As a little girl, Jessica Budd was walking through the halls of Homeland to visit her great-grandmother.
“Mom, this is what I want to do when I grow up,” she told her mother. “I want to work here. I want to work in a place like this.”
This year, Jess joined Homeland as personal care activities coordinator. The journey was long and winding, but she got her wish, and she has already made her mark as the originator of Homeland’s new Veterans’ Wall.
Jess grew up in Marysville, in the countryside north of Harrisburg. Her parents were in semi-retirement by then, but her adventurous and athletic father worked in golf shops and taught skiing. Her mother taught aerobics. Sometimes, she helped them repair rental properties they owned.
Jess attended Susquenita School District for elementary school but graduated with her sole classmate from the newly formed Covenant Christian Academy.
“I was third in a class of two,” she says. “No joke.” The school claimed that neither student’s GPA merited top-of-the-class ranking, but she argued their case and got her salutatorian sash.
At age 19, Jess enlisted in the Air National Guard, 193rd Special Operations Wing. Despite the heat of her first post in Texas, she loved the structure of the military. By chance, she specialized in aerial port, a logistics field, where she learned to drive forklifts and pack immense cargo parachutes.
She earned her honorable medical discharge in two years and finished the associate’s degree in photography that she had started before enlisting. With medical issues that had plagued her since childhood, she was on disability but volunteered for Mission Central.
Around 2019, she finally received a diagnosis for her ailments – Lyme disease. As she recovered, she felt she could get a job again. After the COVID pandemic eased, she remembered her love for settings like Homeland. She also had a close relationship with her vivacious grandmother, her Nana.
“My Nana was my best friend,” she said. “She taught me how to talk to people. I’d hang out with her and her friends all the time, and she complained that I was stealing her friends. I’ve always liked elderly people.”
Jess found a job in dietary at a Harrisburg-area nursing home, eventually changing to activities. All the while, friends were urging her to join them at Homeland, but the thought of leaving the residents she knew and loved broke her heart. It was a time of trials, including the loss of her father and beloved Nana, and “the residents were the biggest support system. It was a very long, awful year, and they stood by me the whole time.”
Since accepting “an offer I couldn’t refuse” at Homeland, she looks forward to reminiscing with her new friends.
“I love to hear their stories from when they were younger,” she says. “They’ve done some of the wildest things. I just learned today that one of my residents went skydiving. Another one wrote an actual, published book.”
By the way, did she ever jump during her time with the Air National Guard?
“Oh, God, no,” she says. “You couldn’t pay me to get off the ground.”
Then again, she is an avid skier who goes West, where the slopes are steep and the views spectacular.
“Anything in the East pales in comparison to being able to jump off a cliff,” she says.
On Day One at Homeland, Jess asked about creating a Veterans’ Wall honoring Homeland residents who served in the Armed Forces. She expected something like the photo array on a corkboard that she had created at her previous employer. She was stunned and impressed when Homeland formed a committee, allocated a budget, and created a wall — with photographs that Jess took — in only 10 weeks.
Many Homeland veterans served in the Korea and Vietnam eras, “and they get forgotten a lot,” she says. “Those wars are not something people remember, but they, like all the veterans from all the other wars, are the reason we’re here, the reason we have freedom. We wouldn’t be the country we are today without them, so they need not be forgotten.”
Outside of work, Jess spends time with her three daughters and watching her infant granddaughter be adorable. She is artsy, printing t-shirts and sewing. Sometimes, she takes photos for friends – portraits and events such as milestone birthdays are her favorites.
Jess is “in awe of Homeland.”
“The care of the residents is clearly the priority,” she says. “The staff is incredible! Everyone is kind and happy to help you; they all go above and beyond for the residents. I love working at Homeland.”
