Compassionate Friends presented DIMACS director with the group’s Compassionate Employer Recognition award
When Rutgers employee Christine Spassione and her husband, Ken, decided to start a family, it took over a year and a number of fertility treatments to conceive their now 3-year-old son, Christoper. The couple’s attempts to have a second child, however, resulted in three miscarriages. Spassione learned that a genetic disorder was making it difficult to carry a pregnancy to term, and further attempts would require much more medical intervention with little assurance of success.
As grief and sorrow overwhelmed her, Spassione found support from two sources: a nearby chapter of an international support organization called The Compassionate Friends, and her colleagues in the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) who listened to her and helped her handle her job during a difficult year of emotional healing.
“When a child hasn’t lived, you grieve for so many things, including what he or she could have become,” said Spassione, DIMACS program coordinator. “These children are a part of who I am, and a part of my family.”
Getting time off for medical care and counseling was an important part of the care her managers provided, but even more generous was her coworkers’ quickness to offer emotional support and assist with day-to-day tasks. The Compassionate Friends provided her access to a community of understanding people who had experienced similar losses.
When she learned that the organization had a formal program to recognize employers who support families that experience the death of a child, including miscarriages and stillbirths, she realized that would be the best way to show her colleagues how much she appreciated their care. Last week the Central Jersey Chapter of The Compassionate Friends presented DIMACS director Fred Roberts with the group’s Compassionate Employer Recognition award. It is one of 81 awards that the group is presenting this year to employers across the country who go above and beyond their normal policies to help an employee cope with such a loss.
Richard Quaintance, professor emeritus of English at Rutgers and recent head of the Central Jersey chapter, presented the awards to Roberts at an informal ceremony. Quaintance talked about the pain he experienced when his young adult son died in a car accident after finishing law school in 1985 and about to begin a promising career. No matter when they lose a child, he said, parents share the grief of lost potential.
Roberts said a compassionate workplace is reflected in employee attitude. “If I treat my employees the way I want to be treated, it is a much happier place to work and in the end higher quality work gets done too. And it’s not just me who does the caring at DIMACS," he said. "This is an award for everyone on our staff.”
As an example, Spassione cited how Nicole Clark, the center’s workshop coordinator, assumed many of her administrative tasks after her last miscarriage occurred just before a major Board meeting. At the time, Clark had been on the job less than three weeks. Also, Roberts and center administrator Sarah Donnelly spoke often with Spassione privately and also reached out to Ken Spassione to learn how DIMACS could help the family.
“My losses are a part of who I am, but now I realize that I’m not defined by them,” Spassione said. “Maybe what I’m sharing can help others. If they don’t know who to turn to, I can show them.”