Ecumen Home Care Director Frances Fernandez Brings Her Mission to Minnesota
Frances Fernandez, the director of Ecumen Home Care Twin Cities, is a woman on a mission. Always has been.
Top 5 Blog Posts — April 6
Did you miss last week's most-read Changing Aging blog posts? Ecumen's online visitors found these articles most interesting:
Popsugar.com: 25 Life Lessons Written by a 99-Year-Old Man
“Grandpa Cheese” gives his great-granddaughter a few life lessons on living well, including a strong endorsement of eating sausage every day.
Ecumen Employee Jen Rasmussen: Making Life Better by Making Life Fun
Jen Rasmussen is Director of Fun at Ecumen Lakeview Commons. Today she has unleashed a feisty dog and a small child on the residents of the Maplewood assisted living community. Her boss passes through the commotion and jokingly tells her she is fired — for the third time this week.
Ecumen-Managed ‘The Classic at Hillcrest Greens’ in Altoona, Wisconsin To Open in Early July
Construction of The Classic at Hillcrest Greens in Altoona, Wisc., is well underway, and the new senior living community managed by Ecumen plans to open in early July. The new community, located at 2455 Sawgrass Place in Altoona, includes 99 rental apartments for people 62 and older — 63 designated for independent or assisted living residents and 36 for memory care residents.
From Golf Course to Multigenerational Community: Eau Claire Leader-Telegram Charts the Evolution of Hillcrest Greens in Altoona, Wisc.
A former 18-hole golf course — located along U.S. 12 just east of Eau Claire — is being converted into the Hillcrest Greens planned community development which will offer a variety of multigenerational housing options.
An Earful of Fun at Ecumen Seasons at Maplewood: Home of the Melodious ‘Maple Nuts’
They call themselves the “Maple Nuts” — an instant tipoff that they are a good-humored bunch. The Maple Nuts, who range in age from 70 to 96, are united by their love of singing. Most have sung all their lives, usually in church choirs.
You can read these articles and more at ecumen.org.
An Earful of Fun at Ecumen Seasons at Maplewood: Home of the Melodious ‘Maple Nuts’
A spirited group of women residents at Ecumen Seasons at Maplewood are belting out show tunes with conviction. “There’s nothing like a dame,” they sing.
Ecumen Century Club: Happy 102nd Birthday Ruth Knapp
Ecumen honors Ruth Knapp, a resident of Ecumen Detroit Lakes, who is 102.
Popsugar.com: 25 Life Lessons Written by a 99-Year-Old Man
Grandpa Cheese has taught me a lot about life. I could think of no better person to give the world a few life lessons than him. Here's what he has learned in his 99 years.
From Golf Course to Multigenerational Community: Eau Claire Leader-Telegram Charts the Evolution of Hillcrest Greens in Altoona, Wisc.
A former 18-hole golf course — located along U.S. 12 just east of Eau Claire — is being converted into the Hillcrest Greens planned community development which will offer a variety of multigenerational housing options.
On the 178-acre site of the former Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Altoona, single family homes and senior housing are under construction. “What we’re hoping to have within the development is a community or neighborhood where people can rotate through as they grow,” Bill Albright, vice president of Heartland Contractors, told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram in this story that explores the site’s evolution.
Hillcrest Greens will be home to The Classic, an Ecumen-managed four-section building on the campus devoted to senior citizen housing, with independent and assisted living apartments and memory care, which will open in July.
The community is adjacent to more than 65 acres of public park, with 6,000 feet of frontage on Otter Creek (a Wisconsin Class II Trout Stream), 3.5 miles of bike and walking trails and sidewalks, three ponds and park amenities that include a playground area, a pavilion, basketball court, pickle ball court, and a putting/chipping green.
Top 5 Blog Posts — March 30
Did you miss last week's most-read Changing Aging blog posts? Ecumen's online visitors found these articles most interesting:
Ecumen Employee Jen Rasmussen: Making Life Better by Making Life Fun
Jen Rasmussen is Director of Fun at Ecumen Lakeview Commons. Today she has unleashed a feisty dog and a small child on the residents of the Maplewood assisted living community. Her boss passes through the commotion and jokingly tells her she is fired — for the third time this week.
Ecumen Century Club: Happy 105th Birthday Verna Bloom
Everybody wants to know Verna Bloom’s secret. She’ll tell you being 105 years old “surprises” her because she has no big secrets to longevity — except maybe a positive attitude.
The Strangest Bedfellows — By Ecumen Blogger Jim Klobuchar
Bleats of nostalgia broke out with the approaching shutdown of the almost legendary Nye’s Polonaise bar and restaurant in Minneapolis. Jim Klobuchar recalls the inventiveness of founding owner Al Nye.
Ecumen’s Abiitan Mill City Project Building Momentum
Ecumen’s new Abiitan Mill City development planned for downtown Minneapolis is gaining momentum as potential residents are making priority commitments and final city approval is pending in two weeks.
Ecumen-Managed ‘The Classic at Hillcrest Greens’ in Altoona, Wisconsin To Open in Early July
Construction of The Classic at Hillcrest Greens in Altoona, Wisc., is well underway, and the new senior living community managed by Ecumen plans to open in early July. The new community, located at 2455 Sawgrass Place in Altoona, includes 99 rental apartments for people 62 and older — 63 designated for independent or assisted living residents and 36 for memory care residents.
You can read these articles and more at ecumen.org.
The Strangest Bedfellows — By Ecumen Blogger Jim Klobuchar
Bleats of nostalgia broke out with the approaching shutdown of the almost legendary Nye’s Polonaise bar and restaurant in Minneapolis. They have not subsided since the most recent owner delivered the bad news.
Loyalists remember Al Nye, the proud and hulking owner who popularized it. They remember sing-along sessions around the piano that turned amateur songsters from nearby factories into waiting-to-be-discovered successors to Placido Domingo and Renee Fleming. They remember the cuisine intended to replicate the best of Eastern Europe but was more like the aromas of home kitchens of Northeast Minneapolis, more familiar to the sons and daughters of the immigrant years.
My own regrets have nothing to do with the ambiance of Nye’s Polonaise as much as the inventiveness of its founder, Al Nye, in salvaging a dozen big pay days from the most implausible source, a football clinic that I taught in the early years of the Vikings arrival in Minnesota.
The classes were held every other week. The sponsor was the Minneapolis Star Tribune, for which I covered pro football in the Vikings’ early years. The cost was a few dollars a session. We rotated the classroom site every few years but usually wound up close to the football-loving precincts of Northeast Minneapolis. We didn’t get into the more arcane parts of pro football strategy but, after two weeks or so, it was clear to me that my students could tell the difference between a Red Dog and a Hot Dog.
We usually chose a venue that served lunches and snacks and offered a temperate selection of drinks, so that none of the 150 or so students who attend each session would feel deprived. In other words, it was a payday for the owner.
Nye’s Polonaise was familiar to me by then, partly because it stood virtually next door to the much revered Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, said to be the oldest in the city. The problem with conducting the clinic in Nye’s was the absence of anything close to an auditorium where we could comfortably conduct our course of higher learning.
“You need chairs — more than a hundred,” I told Al. “You need a place to put the scholars.”
“I’ve got a place in the basement,” he said. “It’s clean, comfy and adequate, and will seat them all.”
“What about chairs?
Al Nye considered this newest crisis calmly.
“We’re neighbors,” he said of Our Lady of Lourdes, “historic church, wonderful church.”
“And…” I said, suddenly worried about a clash of cultures.
“They have chairs,” he said, “Hundreds of chairs. Nye’s Polonaise has a basement room. Clean, comfortable and user friendly. I’ll talk to the Fathers. I’m sure we can work out an arrangement. We have an excellent relationship. We’ll send platoons over to pick up the chairs and bring them back.”
Do you have any serious doubt about Al Nye being able to work out an arrangement? All I can tell you is that 150 chairs were there in Al Nye’s basement every Tuesday night. I’m equally sure that they were back in the church the next day.
So I had to call this jerry-built classroom — beneath the sing-alongs at the piano and an occasional broken beer bottle overhead — a rousing success. I even announced Al as our visiting celebrity for one of the evenings.
When he left, I asked my class their impressions.
“Okay,” one of my scholars said. “Al was very good but Bud Grant might have been better.”
I said it was hard to picture Bud Grant diagraming a five man blitz in the middle of a polka party.
St. Peter Herald Highlights the Dedicated Work of Ecumen Sand Prairie Caregiver Robyn Sellner
Robyn Sellner, a memory care assistant at Ecumen Sand Prairie in St. Peter, Minn., has a natural ability to connect with people with dementia.
Ecumen Employee Jen Rasmussen: Making Life Better by Making Life Fun
Jen Rasmussen is Director of Fun at Ecumen Lakeview Commons. Today she has unleashed a feisty dog and a small child on the residents of the Maplewood assisted living community. Her boss passes through the commotion and jokingly tells her she is fired — for the third time this week. 
Gus, the spirited two-year-old Border Collie, is chasing a ball all around the expansive lobby as 18-month-old Nora Bawek, the community’s youngest volunteer, shrieks with delight. That seems to be just fine with the residents.
Everyone is smiling. People are pulling closer to the action — picking up the ball and tossing it to Gus and vying for Nora’s attention. Jen likes what she sees. Fun is happening, according to plan.
Jen’s official title is Director of Therapeutic Recreation, and mainly her job is to help residents stay physically active and socially engaged. Fun is highly therapeutic.
Most people intuitively know that inactivity and social isolation are not conducive to good health. But now reputable scientific studies go a step further, documenting that staying active and involved have significant life-extending benefits.
“I’m a big believer in use-it-or-lose-it,” Jen says. “Regardless of age, we need to use our minds and bodies.”
Jen and her staff constantly plot, arrange and implement stimulating activities — offering something for everyone. That means they get to know all the residents on a deeply personal level and have a keen understanding of what activities will have broad appeal.
Jen says usually about 20 to 30 residents come out for all the large group activities. Others pick and choose, and a very small number need to be coaxed out of their apartments. Jen and her staff will go to great lengths to find activities that resonate. Sometimes the solution is as simple as taking someone to a favorite fast food restaurant.
Activities and events have a broad range and change constantly based on resident requests. But there are staples like group reading of the newspaper each morning, shopping trips and exercise programs. Usually there are eight or nine scheduled activities each day, along with evening events two nights a week.
Jen says one of her all-time favorite events was a re-creation of the opening ceremony of the Olympics. She is also a big fan of the annual first-day-of-spring pie toss, which happened last Friday. “Basically people get to toss a boat of Ready Whip in the staff’s faces,” she explains.
Jen has been in this job for 13 years. In her previous job, she used to drive by Lakeview Commons on her way to and from work. One day, the community was putting on a big outdoor carnival and, on a whim, she stopped in, thinking she might try to get a second job there, working part-time. She interviewed and was offered the director job.
In addition to activities, she supervises volunteers and transportation. Nora, her youngest volunteer, comes twice a month with her mother, Carrie, who used to work in dining services at Lakeview Commons. 
Jen says she’s a planner by nature and loves structure, but the job has other ideas. “Every day is different, and I love that about my job,” she says. “ I’ve learned you just have to go with the flow, or you go crazy. I never know what I’m going to get into when I walk in the door. And that’s OK.”
Jen went to Mankato State University and graduated with a degree in recreation, parks and leisure studies, with an emphasis on recreational therapy. While in school, she had a job caring for seniors as a certified nursing assistant (CNA). “That’s when I discovered that I had a heart for seniors,” she says. “I’m always amazed at how much you can learn from older people. They know so much.”
Out of college, she first started working with children with special needs, but soon felt the pull to go back to working with older people. She has worked in the geriatric behavioral unit at Bethesda Hospital and in other senior communities before coming to Lakeview Commons.
Most of the time, whatever Jen is doing, Gus is close by, usually looking for someone to toss him a ball or give him a treat. A couple of years ago, Jen became intrigued with the idea of having a dog at Lakeview Commons.
Up until then, she hadn’t been much of a dog person, but as a project in Ecumen’s Velocity leadership development program, she researched the therapeutic benefits of dogs. In short order, she adopted a rescue Border Collie named Bauer who roamed Lakeview Commons for a couple of years. Bauer had a seizure and died young about a year ago.
That’s when Gus came on the scene and has been running the halls ever since. “Dogs just bring such joy to the residents,” Jen says. “Gus is the perfect house pet for Lakeview Commons. This is truly his home. He enjoys every minute of the day here, and he helps make Lakeview Commons home for many of our residents.”
Speaking of Gus, there he is again, with that look on his face. Would someone please throw him a ball?
