At her home in San Jose, 91 year old Terry Asquith looks back at how she's given the gift of life to at-risk babies. 50 years ago, she founded the nation's oldest nonprofit milk bank, Mothers' Milk Bank. "I really think I'm proud of myself - how many 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 Los Gatos pediatrician called, needing human milk for a critically-ill baby boy. She asked around for help. "The next morning there was a big article, and that afternoon we had 30 women in line at the Institute donating their milk," Asquith said.
"Wonderful, because, amazing, the amount of people that helped." So she started Mothers' Milk Bank in a trailer at Valley Medical Center in San Jose. Volunteers donated milk that was then tested and pasteurized.
"I remember Terry being so sure to tell us about every little drop is so important," said Laura Maxson, a three-time donor in the 1970s. Now a licensed midwife, she remembers Asquith always found a way to ensure that the babies got life-saving milk. "She was gonna do it.
If that didn't work, we were gonna do it this way. If that didn't work, we were gonna do it that way. And how would you like to help?" Maxson recalled.
In fact, in the milk bank's early years, Asquith recalls a KPIX reporter making a special delivery for an infant whose mother was killed. "They needed milk and we had no way to send it. So Barbara Rodge.