In her San Jose home, 91-year-old Terry Asquith reflects on how she gave birth to vulnerable babies. Fifty years ago, she founded the nation’s oldest nonprofit milk bank, Mothers’ Milk Bank.
“I’m really proud of myself, of the fact that thousands of babies have been helped,” she said.
In 1974, Asquith was a transplant technician at the Institute for Medical Research at Valley Medical Center when a pediatrician from Los Gatos called, needing breast milk for a seriously ill baby boy. She asked for help.
“The next morning there was a big article, and that afternoon we had 30 women lined up at the Institute to donate their milk,” Asquith said. “It was amazing, because it was amazing how many people helped.”
So she started Mothers’ Milk Bank in a trailer at Valley Medical Center in San Jose. Volunteers donated milk, which was then tested and pasteurized.
“I remember Terry always telling us that every drop is so important,” said Laura Maxson, who donated three times in the 1970s.
Now a qualified midwife, she remembers that Asquith always found a way to ensure the babies received life-saving milk.
“She would do it. If that didn’t work, we would do it this way. If that didn’t work, we would do it that way. And how would you like to help,” Maxson recalled.
Asquith recalls that in the early years of the milk bank, a KPIX reporter made a special delivery for a baby whose mother had been murdered.
“They needed milk and we had no way to send it. So Barbara Rodgers said, ‘I’ll take it.’ And the Channel 5 helicopter brought milk to Modesto,” Asquith said.
Today, Mothers’ Milk Bank operates out of its own building on Monterey Road, receiving donations from nine collection sites in three states and working with 120 partner hospitals across the country.
Last year, the bank shipped 12 million pounds of breast milk to California, Maryland, Idaho and Hawaii.
Asquith is proud that nutrient-rich donations have protected babies from infection and necrotizing enterocolitis, a life-threatening intestinal inflammation. Now retired, Terry is touched when she hears heartfelt stories from mothers like the one she met.
“She said, ‘You won’t remember me, but my son Michael, he got milk from the milk bank and he’s now a lawyer in San Francisco.’ And she had tears in her eyes,” Asquith said. “That was incredibly satisfying. Unbelievable.”
For setting up the Mothers’ Milk Bank to help vulnerable babies grow, this week’s Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Terry Asquith.
Mothers’ Milk Bank is always looking for more donations. If you can help, you can find out more here.
Sharon Kin
