Facebook photo The Steve Mariucci Family Beacon House in Marqutte.

MARQUETTE –In today’s world filled with negative information, bad news and aggressive personalities, every once in a while, we run into something positive on all of those counts. We often are subjected to watching, reading, hearing and experiencing what can be perceived as more bad news than good news. With that mind, it is certainly heartening to experience a good-news operation that is altruistic for people in need, without a political or economic agenda,

Good people and organizations still exist; people and groups that want to help altruistically still can be found. And some of them are here in the U.P.

I experienced that “good” when a family medical emergency took me to Marquette, and I stayed at a facility called Beacon House, a name that certainly is apropos, as I found it to be a real beacon, not only for me but for those who need it.

Beacon House or to be accurate, Mariucci Family Beacon House is, according to its website (https://upbeaconhouse.org/): “… a ‘Home away from home’ for patients and families that travel across the U.P. to receive specialty medical care at U.P. Health System-Marquette and the Upper Peninsula Medical Center. The private, nonprofit, donation-based organization ensures that families in a medical crisis never have to ask, ‘Where am I going to stay and how am I going to be able to afford it?'”

Simply, if you or a loved one has a procedure or stay scheduled at UP Health System Marquette, and if you are in need, you can arrange to stay, and eat meals, all accommodations donation-based, at this modern, comforting facility staffed by caring, giving crew members and volunteers who take a sincere interest in guests and their guests’ loved ones.

For background, in 1989, a prominent Marquette cardiologist drove through the hospital parking lot and saw one of his patients in a pickup truck. The man was wrapped in a sleeping bag and was shaving his face while looking in the side-view mirror. The cardiologist later learned that his patient lived in a small town several hours away and could not afford a hotel when he came to the hospital for his follow-up care from his heart surgery, and would sleep in his car, even in sub-zero temperatures.

Upon further investigation, it was discovered that this was not a unique situation. It appeared that a number of medical patients seeking specialty medical care from outside the area would sleep in their cars, bathe in the public restrooms and snack on whatever was available in the hospital coffee lounges. Upon learning this, several physicians and volunteers created a plan to convert a small house next to the hospital for these types of patients and offer the overnight accommodations at whatever donation level the patient could best afford. The first “Beacon House” in Marquette was launched.

Established in 1990, Beacon House has provided compassionate and supportive services with a safe, affordable, place to stay for patients, families, loved ones and caregivers in times of medical crisis when home is too far away. Starting with a four-bedroom home near the hospital in 1994, and increasing to a second home, then a small hotel to accommodate more guests, then space within the hospital, the latest iteration is the 22-guestroom, 27,000-square foot facility at 200 S. 7th Street, just outside the hospital driveway.

The location was secured after years of negotiating and nudging with a revolving population of U.P Health System CEOs, by Beacon House CEO Mary Tavernini-Dowling, who has been with the organization since spearheading a Steve Mariucci fund-raiser in 2011. Mariucci, the former NFL and college football coach who was born in Iron Mountain and who played football and studied at Northern Michigan University, has a long history of philanthropy and took Beacon House under his wing, leading as fundraising champion for the current facility that bears his family’s name. He and his wife Gayle provided the first shovel of dirt at the facility’s ground-breaking in 2020.

Now, I have no vested interest in Beacon House. I’m just writing this to bring the organization to local attention because I was blown away by how caring and genuinely good these people – the principals, the staff and the volunteers — are, and when I heard that many of their guests are from the Keweenaw Peninsula I wanted to share the information. It was not my intent to write this to suggest that a reader should make a donation, but if readers are predisposed to doing nice things for good organizations, it would seem that considering Beacon House for your charitable endeavors would fit into that lifestyle.

Editor’s note: This opinion piece by Mike Blake of Lake Linden was originally submitted as a possible letter to the editor. Because of its length, it could today’s Health and Wellness page as an opinion piece. Mr. Blake’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Mining Gazette or Ogden Newspapers of Michigan.