PINNING HOPES ON FUTURE NURSES, OTHERS FULFILL DOCTOR'S DREAM.

Byline: Mariko Thompson Staff Writer

BURBANK - When nurses at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center began selling lapel pins in red, white and blue, they did it not only to honor Dr. Yeneneh Betru, but to honor his dream.

Betru, a 35-year-old internist at the Burbank hospital, was working to open the first dialysis clinic in his native Ethiopia when he died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. He was aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.

Since that day, nurses at the hospital have raised $7,000 for the dialysis clinic by selling the pins.

Between the efforts of the nurses, his colleagues at the medical group Consultants for Lung Disease, the Betru family, and other community groups, the dialysis clinic will open at Black Lion Hospital in Addis Abada, Ethiopia, exactly one year later on Sept. 11, 2002.

``It's very uplifting to know we all had some great impact,'' said Leslie Cotten, a registered nurse from Saint Joseph's who sewed the pins by hand. ``We started (selling pins) the second week it all happened, and then everything else happened really fast.''

At a ceremony on Monday, the nurses presented his family - mother Sara Tesheberu, sister Ruth Betru, and brothers Aron and Sirak Betru - with lapel pins. A crape myrtle also was planted outside the medical center lobby in his memory.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., commissioned the Hollywood Beautification Committee to provide trees for the 58 Californians who lost their lives on Sept. 11.

``It means a lot to our family to finish (the clinic),'' said Ruth Betru. ``He really did touch a lot of lives. He was a true physician.''

Betru had worked for three years to open the clinic, but encountered bureaucratic problems that had slowed the project. After his death, Consultants for Lung Disease and Betru's brothers took the lead role in raising money, establishing the Salud Fund. More than $37,000 has been raised, and dialysis equipment has been donated for the project. Ethiopian communities around the United States and even Betru's high school classmates donated to the cause.

Betru moved to the United States as a high school student in 1981. He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for medical school and completed his residency at the University of Southern California. He boarded Flight 77 en route to Los Angeles after visiting his fiancee and completing a traditional betrothal ceremony in Ethiopia.

Betru was at the forefront of the hospitalist movement, in which doctors work for a hospital rather than for a medical practice. Hospitalists take care of patients from the minute they enter the hospital until they're discharged, said Earl Gomberg, executive director of Consultants for Lung Disease.

``He was a very caring man and well-liked,'' Gomberg said. ``The outpour of support has been amazing.''

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Dr. Yeneneh Betru's sister, Ruth, left, and his mother, Sara Tesheberu, shed tears after a tree planting ceremony. Above is one of the pins made by nurses at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.

(3) Tricia Althen of the Hollywood Beautification Team plants a crape myrtle outside the Burbank hospital Monday morning.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer