THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 19, 1994 TAG: 9410190052
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 182 lines
ALMA BAUM, 79, is sitting in the sun in front of Madonna Home, her fur hat perched on her head, wearing a pink housecoat and stockings rolled down to her ankles. She's waiting for a friend to pick her up and take her to the thrift store to buy a blouse.
Baum's been here a year, one of 15 residents at this Norfolk boarding house in Park Place, where the only requirements for residency are that you be at least 60 years old and able to walk.
For Baum, it's a godsend. Her doctors had said she couldn't live alone after her last stroke. She has a daughter - somewhere - and a son in Raleigh. But there's no room for her there.
``There's nowhere else to go,'' she says when asked where she'd be if not for Madonna Home. She falls silent, then says: ``I really don't know. There's nowhere else to go.''
This is a place where people come when they have nowhere else to go but when they're not ready for a nursing home. Where they can retain their independence even though they can no longer live independently. Where oversized, high-backed rocking chairs line the sparkling clean day room, where a five-member staff dresses in street clothes instead of uniforms, and where an impromptu waltz between the administrator and a 91-year-old resident is entirely appropriate.
You don't find places like Madonna Home anymore. Today, homes for the aged are licensed and regulated. ``McDonaldized,'' says Kathleen Blanchard, who works with the elderly in Hampton Roads.
``Madonna Home is a dying breed.'' she says. ``It is, in this day of making everything consistent and transportable, nice to know that we are human beings and can have some variety and can be flexible enough to meet the needs of the people it serves.''
But Madonna Home may be dying.
Rising costs and dwindling funds are eating away at the small endowment that keeps the home afloat. Its board of directors is hoping to license it as a Medicaid-eligible adult home but doubts it can afford the necessary construction costs and repairs to the old convent that houses the home. Things such as a commercial dishwasher, a new kitchen to replace the circa 1950 one, a venting fan, handicapped access. Oh, and the heating system is falling apart.
That's assuming, of course, that the board can afford to buy the home from the church that owns it.
``It's a family,'' says Blanchard. ``Once you go to Madonna Home, you're adopted into this family; not into the facility.''
I once cooked breakfast for President Roosevelt, yes, I did. I was the cook at the governor's mansion in South Carolina in 1935, and he came to stay one night.
Janie V. Wilson, 88, is a small woman who walks with dignity and a cane. For 50 years she lived in an apartment in Portsmouth until old age and infirmity made living alone impossible.
And so she came to Madonna Home a year and three months ago.
She pays $400 a month for her small room - $250 less than the regular rate - because that's all she can afford.
Every morning, if it's not raining, she makes her way out to the front yard, hidden behind a shoulder-high hedge, and sits, breathing deeply of the fresh air, her pocketbook clasped in her lap.
``I'd get on my knees and crawl out here before I'd sit in there all day,'' she says, motioning to the cinder block, two-story structure.
MADONNA HOME WAS BUILT IN 1952 as a convent for the nuns who served Blessed Sacrament Church in Norfolk.
One of those nuns, Sister Rita Veronica Seavey, first recognized the need for the home while ministering to elderly church parishioners. But her superiors doubted that the nun, in her late 60s, could start and run the home.
Sister Rita persisted, raising $10,000 and finally getting approval for the home. She ran it for four years before retiring in 1982.
From the beginning, the home's philosophy was to take in anyone, regardless of their ability to pay.
And therein lies the problem.
The monthly rent is $650. That includes three meals, two snacks, laundry, housekeeping and ``a lot of love,'' says the home's administrator, Charlene Davis. But less than half the 15 residents pay that, says Davis. One pays as little as $335.
And so meeting the operating budget of $10,600 a month is impossible without dipping into the endowment's principal - money that's needed for repairs.
If the home was licensed, its residents would be eligible for Medicaid waiver grants, which would guarantee the home $720 a month for their care. Money would still be tight, but the home might survive.
``It's really a difficult situation,'' says Mary Moran, a board member and the home's former administrator. Moran ran Madonna Home for 12 years, more as a volunteer than as a paid employee. She quit last year when her blood pressure - exacerbated by the financial frustrations of Madonna Home - soared. ``Short of having someone run it for free, I don't see how we'll do it,'' she says. ``You have to have someone look at it more as a ministry. For so many years, they had nuns running these kinds of places; they didn't take a salary.
``I keep thinking maybe I'll win the lottery.''
But Davis is more pragmatic. A gerontological nurse, she was used to running large nursing homes and convalescent centers in her native Connecticut. She moved to Virginia a year ago because she was so intrigued with the concept of the home.
She was hired, she says, to get the home licensed, and that's the job she plans to do.
``This works for older people; the fact that they're put in a situation where they have to be independent. Where their independence isn't taken from them,'' she says. ``We don't have the time to take them to the bathroom, but we have the time to talk to them. To listen to them. To hug them. We have a lot to give. That's what's missing in a nursing home. The nurses just don't have the time to be hands on.''
So how's she going to keep it going?
``Fund raising. You know, I think about if every resident of Norfolk gave us just $1, that'd be about $200,000. That would be a start.''
She'll be helped by people like Cathy Snowden of Currituck, N.C., who put her 91-year-old grandmother in the home a month ago. When her grandmother dies, anything left in her estate will go to the home.
``It's a godsend,'' Snowden says as she kneels at her grandmother's feet, painting the older woman's fingernails pink. ``It's personable. It doesn't smell like a nursing home. It's like bringing your loved ones to a home away from home.''
I've been a servant to somebody most of my life; it's nice to have someone take care of you, isn't it? Isn't it beautiful?
Leora Harris, 89, watching ``The Price Is Right'' on the oversized color television set in the darkened day room, has been at Madonna Home since last November.
She was ready, she says, to give up housekeeping. Her first stop was Sentara Adult Home in Virginia Beach. Too expensive.
She also didn't like the looks of the people there. Many were infirm and frail.
``I saw that they were a heaviness and a burden to live there; to see that misery every day would have bothered my mind and my nerves.''
For she's not sick. ``Ain't that the truth,'' she says gleefully, clapping her hands together. Just old. And at Madonna Home, she can gossip with the other residents, participate in the weekly reminiscence therapy, sit out in the garden and still have her privacy.
``I'm just at ease. Just at ease, at ease,'' she says.
And that's why Davis was willing to take a cut in pay to come and take this job in Virginia.
``I'm governed by love; I love old people,'' she says. ``They are the source of knowledge and wisdom, and if anyone deserves kindness and love, they do.
``They work hard, and their last few years should be lived with dignity, which to me is the ability to remember a person and live life the way you want to live it. To continue to be a person.''
I sold clothes for 30 years in a women's clothing store in New York City. And it's just a shame when I look at myself today. I have nothing. I need everything.
Lovett Smith's room is crammed with clothes. They're spilling out of the dresser drawers, stuffed into large garbage bags, bursting from open suitcases. She doesn't need another item of clothing.
But in her head, it's coming on to winter and she has nothing.
Smith, 92, is one of the home's newest residents and its oldest. She was referred by a social worker after it was discovered that the nephew she'd been living with had spent all her money and neglected her health.
When she came to Madonna Home, she could barely see and couldn't hear.
A month later, she's wearing thick, harlequin glasses and pointing proudly to her clear left eye, from which a cataract was removed. She can hear with her new hearing aid (when she remembers to turn it on), and she's got a secure, warm place to live.
She lives on the home's second floor, up a flight of carpeted stairs. There is no elevator.
When she has to go downstairs to eat, or to answer the phone, she inches slowly down the steps, leaning heavily on the banister. But she doesn't complain, doesn't ask to be moved.
``It's exercise for them,'' Davis says. ``It's one of the reasons they get out of bed. We've even had residents live on the second floor and we offer them a room on the first when it becomes available and they say they don't want to move.
``If they know they can still get up and down those stairs, they know they're still alive.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photos by BILL TIERNAN
Lovett Smith, 92, who has gotten new glasses and a hearing aid since
arriving at Madonna Home, still negotiates the stairs to her
second-floor room.
Resident Frances Borkland, 83, left, has been at home 11 years.
Charlene Davis took a cut in pay to become administrator last year.
Leora Harris, 89, says, ``I'm just at ease. Just at ease.''
by CNB