Events

Champions at Pine Run



Bucks County Women’s Journal




December 2013/January 2014



By Barbara Chierici, Senior Director of Marketing

You might be surprised that I can describe our residents as Champions, spirited men and women, many of whom triumph over the limitations of age and illness by staying intellectually, spiritually, and physically connected. Making the move to a retirement setting, at any level, often reenergizes individuals to engage in educational classes, fitness pursuits, and social interactions simply because the environment makes it easy.

Champion success stories add to the high color

of retirement life:


* A 99-year-old gentleman, a graduate of Harvard and MIT, who walks daily and

does not represent himself as a champion other than delighting in conversation on almost any subject due to his education and travels; he is always filled with purpose.


* A group of women, proud octogenarians or better, who find camaraderie in a weekly game of billiards with “the girls.” Fun is their primary goal; playing by the rules is secondary!


* An 81-year-old athlete with Parkinson’s who continues to jog each morning, no matter the season, to keep his muscles and joints limber. His wife proudly displays a quilt made from T-shirts earned over decades of running races.


* An 83-year-old adventurer who jumped out of a plane on May 17, 2013 with his two sons and two grandchildren. The tandem jump originated from 13,500 feet in the blue skies of Gardiner, New York.


* A 66-year-old potter who teaches others for free at the Pine Run Craft Barn. Toiling with student peers to shape clay on the wheel, applying proper glazes, and firing up the kiln rewards her creative spirit.

Studies show that residents of retirement communities often live longer and better than their peers. Resources such as social workers, professional nurses, drivers, and life-enrichment teams buoy the efforts of individuals to engage in healthy habits and to take pleasure in meeting new friends, learning new hobbies, and setting out on interesting adventures. Preparing meals in the bonus years can be lonely at home. Dining at Pine Run and Lakeview is a happy event, anticipated and shared in good company with a variety of options. Menus change seasonally and often include farm-fresh favorites such as local corn and peaches, soup made from stock, prime cuts of meat or fish, along with vegetarian fare and desserts to please any palate or diet consideration.

Doylestown is a community full of art, history, and a long tradition of caring espoused by the founders of Doylestown Hospital, the Village Improvement Association (VIA). That matriarchal root invites participation in an abundance of events and community projects. Working together, our Champion associates and residents at Pine Run and Lakeview are able to embrace opportunities to stay involved and give back to the community. For example, bake sales at Lakeview in the past year have done more than whet appetites—they raised more than $1,000 for Samaritan’s Purse, Bridge to Uganda, Buck up for Bucks County, and the American Red Cross.

We are privileged to have a cadre of volunteers to power activities in many levels of living. One volunteer in our memory care neighborhood, The Garden, is Doylestown Hospital Lay Chaplain Pat Pizza. He kindly shared a message he delivered to his church congregation in October. His message, reflecting on the care the residents give to each other, emphasizes the importance of truly creating a home (or community). An excerpt follows:

“The care I want to talk about is how the residents care for each other. Some of them are quite mobile, while others are essentially confined to a wheelchair. Some can carry on a near-normal conversation with some understanding, while others are unintelligible or no longer speak at all. Often a resident will be sitting there crying for some unknown reason or one that can’t be expressed. Before I go on, let me assure you that the staff is always around to provide for them. However, more often than not, one of the residents will go over to the person and try to soothe him or her, or, if unable to talk, will just hold that person in a hug. There always seems to be a connection between the two and a calming down of the one disturbed. Trust me; it is a sight to behold.”

Caring for others places importance where it belongs in a not-for-profit organization —

on the quality of life of the people who live and work as Champions throughout our continuum. Pine Run strives to be a progressive, resident-focused community, full of vitality and enthusiasm, promoting independence and wellness in all levels of living.

Pine Run is toasting these remarkable elders with a unique film and presentation, Age of Champions, capping off Active Aging Week in November. The sporting film is an award-winning PBS documentary following five competitors who sprint, leap, and swim for gold at the National Senior Olympics. Fun and inspiring, these true stories echo the strengths and frailties we see daily at Pine Run and opens the mind to reinvention at any stage!

I invite any reader to call me at 215-340-5214;

I’d love to arrange a visit to any of our

vibrant levels of living:

Pine Run Village

Residential cottages and apartments for 65+ independent living

Lakeview Personal Care

Quality care for older adults needing assistance with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, dining, and medication management

The Garden

Specialized personal care for those with Alzheimer’s and related

dementias

Pine Run Health Center

A full spectrum of on-site skilled nursing care and

physicians for short-term rehabilitative therapies and long-term care

Construction walls become art halls

at Pine Run



Doylestown Observer




November 2013

During renovations in The Garden at Pine Run Health Center, plain construction walls turned into beautiful art halls! Originators of the idea (pictured) were Kristen Moore, Life Enrichment Coordinator and Tim O’Connell, project supervisor for McDonald Building Company.

This fresh opportunity for self-expression attracted residents with memory impairment to tap their inner artist. More than 35 million people worldwide are estimated to have Alzheimer’s. To find out more about levels of living at Pine Run, call 1-800-992-8992.

50 YEARS AFTER THE ASSASSINATION


Looking back at the way we lived



The Intelligencer




November 19, 2013

It was a decade that sparked some of our most tumultuous years as a country. John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War — those dramatic events are often the lens through which the 1960s are viewed.

But when it comes to the way we lived, especially in the earlier half of that decade, a sense of optimism and innocence still prevailed.

“To me, there were two ’60s. What we characteristically think of as the ’60s really gets underway in 1965, when (President Lyndon) Johnson commits a real army to Vietnam. Then there was the first half of the ’60s, which was really the ’50s in many ways,” said Michael Aaron Rockland, a professor of American studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “It’s like the ‘50s were 20 years long. We come out of World War II and all people want to do is buy a house in the suburbs … and get a Ford and have some babies and have a normal life.”

That may be simplifying things, but for many people, such simplicity tends to frame recollections of the 1960s years prior to Kennedy’s death. “It was an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’-type of lifestyle,” said Irv Thompson, referring which ran from 1952 through 1966.

Thompson, a Yardley native who lives in the Pine Run Community in Doylestown Township, was 15 in 1963 and attending Admiral Farragut Academy, a college preparatory school, in Pine Beach, N.J. He recalled the path before him was clear: “Grow up, get a college education, get a job I would have until I retired, have two-and-a-half kids and a house with a picket fence,” he said.

Life would ultimately take him in a different direction — he was drafted, but his service was deferred due to a shoulder injury, leading him to eventually join the Navy. But many conformed to that societal expectation and the rigid gender roles of the time.

“Socioeconomically, it was important to people to have traditional marriages, in terms of the father being the breadwinner and the mother being home,” said Linda Abrams, a therapist with the Council for Relationships and director of its Spring House office. “Even if it didn’t feel fulfilling, the division of roles was what people did.”

1963 was the year Betty Friedan’s landmark book, “The Feminine Mystique,” was published, challenging the image of the contented housewife. Still, many women did indeed seem happy to abandon their ambitions for domesticity. Abrams’ mom read Friedan’s book, yet insisted she and her friends didn’t fi t its profile of unhappy housewives.

“My mother loved being home … but some people say, ‘It looked better than I felt.’ There was the sense that it wasn’t OK to not feel good about it (not working outside the house),” said Abrams. Even women who had the opportunity to work, like Doylestown Township’s Sandra Fickes, sometimes opted to stay home.

Fickes was 27 in 1963, raising three children and living in Bedminster. Her own mom had been prohibited from working in the family business manufacturing pet food. But when Flickes was given a choice, she said, “I wanted to be a mother first. My day-to-day revolved around the kids. It was a commitment: marriage, childrearing, taking care of your parents and in-laws. These were expected steps in life. It was an enjoyable life.”

After Mount Holly, N.J., native Virginia Whalen married, she gave up her job as a secretary to stay home and raise their kids. When an illness forced her husband to retire in 1963, she returned to work in the Bronx. After his death, she moved back to New Jersey, where she got a job as a secretary in the Westampton Township School District — and a liberal arts degree from Rider College. But she never regretted those years spent at home with their brood of five.

“There might have been a couple of times where I envied my friend going into Manhattan when she got all dressed up,” 91-year-old Whalen, of Medford Lakes, N.J., said as she recalled a neighbor who worked for a cosmetic company. “But I was happy. It was that old time. Father goes to work. Mother stays home. Father knows best.”

Today, marriage and raising a child are often delayed in the pursuit of a career, and women are just as likely to be the family’s breadwinner as men. The push for marriage equality, the growing number of couples who live together outside of marriage and even technology have also redefined what constitutes the traditional family.

“Society is more accepting of people who choose to not be married and have children, especially as more women are able to support themselves,” said Samantha Gross, a history professor in the department of social and behavioral science at Bucks County Community College. “People get married and say, ‘We don’t want to have children.’

“And if you do want children, just take a look at technology: you don’t even need to have sex to get pregnant. You don’t need to carry the child yourself. You can have a child who is biologically yours but you were never pregnant,” she said.

When it comes to gay marriage, the controversy harks back to the ‘60s and another perceived threat to the institution of marriage.

Then, interracial marriage was illegal in many states, with similar arguments protesting that it wasn’t what God intended. The U.S. Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia struck down such laws in 1967. That led to an increase in marriages between whites and blacks, but the possibility of gay marriage wasn’t even on the radar.

“We didn’t know gay and transgender even existed,” said Bunny Swartz, who was a junior at Bensalem High School in 1963. “It just didn’t touch our lives.” Neither, it would appear, did divorce and dysfunction — at least not compared with their prevalence today.

“If someone got a divorce, it was horrifying in your circle of friends,” said Whalen. “I would think there were several marriages where, because of the stigma, they stayed together for the children. Today, I think sometimes couples get married with the idea if it doesn’t work out, they can always get a quick divorce.”

Yet, according to Abrams, divorce rates today are about the same as they were in the 1960s. Earlier this year, a study by The Marriage Foundation, a U.K.-based nonprofit dedicated to enhancing marriages, revealed a couple who gets married today has the same chance of getting divorced after 10 or more years of marriage as a couple who married in 1963.

“It happened, but it was more scandalous than it is today,” said Gross. “Just because people stayed married didn’t mean they were happy in their marriage.”

And just because people weren’t as open about their sex lives didn’t mean they weren’t having as much sex either — and before marriage, too.

“Unmarried women used to pass around a wedding ring in the doctor’s office so they could have access to birth control,” said BCCC’s Gross. “Teenage pregnancy rates peaked in the late ’50s (from a record high of 96 births per 1,000 women in 1957) … and then started going down, down, down.”

But no one would glean such things from media portrayals of that era.

“TV shows, they certainly created this glossy veneer over decades and parts of decades that were certainly not glossy underneath the surface,” said Gross.

Then TV — in black and white — served as a source of family entertainment. But it wasn’t the recreational hub or the diverting distraction it often is today.

“We used to play board games. We played Monopoly, Parcheesi, all different kinds of board games. We played cards,” said Thompson, who also recalled the nights his parents had friends over for their bridge club. “That was a big social thing for everybody, to come into each other houses and do these kinds of things. It wasn’t sitting around watching television.”

When families did watch TV, variety shows like “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which premiered in 1948, were popular.

“Back then, from 8 to 9 (p.m.) was known as the family hour. There were shows that appealed to families in those early hours: ‘The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,’ ‘The Patty Duke Show,’ ‘My Three Sons’ — they were very popular shows,” said Harvey Solomon. He’s a national pop culture authority and the author of six books about movies, television, music and fashion across the decades, including “Book of Days: ‘60s.”

Television in 1963 tended toward wholesomeness and conformity, compared to today’s glut of reality shows that revel in crass behavior and frank sexuality, along with anything-goes, adult-oriented sitcoms like “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy” and “Modern Family,” the latter featuring a gay couple

parenting an adopted child.

In 1963, married couple Rob and Laura Petrie (Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) slept in separate beds on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” — though the sitcom was among the first to dispense with the happy homemaker uniform of a dress and pearls. And one of that year’s most popular films — “Beach Party” — featured a bikini-clad Annette Funicello with her navel covered to preserve an air of innocence.

“Sex was always taboo, both in television and film,” said Solomon. “You could be suggestive, but you couldn’t show anything. Violence certainly wasn’t as pronounced as you would see it in television today. … Back then, the network censors were very much in power.”

Parents didn’t have to worry as much about what their kids were exposed to, and that extended beyond TV.

“The whole idea of community was a wonderful thing,” said Abrams. “There was such an opendoor kind of policy with neighbors. Thinking about safety really wasn’t at the forefront. There really was the sense people were watching out for each other.” Today, we lead more disconnected lives.

“There is so much stress and schedules have gotten so frenetic I think people don’t catch their breaths,” said Abrams, the therapist. “It’s a lot harder to have a family meal and a lot of people don’t set boundaries with their electronics. It’s a lot harder in this world now with all the technology.”

In 1963 — the year pushbutton phones were introduced and some households still shared telephone service through party lines — few could have imagined a world of smartphones, iPads and countless digital devices to supply us with a steady stream of information and connect us instantaneously.

“I think for people to have face-to-face contact or even voice-to- voice doesn’t come as naturally because it’s so easy to do it in an impersonal way,” said Abrams. “Picking up the phone is kind of an odd thing. In the course of a week, I have at least 10 clients who get their cellphones out to read me something on a text. If you’re in a restaurant, people can be texting and be at the same table. The idea of being together can still be an isolating thing.”

Many of those who came of age or raised kids in the early ’60s decry such overuse. Whalen does like looking up information on the Internet, especially regarding her health, but she still writes letters to her children and grandchildren, though she knows they would prefer email.

“I guess that’s gone (letter writing) by the wayside now that you can text,” she said. “My daughter is trying to teach me. She say it’s so much easier, so I will try it.”

Thompson, who has a smartphone, learned how to text a few years ago when he realized it was necessary to communicate with his daughter.

“She wouldn’t answer my phone calls but if I texted, she would write me back,” the Bucks County resident said. “I’m glad I figured it out. I text all kinds of people today, but I’m still not real good at all the shortcuts, like using ‘U R’ instead of ‘you are.’ ”

Thompson also has a Facebook account, but not everyone has been so eager to embrace social media.

“I often wonder, would I have used these things if they had been around when I was in high school? Would I have used Facebook? The answer is absolutely,” said Swartz. “But all this technology, I’m overwhelmed. I can only see it for its practical component. I would never be in my car without my cellphone because what if something happened?”

But does her 8-year-old granddaughter really need to have an iPad?

“I feel like it’s one of those things I just don’t get,” Swartz said. “It’s like Twitter. Why am I the least bit interested in what Jay Leno is having for lunch?”

Lakeview picnic takes families

“Over the Rainbow”



Bucks County Herald




November 7, 2013




Photographs by Natalie Wi

Lakeview, the personal care community of Pine Run in Doylestown, celebrated its anniversary with a “Wizard of Oz” themed picnic.

Central Bucks

Chamber of Commerce

Health & Wellness Committee



Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce Annual Report 2012-2013




Photography by Chris Whitney, Whitney Landscapes

The Health & Wellness Committee mission is to assist CBCC Members in creating and maintaining a culture of physical and mental health that benefits their business and their employees. Committee goals include: providing unique and productive networking opportunities for committee members; supporting the education of Chamber Members on how to create and maintain a culture of healthy living; encouraging individual responsibility for health and wellness. The committee conducts monthly meetings/presentations at the Chamber for CBCC Members. Meeting time includes an information based presentation and committee business. The Chamber provides on-site, information-based presentations/services to Chamber Members at their place of business or other locations, as appropriate.

The fall program, produced by the Health & Wellness Committee and sponsored by Firstrust Bank, is “Survival Guide” for the Affordable Healthcare Act, on September 11 at the Wellness Center, Warrington – with special courtesies from Cornerstone Clubs.

Doylestown Hospital celebrates 90th anniversary



Bucks County Herald




October 24, 2013

Doylestown Hospital is celebrating 90 years of providing compassionate and high-quality care to the community, devoted to the legacy of the hospital’s founders while looking ahead to ensure vitality in the future.

Today, the Village Improvement Association Health System includes Doylestown Hospital, along with The Doylestown Hospital Surgery Center at the Health and Wellness Center in Warrington; Pine Run Community and Health Center; Lakeview by Pine Run, Visiting Nurse/Home Health and VIA Affiliates (physician practices). But it all started with an eightbed hospital in the borough of Doylestown.

The VIA of Doylestown was the guiding force behind the founding of the Doylestown Emergency Hospital in 1923, and still owns and oversees the operation of the hospital today. Founded in 1895 by a small, but inspired group of women from Doylestown, the VIA is nationally recognized as the only women’s club to own and oversee a community hospital. The first meeting was held April 26, 1895 with 14 women present. Since that time, the VIA has grown in size and scope to its present membership of more than 400 members.

The VIA recognized the need for public health initiatives and community healthcare services, and began with the employment of a Visiting Nurse in 1916. The 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic galvanized the need for formalized community based health care. The VIA, together with local medical professionals and the Doylestown community, opened the Doylestown Emergency Hospital at Pine Street and Oakland Avenue in the heart of the borough in 1923.

The hospital was officially dedicated on Oct. 9, 1923.

As demand for hospital services increased, Doylestown Emergency Hospital moved to a new location at Belmont Avenue and Spruce Street in Doylestown in 1939. Originally a 21-bed facility, this hospital expanded to accommodate 54 beds in 1951. As the community grew, a larger facility was needed. Ground was broken in former cow pastures for the new hospital on West State Street in September 1973. The third Doylestown Hospital was dedicated as $12.6 million, 200,000-square-foot, 165-bed hospital in November 1975.

In 1992, the VIA acquired the Pine Run Community and Health Center and in 1998 added a separate assisted living complex known as Pine Run Lakeview.

In May 2000, the hospital opened the Heart Center to offer state-of-the art care to the community. The Heart Institute of Doylestown Hospital opened in 2007 and has consistently earned superb marks from healthcare quality ratings organizations. Currently known as The Richard A. Reif Heart Institute of Doylestown Hospital, the new name pays homage to Rich Reif, who served as CEO for more than 20 years before retiring in January 2013.

The Emergency Department expansion project (opened April 2010) added a 39-bed ER and another 40 beds on a second floor medical-surgical unit. The hospital is currently licensed for 238 beds.

Today, new and exciting challenges are emerging across the spectrum of health care.

“Health care reform is requiring that hospitals, doctors and healthy systems re-examine their role,” said President and CEO Jim Brexler. “Are they adequately focused on “health” care or “illness” care? It is a challenge to design a system of services that is both proactive in promoting health and yet is still responsive to patient needs when illness and disease are present. At Doylestown Hospital, we’re working to design and operate a healthcare system that addresses the needs of our patients and their families. Our goal is to be a health system that is both relevant and indispensible to the communities we serve.”

Doylestown Hospital’s medical staff includes more than 420 physicians in more than 50 specialty areas. Areas of clinical emphasis include cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery, oncology, orthopedics, emergency medicine, maternal-child health, interventional radiology, gastroenterology, urology, general surgery and robotic surgery.

While facilities and technology have changed dramatically over the years, the hospital and its medical staff, associates and volunteers remain committed to the mission to “provide a responsive, healing environment to our patients and their families, and to improve the quality of life for all members of our community.”