The late Glenna Simpson of Kingfisher had a servant’s heart.  

Educated and certified as a nurse’s aide, she never entered the workforce but chose instead to remain home to raise her five children.

But Simpson, the wife of the late Ancel Simpson, longtime Kingfisher attorney, never lost her desire to work in a hospital setting.

So when Kingfisher Community Hospital started a volunteer auxiliary unit in 1979 after all her children left home, Simpson became one of the first “Pink Ladies.”

Working every Tuesday, Simpson was the first of the hospital volunteers to log in 500 hours of service and was recognized in a full-page photo feature in a local newspaper in 1982.

Her service there included everything from distributing juice, magazines, flowers and gifts to patients, to delivering patients for radiology, lab work and other tests, to “babysitting” newborns in the nursery, to operating the growing gift shop.

In the 1982 news interview, Simpson said she wasn’t “much of a club person,” so her volunteer work at the hospital grew to become her primary passion outside of her home and family.

When the Simpsons’ youngest son Joe, now of Liberty Hill, Texas, was looking for a way to memorialize his mother after her death, he and his wife Caryl chose Mercy Hospital Kingfisher as the perfect location.

“Our mother had a love for serving others,” Joe Simpson said. “Her gift was caring for people and we know this because it’s what she did so effortlessly for her own family.”

That gift of compassion is now permanently memorialized with a bench installed outside the hospital.

“We are very pleased to receive this bench that honors Glenna’s memory and her many years of service to our community,” Brian Denton, administrator of Mercy Hospital Kingfisher, said. “We know it will serve our patients and visitors for years to come.”

In addition to Joe, the Simpsons’ children include: Linda Mecklenburg and husband Randy of Kingfisher, Mike Simpson and wife Rhonda of Mustang, Bobby Simpson and wife Vickie of Ogden, Utah, and Theresa McAvoy of Yukon.