Fast Forward Fund Spotlight: Lewis Fitts

Born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Lewis Fitts comes from a long line of strong, hard-working, and community-oriented people. The Fitts family has been rooted in Tuscaloosa for almost 200 years and has always given back to the community. Lewis Fitts explained that it all started with his great-great-grandfather who helped raise money to rebuild the University of Alabama after the Civil War and the legacy continued from there. It is a Fitts family tradition that each generation engages in giving back to the community. 

Throughout Fitts’ life, he has always been a hard-working man. Starting from a young age, he worked on his family's farm with his father. At 16, he started working for his uncle at Fitts Industries, a high-quality stair component manufacturer. Eventually, Lewis and his brother bought out their uncle and turned Fitts Industries into an international company. In 2005, he decided to retire and spend more of his time helping out in the Tuscaloosa community. Lewis says that he has, “been blessed with success and enjoys giving back to the community to show thanks for the blessing.”

Fitts became a member of the Tuscaloosa Rotary Club, an organization his family has been apart of for a very long time. He also joined the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of Alabama, Turning Point, Alabama Coalition Against Rape, and the DCH Foundation. Humbly, Fitts shares that he is just, “out there making a difference to make things better for the next generation.”

Lewis Fitts has been involved with DCH since 2010 when he accepted an offer to serve on the board for the DCH Foundation. When he first started becoming involved within the hospital, he claims that he, “came to the hospital as a critic, but once I learned more about what the hospital was all about, I realized that there was so much opportunity for good to be done.” Later, he moved to DCH’s finance committee, next to the governance committee, and is now currently serving as the board president of the DCH Foundation. DCH is special, according to Fitts, because it is a community hospital that accepts everyone and is constantly seeking to improve the level of health care to the public.

Lewis Fitts is a very special person because not only does he play a tremendous role in the DCH Foundation as a whole, but he also is a charitable donor to DCH’s Fast Forward Fund. The fund assists in purchasing hospital equipment that the hospital as a whole has a need for and fulfills each need quickly, helping make DCH the best that it can be. Anyone can choose to donate at any given moment to the Fast Forward Fund in general or towards a specific project the fund is raising money for that holds a special significance to an individual. Fitts’ compassion for the Fast Forward Fund comes from the fact that it introduces funding flexibility within the system. He feels that the moment, “it was established it became a great success.”

Community leaders and even the employees of DCH are donating money towards the Fast Forward Fund to purchase new equipment and maintaining DCH’s technological growth. In Fitts’ words, “DCH is a community hospital, it is our hospital, and we the people of Alabama need to give it support to make it a better hospital and better provider of healthcare.”