Where Dignity Lives

She clears out the antique desk drawer for what may be the hundredth time. Snapshots, old and faded. An electricity bill from the 1970s. The prayer card from her mother’s funeral.

Catherine “Granny” Jordan, 90, removes these and other bits of history from her desk, sorting a lifetime of memories into neat, little piles. Hands trembling from Parkinson’s disease, she shuffles through tattered birthday cards, old magazine clippings, notes on a 1966 bond issue. Lost, for a moment, in her past.

“She’s packing to go home,” Ron Simpson observes quietly from a few yards away. “She does this almost every day.”

Simpson, director of Granny’s Place, a six-bed board-and-care facility for the elderly, reaches over and gives Jordan’s hand a gentle squeeze. He does all he can to make his residents feel at home--including his wife’s grandmother. But sometimes, the concept of home proves elusive.

Simpson, 53, knew this when he opened Granny’s Place last year. His grandmother-in-law had lived in only two houses her whole life until failing health forced her into a succession of nursing homes. Knowing that she would benefit from a cozier, more personable environment, Simpson decided to open his own small board-and-care facility with her in mind.

Granny’s Place, located in a residential home in Mission Viejo, would offer a safe, caring environment, Simpson said. One that would be anything but institutional. Granny Jordan would be its inaugural tenant.

The six residents at Granny’s Place, all in their 80s and 90s, live as a family. They eat meals at one table, take trips together to the mall, trade stories about family and friends. Guests, Simpson says, are always welcome.

Times are not always rosy, of course. The aging process sees to that. Residents feel their share of aches and pains. At least one calls out at night for her “sweetie pie.”

But they do the best they can.

Board-and-care homes--also known as assisted living or residential care facilities for the elderly--offer 24-hour care for adults 60 or older. Unlike nursing homes, board-and-cares do not provide medical supervision. They’re designed for people who need assistance with daily tasks such as eating, bathing and making doctor appointments, not for those who require ongoing medical care.

Orange County has 547 licensed board-and-cares, a figure that has nearly doubled over the past 10 years, says John Grant, licensing program supervisor with the state Social Services office in Santa Ana.

The industry has grown so rapidly, Grant says, that his office has had to conduct two orientation seminars per month for prospective start-ups. The meetings often attract overflow crowds, though only 10% or so ultimately apply for a license.

Simpson gave up a $90,000-per-year position with a Santa Ana medical ultrasound firm to open Granny’s Place last spring. The decision wasn’t difficult, he says. The ultrasound equipment he helped develop was being phased out by the company; his job would soon be phased out too. It was time for a change.

Simpson had never before envisioned running a board-and-care; he and his wife, Robin, a special-education teacher, barely knew such facilities existed. But after seeing how much Granny’s health had improved after they moved her from a nursing home into a rented home with a full-time caregiver, Simpson knew a similar situation might benefit others too.

His mission, he says, was to provide a loving environment, one that would celebrate the residents’ individuality, preserve their dignity. A home sweet home through good times and bad.

Sitting at Jordan’s bedside, Simpson reaches for a small, framed photograph of her taken half a century ago. The photo captures a dashing brunet in shorts and a sleeveless blouse, her back to the New Jersey shore.

“Who’s this, Granny?” Simpson asks gently. “Who is this gorgeous girl in the photo?”

Jordan squints at the photograph through thick eyeglasses. She pauses, then goes back to sorting photos, unable, it seems, to identify the woman she used to be.

*

There is no sign posted outside Granny’s Place. No indication that this house with neatly trimmed lawn and double garage is much different than any other on Delphi Street.

The folks at Granny’s like it that way. A sign would be so institutional.

But come inside. Watch your step around the wheelchairs and walkers. Plop down on the sofa under the skylights and let the sunshine warm your bones.

Hear those finches chirping in the living room? They’re expecting, you know. Lunch is almost ready: fresh fruit, lemonade and a hefty serving of Tuna Helper with peas.

Although house manager Marina Toro whips up some tasty grub--Bolivian stew, chicken Devon and the house favorite, spinach-mashed potatoes--residents are often treated to dining excursions, from picnic dinners at the beach to lunch at a 1950s-style diner on the Balboa pier.

Granny’s Place won’t make the pages of House Beautiful, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. The decor is that of a moderately priced bed-and-breakfast--clean, comfy, practical. The pantry looks like a mini-Price Club, stocked with everything from industrial size cans of applesauce to 3-pound bags of prunes.

A pair of stuffed animals, Christmas mice in cheerful red velvet, hang on a wall near the foyer. A cuckoo clock has been made cuckoo-less, so as to not wake anybody at night. A TV sits in the corner, rarely used. There are smoke detectors in every room.

The backyard is a retreat. Sprawling olive tree. Clusters of pink and purple impatiens surrounding a tidy, green lawn. Bird of paradise. Queen palms. The residents come out after breakfast, to chat or enjoy the sun. Discrete concrete ramps provide wheelchair access from brick patio to deck.

When Simpson speaks of each resident, he takes care, on first reference, to include middle initials. He relates anecdotes from their pasts as if speaking of lifelong friends, and kids them, gently, about their differences.

Byron C. Beam is the house flirt, going around in short pants to show off his legs. Merle E. Joos? She’s got a snappy comeback for everything. Wilma L. Sondergard? If Simpson doesn’t take the time to eat, Wilma directs him to the table, pronto. . . .

The cost of living at Granny’s Place ranges from $1,800 to $2,900 per month, depending on size of room and level of care. That fee covers virtually all the residents’ needs, from meals, toiletries and linens to transportation to doctor appointments and prescriptions.

Simpson, who employs a staff of four, says he clears about $3,000 a month at full occupancy. To make it a more viable occupation, he plans to open a second board-and-care in Mission Viejo--Granny’s II--in the next few weeks. But he doesn’t care to expand the business after that.

“There are a lot of people who think you can get into this business and get rich,” he says. “But it’s not a gold mine. I think people would discover that pretty fast.

“I don’t mean that a person needs to be philanthropic--a person needs to be compensated for what they do. But being a really good caregiver involves some spiritual communication. You really need to be motivated by caring for someone else.”

Especially when times get tough.

Residents at Granny’s suffer a range of hardships--dementia, incontinence, arthritis--but last December was a real test. The board-and-care was hit by a heart attack, two strokes and a case of pneumonia, all within 10 days. Simpson rushed from one hospital bed to the other. A week later his father had a stroke. Simpson flew immediately to Florida to see him. His father died hours later.

Simpson is philosophical. Life is too short, he says, to worry about the end. His motto seems to rub off on those around him:

Let’s make the best of it while we can.

*

Caring for the elderly is rarely easy, especially for adult children caring for their aging parents. Some push themselves nearly to the breaking point before they even start looking into long-term care choices.

“That’s the problem,” says Pamala McGovern, executive director of the Orange County Council on Aging, a nonprofit agency that monitors the county’s long-term care facilities. “People experience a sudden catastrophe, and they don’t know what’s out there.”

Paula Murphy learned soon enough.

Her 94-year-old mother, Eleanor Lungren, was living in a retirement community in Encinitas last year when a series of small strokes and a fall left her unable to care for herself. Murphy moved Lungren into a South County nursing home, where she was promised nothing but the best. The price: $4,000 per month.

This for a facility that smelled of urine.

“They promised you up front all these things, then I’d go over there and find she hadn’t been moved for eight hours,” says Murphy, of Laguna Niguel.

“She couldn’t chew or feed herself. I’d go over there, and her mouth would be full of food. I had to dig hamburger out of her mouth before she choked to death. They couldn’t take the time to do that.”

Then Murphy heard about Granny’s Place. She moved her mother in soon after.

Here, says Murphy, was a place where her mother felt at home. Where the staff was caring and sincere, not overworked and jaded. Where they cared enough to stock her mother’s favorite beverage, Diet Coke, and celebrate her 95th birthday with great hoopla.

The birthday was made extra special, Murphy says, because Simpson took it upon himself to help Lungren with her hair and makeup. “He put on way too much rouge and eye shadow--she looked like a stage girl,” Murphy recalls with a chuckle. “But that’s how they are there. Not afraid to pitch in and help.”

Although her mother’s stay wasn’t long--she died three months later from pneumonia contracted after hip surgery--Murphy says she will always be grateful her mother spent the final months of her life in this home.

“The moment you walk in, it feels like you are being embraced by loving arms,” says Murphy, who visited Granny’s Place at least three times a day while her mother was alive and continues to be a regular visitor.

“Even when they don’t know you’re looking, they’re hugging and kissing these people. I mean, there is love in that house.”

*

Operating a board-and-care requires adhering to a long list of state regulations. There are rules on everything from the amount of surplus food that must be on hand to the administration of prescription drugs.

Weeks after Granny’s Place opened last spring, an evaluator from Social Services showed up for an unannounced inspection. This was to be expected, as all board-and-cares are evaluated soon after licensing.

Simpson, who was attending a seminar on Alzheimer’s disease at UC Irvine that day, returned to Granny’s later that afternoon to find that the board-and-care had been cited with eight violations--from improper storage of cleaning products to ground meat defrosting at room temperature.

For Simpson, who graduated at the top of his class in the MBA program at the University of Pittsburgh and went on to earn a doctorate at Cornell, it seemed a crushing failure. But he quickly corrected the problems.

According to county records, Granny’s Place has received perfect evaluations since.

*

Byron Beam didn’t want to move to Granny’s Place.

His family moved him there from a retirement community last June after Beam refused to eat and had grown dangerously thin. A few days after arriving, he sat on the sidewalk in front of Granny’s, refusing to go in and shouting, “Help! Help!” to passing cars.

Change and loss of control, social workers say, can be an elderly person’s nightmare. Beam describes his initial stay at Granny’s as “terribly hard.”

These days, he seems downright giddy.

His former home was populated by “a bunch of old codgers,” he says. At Granny’s Place, it’s almost like living a new life. He and his roommate, Irving Segall, often chat long into the night.

“Happy? I am that,” Beam says, lying on his double bed, legs crossed casually, slippers at his bedside. “Cross my heart!”

He looks at Simpson and smiles. “I admire this man tremendously,” Beam says. “I wouldn’t lose him for all the tea in China.”

Quips Simpson: “I’ll pay ya later, Byron.”

*

Dinner time rolls around. Tonight it’s roast beef with gravy, glazed carrots and those famous spinach-mashed potatoes. Appetites around the table are impressive.

Irving pours sugar into his iced tea, sprinkling some of it on the table. Merle asks several times for her husband, Wally. When she’s reminded that Wally went back to his home in Laguna Hills half an hour ago, Merle disagrees.

“Wally’s right here,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m just sitting on his feet.”

Applesauce is served for dessert. Granny, in her wheelchair, requests ice cream.

“I’m sorry, Granny,” Simpson explains. “We’re out of ice cream. But I promise to buy some tomorrow.”

Merle again asks for Wally.

Granny again asks for ice cream.

Simpson explains both situations a second time, to no avail. The absence of ice cream and Wally dominates the table conversation for the next five minutes.

Simpson smiles, leans back in his chair and sighs.

Then he picks up on Wilma’s stare.

He’s hardly touched his dinner. Time, she says, for him to eat.