Child, hospital employee leave lasting impressions

HCA Florida Putnam Hospital employees have preserved the memories of a former registered nurse and local child who died years earlier. 

Employees of the Palatka hospital presented the nurse’s and child’s families with tokens of their loved ones – handprints that had been protected for more than 10 years. 

Former HCA Putnam nurse Danielle Flores started “Caring Hands of Putnam Community Medical Center,” said Wayne Placona, director of facilities services for the hospital. Flores invited hospital caregivers and eventually all employees to add their hands to a hospital wall along the emergency ward, he said. 

Employees saved the handprints from Flores, who died Aug. 6, 2017, at 36. Flores’ family was at a ceremony earlier this month to receive her handprints, said David Chudzik, the hospital’s communications and community relations director.

Attendees at the Caring Hands ceremony were dealing with a wide array of emotions, but the handprints connected two families who never knew each other, he said. 

“Years passed since they passed away, but yet they got these hands that were kind of a living reminder,” Chudzik said. 

Flores started the project just before Kandace Branam was hospitalized at Putnam Community in 2012, Placona said.

On Oct. 11, the family of Hollister resident Kandace Branam, who passed away when she was 8, accepted a framed piece of wall that included Branam’s painted handprint, which she added to the wall of the hospital April 11, 2012. 

During that time, Branam went to the hospital, then known as Putnam Community Medical Center, after an allergic reaction to peanuts, Placona said. Branam saw hospital employees had put their handprints on the hospital wall and she wanted to leave her mark, too, Placona added.

“She (saw) this going on and just thought that was the neatest thing in the world,” he said. 

Branam unexpectedly passed away March 6, 2014, her obituary states. Her grandmother, Delinda Branam, worked at the hospital when her granddaughter passed away. During a ceremony earlier this month, Delinda Branam said she made the maintenance department promise not to get rid of the handprint even as the hospital was about to undergo renovations. 

“That maintenance department had guarded this little handprint for years,” Delinda Branam said. 

No one knew how much the action of painting hands and leaving them on a wall would impact families all these years later, Placona said. But after Kandace Branam’s and Flores’ deaths, hospital employees knew the project was something to protect and made sure to box off the entire wall until they could have the Caring Hands ceremony. 

“They were excited,” he said of the families. “They had been waiting a very long time.”