Gift from Mallory family to upgrade Carson Tahoe Health emergency room

A Mallory Emergency Department joins the Mallory Foundation Triage Lobby at Carson Tahoe Health’s hospital emergency room complex after a $500,000 gift to improve access and safety there.

The donation from the Carson City-based foundation of the late Jean Mallory, philanthropist and daughter of automotive inventor/entrepreneur Marion Mallory, brings the total funneled into the Carson Tahoe Health (CTH) complex to $1.7 million since 1989. The most recent prior gift was for $200,000 to provide renovations resulting in the Mallory Foundation Triage Lobby in the hospital’s emergency room area.

With the $500,000, according to a CTH announcement, the entire area is going to be renamed the Mallory Emergency Department “in tribute to these community champions” whose decisions have spurred hospital upgrades.

“The legacy of the Mallory family, both in terms of their contributions to industry and to the lifesaving impact they continue to have on the people of Northern Nevada, is an inspiring story,” said Kitty McKay, development director with the Carson Tahoe Health Foundation. She said the Mallory legacy reaches into the nation’s past and the ripple effect is going to be felt well into the future.

The Mallory Foundation headed by Riley M. Beckett, a retired Carson City attorney, was founded by his client Jean Mallory to benefit six beneficiaries: the CTH hospital; the Eagle Valley Children’s Home here; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston; Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan; Leader Dogs for the Blind, also Michigan-based; and the University of Nevada, Reno.

Beckett, after sharing details about those beneficiaries, said the hospital’s emergency department has been a recipient of the recent $700,000 total because the board sees a need for the triage changes inside and both safety and access improvements outside. He said he actually had experienced that need himself when he, unfortunately, at one time needed emergency treatment there.

“We thought of any impact for the (Carson City area) community,” he said, “that was a primary one. They’re going to open up that whole space back there (the ER entry), and make it more accessible to anyone coming there.”

Beckett, who heads the three-member Mallory Foundation board, said Jean Mallory created the charitable organization, selected the beneficiaries and served on the board until she died. He said his current fellow board members are Ellen Shock, a Marion Mallory bookkeeper and longtime family associate, and Thomas Cook, Reno attorney.

Beckett said Jean and Marion Mallory Jr. had ties to Carson City and Northern Nevada, as well as Michigan, and Marion Mallory Jr. was known locally by the nickname “Boots” before he died in a Washoe County automobile accident.

An automotive ignition system put the elder Mallory’s name on everyone’s lips during his period as a contemporary of Henry Ford, but his inventiveness and entrepreneurial skills went well beyond that fame, according to Beckett and the CTH media announcement. Beckett said there was talk at one point Mallory had more patents than anyone, historically, except Thomas Edison.

In the 1920s, CTH said in its announcement, Mallory was renowned as a distinguished leader in the automobile industry and his state-of-the-art ignition products went into Henry Ford’s first V-8 engine vehicle.

“He was a visionary, and looked for emerging markets for his ingenious, next generation products,” said McKay. “And his children cared deeply about our area.”

In that same release, CTH noted Beckett’s grandchild was born in the Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center not long after it opened in 2005.