Wharton Homes Dedicated at Uplands

Uplands Retirement Village in Pleasant Hill, TN, recently dedicated and blessed its new skilled nursing facility, Wharton Homes. The Uplands Board of Directors gathered on May 7th to formally dedicate the new homes and on May 15 delegates to the Spring meeting of the Alabama/Tennessee Association of the United Church of Christ processed to the homes for a ritual blessing. CHHSM was represented at the blessing by the Rev. Bill Johnson, vice president for member relations, and the Rev. Bill Royster, CHHSM’s southern regional representative.

Incorporating the Eden resident-centered care concept, the two Wharton Homes will house four neighborhoods of residents – two with 15 residents; two with 16 residents. Each of the four neighborhoods has a comfortable central hearth room, a kitchen and common dining area as well as smaller seating areas for informal gatherings with family or friends. Each home also has a secure garden with accessible planters for the convenience of residents with green thumbs. The design of each home includes a spa, beauty shop and laundry. Each residential room houses a caregiver’s unit for access to electronic medical records and secure storage of medications for the resident. Each home will have a shared pet selected by the residents. Children from the nearby elementary school will visit regularly with the residents as will friends from the wider Uplands community. Nancy Himell serves as executive director of Uplands Retirement Village.

For more information, contact David Harsh, director of Development/Communications, atdharsh@uplandsvillage.com or visit www.uplandsvillage.com.

The End of an Era: Marie Grace Lee, Deaconess Sister

In the late nineteenth century, St. Louis was the American center of the Deaconess Sisters, a movement that traced its spiritual roots back as far as Paul’s first letter to the Romans. This order of women, founded in Germany in the 1830s, dedicated their lives to caring for the sick and the poor. They were established in America in 1889 by a group of St. Louis Evangelical pastors who wanted to respond to the needs of the poor in their community.

The Deaconess Sisters of St. Louis, which included 200 women, launched Deaconess Hospital and a nursing school and worked with children, seniors, and the homebound ill. Their work continues today through the ministries of CHHSM members including the Deaconess Foundation, Deaconess Parish Nurse Ministries and the International Parish Nurse Resource Center in St. Louis.

Now the Deaconess movement in the United States has passed into history. On February 25, 2010, Sister Marie G. Lee, the last Evangelical Deaconess Sister in the United States, died in St. Louis.

Sister Marie G. Lee was born to August and Ocie Lee on January 6, 1910 in Indiana and moved with her parents and three sisters to Latham, Illinois in early childhood. A bright and capable child, she began school at age 4 and graduated from the Latham High School at 16. Like her mother, she studied nursing, attending St. Clara’s School of Nursing in Lincoln, Illinois and graduating with her RN in 1929. Shortly thereafter, she went to St. Louis to help with a project at Deaconess Hospital for a time. She stayed for 80 years—two-thirds of the hospital’s history.

Sister Marie became a Deaconess Sister in 1932 and helped to start the Deaconess Hospital pediatrics unit, serving as its head nurse for its entire existence. She then studied orthopedic nursing in New York and returned to Deaconess to complete her career. In retirement, she served the hospital as a volunteer and was a strong mentor to generations of nursing school students at Deaconess College of Nursing (now Chamberlain College of Nursing). Despite the fact that she was a life-long Baptist, she remained committed to her vocation as an Evangelical Deaconess Sister.

“Sister Marie was our present link back to the earliest days of Deaconess Hospital, for she worked with those who were there from nearly the beginning of its ministry,” said the Rev. Deborah Patterson, CHHSM board member and executive director of Deaconess Parish Nurse Ministries and the International Parish Nurse Resource Center. “She modeled healthy eating and exercise habits for us all,” recalled Patterson, “and was actively involved with her students, colleagues, and friends, and their children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren, until the day she died.”

Sister Marie’s funeral was held in Maplewood, Missouri, just a mile from where she had lived for the last 80 years, and she was buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Normandy, Missouri, near scores of other Deaconess Sisters who had gone before her.

Cars and Boys Get Help at Brooklawn

At CHHSM member ministry Brooklawn Child and Family Services in Louisville, Kentucky, the staff works to help boys overcome serious emotional disturbances and to find foster or adoptive placements. So how did they get involved in oil changes and brake work?

For teenaged boys at Brooklawn, part of healing is developing self-esteem through vocational education, and the ministry operates an accredited special education school in collaboration with the Jefferson County Public Schools. In April 2005, the two organizations opened the Brooklawn Auto Service Training Center, a working garage where boys aged 13-18 can learn what it takes to be an auto mechanic.

Boys at Brooklawn and other state-agency schools can participate in the program as long as they meet behavioral standards; between 20 and 22 take part on most days. The Training Center offers classroom instruction as well as hands-on training under the supervision of instructors, who are employed by the school system.

How’s the service? After a few months in business, with only word-of-mouth advertising, the Auto Service Training Center has a two-week waiting list for cars in need of repair. And since the boys’ labor is free, customers pay only for parts. “I had my brakes done there and it cost $50,” said a satisfied customer, “whereas it would have been at least five times that somewhere else.”

Although Brooklawn’s program does not provide formal certification for employment, program instructor Bill Greenwell feels confident about his students’ skills. “I can take a student who’s never set foot inside a shop and make him employable in a year,” said Greenwell. “Now that’s entry-level employment, but that’s more than most people have who walk in off the street looking for a job in an auto shop.”

To learn more about Brooklawn Child & Family Services and its programs, please visit www.brooklawn.net. If you’re in Louisville and your car needs work, please call 502-451-5177 to get on the waiting list!