September 23, 2004

An advocate for seniors, Bognar has spent a lifetime helping others

Andrée Bognár is retiring next week as the coordinator of the Home Assistance Program. A reception in her honor will be held Sept. 29, 2–4 p.m., at the Senior Center.

By Diane Chiddister

People who know Andrée Bognár know she doesn’t like talking about herself, and she dislikes even more talking about her accomplishments. But Bognár’s past and current colleagues immediately warm to the topic, and from them you learn that the small, unassuming Yellow Springer has done some very big things for senior citizens in the Miami Valley.

Next week Bognár’s 30-year career in the Miami Valley will draw to a close. On Wednesday, Sept. 29, which is Bognár’s 75th birthday, she will be honored at a reception from 2 to 4 p.m in the Yellow Springs Senior Center. Everyone is invited.

Until that day, you might see Bognár, clad in a sweat shirt and jeans, making her rounds on the streets of Yellow Springs, cheerfully walking to her clients’ homes. As coordinator of the Home Assistance Program since its inception in 1998, Bognár is the small program’s human face, a one-woman campaign to help local seniors receive the services they need to continue to live in their homes.

Before working with elders in Yellow Springs, Bognár worked as a case manager with Dayton seniors and launched and directed one of the area’s first adult day care programs.

While in the last three decades she has helped countless seniors live richer and more comfortable lives, Bognár downplays what she gave to others, instead emphasizing what she received.

“It’s the path of being with people that was so interesting, and the path of learning,” she said in an interview last week. “What’s most important is listening, and learning. I think that part goes on forever.”

Bognár’s lifetime spent helping others began with a childhood rendered tumultuous by World War II, according to her son Steve Bognar. Born in Belgium, she was the fifth of six children, and she and her family fled her hometown of Leuven on bicycles when a bomb struck their home. Not long after, her father died, partially due to the shortage of penicillin in the war-torn area, and Bognár’s mother raised her six children alone in a Nazi-occupied country.

After receiving a degree in social work, Bognár worked for the Red Cross in Europe, helping refugees escaping the Hungarian Revolution. There she met her former husband, who was from Hungary. They moved to New York City in 1961, then to Milwaukee, where Bognár worked with new immigrants until her sons, Steve and then John, were born. At that point, she stopped her professional work and spent the next 10 years at home with her children.

In 1974 the Bognár family moved to the Beavercreek area. With her sons almost grown, Bognár returned to work, and became the first director of the Today Center for Adults, one of the first senior adult day care centers in Ohio. Bognár officially retired from that job after 15 years when she turned 60, but retirement didn’t stick, and soon she was back at work, this time as a case manager at the Passport Program of the Area Agency of Aging in Dayton, where she worked until taking her current position in Yellow Springs.

Along the way, Bognár served as one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Greene County Council on Aging, said Karen Puterbaugh, the council’s executive director, who worked with Bognár for many years. Bognár and several other professionals saw the need to better coordinate and connect the various local and county agencies that served seniors.

Creating a new organization that enhances cooperation between agencies was a natural project for Bognár, Puterbaugh said, because Bognár always sought to promote harmony and to minimize divisiveness.

“She’s all about community,” said Puterbaugh. “She’s the least turf-conscious person I know. I don’t think she has a turfy or political bone in her body.”

Bognár may also be one of the least status-conscious people around. When the Ohio Association of Adult Day Services in 1994 honored Bognár by creating an annual Andrée Bognár award for an outstanding professional, Bognár kept the honor such a secret that she didn’t even tell her sons, said Pat Mayer, the assistant director of the Area Agency on Aging. Bognár was also honored for her service by the Miami Valley Gerontology Council, a professional organization, in 1997, Mayer said.

Over the years as she crossed paths with Bognár, Mayer said, she was struck with how Bognár always treated her clients with consideration and respect. “And she’s tenacious,” Mayer said, noting that Bognár sorted through the bureaucracy to get her clients the benefits and services they needed.

When the Friends Care Community board started the Home Assistance Program in 1998, the board knew as soon as Bognár walked in the door that she was the person to launch the program, said her boss, FCC Administrator Jeff Singleton. Bognár initially impressed the board with her vast experience with area seniors, Singleton said.

“All the networking she’s done over the years. She knows everyone and everything,” he said.

Over time, Singleton said, he came to appreciate even more than Bognár’s knowledge her gentle and caring manner.

“She’s someone people very quickly trust,” he said. “They bare their souls to her, and they know everything they say is in confidence. And they know that she’ll do her best.”

When Bognár first visits a new client, she said, she provides information about the multitude of state, county and local services available to elders who choose to live at home. She finds that people often don’t realize the range of services available, including a personal care assistant who can help with bathing and dressing, a homemaker who can help clean or prepare meals, and home physical and occupational therapists, as well as specialized equipment such as a bath bench, which can make bathing safer.

Other than offering information, Bognár said, her most important task is to respect her clients’ wishes.

“I want to give sound information and then to respect the decisions they make,” she said. “We need to realize that we are all people, young or old, and that we all like to make decisions for ourselves.”

Her job also entails helping older people sort through federal and state bureaucracies, and when they have to go to the hospital, Bognár acts as an advocate and makes sure they get needed services when they return home.

Phyllis Scoenleben, who works in discharge planning at Greene Memorial Hospital, said that she’s always impressed with how Bognár handles her clients.

“She’s always one step ahead. She takes the ball and runs with it, coordinating with us so her clients have as smooth a transition as possible when they get home,” said Scoenleben. “She goes above and beyond what’s required.”

That willingness to go above and beyond is reflected in Bognár’s availability to her clients, which impressed local resident Willa Dallas when her husband, Dal, was hospitalized.

“We’ll miss her,” said Willa Dallas. “I got the feeling she was always available to help whoever needed it.”

To be so available, Bognár must often work flexible or extra hours. When asked how much she works, Bognár replied that she gets “paid for 20 hours a week.” But when asked again the number of hours she actually works, Bognár shrugged her shoulders and replied, “I don’t know.”

When she retires next week, Bognár plans to use her free time to take lots of walks, visit her friends and family, and, of course, do volunteer work for local agencies that serve seniors.

Those who continue working with seniors have a powerful example to follow, her colleagues said.

“She’s been a gift to me personally and a gift to Greene County,” Puterbaugh said. “She’s left a legacy and now it’s our job to carry it on. But she’s put the bar up high.”