the story of Children’s Mercy.

As we celebrate 125 years of caring for children and families in our community, you may be curious about the history behind our Hospital Hill campus namesake, Adele Hall, and the Hall family.

The Hall Family and Children’s Mercy have a long history of partnering to benefit children and families in our community. Their significant investments in the care and healing of children have helped shape Children’s Mercy and thousands of lives in the Kansas City region and beyond.
 

From babies to boardroom

In 1910, Joyce C. Hall came from Nebraska to Kansas City with a shoebox of postcards, selling greetings and well wishes. His family’s entrepreneurial vision propelled him forward, and before long, Hallmark Cards, Inc. was born.

From the beginning, the Halls were committed to giving back to the city that was so giving to them. In 1943, Joyce Hall, along with his wife Elizabeth Dilday Hall, and brother and business partner Rollie Hall, created the Hall Family Foundation, one of the first family foundations in Kansas City, with a commitment to support the community’s children.

What followed were many decades of support for Children’s Mercy and its work serving the community, including the move to Hospital Hill, expansions that doubled the size of the hospital, encouraging the academic partnership between Children’s Mercy and the University of Kansas Medical Center, and bringing to life Katherine Berry Richardson’s dream of a robust center for research dedicated to children: the Children's Mercy Research Institute (CMRI). 

“We felt we could do something for the city that had done so much for us,” Joyce Hall wrote in his memoir. “The Kansas City spirit had become a part of my life.”

Joyce and Elizabeth Hall passed on this commitment to their children. Their son and daughter-in-law, Don and Adele, became passionate supporters of Children’s Mercy, involved from “babies to boardroom.” Adele would go from rocking babies in the NICU as a volunteer to leading a Children’s Mercy board meeting, living out the Halls’ belief that every level of a nonprofit is vitally important. Don’s vision and leadership were instrumental in recruiting the first executive director and launching the Children’s Mercy Research Institute.

In 2013, we celebrated the renaming of our main campus in honor of Adele Hall and her many contributions to children in our community. In an announcement about the renaming at the time, Don Hall said of his wife: “After her own family, Children’s Mercy and this community were her top priorities.”

Now the third and fourth generations continue this legacy at the Hall Family Foundation, rooted in the belief that if you can positively alter a child’s life and cultivate a child’s potential, you create ripples of change in their family and our city.

Timeline

• Early 1900s: A fledgling children’s hospital, Children’s Mercy, and a tiny greeting card company, later known as Hallmark, circled in much the same orbit.
  
  
• 1943: Joyce C. Hall, along with his wife Elizabeth Dilday Hall, and his brother, Rollie Hall, established the Hall Family Foundation.
  
  
• 1960s: Joyce Hall and Harry S. Truman helped lead the charge to move Children’s Mercy to Hospital Hill and served as campaign co-chairs to raise money for the new campus.
  
  
• 1967: Gifts from Hallmark drove the campaign’s success and helped to establish the first endowed faculty position – now known as The Joyce C. Hall Eminent Scholar in Pediatrics and held by Jeanne M. James, MD, MBA, FAAP, Pediatrician-in-Chief.
  
  
• 1992-1994: As the hospital approached its centennial in 1997, lead gifts from the Hall Family Foundation supported the construction of two towers for inpatients (Sutherland and Henson) and the Hall Family Outpatient Center, doubling the size of the hospital from 320,000 square feet to 640,000 square feet. The family also devoted countless volunteer and advocacy hours to Children's Mercy.
  
  
• 2000-2001: Leadership gifts to the Destiny Campaign included support for a new pediatric research lab space and the first endowment for medical research at Children’s Mercy. Don and Adele’s daughter, Margi Pence, followed her mother on the hospital board, serving as chair in 2001.
  
  
  • The Hall Family Foundation took on obesity – one of the great epidemics faced by a new generation of children – with a leadership gift for the Donald Chisholm Hospital Hill Center. The gift helped create the Center for Physical Activity, Nutrition and Weight Management, one of the nation’s largest public-private partnerships addressing childhood and adolescent obesity at the time.
    
    
  • The Hall Family Foundation joined the Healthier Ever After campaign, which led to the construction of the six-story East Bed Tower, with 73 much-needed inpatient beds, named for Elizabeth Ann Hall, mother of Don Hall, while continuing to actively volunteer and advocate.
    
    
  • We had the honor of renaming our main campus in honor of enthusiastic supporter and friend of the hospital Adele Hall. In an announcement about the renaming, Don Hall said of his wife: “After her own family, Children’s Mercy and this community were her top priorities.”
    
    
  • The Hall Family Foundation joined the Sunderland Foundation to transform the future of pediatric research as well as the city’s downtown skyline, making the largest gifts ever, $75 million each, to support pediatric research, kickstart the construction of the future home of the Children’s Mercy Research Institute and accelerate the recruitment of top researchers from around the globe.
    
    
• Today: The Hall family continues to volunteer, engage in many areas at Children's Mercy and advocate to enhance the quality of life for our community’s families. The family and the Hall Family Foundation have contributed more than $200 million directly to the hospital.