November 10, 2005

By Lauren Heaton

Thirty-three years before there was a nursing home in Yellow Springs, former Antioch College President Arthur Morgan seeded the idea that local residents needed an elder-care facility in the village. Twenty years before the center was built, Morgan urged fellow Quaker Paul Wagner, an engineer at Morris Bean & Company, to lead an effort to mobilize the community. A year after Morgan’s death in 1975, villagers caught up with Morgan’s idea and began to work to fulfill his dream.

In 1976 Morgan’s son Griscom Morgan organized a community meeting that drew enough interest, along with the commitment of the Yellow Springs Friends Meeting, to start the project. Morgan’s grandson Lee Morgan and Mort Rauh, the financial vice president of Antioch College, co-chaired the fundraising campaign with Wagner and easily raised $300,000, which at the time was the largest capital campaign in Yellow Springs, Wagner said.

On a tract of land donated by the family of Suzanne Vernet, Friends Care Center opened in August 1980 as a 50-bed skilled-nursing facility on Herman Street. Rick Heath was the center’s first director, and Carl Hyde was the first medical director.

The center’s original focus was to enable its residents to “live healthfully in mind and body,” Wagner said.

According to the Friends Care Web site, its current mission continues to be a commitment to “human dignity, individuality, holistic health, relationship building and active involvement to enhance quality of life” and to care not just for people but about people.

Some of the center’s first residents were the aging parents of its organizers, such as Bill Hyde, Carl Hyde’s father, and the mother of Esther Hofferbert, director of nursing and also a board member. Hofferbert said the center treated each resident as a “whole person.”

Joan Gifford, the activities associate, began working for Friends as a nursing assistant just a couple of months after the center opened. She didn’t know much about nursing care at the time, she said, but she felt strongly about staying because the center’s staff and its organizers seemed committed to their goals of creating an excellent nursing facility.

“It was a dedicated group of people who had a vision and knew what they wanted, and it felt really good to be a part of it,” Gifford said. “It was important to them that we weren’t the standard nursing home, that we excelled, went above and beyond, remained progressive and kept the main focus on the people who lived there.”

Everyone at Friends Care seemed to understand that “if the people employed there were happy and felt as if they were doing something important and were needed, then the people who lived there would benefit,” Gifford said. The satisfaction of everyone there helped to make a community at FCC, she said.

Friends Care soon recognized the need for additional space, and added 16 more beds and a multipurpose area in 1983, and an Alzheimer’s unit in 1986. Friends Assisted Living Center opened in 1999, followed by the Friends Independent Living Homes in 2002, both of which, in addition to the Friends Home Assistance Program, served to transform Friends Care Community, as it is now known, from a small nursing home to a continuum of care retirement community, said Jeff Singleton, the current administrator.

The center’s focus on helping residents to feel that their lives are important and meaningful has helped it to maintain its role as an innovator and a leader in the nursing home field, he said.

In 1987, Friends Care became the first nursing home in Ohio to admit patients with AIDS. In the 1990s, FCC became an Eden Alternative provider, bringing residents into contact with plants, pets and children. Several years ago the center initiated a Head Start program at the nursing home.

Residents Seth Duell and Jim Ford, who have both lived in the Extended Care Center for over a year, said that discussions over the years have led each of them to believe that the quality of care at Friends Care makes it one of the best nursing facilities in Ohio.

Bob Antonick, a 12-year resident, moved to the center from another nursing home after hearing “the buzz” about Friends Care, he said. Antonick came to FCC as a smoker, and without any discussion, a special vent was installed in his room to accommodate his needs, he said. He said remains the only resident who smokes.

People in Yellow Springs in general seem to be “more sensitive to the needs of humanity,” Antonick said, which also means that most of the staff and volunteers at Friends Care go out of their way to be helpful and to take the time to talk to residents.

The friendships Gifford has developed with the residents are the main reason she has stayed so long, she said.

“In our country we have a tendency to think of people who are older as simpler and less worldly than we are, that there’s something missing in them,” she said. “But when you’re there, spending time with them every day, there’s so much they teach us and we teach them. They’re willing to learn new things, and we’re friends with each other.”

Since it opened, Friends has served nearly 1,000 residents, and it is one of the largest employers in Yellow Springs with 130 employees. Friends Extended Care Center has remained small, with 66 beds in the nursing facility, which is big enough to serve the needs of Yellow Springs, Singleton said. The center has a small waiting list that averages a two-month wait for admission.

Wagner said Arthur Morgan always wanted Friends Care to be a community affair, which it has been since the beginning when hundreds of people came forward with their time, vision and money to help establish the facility. He said he is grateful that FCC has done so well because he believes that having an elder-care center in town enables seniors to remain in their community with their family and friends as they age. Wagner said he also believes it’s very important for Yellow Springs to “have its own nursing home run by its own people.”

Two and a half decades after Friends Care Community opened its doors, it continues to attempt to fulfill Morgan’s vision.

“It’s a balance of mission and finance, and the place hasn’t been stagnant,” Singleton said. “We’ve done some good things to add to the community, and it’s kept things interesting and kept me energized in doing my job. We’ve also been very fortunate to have such strong support from the community.”

Singleton and the FCC board of trustees are planning both operating cutbacks and facilities expansion in an effort to respond to Medicaid reimbursement reductions and to try to gain more institutional independence, David Heckler, the board president, said.

The center remains committed to its residents, employees and the mission to serve the community as it changes to meet the demands of the current times, he said. For instance, FCC plans to build a new 24-unit senior apartment complex next year on its current campus.

“We continue to be blessed with a tremendous number of dedicated people, and that continues to be what sustains us,” Heckler said. “As we look to the future, we’re looking at providing additional services and housing opportunities that probably were not envisioned at the time Friends was first built. It’s an organizational evolution.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com