Recent News - Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America

01 May 2006

Manor residents celebrate year ‘round with service

As anyone who has ever volunteered knows, there is a great sense of worth and satisfaction in helping others. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or where you do the volunteering, there is something very special about helping others.

That’s no less the case for residents of Presbyterian Manor of Arkansas City, who are using their talents and special abilities to help others both at the Manor and in their community.

They are not alone. April is National Volunteer Month. In a survey conducted by the Independent Sector, a coalition of nearly 600 corporations, foundations and private organizations working to strengthen nonprofit organizations, 43 percent of seniors 75 and over reported volunteering. That was an increase of six percentage points between 1995 -1999. Fifty-six percent of those 18 or over volunteered a total of 19.9 million hours. That was the highest ever recorded level of volunteering in the survey’s history.

Now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, the Manor residents are a lively, good humored group of volunteers who have had years of experience helping others—and they show no signs of slowing down.

Take Rosemary Von Hoene. If you’ve ever lost weight, gained weight or bought something that needed alterations, you’d want to have this good natured 74-year-old as a friend or neighbor.

She is the resident “seamstress” at the Manor, providing her services on a volunteer basis to those who need her help. “I’ve sewn all my life,” she says. She started as a child, making clothes for her dolls. In high school, she made her own clothes. Of her volunteer sewing, she says “It’s nothing to do some of these things.” Easy for her to say. She sews--on her own machine which was one of three treasured items she brought with her to the Manor. Many others do not sew. At 74, her eyes are still good enough for her to carry out these services for Manor residents at no charge. Or, if they insist on payment, she will accept a special fee of “a candy bar, a card or even a prayer.”

Von Hoene, a Manor resident for only a year, is originally from Mitchell, S.D.

Marriage to 30-year Air Force career man and native of Ohio took her away from her small hometown. The couple lived in a number of other states as he moved from one military assignment to another. They also lived for a time in Newfoundland and Germany. While Von Hoene, a chief master sergeant, served in Viet Nam, she and their six children, then ages one to 10, lived in Derby. In his final years of service, he was stationed in Clovis, N.M., where three grown children and grandchildren make their home. A daughter, Denise Simmons, and two grandchildren live in Arkansas City, and she has sons and grandchildren in North Dakota and Tennessee.

Her children, ages 40 to 50 at this point, have provided her with 22 grandchildren. Von Hoene manages to keep in touch through the use of technology. One of the other treasured items she brought with her to the Manor was her computer. “We write just about every day,” she says of communicating with the various members of her family across the country.

Von Hoene has contracted chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which affects her breathing. She moved to Ark City for her health. In Clovis, the altitude was about 4,500 feet; in Arkansas City it is 1,000. “I do better at a lower altitude,” she explains, but “I still use oxygen. She worked as an illustrator for the Air Force, doing charts and all kinds of illustrations. She also did picture framing and worked for an advertising agency in Clovis.

A very creative individual, she also paints and etches on glass. Her latest volunteer effort was painting bird houses which were raffled off at a recent Habitat for Humanity dinner sponsored by the First United Methodist Church in Ark City. Proceeds will go to construction of houses Habitat builds for those in need. The birdhouses were unique. Built by Habitat male volunteers, one was modeled after a penthouse; the other features an open cat’s mouth as the entryway. Last year, she won first place and a blue ribbon with a 3D sculpture featuring a bird. That local win enabled her to compete in the annual Art Is Ageless competition which the Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America sponsors. The event draws works from residents and senior communities of its 16 Manor sites in Kansas and Missouri.

Von Hoene is a good sport and has a great sense of humor. When the Manor needed an elf for Christmas, she suited up. When the home needs someone to call the bingo games, she and her daughter, who often recruit the Von Hoene grandchildren Rosemary and Davis, come to the rescue. You could say she is “the voice of Bingo,” says her daughter.

If there’s a need for a fortune teller, she will dress the part and play the role. A second floor independent living resident, she says almost in understatement, “We have a lot of fun here.” During the Manor’s special dress-up events, she has attended activities attired as a farmer whom no one recognized, a bag lady with a bag over her head, and donned a formal ball gown. Whenever there are special activities that require fun attire, many residents like to attend ”just to see what Rosemary is going to wear,” says her daughter. Denise Simmons is not an unknown quantity at the Manor. On occasion, she puts on her professional hat as a speech therapist for residents.

Von Hoene finds time to make table centerpieces for the Manor’s dining room, as those that featured stars and stripes for the Fourth of July. And to provide a United States flag for the Manor courtyard, because she “missed seeing the flag on a daily basis.”

She lives a full and active life, this “Geraldine Ferraro look-alike,” as her daughter describes her. Another thing she brought to the Manor with her was a new electronic piano, a third treasured item. She has always loved music and explains that seven of the nine children in her family played the piano by ear. She’s one of them. Most of her playing is for her own satisfaction, she explains. She also plays the guitar.

Like Von Hoene, Neva Bahruth, 86, doesn’t need to leave the Manor to do her volunteer work. She’s got plenty to do. A fifth floor independent resident, she’s the drafted “green thumb” to care for the plants on her floor. The are plants left by former residents who have passed on that were donated to the Manor by their families. Bahruth observes a study routine that requires watering and feeding on a regular basis. “People enjoy those plants,” she says, so she gives the effort her full attention.

She’s like a utility baseball player, she’s called up to play when there’s a job to be done. An earlier role she inherited was leading an exercise group on her floor when the original leader passed away. The group exercises to audio tapes on a daily basis.

On Fridays and Saturday evenings, you will find her “rolling silverware” for the Manor’s dining room and health care unit. It’s a job that requires two 40-minute stints a week. She’s one of several other volunteers who help with that task. The “silverware rolling brigade” involves other resident volunteers including Edith Marlow, Nellie Hite, Helen Harshberger, Ilene Gomez, Ernestine Reynolds and Wanita Cleghorn. Bahruth also helps in the Manor library, where she makes sure the four newspapers that arrive there regularly are placed in their proper holders for resident use.

There’s a non-traditional career role in her background. Bahruth worked for the railroad in communications. That was unusual, but she says it was during World War II. It was a role in which males needed replacements when they went to war. She was a teletype operator originally. Then she learned Morse code. She became a telegraph operator, and then, for a while, she was a train dispatcher using a radio. Just before her retirement, she says, the facsimile machine was introduced to the workplace. She held those various communications roles for nearly 40 years. She also helped her now deceased farmer husband with tending to cattle and their wheat, hay and milo crops in Cowley County. Bahruth has a daughter who is a speech pathologist in Ponca City, Okla. Her son-in-law works for Conoco.

She loves the volunteer opportunities because “I enjoy people and like to help others and it’s a good way to get acquainted.”

Lena Metcalf does her volunteer work as a singer in the Twilighters, a chorus of community singers who perform in Arkanasas City, Winfield, Cedarvale and even in Blackwell, Okla. The chorus, directed by Eva Reyez, practices at the Arkansas City Senior Center and performs every month at venues ranging from apartment complexes for seniors to medical lodges and the Manor.

“We sing the old oldies,” says Metcalf and “always close with one or two spirituals.” The group tends to sing songs that are familiar to their audiences, songs like “April Showers” and “Happy Day Are Here Again.” Songs, she explains, that audience members tend to know the words and allows them to sing along.

She’s been singing all her life, she says, but never in a group until now. For 22 years, she worked as an operating room technician at Arkansas City Memorial Hospital. Then she volunteered with that hospital’s auxiliary. She sings soprano. At the Manor since 1999, she resides in independent living. At 90, she says she has the satisfaction of “seeing the happy faces in the audience” when the chorus performs. She loves it when they sing along.

Another Manor resident, Ila Mason sings alto to Metcalf’s soprano as another member of the Twilighters. She’s been a Twilighter for 21 years.

“We practice a lot,” she explains, “three to four hours a week.” At 91, she has been a resident in independent living at the Manor for almost a year. She and her husband delivered gasoline to filling stations in southeast Kansas for a number of years. When he died, she continued the business with the help of an employee until her retirement at 55.

Mason also is involved in the First United Methodist Church’s work for Habitat for Humanity. Her most recent act of kindness was raising money to purchase clothing for seven children of a Habitat family. “I work out at the rec center on Mondays and Wednesdays,” she explains, “and when people heard what I was doing they just gave me money to help. I didn’t really have to ask them to help.” She has since taken the children shopping, she adds.

When Mason moved to the Manor, her pastor told her to remember to “get out once in a while. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but I figured out that there’s so much going on here and folks are having such fun that you might get to the point where you don’t want to leave for fear you’ll miss out on something.” She has three daughters in Kansas and California.

Von Hoene, Bahruth, Metcalf and Mason and other Manor volunteers are just four of the millions of seniors in the country who have discovered the sense of purpose and accomplishment that comes from their volunteer work.

Among the obvious traits of these four is that they are lively individuals, personable, connected with their communities, and obviously derive reward from doing things for others. As a result, they may have increased their life expectancy. Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a remarkable correlation between volunteer work and longevity among those who have given their time to a single cause.

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