Jenni and Dalton McGaha give $1M for Plano Expansion to help kids like theirs

Jenni McGaha peered over the isolette where her sleeping baby boy, Riley, rested after an open-heart surgery when he was just a few months old.

She tried not to focus on his tiny body connected to various cords and beeping machines.

But then, she noticed two bandages over the incision cut in the shape of footballs, with three laces drawn in marker. One bandage read “Cowboys,” and the other read “Eagles” for the upcoming Sunday night game.

And for a moment, Jenni smiled and said that’s when she “fell in love” with Children’s Health℠.

“You're going in to see your son after surgery, and instead, you see the Cowboys and Eagles on a football field. It was so sweet,” Jenni said more than a decade after the event. “It softened the whole experience.”

Those small, almost unnoticeable gestures — like a nurse carrying Riley wrapped in a blanket into surgery versus wheeling him through the double doors — by Children’s Health team members have remained with Jenni and her husband, Dalton.  

These moments are why after Riley, who also was diagnosed with Down syndrome and autism, recovered from the operation they signed up to adopt a family during the holidays — a three-decade tradition at Children’s Health to provide gifts for families who otherwise would not have any during the season.

And it’s why they were thrilled in 2008 to see the growth of Children’s Health with a second hospital in Plano, just a few miles from where they live. For many years, Riley has continued to receive care from team members at Children’s Medical Center Plano, along with the couple’s niece.

“You can tell the people at Children’s Health love what they’re doing, and they’re happy to be working there,” said Jenni, who met Dalton when they were both teachers at Richardson ISD. “As hard as it is to have a child in the hospital, Children’s Health makes it as happy of an experience as it can be.”

And it’s why last year, Jenni and Dalton committed a major gift to the new eight-story, 395,000-square-foot tower under construction and scheduled to open next year at the Plano campus.

Generous gifts like this from the McGaha family help us further our ability to care for a rapidly growing pediatric population in North Texas, allowing us to increase staffing, provide program support, purchase new equipment and technology and expand access to care.

“Dalton and I are both previously educators, and we love children. We feel it’s not just our responsibility, but it’s in our heart that we want to give back and help others,” Jenni said. “And it was a no-brainer for us to be part of the next chapter at the Plano hospital to help meet the needs of more children.”