In August of 2006, Lisa Burke and Dan Gjelten were involved in a serious automobile accident in Portland, Oregon a few days before they were supposed to run the Hood to Coast relay race with a team of faculty, staff and alumni runners from the University of St. Thomas.
At the time, as they began a long period of active recovery from injuries, they received a generous monetary gift collected by their colleagues in IRT. Since the accident expenses were largely covered by insurance, they decided to donate that gift to the UST Libraries in honor of their colleagues and acquired a collection of books on health and healing, which are now in the O’Shaughnessy Frey Library. Each book in the collection includes a bookplate reading:
“The heart of St. Thomas is never more evident than in a crisis. This book is a gift from Lisa Burke and Dan Gjelten, with gratitude to our colleagues in the university’s Information Resources and Technologies Division.”
The books focus on all aspects of healing, from the medical to the spiritual, and many of these titles were helpful to Dan and Lisa as they struggled with broken bones and the loss of their normal level of activity, and perhaps most importantly, the emotional aspects of their experience. The collection is intended to provide similar support to all who must work through the normal and abnormal challenges of life with its inevitable pain and loss and towards health, wholeness and hope.