It's been nearly four months since Mrs. Ann Smith Gordon took over full-time at the Patients' Assistance League and Service -- she had been running the cancer support group out of her Hamilton lingerie shop since 1983 -- and her new office at the TB, Cancer and Health building is still littered with unopened boxes.

"I haven't had a chance to unpack everything,'' the well-known photographer, whose title of PALS chairman was changed in the process to president and chief executive officer, said with a laugh recently. "It's terrible.'' Having given up her lingerie business to assume her new position, Mrs. Smith Gordon, of course, can be excused if she lacks the time to deal with an unopened box or two. In addition to her photography and the overseeing of PALS, with its five full-time oncology nurses and 60 or so volunteers, she also gets out and deals with the patients directly, driving them to and from the hospital and offering as much support as she is able.

"I like to be as hands-on as I possibly can,'' said Mrs. Smith Gordon, whose desktop is strewn with thank-you letters from patients and their families.

"After all, we are all in this for the patients.'' And there are, indeed, a good many patients to help out -- more than 100 a day, in fact, with a further 100 people being referred to PALS daily. "None of them,'' said Mrs. Smith Gordon, "pays a cent for the use of our services,'' which include everything from the provision of walkers and wheelchairs to patient and family counselling.

Needless to say, the PALS mandate of providing "comprehensive quality home care'' at no cost to the patient has made fund-raising a high priority for the league, which currently has an annual operating budget of some $400,000 (up from $500 in 1980, the year that PALS was founded).

"I have had many a spirited discussion,'' Mrs. Smith Gordon said, "with people, including doctors, who say that we should charge for our services.

"But,'' she added, in a not-so-veiled reference to last week's referendum on Independence, "we've had a lot of talk recently about not fixing what isn't broke. At PALS, (the free service) comes back to us in so many ways.'' In an effort to offer an example of those "ways,'' Mrs. Smith Gordon produced some of the letters that the organisation has received over the years from the families it has helped. Many of the letters, usually written in long-hand, commend the group for taking such good care of a brother or a child, calling its volunteers "angels of mercy.'' Others make special note of the PALS nurses, lauding their expertise and particularly their compassion.

"Our nurses,'' said Mrs. Smith Gordon, "are very special people. As someone wrote in to say, they go the extra mile.'' And so -- fortified with the knowledge that their efforts are making a difference -- the PALS team pushes on with its drive to meet its budget, only a fraction of which is furnished through Government largesse.

As Mrs. Smith Gordon doesn't believe, moreover, in hitting donors directly, the organisation has become one of the most creative charities in Bermuda in terms of its fund-raising ventures, which, in the past few years, have included a fish fry, an annual slide show of the PALS head's trips abroad, a pay-per-mile walk from Dockyard to Albuoy's Point and the sale of decorative sachets through the Irish Linen Shop.

Not to be outdone, many of the people whose lives have been touched by PALS have matched the organisation in terms of creativity. One former patient, for instance, raised some money by baking bread and selling it to her neighbours, sending in a modest but much-appreciated $13. Another little boy, whose grandfather had been helped by PALS, set about collecting tins, ultimately offering up $3.45.

Frequently, though, Mrs. Smith Gordon acquires a significant amount of her organisation's funding through people on the street, many of whom stuff money in her hand and then hurry away.

"I don't know of any place in the world,'' the PALS president said, "where people just hand you $20, $50, $100. Bermudians are so generous in that sense, and that's how so many charities survive here.'' Of PALS, she added: "I think -- and I do say this proudly -- that we are one of the most respected charities on the Island.'' Even so, the organisation does suffer, Mrs. Smith Gordon admitted, from a public awareness problem, with many Bermudians unfamiliar with what PALS does in the community.

Greater public awareness, she consequently said, has become a major goal of her newly full-time presidency, as has the building of an extension, currently in the works, to the PALS facilities at TB, Cancer and Health. "We have grown so much,'' Mrs. Smith Gordon explained, "that we have outgrown our facilities already. Right now we need at least four offices and of course a larger storeroom.'' The storeroom, no doubt, for all those unpacked boxes.

PALS PRESIDENT MRS. ANN SMITH GORDON -- "Bermudians are so generous, and that's how so many charities survive here.''