Tag Archive for: Board Spotlight

Maggie Kirsch can’t name a single incident that exemplifies her beautiful experiences at Homeland.

“All the little ones make up for one big one,” she said. “Everybody is so kind, considerate, and caring here that I can’t honestly say there’s one big thing. It’s the little things that make this place.”

Maggie is a longtime volunteer, serving on the Homeland Board of Managers for about eight years. The Board of Managers is Homeland’s unique, all-women board devoted to sustaining Homeland’s renowned homelike feel, managing the details that range from hanging holiday decorations to redecorating the dining room and refreshing bench cushions.

“I have never met so many kind women so eager to help and ready to do whatever needs to be done,” she said. “They don’t hesitate. Amazing, amazing women.”

Maggie was born in Brooklyn and is the daughter of Italian immigrants. Her mother learned English by reading the Sunday comics. Her father followed a tortuous path through the Alps, across the Atlantic, and down through Canada to reach a better life in the United States.

“He made something of himself on his own,” she said. “He didn’t expect anybody to give him anything. They knew what they had to do.”

Her family moved to Harrisburg from Brooklyn, NY when she was two to be closer to her mother’s family. Maggie’s grandparents ran a grocery store on Cameron Street, near the Bethlehem Steel plant in Steelton, and her father owned an ice cream truck. Later, her parents owned a Harrisburg bar called Guy’s Café.

Maggie attended Bishop McDevitt High School, where she loved singing with the choir and the a cappella group. After graduating from high school, she became a medical assistant and worked in a doctor’s office, which taught her how to do blood tests and other procedures.

In 1966, Maggie married Tom McAuliffe, a Bethlehem Steel electrical engineer. For 22 years, they stayed busy raising their four children. Then one day, while at a seminar in Bethlehem, he died suddenly while out for his daily run.

“I can only say I put one thought in front of the other, handled one situation in front of the other,” she said of those challenging days. “Thank God my kids are good. I was fortunate to have good friends and good family to help.”

Maggie also worked for 16 years as an office administrator for AAA Travel, and after her husband died, she worked as a temp for Kelly.

The agency allowed her to be home every day when her youngest child came home from school.

While serving as a temp with Amp, the former electrical component manufacturer, she attended a holiday party where she met an Amp engineer named Paul Kirsch. Soon, they were dating, and they married before he took a business trip to Paris.

The couple’s travels have taken them to Alaska, Hawaii, and Europe. On one memorable trip, Maggie and four of her siblings – the Bianchi family — ventured with their spouses to their parent’s Italian hometown. There, where a cousin was mayor, they walked the cobblestone streets, ate gelato made by another cousin, and saw their grandmother’s silkworm farm and fig-tree groves.

“It was the best trip we ever took,” Maggie said. “All the things my parents talked about now came to life. If you can return to wherever your parents were from, go!”

Maggie and her husband live in Lower Paxton Township. The grandmother of 14 loves to golf, is an avid gardener, serves as a docent for the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence, and sings soprano, just like she did in high school, but now with the Hummelstown Community Singers.

Since joining the Board of Managers, Maggie has “enjoyed every minute of it.”

“I feel so satisfied just to see how happy the people are,” she said. “I feel so gratified by the things I can do to help make the residents’ lives better. The employees are so nice. I have never met a rude person here. Everybody is very considerate of each other’s position and how they can help each other.”

As a career physical therapist, Judy Bowman saw many long-term care facilities with loving atmospheres – but none matched the intimacy of Homeland Center.

“Being a smaller place, everybody knows each other here,” she says. “We have more fun interacting with the residents. The staff is unbelievably and truly caring. The residents notice that, and the families notice that.”

Judy serves on the Homeland Board of Managers, a unique panel of women devoted to sustaining Homeland’s renowned homelike feel in décor and activities. The Board of Managers descended from the original 18 women from nine Harrisburg churches who, in 1867, founded the “Home for the Friendless” to shelter Civil War widows and orphans.

Coming full circle, Judy remembers that her mother attended church at one of those nine institutions. Judy’s grandfather would take her mother to visit Bethesda Mission and Homeland Center every Sunday.

Judy joined the Board of Managers in 2020, just when COVID restrictions shut down the fun activities that the board was known for presenting – picnics, Monte Carlo night, even a sock hop featuring an Elvis Presley impersonator.

Now that most restrictions have lifted, the board is in full swing. They have hosted a French fry truck, planned a fall festival, baked cupcakes with the residents, and bought patio furniture and a firepit where residents make s’mores. They also made 250 bows to refresh Homeland’s holiday wreaths and held an ice cream sundae party where residents chose their ice cream flavors and toppings.

“We had so much fun talking to the residents,” Judy says. “That’s what was missing during COVID, that interaction.”

Judy serves on the board’s House and Grounds Committee, sustaining Homeland’s atmosphere as “a beautiful, loving, and caring place.”

“This is the residents’ home,” she says. “Every member of the staff, whether in nursing, housekeeping, maintenance, dietary, or activities, focuses on each person’s needs because everybody’s different.”

As a physical therapist, Judy advocated for legislation benefiting the profession, served as an appointee on the State Board of Physical Therapy, and worked in rehab facilities and for the Visiting Nurses Association. She always gravitated toward working with the elderly.

“I enjoyed the conversations with them and the fact that they so appreciated it,” she says.

Judy and her husband both have strong ties to area history. Judy’s Baum ancestors settled in the region on a land grant from a son of William Penn. Her father worked in management for Hershey Enterprises. For a time, he worked in the factory supply center and had to be available for emergencies, so the family lived in the nearby Homestead, where Milton Hershey was born and perfected his milk chocolate formula.

“I couldn’t understand why people would come up and want to see the house,” she says. “I climbed every tree around there. I always brought little bunnies home and nursed them back to health.”

Judy’s husband, Steve, is a Bowman of Bowman Bowman & Co. department store, founded by his great-grandfather in 1871 and whose flagship stood in downtown Harrisburg for 100 years. Steve worked for the family business until he and his father started a sewer cleaning business. When they sold that enterprise, he went to work part-time for Boscov’s, where you’ll still find him conscientiously serving customers in the shoe department.

“He never gave up retail,” Judy says.

Judy also had her time in retail as a part-time bridal consultant at Boscov’s. Since retiring from PT and Boscov’s in 2019, she has volunteered. At Homeland, she witnesses the extraordinary commitment of staff sharing their enthusiasm and talents, and she has come to grasp the “unbelievable” scope of the work performed by the all-volunteer Board of Managers.

“It is very, very hands-on,” she says. “This board right now has so many different talents, and everybody works together using their strengths and gifts.”

She feels grateful to share her gifts – a lesson she learned from her mother, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dickinson College and taught at Milton Hershey School. Her mother also volunteered for countless community causes, and always had room at the dinner table for any student who dropped by.

“The opportunity to help at Homeland is a blessing,” she says. “It truly is. We have an opportunity to help others, to give back, and to serve others. I think we get more rewarded than the other way around.”