Making New Friends: IVH and the Alzheimer Unit (108)

I’ve mostly made it through another week of school. It’s trying to kill me, but hasn’t succeeded just yet. My chemistry exam Monday and calculus one on Tuesday may though.

I spent my last 3+ hours reading the Indiana Veterans’ Home (IVH) volunteer information. I am tired of reading it, but hey, I’m done now and I learned quite a lot about the Home.

Basically, they take care of about 300 people. About 250 of those people are Hoosier men who have served in the military during time of war and the 30-50 women are primarily spouses of men in the home or widows of veterans with a few female veterans mixed in.  IVH is a large and State run institution, so it naturally has many inefficiencies, but it is readily apparent that they truly care for the residents and want what is best for them.

One other cool thing about the Veterans’ Home (especially applicable to me) is the way they use volunteers. They really work to put volunteers to work in a way that will use their skills, time, and motivation to bless and help care for the veterans. They do not ask you to do silly things or tell you there is nothing you can do. They encourage volunteers to work in dozens of roles all over the home, helping residents in every way from helping them get their meal trays to visiting with them to wheeling them all over creation to flower and garden work to who knows what else.

When I was there Thursday for orientation, we went on an extended and detailed walking tour of the campus. Carolyn (the Volunteer Coordinator) took us up to the Alzheimer unit because it was getting late (past 8 pm) and that’s the only place you’re sure to find people up. About eight very awake residents were sitting on couches and in various types of wheelchairs having ice-cream and sherbet. We got to spend about 10 minutes talking to them. Despite a few very sad comments from patients about wanting to go home and such impossible things, I had a blast with the residents and now I think I may do my service at least in part there in the Alzheimer unit. I never would have thought of doing that before.

Serving Those Who Served (108)

Over the summer between my junior and senior years of high school I completed the largest voluntary project of my life. By voluntary I mean two things; both that I chose to do it under no sort of requirement and that the point of the entire project was to volunteer and involve others in volunteering.

The project was in fulfillment of one of the requirements for my Eagle Scout rank. The requirement says “While a Life Scout, plan, develop, and give leadership to others in a service project helpful to any religious institution, any school, or your community.” Simple enough, right? All I have to do is to get a few people to do something nice and someone else to sign my book.  Not quite. I am a member of Boy Scout Troop 307 and we are over-achievers. One of our Scouts built a 200 foot board-walk, another got donations and built shelves to stock an entire new food pantry, and his brother did the same for the corresponding clothing closet. As you can see, I had a rather high bar set for me.

I asked some people for suggestions and ultimately came to the conclusion that I would like to do something for the Indiana Veterans Home. They are good and friendly people with an obviously good mission. They provide retirement community and nursing home type care for veterans who have seen active service and their spouses. I personally had benefitted from their benevolence because they have allowed the homeschool soccer team I play on to use a large field of theirs for soccer practices and games for some five or six years now.

Over the hundreds of times that I had come there for soccer practices and games I had noticed that the massive military graveyard adjacent to the Veterans Home receives relatively little care. It is not overgrown, but the stones are discolored and many were slanted. Because the Veterans Home’s budget is perpetually tight they do not spend any more time or money on the graveyard than is necessary to keep it decent. Therefore, I proposed to them that I might be able to serve them and honor the deceased veterans by cleaning the stones in the graveyard. There is a rather long story about what happened in the middle, but in the end, I was able to straighten the stones instead. I got many other individuals I knew - and a number I didn’t - to help me and we wound up putting in about 350 volunteer hours and straightening nearly a thousand stones.

When I was informed that I would need to spend time volunteering somewhere for English 108, the first place that popped into my mind was the Indiana Veterans Home. They have literally hundreds of volunteers that put in thousands of hours each year. Volunteers are such a vital part of their operation that I honestly think they would have difficulty staying open without volunteers.

I am very excited to get to work with Carolyn Johnson and all my friends at the Veterans Home again. But it makes me even more excited that a number of my class mates will be joining me there too, as the Veterans Home’s motto says, Serve Those Who Served.