To the editor:

I read with interest the article on the religion page in Saturday’s Sentinel with the headline of “Geisinger welcomes first chaplain.” I don’t understand how the hospital can ignore the many, many local pastors who spent untold numbers of hours doing volunteer chaplain duty at the hospital for decades. Those men and women literally visited hundreds of patients. Some of those chaplains were on call 24/7 for emergency calls, which sometimes included life issues, accident victims and other hard-to-deal-with cases.

I would like to thank all those chaplains who gave of your time and energy over the years for our community! I sure appreciated the visit from the chaplain when I was a patient and have talked to many others who appreciated visits also!

Darvin Donahey

Lewistown