Helping the elderly is her mission

Doors open, doors close. That’s how, Bonnie S. Martin, the Tawes Nursing & Rehabilitation Center’s admissions specialist, describes her life.

Many of Bonnie’s “doors” have revolved around McCready. She was born here, worked as a pharmacy and storeroom assistant in the late ‘70s, helped move patients from the original hospital to its replacement in 1980, and spent hours visiting with her beloved grandmother, a resident of the Tawes nursing home.

Now, she’s back “home” in a newly created position that enables her to draw on three decades of experience working in social services with an emphasis on helping the elderly.

When Bonnie was a child, she and her sister were placed in foster care for a short time during a family crisis. The experience went a long way toward shaping the path she’s traveled as an adult. Bonnie says she was influenced and touched by caring, concerned social workers and convinced her that some day she wanted “to work with people.”

Her faith also has played a crucial role in her life. She earned an associate degree in arts and human services from Delaware Technical & Community College, but her studies didn’t stop there. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in missions and ministry from Southeastern College in Lakeland, FL, and an associate degree from Christian World College of Theology College, an affiliate of Delmarva Evangelistic Church in Salisbury.

The two latter academic experiences prepared her for the daunting but rewarding challenge of overseas missionary work in countries like the Philippines, Haiti and Mexico, where U.S. churches routinely reach out to the most down-trodden. Bonnie says those experiences gave her a great appreciation for the bountiful life Americans back home enjoy and sometimes take for granted.

Her resume includes stints working as an intern with Maintaining Active Citizens (MAC) Inc. in Salisbury and as a social services’ assistant and nursing home case management at other skilled-nursing facilities on the lower Eastern Shore. In between, she spent four years in Massachusetts, where she was an eldercare case manager.

Now at she’s back at McCready and still opening doors -- for elderly people and their families. When it’s time for someone to move from a hospital to rehabilitation care or skilled nursing, she eases the way.

“We have more resources today, but they are still not enough,” Bonnie says.

She meets prospective residents, their families, their nurses and doctors and their social workers BEFORE they settle in at Tawes. Using her network of elder-care contacts, she guides each family through care planning, financial concerns and the intricacies of Medicare and Medicaid.

“I get to know the residents and their families, and what they need,” she said.

Bonnie says she enjoys getting to know the (elderly) people she helps because their life experiences have been so rich.

“It’s such a shame to read someone’s obituary in the paper (you don’t know) realize how much we could have known about that person when he or she was alive,” Bonnie says.

In her free time, Bonnie is active in her church and likes to sing in the choir. She’s sometimes asked to stand in for other ministers, an opportunity to draw on some of her education.

She enjoys riding the family Yamaha motorcycle with her husband, Paul, or daughter, Sarah, when she’s not playing with their “very spoiled Chihuahua, Chi-Chi.”

Photos by Patty Hancock