By Rita McInerney

The red brick house on East Second Avenue in Rome is alive with people and motion; the large front room bright with sunlight from the large windows. Three women share a sofa. Across the room several men relax around a table. At the big table in the dining area women stitch cotton fragments later to be joined in a quilt. People in wheelchairs are highly visible.

These men and women, numbering about 24 on this Thursday morning, don’t answer to the same family name or have the same skin color but they are “family.” They talk, joke, pray, and eat together and sometimes they cry together.

This is the community Sister Diane Brin, C.S.J., and Sister Joan Granville, S.C., have created for the elderly or the handicapped who came together as strangers and grew to recognize each other as brothers and sisters; loving, sharing, caring about each other. With a few this is as much love and support as they know in their lonely lives.

They are clients at the Day Rehabilitation Service, a program of the Professional Health Resource Center, Inc., (PHRC) a non-profit facility operating under the co-direction of the two Religious. Twenty women and five men are cared for at present. Ministering to their need to preserve dignity and personhood is as important to the sisters as tending their bodies weakened by years or broken by machines.

The day center is the fruit of an idea nurtured when the women met and became friends while studying for their masters’ degrees in health administration at St. Louis University in St. Louis. They talked of moving beyond the traditional health care, to operating a center where people could be educated to take more responsibility for their own health. And they wanted their service to be in the rural South “to serve people who really needed care.”

Although they lacked money for the venture they had other assets for collateral; a workable idea, the required skills, determination and faith. It would take time to lay the groundwork, learning what was available in grants and what funding the federal and state governments could provide.

In the meantime they went back to their home bases, Sister Diane to Salina, Kansas, (her motherhouse is the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Concordia) and Sister Joan to Elizabeth, N.J., not too far from the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity in Convent Station. For the next few years they worked in hospital administration. Then both became aware they were in line for long-term administrative responsibility. The time for decision had arrived. Did they want to venture into the unknown or stick with security.

“We decided to try it.” Georgia was their choice because it showed the most interest in their proposal during their letter-writing campaign to 11 states in Appalachia. In 1977 they came to Atlanta where Sister Joan worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Sister Diane at Emory Hospital’s Rehabilitation Center. In May, 1978 they moved to Rome. Sister Joan took a job at Floyd Medical Center and Sister Diane at the Cresswell Convalescent Center. They applied for a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission and got to know the health care community in Rome and Floyd County.

Today they are an important part of the health care community. Along with being co-directors of the day center, they direct four other programs for the older adult, the handicapped, the emotionally disturbed or the mentally retarded. There is one other full-time employee, 85 part-time workers. They serve 1,209 people in 10 counties.

The beginning came with the approval of the ARC grant in 1978. Earmarked for health education for the elderly, their territory covered seven counties. “We taught them how to take responsibility for their own health: mainly through proper nutrition and exercise. They saw a lot of unmet health needs among the elderly, “many clients in desperate need. We found a lot of physical needs and learned a lot about older adults.”

By this time the Coosa Valley Planning and Development Commission was a strong supporter of their skillful, unselfish health care and approached them about setting up a day rehabilitation center as an alternative to costly nursing home care and as a way to keep people out of nursing homes as long as possible.

“We knew we would never be able to do it on our own,” Sister Joan said. “We were able to get a contract from the Georgia Department of Medical Assistance. Both our communities were very supportive.” Both communities provided start-up money along with endless prayer support.

With their expertise and dedication they were able, from the beginning in Rome, to “plug into the community care system.” They “plugged in” so well that the planning commission approached them several times about taking on new programs, all directed at helping the poor, elderly, physically frail and handicapped.

“They call and say ‘it’s really nice you have these programs. Would you like to do some more,” Sister Joan joked. “We’ve had to turn down some programs,” Sister Diane said.

“We have said from the beginning that we wanted to provide services the community was not providing,” Sister Joan said. Now their goal has been reached in five areas. Their non-profit center includes, along with the day care; the Senior Community Service, Employment Program – a Title V program for people over 55; the Foster Grandparent Service; the Senior Companion Service which matches people over 60 as support persons to emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded individuals over 21, and an Alternative Living Service which places adults who otherwise would have to go into nursing homes in approved, licensed private family homes.

At the busy day care center, the registered nurses on the staff, Sister Diane and Joanne Gaba, monitor blood pressure, give medications and soothing foot and skin care to wheelchair clients with lifeless limbs. Physical therapy is practiced in a well-equipped room just off the large room. All equipment was purchased with a $50,000 grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Here Frances Ransom is learning to walk again, on two artificial legs. She was doing fine on the prostheses until breaking her femur in a bathroom fall at home. Today she is persisting, wheeling up to the bars and grasping them firmly, lifting her tired body up slowly, taking painful steps. Sister Diane and Joanne are nearby. For other clients there are other rehabilitative services: exercises for hands twisted and knobbed by painful arthritis, massage for an arm stiffened from confinement in a sling. A woman has her hair washed and combed, another has a session with a talking book. Pert, tiny Radar, an Alzheimers’ victim who seems to be everyone’s pet, is shepherded to the bathroom. Russell has a dressing on his bony, shiny scalp changed. Jim soaks his paralyzed feet and Hope sits in her wheelchair, next to the television, creating a small box cover with a large needle and red wool.

There is talk and laughter. It is comfortable to be in a friendly environment, much better than sitting alone in a small apartment; than being overlooked in a family preoccupied with the demands of children, or being dependent on an abusive relative.

They have come to the center by different routes. Some live in Rome, others out in the country. Julius Windom, the driver, picks up the men and women, leaving the center at 7 a.m. and takes them home in the afternoon. The clients must live within a 15-mile radius of the center. With one exception they are Medicaid clients referred by the Office of Aging in Rome, by Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital, by family and children’s services or their own doctors.

“It’s being proven that the center is cutting down the amount of money needed to care for these people,” Sister Joan said, Medicaid has a $475 monthly ceiling on regular care, two or three times a week, Sister Diane said. They spend about six hours at the center. Some eat a light breakfast and a full meal at midday.

Sisters Diane and Joan are at the center for an hour by the time Julius arrives with the first vanload around 8 o’clock. Ora Hearst, the health aide and housekeeper, serves them a light breakfast. At noontime, those whose diets permit, eat the meal delivered from a nearby restaurant. Others require special foods. A few must be fed, some pick at their food, others clean their plates. Leftovers are carried home in foil-wrapped packages for evening meals.

The structure brings them in, one of the co-directors explains. At first they feel isolated. That soon changes. “A real community atmosphere has developed, become very strong. And they really thrive.” A telephone network links them away from the center. They phone each other, call absentees to check if they’re OK. “If one is sick they know about it before we do.” Such closeness didn’t develop overnight “but it’s been neat for us to see that happen” over the four-and-a-half years since the center opened.

With few exceptions the clients are elderly. Once they accepted a boy, 13, who was recovering from surgery for a non-malignant brain tumor. “He rode a wheelchair in the first day. We did intensive therapy with him. Six months later he was walking,” Sister Diane said. “At first he hated all these old people, couldn’t stand it. But he became like a grandson to them. Now he visits and asks for everybody by name.”

Currently they have a Catholic client, Effie Pappalardo, who used to work at St. Mary’s school and proudly wears the Miraculous Medal given her on retirement. There are a lot of other denominations represented among the men and women. At the Thursday morning prayer service everyone sang verse after verse of “Give Me That Old Time Religion.”

“There are different gifts but the same spirit” from I Corinthians was the Scripture reading for the service led by Sister Anna Soler, Sister of Charity and computer programmer from Elizabeth, N.J. She was driving north the next morning, sad at having to leave them. “You give me so much.” Two or three women shared, the last speaking of how much it meant to her to be with them. “I love you all.” Peace flowed all over the room, everyone hugging and kissing, smiling, speaking each other’s names.

Sisters Diane and Joan have found a friendly, supportive community at St. Mary’s parish where both have “really tried to act as parishioners.” They are Eucharistic ministers and have co-taught ninth grade CCD. “It’s been my first parish experience,” Sister Joan said.

In the beginning they sensed some apprehension from the community. “Most had never met Catholics before, didn’t know any Catholics.” They have become involved and gotten to know people beyond the work experience. “Eventually,” Sister Joan said, “you find you really get to know and identify with the community. It took several years to make the transition.” They hope, at some point, “to turn this over to a local group. But it’s hard to find professionals. It’s complex, anything in health care is. We hope to weed ourselves out of it.”

Weekends pass quickly doing housework and yardwork at the house they share in Rome. Usually there is payroll work to be done for one of the programs. They expect the new computer will make this job much easier. A foundation established by Sister Diane’s community provided some of the money for the computer.

In a few months they will make the move to a building a mile away. “We are exploding. We can hardly navigate to give care.” The new center will have three times the space and better parking facilities.

This year they plan to apply to Medicare to become a Comprehensive Outpatient Rehabilitation Facility. This, said Sister Diane, “means we can expand services to take care of Medicare patients. They will come in for short periods for physical, occupational and speech therapy and for nursing care.”

Trainees are a big help they say. The center has contracts with Floyd Junior College, Berry College and North Georgia State to provide learning experience for students interested in working with the elderly. Novices come from their motherhouses for the same reason.

Three of the center’s employees, Louise Campbell, Ora and Julius, are employed through the Senior Community Employment Service. The PHRC has directed this program for three years and each year has won a state award for the number of people placed. But it’s hard to convince agencies to hire the over-55 people, sister Diane said.

“We both can do almost everything,” Sister Diane said about the five programs. “Joan concentrates on the employment service, Foster Grandparents and Senior Companion. I concentrate on Day Rehabilitation and alternative living. It’s hard to talk about division of services. We both know them all so well.”

The dimensions of their ministry have been stretched to limits never dreamed of when the ideas took shape back at St. Luis University. They are helping to fill an enormous need for health care for people no longer able to help themselves. They are doing it in response to the challenges of the Gospels, not for big dividends for stockholders. Their gifts have been ample and their strengths nourished daily by those to whom they minister.