In this special edition of Legacy magazine, we are proud to express our profound gratitude to Ron and Nancy Harrington and their children and their spouses, Jill and Steve McLaughlin and Ron and Lydia Harrington, for the family’s extraordinarily generous support of University Hospitals and the newly established Harrington-McLaughlin Heart & Vascular Institute.

In August of this year, the family demonstrated a singular commitment to advancing our health system and our exceptional work in the field of cardiovascular medicine by bestowing $22.6 million – one of the largest gifts in our 143-year history – to help sustain and advance our Heart & Vascular Institute. This truly transformational gift will be used to ensure the Harrington-McLaughlin Heart & Vascular Institute, aptly named in honor of our kind benefactors, is propelled to the forefront of cardiovascular care centers in
the nation and the world.

In this issue of Legacy magazine, you will learn what inspired the Harringtons and McLaughlins – as grateful patients and as results-driven philanthropists – to present this significant gift to University Hospitals. It honors the groundbreaking research of their family’s physician, Carl E. Orringer, MD , Director of the Lipid Clinic and Preventive Cardiology at the Institute, through the establishment of the Harrington-McLaughlin Chair in Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine. The gift also acknowledges the visionary
leadership of Daniel I. Simon, MD , Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Director of the Harrington-McLaughlin Heart & Vascular Institute.

As important, we will share with you the clinical advances we will be able to achieve as a result of the family’s concerted support of our efforts. Their exceptional gift will strengthen our ability to recruit to our academic medical center physician-investigators of national and international renown who are dedicated to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Further, the funding will enable us to continue
to develop the leading-edge programs in stem cell biology and clinical research for which UH Case Medical Center is known. Finally, the transformational gift will allow us to partner with the family to ensure that the Harrington- McLaughlin Heart & Vascular Institute continues to earn recognition as a national center of excellence.

Over the past year, I have had the singular opportunity to get to know the Harrington and McLaughlin family and learn about their abiding commitment to enhancing health care in our region. Today, we are honored to count the family among our most loyal supporters and proud to have them as friends of University Hospitals.

In honor of the patients whose lives will be transformed and, in many cases, saved as a result of our benefactors’ great generosity, we are privileged to dedicate this special issue of Legacy magazine to the Harrington-McLaughlin family.