James H. and Eleanor Randall are ensuring the availability of lifesaving care close to home, through a generous gift toward expansion of Huntington Hospital’s emergency department and Center for Trauma Care.
When Jim and Eleanor Randalll heard of recent emergency room closures in our region including the closure of the emergency room closest to their home in Bradbury they were concerned. The couple have six children (Adam, Beaux, Starlite, Matt, Ben and Jordan), two of whom are still in their teens. “Where would we go if our kids had some kind of traumatic injury?” wondered Eleanor.
It was not long, however, before the Randalls had an answer to this question. Through a Huntington Hospital publication, they learned of the hospital’s plans to expand its own emergency department, even as other similar facilities were closing. The couple saw this as more than good news; they felt a call to action. “We wanted,” says Jim, “to find out how we could get involved.”
The Randalls thus approached their good friend Jayme Studenmund (who was serving on Huntington Hospital’s board of directors at the time), and ultimately met with both Studenmund and the hospital’s president and CEO, Stephen A. Ralph, to learn more about the proposed expansion.
What they learned impressed them. Indeed, they were moved to make a substantial commitment toward renovation and reconfiguration of the hospital’s emergency department and Center for Trauma Care. Their generous gift will help ensure the continued availability of compassionate, uncompromising care to our region in the most urgent of circumstances.
EXCELLENCE AND ENGAGEMENT
While the Randalls hail from different parts of the continent (Jim was born in New York and raised in Coral Gables, Florida, while Eleanor grew up in Winnipeg and Toronto, Canada), the two met while living in Southern California.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given Jim’s evident passion for the company he runs Allfast Fastening Systems, Inc. it was during a visit to the company plant that Eleanor’s heart was truly won. “Jim knew the kind of details about employees that showed he really cared,” she says, “and they obviously cared about him. They lit up when he came into the room. He’s fair. He’s kind. He’s honest,” she adds. “I knew I was going to marry him after I walked through that facility with him.”
Allfast is the world’s leading manufacturer of rivets and related installation tooling for the aircraft industry. The company holds 18 patents and supplies clients in more than 30 countries. With a staff of nearly 200, Allfast has won numerous awards for its work, including to name but a few – the Boeing Supplier of the Year award, the Lockheed Star award, the Northrop Grumman Platinum Source Supplier award, and the California Water Environment Association’s Southern California Plant of the Year award, an environmental award recognizing the company for operating the cleanest water treatment system in Southern California. (Now also investing in commercial real estate around Allfast’s City of Industry factory, Jim and Eleanor have, in addition, won recognition for their work in the area of architectural design.)
Jim is justifiably proud of Allfast’s track record, including “close to one billion rivets Produced for Boeing alone, delivered 100 percent on time, with no defects,” he says. He is also proud of Allfast’s philanthropic involvement. “We like to give back to our cities, to our schools…,” he emphasizes, “to causes through which we feel we can help improve lives.”
THE ART OF CARING
With a background in graphic design, Eleanor provides a great deal of valuable input regarding Allfast advertising and marketing materials. At one point, however, she was on the other side of the camera modeling and appearing in more than 150 television commercials.
More recently, as the children got older, she began looking for an additional outlet for her energy and creative talents. “I decided I needed to do something different …something outside my comfort zone …and then, as I came out of the grocery store one day, there was a flyer on my windshield, advertising art classes,” she recalls. “I’d never even doodled in my life, but I started the classes and, to my surprise, I loved it.” Today an accomplished artist, Eleanor’s large scale oil works include a series of aircraft paintings, on display at Allfast, and a large mural sized painting created for the University of Southern California School of Social Work. She is currently working on six pieces that will be hung in Mt. San Antonio College’s refurbished planetarium. The Randalls have made significant contributions to both these latter organizations, creating the Randall Information Center at USC School of Social Work (a student resource center made possible by support from the Randalls), and the Jim & Eleanor Randall Planetarium at Mt. San Antonio College.
Both Jim and Eleanor serve on the board of directors at Mt. San Antonio College Foundation. They have also been involved on the board of Flintridge Preparatory School, where the Randall Performing Arts Center is named in honor of their contribution toward expansion of the school’s arts program. At San Gabriel’s Clairbourn School, the couple’s generosity led to creation of Randall Hall, which houses a play area and classrooms for younger students.
“These naming opportunities help us set an example for our children,” says Jim, adding that he and Eleanor have also created a trust that specifically requires their children to continue giving to the community. “We feel it’s very important to give back:
MAKING A LIFESAVING DIFFERENCE
The Randalls continue to set a philanthropic example honing in on areas with broad and potentially life changing importance, such as education, mental health and now emergency care. Ultimately, notes Eleanor, “We chose to make a gift toward expansion of Huntington Hospital’s emergency department because the project touched our hearts. We were shocked to hear that all the other trauma centers in our region had been closed,” she adds, “and that Huntington Hospital was the only one nearby:” Should Huntington Hospital not be able to meet our region’s needs, it would mean a long ambulance ride to a more distant facility at a time when every second could make a life or death difference. “We wanted to make sure there’s a place for people to go right here… that they weren’t going to die on the way to the hospital,” Eleanor emphasizes.
In gratitude for their gift to lifesaving care, the hospital will name the Jim & Eleanor Randall Trauma Room in the Randalls’ honor. “Here’s a family that truly recognized the importance of emergency and trauma care close to home,” notes Huntington Hospital’s vice president of philanthropy and public relations, Jane Haderlein. “We all have a stake in this …and Jim and Eleanor Randall understood that and came forward with both generosity and thoughtfulness. Our entire community owes them a deep debt of gratitude for their extraordinary support.”