Kathy Thewes named Deaconess Memorial volunteer of the year

At Deaconess Memorial Medical Center in Jasper, volunteers are the people who help steady a hospital visit, guide families and make the building feel less impersonal. Kathy Thewes has now been named the 2026 Little Company of Mary Volunteer of the Year, a recognition that places her in a line of service the hospital says is central to patient experience.

The award honors the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary, who founded Deaconess Memorial, and Thewes is the ninth recipient of the annual recognition. That makes the honor more than a plaque on the wall. It reflects a tradition the hospital ties directly to its history, its religious roots and the day-to-day help volunteers provide in Jasper.

Deaconess Memorial says its volunteers come from a wide range of backgrounds, including retirees, teenagers, former patients, homemakers and husband-and-wife teams. That mix matters at a 114-bed hospital that says it employs more than 1,600 caregivers and handles more than 6,000 inpatients, 250,000 outpatients and 26,000 emergency-department visits each year. The hospital also says about 700 babies are born there annually, which gives volunteer service a role in nearly every corner of the campus.

The recognition also lands in the middle of a period of change for the hospital’s identity. Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center became affiliated with Deaconess Health System on February 1, 2024, and the facility officially rebranded as Deaconess Memorial Medical Center on August 1, 2024. Even with the new name, the hospital has kept its Catholic identity and its Little Company of Mary heritage at the center of the transition.

That history runs deep in Jasper. The hospital’s history page says the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary moved to a new home in 1980, and their former convent later became the Memorial Hospital Annex. A 1986 expansion added 45,000 square feet and increased bed capacity to 131, underscoring how the institution has grown while keeping service to Dubois County at its core.

Thewes’ selection follows Adam Schwartz, who received the 2025 Little Company of Mary Volunteer of the Year award. Together, the back-to-back honors show that Deaconess Memorial continues to treat volunteer work as a visible part of how the hospital functions and how it stays connected to the community it serves.