Hardy Rickbeil - A Lifelong Learner, A Lifelong Teacher
Photo: Hardy Rickbeil at age 100 doing his daily workout.
On Sunday May 16, the opening of new senior housing was celebrated by Ecumen in Worthington, Minnesota. On the same day, Worthington community leader and Ecumen customer Hardy Rickbeil died at age 101, having surpassed his goal of living a century. Hardy was all about building community and moving forward, so he would have loved the standing-room only crowd at the grand opening celebration. And he would have been humbled by the following headline that appeared above an article about his life in the Worthington Daily Globe newspaper:
Remarkable. Mentor. Generous. Promoter. Considerate. Coach. Volunteer. Honest. Friend.
More excerpts from the Daily Globe on Hardy, a remarkable person . . .
Early Life
Born June 21, 1908, in North Dakota, Hardy moved at age 12 with his family to Worthington, where his father became the proprietor of the local hardware store. He grew up helping in the family business, but went away to college with a dream of becoming a basketball coach. That dream was cut short, however, when his father suffered some setbacks and health issues, and Hardy returned home to help out, eventually taking over the business.
“I was not happy about that,” admitted Hardy about leaving college in a Daily Globe article marking his 100th birthday in June 2008, “but it was a real opportunity. I had the opportunity to dig right into the community as a businessman with the Chamber of Commerce — back then it was called the Commercial Club — and I became a Mason and a member of Kiwanis.”
Hardy’s relationship with longtime friend Bethel Knapp blossomed into a romance, and they were married in 1931. The Rickbeils had two children, Richard “Dick” Rickbeil and Dianne Rickbeil Frerichs, and their family later grew to include 11 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. Bethel died in 2003.
Entrepreneur, Learner and Teacher
Under Hardy’s ownership, the Rickbeil’s hardware enterprise grew to encompass appliances, furniture, marine, repair shop and warehouse and delivery services in 40,000 square feet of display and storage space in downtown Worthington. Hardy incorporated the business and made several of his employees officers of the company. He also became involved in state and national associations such as the Minnesota Retail Federation and National Retail Hardware Association.
Although he never had a career as a sports coach, he became a coach to his employees and was always a “straight shooter,” according to George Habeck, who worked in the appliance store for 26 years.
“Hardy was the one who really interviewed me, and he said, ‘Remember this, try to follow this (priority) in your life: God, your country, your family and then your job. Try to keep that in perspective. Don’t ever put your job in front of those other things.’ That really impressed me right from the start.”
But Habeck was also a bit perplexed when Hardy gave him “homework” along with the job.
“He said, ‘Here’s a book. I want you to read this and give me a report,’” Habeck remembered. “The book was ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ I asked some of the other (salesman), Frank Schuster and Mike Christensen, about it, and they said, ‘Yeah, we had to do that, too.’”
Hardy did his own homework, studying trade journals and merchandise materials and underlining as he went, keeping abreast of all the latest information. He stressed exercising both mind and body throughout his lifetime.
“From my desk, I could see Hardy’s desk upstairs” in the appliance store, Habeck said. “I could see him on the phone talking, then all of a sudden he’d be gone, then I’d see him again. He was doing deep knee bends while he was on the phone. He was multitasking. And this was when he was in his 80s. Up to the very end, he had a very sharp mind and was always up on everything, stayed on top of everything. He kept a file on every individual who worked there, and when I retired, he presented me with the file folder.
“He took a personal interest in you, too,” added Habeck. “He knew I had high blood pressure, so every once in a while he’d leave me an article that he’d read about high blood pressure. Besides losing a former employer, I also lost a friend.”
Heaven on Earth
All of Hardy’s family, colleagues and friends recall that he lived his life by the Golden Rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you — but he utilized and created many other slogans in his business dealings.
“Rickbeil’s had a slogan, ‘We serve to serve again,’” recalled fellow downtown businessman Russ Rickers, whose photography studio shared an alley with several of the Rickbeil’s stores. “‘We sell the best and service the rest,’ he’d always say about the repair department. Hardy would always talk about competition, that competition is good, something like ‘Competition makes you better if you have what it takes.’” . . . .
Later in life, Hardy became an active member of Ecumen's Meadows of Worthington senior living community, and his was a familiar figure inside and outside The Meadows.
In the 2008 article, Hardy said the grounds patrol provided him with exercise and relaxation. He loved to be outdoors and once was an avid big game hunter, although now his hunts were for trash.
“These cumulus clouds are fantastic,” Hardy said about being in the outdoors. “It’s almost heaven on earth, so why be in a hurry to die?”
Hardy Rickbiel, a man in motion, making a difference. Thank you, Hardy. Enjoy the real heaven.
Jim Klobuchar - The Hazards of Finding Direction in our Lives
Jim Klobuchar, Ecumen "Changing Aging" contributor: In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.
The Hazards of Finding Direction in Our Lives
Since the Neanderthals found their way around by tracking the sun, the make-life-easier industries have been tying to rescue us from simplicity.
We have graduated into a frenzy of automated route-finding symbolized by the GPS, sitting imperiously on millions of dashboards. It is the electronic successor to St. Christopher, who for decades was the patron saint of travelers until being downgraded from sainthood 30 years ago by the Vatican’s well-intended but somewhat rash housecleaning of border-line saints. My miseries of a week ago in southern Minnesota made me yearn for the now-mothballed services of.Christopher, who is sadly functioning now in the minor leagues of sainthood.
You know about the speed-of-light advances in direction finding since the compass and road map. The pioneers before the compass were craftier folk like Eskimoes and Scandinavians. They found that if you drew an imaginary line between the two outlying stars of the Big Dipper, and multiplied that distance by five, you would find your way infallibly to the North Star. This came to be called True North. That was an illusion, because there is another force of nature called magnetic deviation, which can be caused by the presence of mineral deposits on the earth, and can land you in the middle of a lake if you fly light planes and don’t know about deviation..
Later the on-line masterminds created interactive road maps that could take you from your doorstep to your favorite casino in the Mojavi Desert and, allowing for a pizza stop in Wichita, come within inches of measuring the precise distance and elapsed time. Like many, I relied on this flawless system until I found myself at night in the middle of a country bridge that literally led nowhere, abandoned two years before.
Nonetheless I bought my highly intelligent wife a $300 GPS for her birthday three years ago, knowing her fondness for the latest miracle devices but aware of her short attention span for gadgets. She uses it twice a year and we can now happily follow the GPS to the nearest Walgreen’s, a half mile and one left turn from our house.
So a week ago I was scoping out the route of a bike ride I organize annually, with a friend who enjoys these missions. Although we rode in my car, he brought along his personal GPS, realizing my high-tech limitations I told him I’d grown up in northern Minnesota where inventive iron miners developed makeshift devices to serve as compasses. One of theirs had run into another hunter from the cities. The city hunter noticed the local hunter staring into the reflectorized bottom of a snuff can. “Does that tell you directions?” the visitor asked. “No,” the local replied glumly, “but it does tell you who’s lost.”
As he drove toward a town in southeastern Minnesota I advised my friend to head for Highway 16. I dozed off but awoke to voices. It turned out there was a state AND a county 16, heading in different directions. And the authoritative female voice coming from the GPS was telling us to take Highway 16. But there were two voices, I swear. “The voice on the GPS is a robot,” I said to my friend, “why are you yelling at a robot? She can’t hear.”
He denied yelling at the invisible robot. I was conciliatory. “Probably mistaken,” I said. “Which route are you taking?”
“Highway 16,” he said cryptically. After considering a coin flip, somebody got out a road map. It worked.
You could almost hear St. Christopher applauding.
New Senior Housing? The MEDCottage
A Fairfax County (VA) official dubbed it "The Granny Pod.' He can't stand the invention a Virginia minister created to help people live at home when they need long-term care. But others look at it and say it's ingenuity for the Age Wave and a person's desire to live at home.
What do you think of the MEDCottage (it's not actually called the Granny Pod)?
A little background . . . According to a Washington Post article:
Rev. Kenneth Dupin, who leads a small Methodist church in Southern Virginia, has a vision: As America grows older, its aging adults could avoid a jarring move to the nursing home by living in small, specially equipped, temporary shelters close to relatives . . .
As senior minister at what was then Aldersgate Wesleyan Church in Falls Church, Dupin visited a shut-in named Katie. Her husband had served in the Eisenhower administration, and she liked to show off photographs of them dancing at a White House ball.
On one visit, Dupin found Katie in tears. Her adult children had arranged for her to go into a nursing home. Workmen were busy fixing up her home for sale. When he later visited her at the nursing home, she was miserable.
"When I got there, she was absolutely devastated, and she asked me if I could take her home. That stuck in my head -- the patheticness of it," Dupin said.
The MEDCottage, like an RV, could be hooked up to a house's electrical and water system. It could be wired with sensors and other technology and would lease for about $2,000 per month. Interestingly, an online poll (non-scientific) you can take here shows a majority of people would buy it.
Senior Housing Fear in Woodbury - The New York Times Version
Paula Span, who authors the New York Times' popular "New Old Age" Blog has a post todayon a vocal sliver of people in Woodbury, Minnesota, opposing senior housing for people with Alzheimer's in their neighborhood. Ecumen is a consultant to the project.
What's interesting is that in this era where another person gets Alzheimer's every 70 seconds, we still have a number of people who have big time misunderstandings about the disease. Sadly, if these misunderstandings take further root, they negatively impact the lives of others. Changing Aging means getting knowledgeable about Alzheimer's disease and finding a cure to make it go away.
Program, Here! Get Your Program! Program! A Shout Out to Art Tysk
"Program!" was the shout out at the top of Arthur Tysk's obituary in the local newspaper today. Ecumen's Lakeview Commons community had the honor of having Art as a customer. He died last Friday. Art was one of Minnesota's most recognizable sports vendors, selling T-shirts and game programs well into his 90s. Beginning his career in the 1920s, he had vending posts at the State Fairgrounds and at sports venues from Midway Stadium to the Xcel Energy Center. Art made his passion his purpose and was a model for changing aging.
Betty White and the Need for Older TV Stars
As America ages, isn't it time we had more older stars on TV?
Betty White made history this weekend, becoming the first 88-year-old host of Saturday Night Live. SNL attained its best ratings in almost two years. Here's to more talented older hosts in the future. Kudos, Betty, for Changing Aging, and having a sense of humor in doing it. (OK, Betty is a native of Illinois, but her Mary Tyler Moore role, which was set in Minneapolis, makes her an honorary Minnesotan.)
Marion Ross - native Minnesotan who starred in Happy Days was on Nurse Jackie, the Showtime hit, the other day. She played a hospital patient who was neglected by her home health care aide. Marion did a great job, but it would be nice to see her play other roles, too.
George Clooney Has Long-Term Care on His Mind
George Clooney is enlisting friends Matt Damon and Brad Pitt to try to save a nursing home in Hollywood. The nursing home is the Motion Picture and Television Fund nursing home, which cares for people who worked in film and television. I don't know all the ins and outs of the debate, but it looks like the nursing home, as many are in the U.S., is losing huge amounts of money, as Medicaid reimbursement continually gets cut. This same drama plays out - minus the Hollywood stars - in communities across the U.S., underscoring the need to transform how we pay for long-term care in the U.S.
The stars and others seeking to save the nursing home have created an only-in-Hollywood campaign complete with dramatic video at www.savingthelivesofourown.org. It would be great to have George, Matt, Brad and the other stars to bring their advocacy nationally and shine the spotlight in America that we need to build the infrastructure and financing system to support America's elders with dignity.
As U.S. Health Secretary Kathy Sebelius looks how to market the CLASS Act, America's new public long-term care insurance plan, perhaps these stars can come on board as they've got long-term care on their minds.
Grandparents Walking All The Way Around Lake Superior, Adventures in Aging Part 2
Two grandparents are walking all the way around Lake Superior . . . Mike Link and Kate Crowley departed Duluth, Minn., last week, near Ecumen's Bayshore and Lakeshore communites, and started walking toward Wisconsin . . . they're going to walk completely around Lake Superior by Labor Day. Mike and Kate will become the oldest circumnavigators to have hiked around the largest body of freshwater in the world.
Follow their travels here. This is very cool (glad to see they have their polar fleece).
When they get to Bayfield, Wis., they should stop in at the CORE offices, which we blogged about here. Also, here's another adventure in aging - Kara Buckner's 81-day trip around the world.
Good wishes to Mike and Kate!
Fear and Neighbors With Alzheimer's
NIMBY and Memory Care. It's a new one. Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Jon Tevlin has a column today about a Woodbury, Minn., neighborhood that has some residents that are opposing memory care housing. Ecumen is a consultant to the developer . Some have expressed fear of having their kids live near people with Alzheimer's.
I've seen NIMBY (not in my backyard) cases related to building size, traffic, parking, etc., but never because of fear with people with Alzheimer's. Has anyone else ever seen that?
Adventures in Aging, Part 1, Around the World in 81 Days
Are you including adventures in your aging journey? Kara Buckner is and she's taking a number of Ecumen customers with her on her trip 81-day trip around the world through her blog "Let's Karavan."
Kara quit her job, rid herself of her house and her her car, bought a ticket on Delta Airlines and is going around the world in 81 days. She's been to Antarctica, Argentina, Chile and elsewhere. Today she's traveling to South Africa.
If you visit the memory care apartments at Ecumen's Lakeview Commons community in Maplewood, Minn., you'll see in one of the gathering areas a large global map where customers are tracking daily the global travels of Kara, who is the cousin of Ecumen colleague Andrea Nye. Kara blogs daily on her adventures. I dig her posts and her evolving defintion of home, which she described while in Buenos Aires.