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 There are pivotal moments in our lives that shape who we are and what we’ll become. In the life of one of Ellis Hospital’s greatest benefactors, John W. Belanger, who was born in the small Maine town of Bath in 1899, a seminal moment came during his teenage years when his mother died at the very young age of 39.
Since John’s father was an alcoholic and unable to care for his children, John and his three siblings were separated and sent to live with relatives following their mother’s death. Uprooted from the only life he had known, John went to live with an aunt and uncle in Massachusetts where he finished high school while working a simple, part-time job at the General Electric Company in Lynn, MA. After graduating from high school, he continued working for GE and was soon transferred to Philadelphia, PA, where he took night classes at Franklin Technical Institute and then at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“He was very ambitious and very smart,” remembers Ellis Hospital Foundation Trustee Norma Cummings Rettek about her uncle, John Belanger. He moved up the corporate ladder at GE, advanced through the managerial ranks and was later transferred to GE in Schenectady, where he and his wife, Anna Nordgren Belanger, would spend the rest of their lives. By the time he retired, Belanger had more than 40 years of service with GE and had reached the upper levels of management as an executive vice president and a member of the president’s office. He also made a tremendous impact on his community through his many civic activities, including service on the Ellis Hospital Board of Trustees from 1953 to 1967.
“His life truly typified the American dream,” Ellis Hospital Foundation’s Director of Gift Planning Damon Stewart said. “Those of us at Ellis are proud to be able to count John Belanger as one of our most significant benefactors, and are grateful for his role in our history.”
When he died in 1968, John Belanger, who had no children, left more than $2 million to Ellis Hospital through his will. His generous bequest “honored his sister, Lurline Belanger Cummings, R.N., and the nursing profession she loved so dearly.”
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