Volunteer barman keeps hospital customers happy
John Whalan, 91, is a volunteer barman with a difference when he pushes his drinks trolley around Sydney’s Greenwich Hospital and mixes his cocktails for the terminally ill during a Happy Hour service which has many enthusiastic customers.
“I don’t know a patient who has refused a drink,” said Mr Whalan.
“Champagne is fairly popular and we have little plastic flutes for that. So is gin and tonic. We have a few whisky drinkers in the ward and a lot of them like a beer”.
The drinks trolley is paid for by the hospital and also includes red and white wines, cheese, biscuits, soft drinks and chocolates. It started at the beginning of 2008 at the suggestion of the hospital’s volunteer group, the Happy Hour usually begins at 11am.
Mr Whalan, a former AMP sales manager, said that he had become very depressed after the death of his wife in 2003.
“I realised that if I didn’t do something I’d just become a helpless old man. Around the same time a friend of mine died at Greenwich Hospital so I volunteered here.
“It makes me happy too. It’s changed my life. I feel good about myself and really alive”.
