Archive for year: 2022

Eufemia Cruz-Santana loves her sweets. A candy jar sits enticingly on her windowsill, and she offers a visitor a cherry Life Saver. A few minutes later, she digs through the bowl and hands the visitor a gold-wrapped Werther’s Original with all its toffee goodness.

“Here’s the best one,” she says.

That moment of sharing encapsulates the sweet and generous nature of Eufemia. Her life hasn’t always been easy, but as her bright room full of whimsical gifts attests, she has built up a reservoir of love among her family and, now, the Homeland family that takes good care of her.

Eufemia, who grew up in Guayama, a historic beach town on Puerto Rico’s Caribbean coast, lost her father when she was 2 and her brother was 4. Her mother remarried and had more children, and when Eufemia was 15, she moved to Chicago to live with her aunt.

Before coming to Harrisburg in 1972, Eufemia, her husband, and their five children shuttled between Chicago, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico.

“Her husband came here to visit a cousin, and they liked it, so we all moved here,” says Eufemia’s daughter, Laura Segarra, of Hummelstown. “It was much better than living in an apartment in New Jersey. They liked the atmosphere.”

Eufemia came to Homeland in the spring of 2021. This fall, she celebrated a milestone birthday, her 80^th, with a family party at her son’s house.

“It was a good birthday,” says Eufemia. “I always get something good.”

The windowsill in her room in Homeland’s Ellenberger memory care unit is cheery with the presents she got for that birthday.

“My daughter bought me this for my birthday,” she said, tapping a button on a teddy bear that sang happy birthday while a ball in its hands spun and lit up in different colors.

The windowsill has other gifts and mementos: a vial of sand from Atlantic City, family photos, and autumnal décor. For the holidays, Laura decorates the sill with a small Christmas tree. A toy dog curled on a dog bed is so realistic you think it’s sleeping.

“I love it,” says Eufemia. “I enjoy just seeing it.”

Eufemia raised her five children, and today she has 21 grandchildren, 27 great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.

“I tried to do the best I could,” Eufemia says of her years raising a family.

Laura agrees. The family attended St. Francis Catholic Church in Harrisburg. The kids learned to cook, including the traditional Puerto Rican dish of rice with gandules, the legume known as pigeon peas. More importantly, Eufemia taught her children “how to respect people.”

“She taught us how to work for what you want,” says Laura. “She taught me to be who I am now, a responsible mom.”

When the weather is nice, Laura will take her mom on excursions to visit family, eat lunch, and see Eufemia’s friend, Esther. The two have been best friends since their kids were young.

“She’d do anything for me,” says Eufemia.

Eufemia looks sparkly in a shirt studded with tiny rhinestones. She wears pendants saying “Sweet Mom” and “Nana,” her grandma names, which have become the endearment everyone uses. Her fingernails are perfectly painted in a deep red – a hallmark of Homeland, where residents get regular manicures.

“It’s nice here,” Eufemia says. “I like it. The people are so nice. Everything is nice.”

Laura adds, “They really like Mommy here.”

Homeland keeps Eufemia busy with daily activities, and she enjoys it all. She is proud of the artwork she has colored in craft classes that hangs on her armoire’s doors.

“We sing,” she says. “We exercise. We play bingo.”

Laura and one of her sisters visit weekly. On this day, Laura brought her mother a lunch of sancocho, a Puerto Rican stew of vegetables and pork-neck bones, and homemade rice pudding. With Homeland watching over their mother, Laura and her siblings appreciate the peace of mind from knowing their mother is in good hands.

“When I call if there’s something wrong, right away, they get back to me,” Laura says. “If she’s not feeling well and maybe doesn’t tell anyone, I’ll call and tell them, and right away, they get on it. Whenever they do things for her, they check with me right away. We like the whole staff.”

Lorna Baer first knew Homeland through her past service with the Board of Managers. When she arrived as a resident, she knew her way around.

“That’s one of the reasons I was glad to come here because it felt like home,” she says.

Today, Homeland is her home, as she lives in a bright skilled-care room where attentive staff look after her needs.

Lorna is a lifetime resident of the Harrisburg area. Her father founded the W. Orville Kimmel Funeral Home. It was first in Lorna’s grandparents’ home before they moved it to Market Street in the city. He worked hard to make it a success.

“He took his profession extremely seriously,” Lorna says.

In a bit of Harrisburg history, Lorna’s grandfather was a foreman in the machine shop of industrialist W.O. Hickok.

“Back in the day, it was very common for people to name their children after their employers,” Lorna says. So her father was named W.O. Kimmel – the “W” for Wesley, after his grandfather, but the “O” for Hickok’s middle name of Orville, the name he used.

When her father died, Lorna hired a licensed funeral director who operated the family business for 19 years. When she sold the business, she took extreme care to find the right person with an ethical approach to business.

Growing up, Lorna excelled in Harrisburg schools. At John Harris High School, she had excellent teachers with college-level skills.

“That was a happy time,” she says.

Her family was active in the Church of God, and she graduated from the church-affiliated Findlay College, in Findlay, Ohio. Lorna married a few months before graduation, and her first job brought her back to the Harrisburg School District. She served as one of the district’s home and school visitors until the position was eliminated.

Her time operating the funeral home coincided with raising three children.

“That turned out to be a wonderful gift,’’ she says. “I could be a full-time parent when it was necessary and still do my job.”

Lorna also belonged to a book club with some women serving on the Homeland Board of Managers, and they recommended her for board membership.

The Board of Managers is unique to Homeland – an all-women group dedicated to sustaining Homeland’s renowned homelike feel in its décor and events. The board traces its roots to the 18 women who founded the “Home for the Friendless” in 1867 as a refuge for Civil War widows and orphans.

Lorna served two consecutive terms and was invited to return a few years later. She has also played piano for worship services lead by Homeland Chaplain Dann Caldwell. She first played piano in elementary school, when she and two other students alternated accompanying the school orchestra, which played to begin and end every day.

As an adult, Lorna attended Paxton Presbyterian Church, the historic church dating to the 1720s. In 2009, church leaders decided to sell the church’s vacant, rarely used circa 1855 manse. The church’s legendary pastor, the Rev. Morton Glise, had raised his family in the limestone home, complete with hearth fireplace and dumbwaiter shaft.

Lorna always wanted to live in a stone house, and now, there was more.

“I was pretty sentimental about the church, and I couldn’t stand the idea of some stranger unrelated to the congregation owning the manse and using the building for something else,” she says. “So I decided I would check my resources and see if I could maybe bid on it.”

She pulled together financing for a possible purchase, with enough additional for painting and kitchen renovations. The auction on a September evening drew a crowd that stretched to the sidewalk.

“They were waiting with bated breath to find out who was going to buy it, and my bid took,” Lorna says. “So I bought it, and that’s where I lived.”

Lorna came to Homeland before COVID. Today, she enjoys her room decorated with pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I appreciate how caring a place it is,” she says. “And how nice everybody is to everybody else.”