8th Annual Homeland Hospice 5K and Memory Walk

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Oct. 22 | Rossmoyne Business Center

Homeland Hospice is hosting our 8th annual 5K and Memory Walk on Saturday, Oct. 22, at the Rossmoyne Business Center in Mechanicsburg and we hope you will join us!

The Homeland Hospice 5K and Memory Walk raises funds for benevolent services for hospice patients and their families. Homeland Hospice depends on the generosity of donors for its enhanced care for hospice patients such as massage therapy, music therapy, and extra in-home-relief hours for caregivers, as well as for residents at Homeland Center whose financial resources have been exhausted.

The Homeland Hospice 5K and Memory Walk began in 2014 as a signature event to raise funds and bring awareness to Homeland Hospice services. It was initially a competitive 5K run and walk but has transitioned to include a Memory Walk that focuses on providing a space where loved ones can remember those who have passed.

“The Homeland Hospice 5K and Memory Walk is an uplifting event we look forward to every year,” said Myra Badorf, assistant director of development for Homeland Hospice. “It is for families to remember their loved ones and for us, as an organization, to remember and honor the community and people we are blessed to care for on a daily basis.”

Registration for the 5K and Memory Walk is open for runners, walkers, friends and family members of all ages. Participants may register individually or with a team, and are welcome to bring their four-legged friends. Registration is required. Participants who register will receive a t-shirt while supplies last. Online registration will close after Friday Oct. 14. Walk-up registrations will be accepted.

The 5K will take place on a relatively flat course at the Rossmoyne Business Center and will begin and end at 5000 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg. The Memory Walk will be a shorter distance along a portion of the same course.

After the 5K and Memory Walk, we will honor loved ones, provide light refreshments and award event prizes. Prizes include $100 to the 5K overall male and female champions and ribbons to the top three male and top three female finishers in eight different age brackets. Additional awards will go to the largest team, most “decked out stroller” and most adorable dog. So, start decorating your strollers and remember to bring your furry friend! Not only will you have fun, but you may just come home with an award.

Gather your friends, dust off those running shoes, and join us for our 5K and Memory Walk! It will be a fun morning of smiling faces and we can’t wait to spend it with you.

Volunteer David Sherman: Always watching out for others

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When David Sherman retired from civilian service with the U.S. Navy, 150 people signed the framed picture of the facility where he worked for 41 years, attesting to the friends he made and the impact he had.

Now, David can add “Homeland volunteer” to a life full of accomplishment, athletics, and service. Every Thursday afternoon, he is a fixture in the Homeland hallways and gathering spaces, helping residents play dominoes or take a safe walk.

He also volunteers for Homeland Hospice, putting the monthly newsletter in envelopes for mailing. His volunteer service is an extension of his giving nature and a career devoted to protecting people and documents.

“That’s why I’m in security, to help people be safe,” he says.

David is a Harrisburg native, with a life that has taken many interesting turns. At age 2 and a half, he was diagnosed with hearing loss. For 15 years, he received speech and hearing therapy, learning to lipread from a Harrisburg therapist.

After graduating from William Penn High School in 1966, David learned sign language at Gallaudet University and attended the Pennsylvania Rehabilitation Center, in Johnstown. After getting a couple of jobs in Harrisburg, his parents were delighted and proud when he went to the Washington, DC, area and got a job with the U.S. Navy.

That was in 1971, the beginning of his 41-year career at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division in Bethesda, MD. He spent 27 of those years in security and document control. Sometimes, his work was classified. He was responsible for picking up documents at the Pentagon for years.

Throughout David’s life, Harrisburg’s Jewish community, and Kesher Israel Congregation, also known as KI, have been constants. He has served on the KI board and had his bar mitzvah in the former synagogue in uptown Harrisburg on July 4, 1960.

In 2022, after the congregation moved to a beautifully renovated new home in Harrisburg’s Riverside neighborhood, David celebrated his 75th birthday with a Kiddush party. As with his bar mitzvah, he received the Aliyah – or call – to read the Torah in Hebrew. Today, David helps provide security at the new synagogue’s entry.

Another thread in David’s life is athletics. In high school, he lettered in cross country and track. He won ribbons for first and second place in the Navy 3K run and walk.

“The walk, I did in 19 minutes,” he says. “I was younger.”

He still runs, winning five ribbons in past Homeland Hospice 5K and Memory Walks and hoping for another at this year’s event on Oct. 22, as long as a bothersome knee heals up. In Bethesda, he also played right field for a softball team that won two championships, including one year when he won MVP.

Even when he lived in Maryland, he would come home on weekends to play basketball at the Jewish Community Center. He also played touch football for a Navy team and flag football for the JCC, where his best friend said he played the best defense.

David is also involved with the Hearing Loss Association of America. For 10 years, he served as treasurer for the organization’s 1,000-member Montgomery County, MD, chapter. He has traveled to 25 association conventions, helping provide security. He attended many of those conventions with his late wife, Deborah Beauregard Sherman, whom he met in a hearing-loss support group.

David retired from the Navy in 2012 and moved back to Harrisburg in 2018. Since 2019, he has filled his days with volunteering – delivering Meals on Wheels Friday mornings, helping at Homeland Center on Thursday afternoons. On Sunday mornings, you’ll find him at the Dauphin County Library System’s East Shore Area Library, where he set a personal record of 92 books shelved in three hours.

For a time, COVID restrictions kept David from coming into Homeland, but Homeland Activities Director Aleisha Arnold invited him back after they were lifted. Now, every Thursday, Aleisha gets a text from David to check that his volunteer shift is still on.

“The residents say how nice he is and warm to them,” Aleisha says. “He’s very pleasant. He’s very relatable to them. He’s very dedicated.”

David returns the compliment.

“I really like it here,” he says. “I’m very happy. Aleisha is happy for me to help people.”

A Lifetime of Love: Carol and Joe Moomaw

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Carol and Joe Moomaw of Mechanicsburg have known and loved each other all of their lives. As children they played together with Joe often pulling Carol’s ponytail to get her attention. The couple dated throughout high school with each going their separate ways after graduation. Some years later, Carol and Joe reunited and married after a six-week courtship. Through their friendship, love and respect for one another, they have created a steadfast bond to sustain life’s challenges. Two years ago, Joe was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia and is receiving services from Homeland Hospice, a hospice program that serves communities throughout Central Pennsylvania

After their courtship in high school, Joe attended the University of Pennsylvania, then law school. His final two years were completed at Dickinson School of Law, followed by three years working in the Assistant Attorney General’s Office in Harrisburg. Joe left his position with the Assistant Attorney General’s Office to open a law practice. He was retained by his father’s company, Interstate Tax Service, Inc., which provided unemployment compensation consulting services for employees, as the General Counsel. This family business, which was one of the first of its kind in the region, grew into a family legacy.

Carol attended Bucknell University for three years after high school, then married and had four children. She would occasionally see Joe at community events in their hometown of Waynesboro. After Carol’s husband died, she connected with Joe at a dinner dance. Carol and Joe’s longtime mutual friend Marilyn helped arrange the date. Marilyn’s match-making was a success and soon the couple was dating.

As a single mother, dating Carol included her children, which Joe loved. Carol often relied on the babysitting services of her friend Mary. After one date, Carol’s daughter Dawn asked her mother how to spell Mary’s name. Carol recited the letters to Dawn who quickly produced a note for Joe. The note said, “Will you Mary my mom?” Joe immediately said yes.

“It was the sweetest proposal,” Joe and Carol recall. “Dawn wrote the words we were both thinking.”

The couple married six weeks later on Christmas Eve. Marilyn and her husband served as the maid of honor and best man.

“I have always known Joe so reconnecting was easy,” Carol says. “It was like no time had passed.”

Joe and Carol’s life blossomed as time passed. They had two sons together. Joe adopted Carol’s four children and they raised a happy, close-knit family. Today, they have 14 living grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Professionally, Joe continued to grow Interstate Tax Service, Inc., which is now run by the fourth generation of Moomaws.

Carol and Joe tackle his Lewy body dementia as a team. The disease impacts Joe’s   thinking, memory and movement. When Joe struggles to recollect a memory, Carol is quick to help fill in the missing pieces. With the help of family members and Homeland Hospice, Carol helps care for Joe in the comfort of their home.

Joe’s Homeland team includes a nurse case manager, who has helped the couple secure a hospital bed and other necessary equipment, and a home health aide. Carol and Joe also receive 32 hours of in-home support, which gives Carol time to attend to her own needs. Homeland Hospice is the only hospice agency in Central Pennsylvania that offers an in-home relief program to all patient families.

Carol and Joe’s route to finding one another was not direct, but it was a path they both love and are happy they took. From single businessman to father of four in the course of a few months, Joe always adapts to the challenges and opportunities each day brings.

“I’ve loved every minute of it,” Joe says. “I am a fortunate man.”

For more information about services for patients and families, call Homeland Hospice at (717) 221-7890.

Homeland Board of Trustee Member, Larry Bashore, presented with the prestigious Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award

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Capital City Airport honors local pilots, looks to the future

This article is re-posted with permission from the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal
By: Dan Miller, Contributing Writer  |  July 19, 2022 8:28 am

Capital City Airport celebrated its past with an eye towards the future during an event held on Friday July 15.

With about 100 invited guests looking on inside the iconic Skyport Aviation Texaco Hangar, four midstate individuals with close ties to the airport were presented with the Federal Aviation Administration’s prestigious Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award – from left, Larry Bashore of Mechanicsburg, Michael Bowser Jr. of Wellsboro, Judy Redlawsk of Etters, and Robert Klenke of Camp Hill.

Named for Orville and Wilbur Wright, the award recognizes pilots who have demonstrated professionalism, skill and aviation expertise by maintaining safe operation for 50 or more years.

Lee Janik, who organized the event and a 2012 recipient of the Master Pilot Award, noted Redlawsk was to receive the award in early August 2020 but that her presentation was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following Redlawsk the FAA approved the award for Basehore, Bowser and Klenke. The airport has only recently resumed holding public events in person, so Janik decided to hold one big ceremony to present the awards to all four pilots at once.

A fifth pilot, Jim Zelesko, will receive the award later after the FAA completes its review process, the FAA’s Rick Harowicz said during the ceremony.

Janik also broadened the scope of the event to celebrate the nearly 100-year history of Capital City Airport, and to acknowledge the businesses and organizations that today have a presence on the airport.

These include Skyport Aviation, Cargill Aeronautical Academy and Service Center – the airport’s flight school – Harrisburg Pilots, Aerostar, Pennsylvania State Police, Pennsylvania Bureau of Aviation, Midwest Air Traffic Control Services, Civil Air Patrol, Chapter 122 of the Experimental Aircraft Association, U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, and the many corporate and private aircraft owners who use Capital City.

The event also recognized organizations like EAA that give scholarships to young people pursuing aviation careers.

The newest is Pilots With A Purpose, a non-profit organization founded in 2020 with the mission of enabling more women, African-Americans and those from other minority communities throughout south central Pennsylvania to pursue careers in aviation.

Pilots With A Purpose just received its first grant to help fund scholarships for young people to attend the Cargill flight school, which is partnering with Pilots With A Purpose.

The first two students to attend the school through Pilots With A Purpose will be selected by about September, said

Susan Adams, the flight school owner who represents Cargill on the Pilots With A Purpose board of directors.

Redlawsk completed her first solo flight in 1967 at Chicago Midway Airport, obtaining her private pilot’s license in 1968 and her commercial license in 1969.

Her resume includes being a helicopter instructor, maintaining 350 to 400 flight hours a year, being a licensed U.S. Coast Guard captain and a flight examiner and instructor for the Coast Guard Auxiliary, and from December 1975 to now advancing with the Harsco Corp. to her current position as the company’s director of aviation.

She also plays the flute, saxophone, bassoon and the harp.

Basehore’s flight career began with the military with his first solo in a T-34B aircraft at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 1967. He flew helicopters in Vietnam as a Marine and started work for Clark Aviation on Capital City Airport in 1971 as a part-time instructor. He was president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the International Aerobatic Club for more than 20 years.

Klenke made his first solo flight in 1957, learning to fly while in the U.S. Navy with whom he made 100 landings day and night on aircraft carriers.

Klenke went on to a 32-year career as an airline pilot, starting with Mohawk Airlines which merged with Allegheny to become USAir.

Janik told the crowd Klenke told him his love of flying was such that in all those 32 years, “he never went to work.”

Bowser came to Capital City as a flight instructor for Clark Aviation after attending Montana State University in the professional aviation curriculum.

At 23 Bowser became a captain with Pennsylvania Commuter Airlines but then decided to become a dentist, eventually opening a practice in York. Bowser continued his aviation career as a flight instructor and aircraft owner.

Located just outside New Cumberland in York County, what is now Capital City Airport was once a potato farm and was dedicated to become an airport on Aug. 16, 1930, according to research Redlawsk shared in her opening remarks.

The original construction cost of $252,000 was funded by 800 people in a public sale of stock. The airport consisted of 214 acres of farmland that was purchased and another 79 acres that was leased.

Charles Lindbergh was a technical advisor for Transcontinental and Western Air Inc. – better known as TWA – and twice flew into the airport in October 1930, being greeted by more than 5,000 people each day,

Redlawsk said. Passenger service began that same October.

In 1936 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania took possession of the airport and named it Harrisburg York Airport.

The airport was later renamed Capital City Airport and since 1999 has been owned and operated by the regional authority that also owns Harrisburg International Airport, Susquehanna Area Regional Airport Authority.

“We’re very proud of the history that has happened here at Capital City Airport and we’re proud of the things that will come at Capital City Airport and the stories that we are going to celebrate in another year, five years, 10 years and 20 years,” said Marshall Stevens, deputy executive director of HIA who represented the airport authority at the event.

Capital City Airport had 31,408 operations – take-offs and landings from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. – in 2021, a 27.1 percent increase over 2019, according to authority statistics posted on the HIA website.

The airport has had 9,762 operations through May of 2022, down 23.6 percent from the same time in 2021.

2021 was “a huge year” for operations at Capital City, with more corporate jet flights in and out and increased activity at the flight school, airport spokesman Scott Miller told Central Penn Business Journal.

However, Capital City is more vulnerable to bad weather conditions impacting operations than HIA. A worse winter compared to 2021 and the significant increase in the price of fuel are the two factors most responsible for the drop in activity at Capital City this year compared to last, Miller said.

I don’t remember you.

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This article is re-posted with permission. We thank Gabrielle Elise Jimenez, hospice nurse, end-of-life doula, and conscious dying educator, for sharing her experiences at thehospiceheart.net blog.

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Stack of colorful post-it sticky notes isolated on white

Several years ago, I was blessed to be at the bedside of an incredibly kind and generous man. Because of him I was gifted a lifetime friendship with his wife and daughter. After he died, I stayed in contact with them and we had several meals together over the years, until his wife’s memory started to fade, and confusion slowly set in. She was moved into a facility where I was able to visit occasionally, but the space between the visits became longer and longer as her condition worsened. Her daughter and I have been getting together every few months, and she has kept me updated on her mom’s decline, which was happening more quickly now.

About a week ago, she had to move her mom into a new facility that could offer her a higher level of care, which as you can imagine was tough for her. Some of you know this feeling well, you have been in her shoes, and you have had to provide full time care to someone you love. And even though you know it is the right thing to do, there are a lot of emotions that leave you tangled up inside.

I went to visit her at the new facility. I found her on the couch in the dining room, sitting alone. She looked as beautiful as I remembered, smiling, and laughing as though she was just told a funny joke. I sat down next to her, she barely looked at me, and when I said hello, she smiled at me like you do to a total stranger who just said hello, and you are trying to be polite and kind. She didn’t know me. I told her my name, which made her smile, but not in the way I hoped it would. I told her I knew her husband, which got her attention, but it was short lived. She looked right at me, and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you.” And my heart sunk as I held in the tears. I whispered to myself… “I remember you.”

I asked her if I could come back again for another visit, which she seemed pleased about, and then shook my hand as though she just met me. I realized at that moment we were strangers, or at least I was a stranger to her. As I walked away from her, I reminded myself that this is not about me, and while I wish she could remember me, and that our dinners never stopped, things have changed and what she needs from me, is to meet her where she is, not where I want her to be.

When I first met her, she had just started to struggle with remembering things, so she had post-it notes everywhere. At first there were just a few, but over time I watched as the notes increased, helping her to remember things she needed to do, places she need to be, and the day-to-day life stuff. I am guessing that one day she forgot to write the post-it notes and was left to fumble around her life not knowing what she needed to do or where she needed to be. Her daughter took her hand and provided the most compassionate care and support every single difficult step of the way.

When someone loses their memory, when they do not remember events or faces or even you … it isn’t personal. And while it hurts, it is not about us. Our role in these situations is to be present for them, to remove fear and not remind them of it, and to accept that being in the moment is everything to them, and all they know. We must find a way to let that be enough for us and savor each moment however we have been gifted them. It is okay to step away to cry, and your hurt is valid, so please make sure to take care of you and find someone you can talk about it with. And on those difficult moments, try to go back in time to the memories you have the luxury of bringing up and sit there for a while.

xo
Gabby