Wtrc-Magazine-January-2018.Pdf
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LEADERSHIP LETTER Steve Martin, President & CEO While contemplating program, spotlights on our donors and volunteers what to write in our first who are critically important to our success as well as newsletter, which will be information on upcoming events and ways you canL L the first in a series of continue to help the West Texas Rehabilitation Center. quarterly messages to As we come back from the holidays, we will kick off our you, I could not help but 48th annual telethon on January 20th. We hope you will reflect on our rich history. join us at the Abilene Convention Center from 7:00 p.m. What started out as the to midnight or tune in on one of the 8 television vision and dream of networks carrying the show. You can also watch a live Shelley Smith, committed stream of the show at WestTexasRehab.org. Be sure volunteers and community service agencies 65 to register on Handbid to participate in the auction years ago in Bonham Elementary School with 17 featuring hundreds of items that will be available now patients has now blossomed into campuses in through January 20th. Abilene, San Angelo and Ozona. Hospice of the Big Country joined the West Texas Rehabilitation Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to Center in 2000 and today is our largest department support the West Texas Rehabilitation Center, we are helping patients and families through end of life extremely blessed by your kindness and friendship and healthcare challenges. There is a great story of a will continue to strive to be good stewards of all you loving couple and volunteer helped by Hospice in have given us. Best wishes on a happy and healthy 2018, this quarter’s newsletter. and may God bless you, your families and the West Texas Rehabilitation Center. A Foundation chartered in 1966 for the sole purpose of supporting the operations of West Texas Gratefully, Rehabilitation Center continues to grow and now helps support our donor-sponsored patients and operational expenses at around 21% for 2018. This is not where we ultimately need or want to be, but impressive nonetheless. Our goal is to one day see the Foundation cover all of our operating expenses related to patient care, making the West Texas Rehabilitation Center much less dependent on third-party insurance reimbursement, including federal and state government programs such as TABLE of CONTENTS Medicare and Medicaid. 1 Leadership Letter 14 Volunteer Spotlight Due to your faithful support of our Foundation, our fundraising events and your gifts to the West 2 Foundation Spotlight 15 Equipment Wishlist Texas Rehabilitation Center, last year we were able 3 16 to see over 530 patients each day, from 3 states and HOBC Spotlight 2018 Events 148 different cities and towns. These patients were 4 Patient Spotlight 17 New Foundation referred by 893 different physicians who know the value of what West Texas Rehabilitation Center 6 Donor/Sponsor Spotlight Staff Spotlight offers – the best equipment, best facilities and best 8 20 WTRC Telethon 2018 clinicians, therapists and nurses anywhere. The Physician Spotlight West Texas Rehabilitation Center is able to greatly 10 Department Spotlight; ©2018 impact the lives of our patients no matter their Publisher financial circumstances or ability to pay. Audiology, Nutrition West Texas Rehabilitation Center WestTexasRehab.org Pacesetters, Food In these pages, you will read about patients like Program Design & Layout “Braveheart Ben” achieving life changing miracles, Zoom Advertising & Design new programs such as our unreimbursed nutrition www.zoomtexas.com WTRC ROUND-UP WTRC ROUND-UP 1 HOSPICE OF THE BIG COUNTRY SPOTLIGHT Remembering Robert & Norma Jones, FOUNDATION SPOTLIGHT By Rodger Kennedy, Senior Vice President for Planned Giving By Angie Lane, Director of Hospice of the Big Country A long time donor notified WRTC that he has included a very generous gift Let me introduce you to Robert and Norma Jones. invited staff and volunteers (who wishes to remain to the WTRC Foundation in his estate plan that will We met this beautiful couple in the summer of 2013 of Hospice of the Big Country. anonymous) first became continue to support the patients of the WesFt TexaSs when Norma had been diagnosed with a terminal Let me just tell you, it was condition and a hospice referral was made. When the BEST dinner show ever! aware of the West Texas Rehabilitation Center for generations to come. we talked to them about goals of care, Norma Rehabilitation Center wanted to be kept informed and she wanted to be We invited Robert to attend (WTRC) in the early It is gifts such as this that allow the WTRC Foundation comfortable. Robert had been taking care of her for the U.S. Marine Corps 1950’s when he saw to grow its annual distribution to WTRC and continue to a long time and just wanted to know that help was Birthday Party cake cutting patients being treated at treat patients regardless of their financial circumstance. available if he should call. We knew we could do ceremony that Woody Bonham Elementary School. Later when he was in Please consider including the WTRC Foundation in your that and we did. Norma passed away in Gilliland hosts every year. December that year, at home, comfortably, with her He came and it wasn’t long after that he even joined our junior high, his mother “encouraged strongly” that estate plans as a lasting Legacy of your own. husband at her side. Robert was forever grateful We Honor Veterans program. He suited up and reported he volunteer at WTRC. He admits he was not the for the care they had received from Hospice of the for duty! I think this might have been one of his favorite best volunteer, but did see the benefits patients If you would like help or more information please Big Country. things. He loved serving veterans at end of life. received from the Center every time he came. contact Rodger Kennedy at the West Texas Rehabilitation It brought him great purpose to honor them with a Center Foundation at 325-793-5424, Jason Weaver Robert immediately entered our Bereavement recognition ceremony. He was such a good deal for He was actually a WTRC patient once while in at 325-793-3435, Chuck Rodgers at 325-793-5475, or Program. He would come by thHSe office and often Hospice of the Big Country. ask how he could help Hospice of the Big Country. high school for a neck issue and was treated by Chad Hirt at 325-223-6415. I would tell him to keep sharing the news of In January of 2017, Robert had a nagging cough. He Bill Snowden, a physical therapist who later hospice. We had been making plans to produce went into the hospital and tests were performed. The became President and CEO of WTRC. He graduated a series of commercials using actual patient stories, doctor came in and told him that he had stage 4 lung from Cooper High School and then attended Texas not actors. We wanted real stories and, of course, cancer. The doctor gave him his treatment options and Tech University and earned his degree in Finance Robert Jones came to Robert said, “No, I want to go home and I want to go in the early 1970’s. His father, a successful banker mind. Thus, the first home with Hospice of the Big Country” because we at First National Bank of Abilene wanted him to Hospice of the Big were his family. So, that is what he did. Country patient-story go into the banking business, but he had his commercial was made. Not long after he was on hospice, we knew he would own plans. need his own recognition ceremony. We wanted to When Robert recognize our Marine, and so the team went to work He began his career in Dallas at a Savings and completed the planning. He was given his own ceremony and the Loan Institution and worked there before joining Bereavement Program, whole team showed up. He was so grateful. the Financial Accounting Department for the he wanted to become a volunteer. Why would City of Dallas. He returned to Abilene to help I was with Robert in the last few days of his life. I sat he want to serve? Maybe because he spent his with him, prayed over him, and read scripture to him. care for his parents and worked for the financial early years serving as a Sergeant in the United Found in his Bible was a 5-page prayer list of names that services department at a local Hospital. Retiring States Marine Corps. Maybe it was because he he prayed over every day, and scattered through the in 2002, he has pursued his lifelong interests in art spent his middle years serving God on over 20 mission pages were the names of Hospice of the Big Country and music. He purchased and then restored a rare trips throughout South America with his wife at his staff and volunteers. 1926 Steinway Grand piano that is made from side. So, it seemed to make sense in his later years cherry wood. He plays the piano and organ, often that he would want to serve the patients and families When the Lord took Robert home, we placed an of Hospice of the Big Country--giving back. That is American flag over him as he was carried away. I was with friends. what he wanted to do, and he did it well. He was reminded of all that he had given back. It all started involved in everything.