Reporter finds Baptist Home is Something Special

By SACHA CHAMPION

Staff Writer – Daily American Republic – Sunday, November 17, 2002

When the average person hears the phrase “nursing home,” they instinctively cringe as somewhat bad images come to mind. Well, let me tell you, I am an average person — so you can just imagine my reaction when my editor told me I would be doing a story on The Baptist Home in Ironton. That, in fact, I may even want to go there and meet the residents.

“Great,” I thought to myself. “I get to drive an hour and a half, one way mind you, to visit a nursing home.”

However, this trip taught me many things. Mostly that you shouldn’t stereotype all nursing homes together and that there are people out there who still care about their fellow man.

I would like to share my story with you.

The day began early. I headed out of town on Highway 67 North — of course, the landscape on 67 North leaves much to be desired once you pass Greenville. I reached Fredericktown and turned onto Highway 72 West.

Highway 72 West is a narrow two-lane that winds through the countryside. Creeks with crystal clear waterfalls and an amazing mix of tree and rock line the roadway.

As you come around a sharp turn in the road, there it sits. The three-story brick building is imposing, yet breathtakingly beautiful. As you pull into the drive, there are rolling hills and a small creek surrounding the buildings. Walkways complete with stone bridges. It looks like it should be a country club on the outside, yet I was still thinking, “It’s going to be horrible when I get inside.”

I parked the car and headed into the corporate office building. I had a meeting with Larry Johnson, The Baptist Home president. To be honest, I was expecting Johnson to be a man in a suit with a corporate attitude.

More specifically, I was expecting him to say a lot without telling me what I really wanted to know. We reporters get this kind of treatment some of the time.

Once again I stereotyped — and once again I was proven wrong.

Mr. Johnson greeted me with a warm smile and a firm handshake. Right away, I felt at ease with him. This doesn’t happen to me very often because, even though I am a reporter, I can be uncomfortable around people I’m not familiar with.

Mr. Johnson began explaining to me the problems between the home and the Missouri Baptist Convention.

“But first,” he said, “I want to tell you about the home and what we do here.

“There are two or three things that we work hard to do,” Johnson said. “One is to protect the individual, the uniqueness of the individual. That means if we receive a resident who is basically angry with life, he or she will be angry while he or she is at the Baptist home. You stay what you are when you come here.”

“We try to protect the freedoms the residents still have the ability to exercise.”

Johnson said The Baptist Home struggles not to force the residents into a kind of sameness.

“As we walk through the building I hope that you see 130 different residents, not the same resident 130 times,” Johnson said to me. “As people get older we tend to force them into a kind of sameness, and we work to avoid that here at The Baptist Home.”

The second aspect the home tries to focus on is the emotional trauma that comes with aging.

“Aging is emotionally difficult because it is one emotional loss after another,” Johnson explained to me. “It’s one grieving process after another. And the grieving process almost always has some anger involved.”

Johnson said that the loss of home, a job, the ability to work, a spouse and friends all have a kind of grief and pain involved. He said that at the home, they try to address those concerns and pains to help residents live better.

“At The Baptist Home, we try not to isolate people because they are confused or disoriented,” said Johnson. “Those people still have the same freedom to be about, to participate in all the activities and to live in their own room the same as someone who has no confusion.”

“They are healthier emotionally if they are not isolated and restricted,” Johnson said.

As he is telling me stories about past and present residents, I could feel the emotion in his words. He told me about a man who had recently passed away, who suffered from dementia and had a habit of wandering out of the home at night. He believed he had to “go to the church to clean up after the wedding so the chapel would be ready for Sunday service.”

Instead of the nurses dragging the man back into the home against his will, the chaplain and administrators got out of bed at 1 or 2 a.m. and came down to the nursing home to convince the man to come back inside.

Convince him? Talk him into the building? Allow him to choose to come back inside? People still care enough to get out of bed that early in the morning just to allow an old man to feel free to make his own decisions?

Here’s the clincher though. As Mr. Johnson is telling me the story, tears well in his eyes. He has to pause in the middle of the story to collect himself. This is a man who considers this home to be more than a job. He truly deep-down cares for the people.

The following is an excerpt from a report written by Mr. Johnson to The Baptist Home Board of Trustees in December 1999 concerning yet another resident who suffered from confusion.

“Brother L. has lived at The Baptist Home-Chillicothe for 10 years. He is a retired preacher. Today we would call him a full-time evangelist or a professional evangelist. Then he was called a traveling preacher.

“His wife played the piano and his son was a singer and all of them together made up the evangelistic team...until his wife and son both died suddenly from heart attacks and fairly close together. That ended not just his ministry, but for all practical purposes, it ended his life also.

“But that was not the first of Brother L.’s hurts. When he was four years old, his mother and father separated. She got the boys, but she could not provide for them and chose to send him to live with her sister, an aunt and an uncle who were both total strangers to him.

“Today, everyday, Brother L. walks the halls of The Baptist Home wearing his hat, his necktie with food stains on it and his worn-out suit that has a jacket and trousers that don’t match. Brother L. is not always easy to work with. He can get very angry. He does not like for anyone to tell him what to do. He is extremely private, and in his own way, very particular.

“Most other places would have written Brother L. off as a confused, worthless old man. And they likely would have scolded him for his unusual behavior. But at The Baptist Home, we respect him as a person who has done well through all of his life in spite of major emotional trauma and we will fight for his right to wear his hat, his necktie with food stains on it and his worn-out suit that has a jacket and trousers that don’t match.

“And when he dies, unless someone else comes through, we will pay for the funeral, we will dig the grave, we will set the headstone.”

“That is the kind of ministry that I’m going to do everything in my power to protect,” Johnson said with a controlled vehemence as he wiped tears from his eyes. “Even if it means they drag me into court. There are certain people who, if they got control of The Baptist Home, would end that kind of ministry within 24 hours.”

A few more stories that cause me to begin to get teary-eyed, and it is suddenly time to head over to the nursing home — the part I have been dreading. With each step, my dread seemed to grow. Finally we were standing before the doors.

I took a deep breath, stepped inside, and was amazed.

The first thing I noticed was the smell, or rather, the lack thereof. The next thing I noticed was there was a buzz of conversation in the air. In some nursing homes, visitors speak in hushed tones to keep from breaking the silence.

Not in The Baptist Home. Residents were sitting in chairs or walking around talking to each other or members of the staff.

That was another thing that caught my attention. The staff members had time to stop and talk to patients, sometimes sitting down next to the residents and carrying on an in-depth conversation. This could be because The Baptist Home has 140 employees compared to 130 residents.

It wasn’t just the time the staff spent with the residents though. They know the residents. They ask them questions about family and things important to them. This is not something you see all the time.

As we walked down the corridors, even Mr. Johnson knew everyone. He made it a point to stop and converse with each person, resident or staff.

Next Mr. Johnson took me to the gift shop where crafts that residents make are on sale. And these are not just cheesy gifts that only relatives would buy. I was tempted to spend hundreds of dollars on the many craft items that were available.

A neat twist to this is that the home doesn’t keep the profit from sales in the gift shop. One-half of the purchase price goes to the resident who made the craft while the other half goes back into the craft fund to buy more supplies.

As we walked down yet another corridor, each door and room was decorated to the occupant’s desires. Most of the rooms in The Baptist Home are single-occupancy rooms, giving the resident more privacy and a more independent feeling. Renovations are being made to completely do away with the semi-private rooms.

Residents began to fill the hallways as lunchtime approached. Nurses lined the hallway outside the dining room, waiting for anyone who needed help. This was also something I’ve never seen before. Usually, nurses in nursing homes are so busy from being understaffed that they are constantly on the go.

I had yet to go down the medical wing, where those who required extreme medical care were housed. This wing was the one in major need of expansion, according to Mr. Johnson.

This wing had the appearance of a more normal nursing home. However, the personal attention was still present. Even though over 60 patients were crowded into one wing, the light smell of disinfectant hovered in the air, instead of some of those less liked smells.

At this point, many readers are probably thinking that this is nothing unusual. Sure, they are few and far between, but you can find a decent nursing home just about anywhere. But the most amazing thing about The Baptist Home, the thing that really grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go was this: The residents.

So many times residents in a nursing home just aren’t happy. That sadness can affect not only the resident’s mental health, but also their physical health. And yet, here in The Baptist Home, people are happy.

I spoke to a woman who recently turned 103. While she is confined to a wheelchair because she cannot use her legs, she is a happy woman. And at 103, this woman has a sharper mind than most of us have at 25. She enjoys music and learned to play the mandolin at the age of 100. She continues to play the organ, piano and accordion.

Not only was this woman mentally sharp and physically active — she didn’t look a day over 80. Her happy, youthful expression would never give away the fact that she was over a century old.

I also had the pleasure of speaking to Cleva Mull, who was raised in Poplar Bluff. I estimated her age to be somewhere in her late 60s to early 70s, and she matter-of-factly informed me that she was 95 years old.

At this point, someone could literally have knocked me over with a feather. These two ladies are not the only examples, The Baptist Home is full of them. The happiness and laughter here seem to slow the aging process. The residents are healthier and look much younger than other people their age. I shudder to think what I will look like when I am 60, much less 103!

I stopped in and talked to Jean O’Conner, a woman who lived in Poplar Bluff for 20 years before retiring to The Baptist Home. Here again is an example of a perfectly happy woman. Her room is cozy and she has puzzles that cover her table. I asked her how she liked the home and this is what she said.

“It’s great, I am so glad to be here,” she said with a kind of breathless excitement. “It’s just a wonderful part of the country and it’s just wonderful here.”

I then asked Mrs. O’Conner what she thought of the staff.

“I love them,” O’Conner said. “I think they are all trained to be kind and that is not something you see all the time anymore.”

After I left Mrs. O’Conner’s room, I visited with Mildred Dixon, who lived in Malden before going to the home.

“It is just beautiful surroundings,” said Dixon. “And the people that I have met here are just as nice as can be and they just make you feel right at home.”

Dixon enjoys the missionary programs, reading and watching skits that are performed at the home. She too agrees the staff is friendly and helpful.

“They know that they represent our Baptist home,” Dixon said. “I like the people very much. This is a wonderful place.”

I also talked to Lavern Howdeshell, a retired teacher who resides on the medical wing at the home. He, too, finds the home a great place to live.

“I love it here,” Howdeshell said. “I do nothing all day. I am quite a lazy person. I don’t have to have a lot of things to entertain me.”

Of course, this man who considers himself lazy was a teacher of business education and journalism for 20 years in Zalma. He shows an abounding love for his students and is still moved when they come to visit him at the home.

This whole experience was such a shock for me that I must have made The Baptist Home sound like a kind of utopia. Of course, it is not. Residents still have complaints and concerns.

“I’ve been to a lot of homes and as far as I am concerned, as far as the environment, I think it is good here,” Mull said. “But our activities aren’t so hot. We used to have so many. They do try to do things for us but it’s just not as active as it used to be. We really need that.”

Mull went on to say that she wasn’t happy with the way so many employees have come and gone at the home. She is also not a big fan of the food that is served.

By now readers are probably wondering what the purpose for this story is. The purpose is this — there are still people out there who care for one another, regardless of status, and that sometimes even the most jaded person can find a shining light where they don’t expect even a glimmer.

So why bicker over something so wonderful? Why call names and throw mud at one another? No matter who “wins” the battle, the residents of this home are the ones who are truly blessed.

sachachampion@hotmail.com

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