African trip opens nurse's eyes to need

Red Bank woman aids impoverished Ugandan kids

LONG BRANCH — AnnMarie Gray, a registered nurse who finds per diem work at Monmouth Medical Center, often splits her time caring for patients in either the Emergency Department or on the pediatrics floor.

So it is no surprise that away from work, Gray, 33, who lives in Red Bank with her husband, Brian, also balances a variety of care-taking assignments. She and her husband now foster service dogs for a foundation that distributes the puppies to the visually impaired. Then the Grays — who hope to become parents themselves one day — began to open their home each summer to children from war-ravaged areas seeking the relative peace of the Jersey Shore.

At first, Gray was merely going to drop off some medical supplies donated by her brother to a Holmdel-based charity known as Sylvia's Children, run by public-relations maven Sylvia Allen, 72. Gray began to learn about Allen's work with the Mbiriizi Primary School in Masaka, Uganda, where about 300 of the 1,000 pupils, age 4 to 14, have been orphaned because of the AIDS crisis. For years, Allen has been making two trips a year to the school where in 2003 she was asked to serve as "grandmother." She created and registered the nonprofit Sylvia's Children, where 100 percent of every donation goes to the school.

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