Homeland resident Robert Zimmerman: A life of art, church, and family

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Homeland residents bring their cherished furnishings, heirlooms, and art to their bright, comfortable rooms.

Robert Zimmerman brings an extra-special touch to his walls – extraordinary watercolors and one oil – painted by him.

“Patty on the Porch” shows Zimmerman’s wife gazing at the lovely scene at their son’s Long Island place. In other images, waves crash on the shores below lighthouses, a curious giraffe halts its grazing to gaze at its photographer, and a man and two boys in silhouette cross a farm field.

“Zimmy,” as his friends call him, has been settling into his personal care suite since April 2024, making Homeland his home.

“As soon as we walked into Homeland, I got the vibe,” he said. “You can tell from the warmth of the place. The warm colors, wood, and homey elements gave us a good feeling.”

Zimmerman can reflect on a life full of art, family, work, and church. He grew up in Harrisburg after his father moved the family from Middleburg, PA, to ensure his children got a good education.

He met his wife when they were high school students. She was babysitting for a neighborhood family and invited his gang of friends to visit. As they were leaving and Zimmerman was walking down the steps, he thought, “If I don’t do something about this girl and me, I’m going to miss an opportunity.”

They married in 1954 and had two sons, Andrew and Craig. After his first job with the city water company, a friend who worked for Central State Door Service suggested he apply there.

Calling the company “the best place to work,” Zimmerman stayed for 42 years as a garage-door installer for homes and industries. During that time, he also served 10 years in the Pennsylvania National Guard.

Meanwhile, Patty got a job in a Central Dauphin School District elementary school cafeteria, rising to cafeteria manager and eventually to administrative assistant in the

superintendent’s office. When the district adopted computerized operations, Patty took computing classes and helped lead the conversion.

“They both worked really hard to put my brother and me through college,” Craig Zimmerman said.

Robert Zimmerman’s introduction to art came via a gift from Patty. She had a cousin whose husband, Don Lenker, cofounded the Seven Lively Artists, Central Pennsylvania’s preeminent group of painters, founded in 1956 and still going strong. The couple enjoyed their shows, and one Christmas, Patty presented Zimmerman with a large box. When he opened it, her surprise gift included a sketchbook and pigments. Lenker noticed that Zimmerman had a talent for watercolors, and Zimmerman started joining the Seven Lively Artists on their painting retreats.

“The first year, I wouldn’t even let them see it,” Zimmerman recalls.

Finally, they called him into the sunroom at Warm Springs Lodge sunroom in Perry County and told him they had voted him into the group.

“That was one of the highlights of my artistic life,” he said.

The experience led to other memorable moments, including the group’s Christmastime showing at the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence and a dinner with Gov. Ed Rendell.

The Zimmermans’ devotion to their church included Patty’s service as a youth fellowship leader and Zimmerman’s as a church elder. He also wrote and directed Christmas plays for the church, putting new spins on classic Christmas tales. He still recalls “Marley,” his reworking of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” which gave the beleaguered, enchained ghost of Jacob Marley a shot at redemption.

Zimmerman cared for his beloved Patty for 10 years before she passed away. Their lives included gifts of passage to Europe on Queen Elizabeth II for their 30th anniversary and Queen Mary II for their 50th.

Craig Zimmerman said Homeland is a good place for his dad to live.

“He’s a social guy, and he’s had that opportunity here,’’ Craig Zimmerman said. “People are so friendly and helpful.”

Homeland Resident Carmen Vishnesky: Enjoying People, Music, and Empanadas

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Carmen VishneskyCarmen Vishnesky, a cherished resident of Homeland Center, passed away on March 25, 2025. We remember her with deep affection and gratitude for the vibrant spirit she shared with our community.

As a resident of Homeland since early 2023, Carmen Vishnesky has come to love the people. 

“The residents are great,” Carmen said. “Certainly, the workers are exemplary. I don’t have any relatives, and I don’t know what I would have done without the people here.”  

Carmen grew up in rural Mountoursville, PA. Her father worked for Sylvania, which made Kodak Instamatic’s rotating flash cube for cameras, then later traveled as an analyst for a vending machine company. Her mother, a trained classical pianist with a music degree from Lycoming College, traveled the area with a violinist friend, playing at events. 

Carmen studied with her mother’s teacher and became an accomplished pianist herself, but she stopped playing when she attended Bloomsburg State College (now Bloomsburg University) to concentrate on her studies as a French major.  

She also earned her master’s degree from Millersville State College (now Millersville University), then known for its foreign language school. This led to a 35-year career teaching French in the Central Dauphin School District. Outside of the classroom, she found her niche running the high school drama program.  

Carmen met her husband, a physics teacher and assistant principal, and they married in 1981. Though she had never been a sports fan, she “inherited” the world of Penn State football fandom from him. They attended games in the slush and snow in their early years together, but she said she ultimately drew the line in attending games after October. 

 “At that time, he went with his friends or with his son,” she said with a smile, “Then he wanted to sit home and watch it on TV with me.” 

After her husband retired, he pursued his passion for cooking by teaching at the Carlisle Kitchen Shoppe and Cooking School. She was still teaching when he suddenly announced that he wanted to attend a culinary school in France. Before he left, she taught him two French words: “rouge” for “red” and “blanc” for “white.” 

“I knew nothing about wine, but I told him that when they asked him about this vintage or that, he could just say ‘red’ or ‘white,’” she said. “That’s as sophisticated as it gets. We laughed about that forever.” 

Today, Carmen looks back at her “wonderful life.” When she retired, she and her husband traveled together. They went to France multiple times, especially loving the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean region of Camargue, where horses frolic in salt flats. The pair also traveled to Poland and Southeast Asia.  

In Budapest, they rented an apartment and lived like locals, even though they didn’t speak Hungarian.  

“I loved the food,” she said. “I loved walking across the street to the market and pointing to whatever I needed to buy. It was just wonderful. The people were wonderful.” 

At Homeland, Carmen originally lived in skilled care before moving to a spacious end unit in personal care. Here, she indulges her childhood love of classical music. On days of “Piano with Ralph” during lunchtime, she and her friends at the table enjoy a dose of the classics. 

“He plays Rachmaninoff,” she said. “He knows Italian music. He knows Beethoven.” 

She also enjoys Homeland’s cooking classes and was looking forward to an empanada-making class with the Homeland activities staff. 

“I told them I’d just been to a Mexican restaurant and the restaurant’s empanadas were not nearly as good as ours,” she said. 

Homeland Center offers levels of care including personal care, memory care, skilled nursing and rehabilitation. Homeland also provides hospice, home care, home health and palliative care services to serve the diverse and changing needs of families throughout central Pennsylvania. For more information or to arrange a tour, please call 717-221-7900. 

A “Souper Bowl” of a cookoff delights residents with comfort-food favorites

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And the winner is . . . the mushroom soup!

“Five kinds of mushrooms, a gallon of roasted garlic puree, a gallon of caramelized onion puree, sherry, white wine, black truffle oil, and heavy cream,” said Homeland Assistant Director of Dietary Services John Scunziano, rattling off the recipe for the soup he originally created for a steakhouse. “I used black truffle, which is very subtle. White truffle is very strong.”

Homeland’s first soup cookoff was held on a chilly and rainy day, perfect for everyone’s favorite comfort food. Inside, the Homeland Main Dining Room was warm and scented with the enticing aromas of soups simmering in a line of crockpots.

The Homeland Activities Department, always looking for novel experiences for residents to enjoy, proposed the soup cookoff. Nine Homeland staffers pitched in with rich broth- or cream-based concoctions made from cherished recipes.

Representing the traditional soups were the tomato, vegetable, chicken and wild rice, chili, and beef stew. Non-traditional got to shine, too — roasted garlic cream of mushroom with black truffle oil, smoked chicken sausage tortellini with kale, chili, beef stew, and lasagna soup.

Each soup was served in mini portions, and the cook’s name was unknown, so the name of the chef wouldn’t sway voters. At the table of residents tapped to be the judges, Carl Barna, an experienced cook, and Homeland’s resident gardener, said he likes broth-based soups.

“You have to start with a good broth,” he said. “If it’s got a good broth, then it’s good to me. If you have a good broth, you can throw in anything, and it’ll be good.”

He added that the chicken noodle soup he used to make was flavorful with dark meat “and gizzards and hearts and things.”

Another judge, Joe Pulaski, said he was having difficulty deciding.

“They are delicious,” he said. “I’m pretty much a ‘whatever is in front of me’ kind of guy.”

When he was a child, his mother always made vegetable soup and potato soup.

“She always did a pretty good job cooking,” he said. “She had three boys and my big dad, so she had to be a good cook.”

Resident Bonnie Waddell, another judge, was lining up her soups according to her preferences. After tasting six soups, she had the vegetable in first place, but there were three more to taste. She had never heard of lasagna soup or truffle oil, but she was happy to give them a taste.

“I find it interesting because I’m a fan of cooking,” she said. “I’m a believer in seasonings. My mother taught me that. She was a good cook.”

Waddell honed her culinary style by working in homes, cooking, and caring for children.

“I learned what they liked, and from there, it was what I liked,” she said. “I can tell you if something is going to be good or not by the way it’s brought to me. If I have to season it, you can forget it.”

Sandra Ware, a housekeeper in Homeland’s personal care, made the popular vegetable soup.

“It’s something my auntie used to fix for us, with corn, stewed tomatoes, okra, and a little seasoning,” she said.

Activities Coordinator Diomaris Pumarol also contributed an aunt’s soup – the Dominican chicken soup traditionally served when her family gathered to mourn the loss of a loved one.

“Instead of going to a restaurant, we would go to a home, and she would make that for everybody,” she said. “That’s why it’s a comfort food. We related with being together and sharing the tradition.”

Finally, Assistant Director of Activities Emma Lengyel announced the winners, the top five of whom won kitchen goods and soup bowls. Three soups tied for third place – the chicken tortellini, vegetable, and tomato. Second place, lasagna soup. And first place, that delectable, creamy mushroom soup.

Resident Mike Ennis was thrilled to learn that non-judge attendees didn’t have to cast votes or rank the soups.

“I felt a responsibility to taste them all because so much effort went into making these,” he said. “And then I realized that the judges will pick the winners so that I can enjoy them. It took all the pressure off. I could just enjoy it for the flavor of one until the next one came. They were all so well done. They were all so flavorful.”

From founders to Board of Managers: Homeland’s unbroken legacy of caring

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What makes a house into a home? A friendly smile. A helpful hand. A family feel. A warm environment.

Homeland is blessed with a Board of Managers dedicated to creating and sustaining the welcoming feel that has made Homeland a home for generations of residents, their families, and staff.

The Board of Managers is Homeland’s unique, all-women volunteer group. Its legacy dates to the 18 women who founded the “Home for the Friendless” in 1867 to care for Harrisburg’s widows and orphans left by the Civil War. Together, its members tend to the details and little touches that give Homeland its renowned homelike feel — throwing parties, decorating, and engaging with residents.

Today’s Board of Managers members honor their predecessors by infusing their work with a devotion to the mission and a professionalism that gets the job done.

The beginning

The Civil War remains the bloodiest conflict in American history, and after the guns fell silent, Harrisburg, like communities across the country, was left stunned by the staggering losses its families had suffered.

But 18 women representing nine Harrisburg churches vowed to make a difference and establish a “Home for the Friendless’’ to save the widows and orphaned children from life on the streets.

It was an act made more remarkable by the times: in the 19th century, married women could not legally conduct the business functions required. Undeterred, the members of what became Homeland’s first Board of Lady Managers convinced seven prominent men to lend their support and serve as the Board of Trustees.

“This was a very brave group of women,” said Board of Managers Chair Nancy Hull. “They themselves took upon this task to help the orphans, the renegades, and the widows throughout Harrisburg who needed help and support. I’m sure they had to have some fear involved with the people they called ‘homeless,’ but they knew what had to be done.”

The founders smartly circumvented the era’s restrictions on women by leveraging their skills, names, and husbands’ connections to make things happen. Their “Society for the Home for the Friendless” earned its charter in 1866, and those 18 undaunted women formed themselves into the “Board of Lady Managers” to oversee routine operations.

Remarkably, that facility stands today as the centerpiece of what has grown into Homeland Center and the extension of its highly respected services into the community through Homeland at Home; these include Homeland Hospice, Homeland Palliative Care, Homeland HomeHealth, and Homeland HomeCare.

Continuing the mission

The legacy of those 18 women has stood as soundly as its building. The Board of Managers remains the hands-on organizer of renovations, decorating, and events that the residents highly anticipate, from casino days to sock hops, complete with an Elvis Presley tribute artist.

Nothing escapes the keen eyes of the Board members. They dust Homeland’s enormous collection of Hummel figurines, which brighten the public spaces. When residents said they missed French fries—a difficult dish to serve hot and fresh at an institutional scale—the Board of Managers brought in a French fry truck.

“We realize that for the people who live here, the residents, this is their home for the rest of their lives, so we have to make it a home,” Hull said.

Of course, people make guests feel welcomed at their homes, and Immediate Past Chair Alicelyn Sleber recalls the day an ice cream truck came to Homeland. One resident wanted to stay in her room, awaiting a visit from her granddaughter and her boyfriend, but Sleber said, “Well, bring them!”

“Her face lit up,” Sleber said. “She felt good because she could offer something to them.”

With their intense involvement in Homeland’s daily life, Board members work closely with staff to coordinate events, such as holding a spring tea or taking over the Main Dining Room for the spring party (this year’s theme is “Sound of Music”).

Today’s Board of Managers focuses on big goals while never forgetting Homeland’s rich and productive past.

“We owe it to the founders to honor their legacy and to carry on their hopes of what they wanted to accomplish in the community,’’ Sleber said. “They left us the essence of giving back, the gift of our time and effort to meet the community’s needs. We still offer food, shelter, and the necessities, but we’ve enhanced it. I really think that we are carrying on what they started.”