Tag Archive for: Resident Spotlight

Residents and guests often comment on Homeland’s home-like atmosphere, where everyone feels like family.

Homeland neighbors Patty McGowan, left, and Loretta Jean McCauley discovered an amazing coincidence — they grew up in the same part of Perry County and are first cousins by marriage. At Homeland, they enjoy playing bingo together and reminiscing about their relatives.

Now, two residents in facing rooms have taken the family theme one step further, discovering not only that they have roots in the same rural enclave but are first cousins by marriage. What are the odds? Who knows? But it all centers around the tiny village of Reward in Perry County, Pennsylvania.

The residents are Patty McGowan and Loretta Jean McCauley, and their coincidental discovery started with a laundry mix-up. One day, Loretta Jean sent her granddaughter to Patty’s room, right across the hall, with some mismarked laundry. Could these be Patty’s? Yes, indeed. They even included Patty’s favorite blouse.

Patty crossed the hall to thank Loretta Jean for returning the blouse. They got to talking, and Patty asked where Loretta Jean was born. Reward, she said. Patty immediately knew the connection. Her husband’s family came from Reward, and she grew up nearby.

“When she said Reward, I thought, ‘I know who this is. I know how this happened,’” says Patty. “I knew about her. There’s nobody else who could have been born there. Her dad was a brother of my father-in-law’s.”

The pieces fell into place. Loretta Jean was a McGowan by birth, first cousin to Patty’s husband, the late Jim McGowan. Their dads belonged to a clan of 11 siblings, including the brothers who operated farms “that all ran together,” as Patty recalls.

Patty grew up playing with her future husband, his sister, and all the other kids around, so it’s likely she and Loretta Jean crossed paths as children.

“The big times were when the church had something going on because our lives were pretty much church-based,” remembers Patty. “Every little church had their own festival, and each church would go to the other church’s festival.”

Loretta Jean was 9 when her mother died, and she left home to live with relatives. At 15, her father remarried, and she returned to live with him and her stepmother, “who was a very lovely person,” she says. “She couldn’t have treated me more like one of her own.”

As an adult, Loretta Jean lived in Harrisburg’s Camp Hill area. Reconnecting with Patty, who stayed in Perry County and maintained childhood friendships, brought back memories.

“She knew so many of the people in that area where I lived,” she says. “She knew all my dad’s brothers and sisters, which is unusual to know such a big family. It was quite amazing.”

The cousins both enjoy life at Homeland. McCauley likes the food and playing bingo. McGowan, a singer all her life, loves the wide variety of music programs.

“I like it very much here,” McGowan says. “I like the people. I like the place. I like the food. I like everything.”

Finding a relative has enhanced the pleasant times at Homeland, they say.

“I had no idea she knew so much about the people on my side,” says McCauley. “It’s weird that it happened that way.”

And as McGowan says, “It’s a good feeling in your heart to know you’re not alone. There’s still somebody out there who’s a part of you.”

Betty Lloyd cherishes her memories!

Golf with friends. Bridge. Travel with family. Betty Lloyd has brought a lifetime of good memories to Homeland Center.

Homeland Center resident Betty Lloyd visits with her son, Greg. “Homeland has a lot of activities,” Betty says. “You can join them and do anything you want to pick from. I always enjoy talking to people.”

Betty came to Homeland in March 2015. Here, she follows politics and welcomes her son, Greg, when he visits from Providence, Rhode Island, every month.

Before Homeland, she lived in nearby Susquehanna Township, in the same home since 1961. From that house, one of the first in its development, Betty and her husband, Reese, built a life that revolved around the community. Greg spent summers at the neighborhood swim club. Betty played bridge with several groups. Reese worked selling specialized packaging tape and taping machinery to manufacturers.

“It was about finding interesting ways to use lots of tape,” says Greg.

When Greg was grown and moved to Portland, Oregon, Betty and Reese would make annual visits with stops at interesting sites along the way – New Orleans, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon National Park, San Francisco, Hearst Castle. Often, they would golf as they traveled. Though golf was a big part of their life, Betty says she wasn’t very good at it.

“There were four couples, and we played together,” she says. “We enjoyed it. The men were good, but the women weren’t good. We went along just to make it easier for them to get out and golf.”

The Lloyds were also longtime members of Zion Lutheran Church in Penbrook, Pennsylvania. Betty worked with circles of women, helping with fundraising, clothing drives, or preparing meals for receptions.

“It’s a little church,” she says. “I still belong there.”

Betty’s room in Homeland is decorated with items recalling the life she shared with her late husband. An enameled ink pot recalls his World War II service with the U.S. Air Force in China. Two duck decoys came from his time woodcarving, which he took up in retirement.

In those years, Betty and Reese were active in the woodcarving community, visiting shows where he would buy tools and books of bird images published especially for woodcarvers. They also took field glasses to nature sanctuaries around Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake Bay, for first-hand looks at migratory birds.

“He liked going out and watching the birds,” says Greg. “It was a good reason to get out and go to those places, and when the weather was bad, he would spend it in the workshop.”

“He did wonderful work,” recalls Betty. “He’d be in his workshop in the basement, and he could hear me starting to get our dinner in the evening, and then I could hear him putting his tools away. Even with his poor eyesight, he didn’t give it up for a long time. It was fascinating. I was glad he had a good hobby like that.”

Today, Betty enjoys her life at Homeland. She chats with fellow residents, follows political news, and votes regularly.

“Homeland has a lot of activities,” she says. “If you want to, you can join them and do anything you want to pick from. I always enjoy talking to people.”

Joe Bowers stand by the Aluminum Overcast, a B-17 like the one in which he flew as a bombardier. Above is the Plexiglass nose he would sit in while guiding the plan over its target.

As World War II raged on, Joe Bowers was serving as an Army 2^nd lieutenant platoon leader. His feet were on the ground, but his hopes were in the sky, with the B-17 “Flying Fortress’’ bombers winging overhead.

“I’d see these beautiful things flying around, and I think, ‘I’d like to get in there,’” he says today. ”Somehow or other, I got lucky.”

Bowers, a Homeland Center resident, served as a bombardier on U.S. Army Air Force B-17s as a 1^st lieutenant for 26 months with the 305^th Bomb Group, 366^th Squadron. From January 7, 1945, to April 17, 1945, he flew in 35 missions over German cities including Karlsruhe, Munich, and Dresden. During that time he flew various B-17s bearing colorful nose-art and names like “What’s Crackin’ Doc,” “Miss Yvonne,” and “Fancy Pantz.”

On a rainy Saturday in September 2014, the 94-year-old Bowers relived his bombardier days when the Experimental Aircraft Association brought a restored B-17 to Capital City Airport in New Cumberland. Coincidentally, the airport is only a few blocks from the home where Bowers was born and raised.

The B-17s Joe Bowers flew in featured nose art, but nothing like the blonde pinup on the Overcast, he said with a laugh.

Seeing the plane parked on the tarmac – the B-17G-VE Aluminum Overcast — brought back memories for Bowers. The hefty B-17s, flying from England deep into Germany, flew in tight formation with nimble escort fighters that protected the bombers from air and ground attacks.

“Thank heavens they did their job,” Bowers said as he sat near the Aluminum Overcast. “We didn’t lose anybody in our crew. We all came through. We got shot at a lot of times, but nothing took us down.”

The formations were so tight, Bowers recalled, that “some wiseguy said, ‘Hell, I can jump from one wing to another.’”

As bombardier, Bowers sat in the plane’s clear Plexiglas nose. When the pilot ordered “bombs away,” Bowers would get control of the plane, with the critical job of maneuvering the ship into position and using the top-secret Norden bombsight to align the target and release the bombs, clustered as tightly as possible.

“All of a sudden, somebody would say go,” he said. “We kept our fingers crossed and away it went. Sometimes we were able to see it when it hit the ground. Not too often, because we were gone.”

Joe Bowers sits at the B-17’s radio controls.

To this day, Bowers wears a gold bombardier’s ring he bought long ago.

“I’ve always been proud of that ring, so I keep it around,” he said. “It’s a part of me, I guess.”

At war’s end, Bowers came home. He worked in a dental laboratory and at the Mechanicsburg Navy Depot until he retired. In retirement, he volunteered as a bus driver around the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Until 2013, he and his late wife Pat, who had lived with him at Homeland, would attend every Hershey Bears hockey game.

“I was always a nutty fan for the Bears,” he said.

As he walked closer to the B-17 at the Capital City Airport, visitors lining up for a tour took photos and thanked him for his service. Asked whether his ships also had paintings on their sides, like the pinup blonde in a bathing suit on the Aluminum Overcast’s nose, Bowers turned to look at the artwork.

The Aluminum Overcast in flight (used by permission)

“Not like that,” he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd.

Though he uses a walker, Bowers eagerly climbed the steps to the side hatch and stepped inside the plane. He didn’t hesitate to maneuver across the ledge circling the ball turret and into the radio room. From there, he could see into a narrow catwalk and the bays holding the bombs. He smiled from ear to ear and laughed out loud.

Bowers remembers being frightened “more than a couple of times.”

“When you’re riding up front and all this stuff is going on, I got scared,” he said. “But we still had a job to do, and that’s what we did.”