Strange Bedfellows Share Dream

When Buena Vista Care Center administrator Anne Zimmer was given the task of finding a charity for the nursing home’s 100 old hospital beds, she considered homeless groups, AIDS hospices and other nearby needy.

But the agents at United Way suggested a more exotic destination--a Russian city in the Arctic Circle called Nar’yan-Mar.

About 20 of the beds went to some care facilities and individuals who asked for them. And Friday morning, the other 80 started on the first leg of a long and complex journey to elderly Russian pensioners and hospital patients in Nar’yan-Mar. The city formerly was part of Stalin’s gulag prison system, but now is home to about 25,000 citizens working in the timber and oil industries.

Those involved in moving the beds--the care center, the Utah National Guard, United Way International and the Los Angeles Conservation Corps--are working under the exigencies of weather. The remote city is most easily reached by the Pechora River, which is due to freeze for the winter.

Plans for the beds, which first were purchased when the nursing home opened in 1960, began at United Way International headquarters in Alexandria, Va.

That group linked up with a college professor in Salt Lake City who runs the Utah-Russia Institute. The institute hooked up the United Way with the Utah National Guard, which had scheduled maneuvers in the nearby Russian city of Arkhangel’sk later this month and agreed to transport the beds that far. The L.A. Conservation Corps drove the beds to Los Angeles, where they will be picked up by the Guard.

Gregory Berzonski, program director for United Way International, said the needs of those in Nar’yan-Mar make the trip worth all the trouble.

“Believe me, those beds can be put to great use in northern Russia,” said Berzonski, who has visited the hospital in Nar’yan-Mar. “It’s different from what we’re used to here, where everything is automated.”

The beds being donated have solid iron frames and can be cranked by hand to lift the back to a sitting position or to bend the middle of the frame to lift the patient’s knees. Movable side bars provide extra safety. Residents at the care center are already sleeping on new hospital beds that can be maneuvered with the touch of a button.

Residents, administrators and charitable workers are all delighted at the prospect of the beds’ trip.

“I am very excited,” said Ina Walker, an Anaheim resident who founded the care facility and now leases it to Louisville, Ky.,-based Vencor Inc. “The reason I’m so excited is that my husband was born in Russia. . . . His parents left Kiev with just the clothes on their backs.”

Walker’s son is so intrigued that he is planning a trip to the Arctic circle to see where the beds have landed.

Zimmer just loves the idea that so many people across the country have pulled together to do something nice. “Those of us in the nursing home business are caregivers and this means a lot to us.”