THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409130564
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
THE WOMAN was 65, Chinese and destitute. She spoke no English. Her family, who was supposed to be caring for her, had, instead, been abusing her. She needed a place to stay.
None of the agencies and shelters had room for her. Or, if they had room, she didn't qualify for the services. Or some other bureaucratic tangle interfered.
All except Madonna Home, a Norfolk bed-and-board for the elderly.
``Can you take her?'' came the call.
Director Mary Moran hesitated. She didn't have a bed to spare. Then she glanced around her office, and her eyes zoomed in on the futon in the corner.
``Sure. We have room. Bring her in.''
For the next six weeks, the woman slept on the futon in Moran's office, communicating via sign language and a Chinese/English bible.
``They were flexible; they did the right thing,'' remembers Kathleen Blanchard of the Southeastern Virginia Area Model Program of that incident several years ago.
It's a credo that Mary Moran, 57, has tried to follow her entire life. Do the right thing - even if it means ignoring or bypassing the rules.
For most of the past 15 years, that's meant doing the right thing by older people, be they in Madonna Home, which she ran for 12 years before resigning last year, or Russell House, the Housing and Urban Development-funded apartment complex for the elderly whose board she directs or in her own Virginia Beach home by caring for her own 90-year-old father-in-law who spends summers with her and her husband.
The one person Moran hasn't done right by - until recently - is herself.
Last year, her blood pressure skyrocketing from the constant struggle to maintain Madonna Home as a viable institution in an age of diminishing resources and expanding need. So she quit. Decided to cut back on her activities. Learn how to stop doing ``three things at once,'' how to be still, how to just plain be.
``It's really necessary to refresh ourselves so we can then go back out and be involved in activities such as Madonna house,'' says Moran, who has lived in Hampton Roads since 1970.
But Moran's ``pause that refreshes'' would probably exhaust most other people. She's still president of Russell House's board; still serves on the board of Marian Manor, a nonprofit assisted-living and nursing home in Virginia Beach she helped found; still sits on the Virginia Beach Task Force on Aging; is still active in regional activities with the Catholic Church and her own parish; is planning for her son's upcoming wedding; took her own father, 89, to Key West, Fla., for a vacation; and is entertaining her father-in-law for the summer. She just returned from a trip to Big Sur, Calif., where her two grown daughters live.
Mary Moran just doesn't know how to slow down.
She's been that way her entire life.
As a young Navy wife in Rhode Island, she took it upon herself to teach Japanese wives English so they could read their husbands' letters while the men were at sea.
As a stay-at-home mother of three small children, she ran the neighborhood swimming pool, was president of the PTA and the civic league and taught Sunday School in her church.
And then, when her kids were older, went back to school and got her degree in social work so she could work with the elderly.
Even at Madonna Home, where she was supposed to be a part-time director, she often went beyond the call of duty. During Thanksgiving, for instance, Moran and her husband often brought their children to the home and cooked dinner for the residents so the home's cook could have the night off.
She fixed the plumbing, made drapes for the commons area, brought residents home on a weekend or at Christmas, even slashed her own salary to balance the budget.
``Maybe she cared too much,'' says her longtime friend Phyllis Millette, ``because it started affecting her own health.''
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Moran began working with the elderly in the late 1970s, during her own mother's illness and eventual death.
She'd gone back to school for her social work degree, and, after seeing how much the neighbors in her native Birmingham, Ala., helped during her mother's illness, went on to get her associate's degree in gerontology from Tidewater Community College.
``I felt so guilty; here were all these people doing so much for her, I felt I had to get involved in some manner,'' Moran remembers.
She'd always been attracted to older people, always accepted them as a part of her life because her maternal grandmother had lived with her while she was growing up.
But it was her paternal grandmother who was the most influential women in her life. A pioneer who originally settled the family on Alabama's rural Gulf Coast, taught Moran how to shoot a .22-caliber rifle. She lived in a house in a cemetery, literally a graveyard, that expanded around her house.
``She could shoot a gun, wring a chicken's neck, mend anything,'' Moran says. ``She had books everywhere. Was the first person I ever saw in the Deep South who was totally integrated with the black community. But she was never too busy to stop and build a doll house or climb a pear tree.''
One of her most vivid memories is of the weekend the 72-year-old woman took Moran and her family to the Gulf Coast. They slept all night on the beach bundled up in blankets, then the old woman cooked breakfast for 16 the next morning over an open fire.
Longevity runs in Moran's family. Her father is a hearty 89, nearly blind, but still relatively independent and of sound mind who spends half his time with her sister and half with her.
Her father-in-law, Walter Moran, still lives alone in Florida, plays bridge three times a week and has the appearance and energy of a man 30 years his junior.
He describes his daughter-in-law as ``serenely independent;'' a woman who ``sees people as they are; who isn't afraid to speak her mind.''
``Sometimes it gets me in trouble,'' Moran says in agreement.
For instance, when she worked at Madonna Home, she frequently berated relatives and children who didn't visit their parents. ``When I'm in the role of advocate, I don't spare words.''
She's now turning that same fierce energy and devotion to the issue of elderly housing in Virginia Beach, noting that the three low-income homes for the elderly, each with waiting lists stretching for years, are not meeting the needs of the city's elderly population.
In general, though, she's more hopeful these days when she considers how this country treats its elderly; a change, she says, from her feelings in the past.
``Six years ago I would have been more zealous. But I read more good things about aging. We know more. We're not afraid to talk about it, and we're more realistic because we're all getting older.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
IAN MARTIN/Staff
Charity starts at home for Mary Moran. As well as being in charge of
the Russell House, an apartment complex for the elderly, the
Virginia Beach woman helps care forher father-in-law Walter Moran,
90, during the summers.
Graphic
MORE ON MORAN
Who was the most influential woman in your life?
My grandmother.
What is your favorite timesaver?
Making lists
What is your favorite stress buster?
Walking, preferably on the beach.
What do few people know about you?
That I'm basically rather shy. Before I speak to a group or go to
a board meeting, I'm absolutely weak with nerves.
by CNB