MMMC will benefit from volunteer’s compassion

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WAILUKU - A longtime Maui Memorial Medical Center volunteer has bequeathed an estate estimated at $1.5 million to the island's only acute-care hospital.

This weekend, items from the estate of the late Mark Allen Oreck, an 83-year-old retired restaurant owner and a Pan Am airline training executive, are up for sale at his home at 18 Kauaula Road in Lahaina. Oreck bequeathed his residence, his former restaurant space and all his personal belongings to benefit the hospital.

The Oreck estate sale, administered by the Maui Memorial Medical Center Foundation, will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. All sales are final. Cash and credit card sales only; no checks.

Oreck died Sept. 29, 2007, leaving a legacy "founded on the highest principles of volunteerism and compassion," according to the hospital foundation.

Maui Memorial's emergency room staff described Oreck as a dedicated volunteer who showed up at 6 a.m. almost every Saturday from about 1989 to 2007, when he fell ill and died after a battle with cancer.

"It was his compassion for others that truly made Mark one-of-a-kind," said Emilou Alves, the emergency room's nurse manager.

Dr. Randy Nikalson was with Oreck when he died. "He was amazingly brave and calm," Nikalson said of Oreck's final hours.

David May, a nurse in the emergency room, remembered Oreck's kindness. "Everything that makes a nice person nice he was," May said.

May said he enjoyed talking to Oreck about his many travels, including to Paris, a place May had never visited but felt like he had because of Oreck.

Oreck's volunteer responsibilities in the emergency room included answering phones and welcoming patients and their loved ones, sometimes comforting those who needed it.

May said he was "very grateful" to hear about Oreck's desire to leave his estate to the hospital. "His legacy will live on in the hospital," he said.

Nikalson said Oreck inspired him, and he hopes one day to also volunteer in the community.

This weekend's estate sale features antiques, "rare finds" for collectors, chandeliers and lighting fixtures, paintings, pottery and dishes. Prices range from $10 for silver-plate flatware to $5,000 for a Flemish 17th to 18th century oil painting on canvas.

Not all of Oreck's items are being sold. Maui Memorial's foundation has already donated about $1,000 in costumes belonging to Oreck to the Maui Academy of Performing Arts; about 200 books to the Friends of the Library; and four cases of clothes to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Oreck also willed his restaurant space he owned, the former La Bretagne on Front Street in Lahaina, to the hospital. His three-bedroom, three-bath home covers 2,760 square feet on a 8,460-square-foot lot.

For more information on the sale of the house or restaurant space, call the Maui Memorial Medical Center Foundation at 242-2630.

* Claudine San Nicolas can be reached at claudine@mauinews.com.

CORRECTION: * Volunteer's compassion. The late Mark Oreck did not bequeath his former restaurant space in Lahaina to Maui Memorial Medical Center. However, his estate did give the mortgage note on the property to the hospital. A story on Page A1 and continued on A4 on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 inaccurately reported the property ownership.