Keeping a retirement community of
some 400 residents running requires a large staff. These are the people around
us everyday, who clean our rooms, cook and serve our meals, fix our broken
faucets, and tend to us when we get too old to take care of ourselves. In time
they become familiar to us. We learn their names and they learn ours. Some
become friends.
Some of the stated values of this
particular retirement community are integrity, compassion, dignity, and
service. The community tries (maybe not always with perfect success) to live
out these values in board decisions, administrative policies, resident
activities, and employment practices. Fair wages, adequate on-the-job training,
and a recognition of the dignity of each person—these are the goal.
Most of us residents are grateful
for the staff that work here. I especially enjoy the opportunity to interact
with the Hispanic workers; they remind me of my home in Bolivia. And it’s
refreshing to have so many young people—high school and college
students—serving us meals in the dining room. (I did the same thing in this
same dining room when I was in college. I loved how the residents treated me.)
According to the last report, this
community employs 246 staff persons, many part-time. Most of them seem happy to
be working here (they all need to work somewhere); others seem burdened. But
they all have private lives. They all have stories.
Some of the ways residents express
their appreciation is through a scholarship fund and bi-annual bonuses in the
form of gift cards, furnished entirely by resident offerings. Perhaps even more
important, is when residents respond personally to different ones, learning,
not only their names, but also what we can of their unique stories. This can be
a challenge as they’re all on a schedule, with timed breaks. But little by
little, it’s possible.
Let me tell you John’s story. I
first ran across John as he was vacuuming the carpet in our hall. I greeted him
and he responded with such a warm smile, it touched me and after that I made it
a point to chat with him whenever our paths crossed. Once he commented on a
hanging of shells on my door, asking me where it was from. I told him it was
from the island of Ponape in the South Pacific. He smiled and told me he
recognized it because that’s near his homeland, the island of Yap.
Yap? Intrigued, we invited John up
to our room one day after work. We had lots of question, and what we learned
amazed and delighted us.
Yap is a cluster of islands about 800 miles east of the Philippines surrounded by barrier reefs, part of the Federated States of Micronesia. Beautiful beaches climb inland to forested mountains. It has a year-round temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Population on the main island runs between 11,000-12,000 people. It’s small but it sounds like a paradise.
The religion is a form of imported
Catholicism mixed with animism and ancestorworship. People are proud of their
customs and language, and struggle to maintain their way of life while facing
the modern world. Hard to do.
John comes from this culture, but
he is not just a random member. He is royalty. His step-father was chief or
king of the island, a position handed down in the royal family. As such, John
was in line to become chief.
When he was in high school, a
Korean student shared the Christian gospel with John and gave him a Bible. He
had always been curious about that figure up on the cross and wondered if there
were more to life. After much reflection and prayer, John decided to become a
follower of Jesus. This did not go over well with the family who disowned him
for a time.
John moved to Guam and met his
wife Donna in a church. They had their first two children in Guam, then decided
to migrate to the Northwest corner of the United States where both John and
Donna had family. They eventually made their way to Newberg, Oregon where,
after several jobs, John found himself on the maintenance staff of George Fox
University. He worked there for 19 years, while raising his family of now four
children. Oregon became home.
When George Fox began cutting
staff positions, John decided to move over to Friendsview, again finding a
position on the maintenance staff, where he continues working today.
I wrote this poem about John:
The Prince of Yap
The man who vacuums
the carpets in the hall
is really the Prince of Yap.
His late father was the King of Yap
and he was next in line
to succeed to the throne.
But he didn’t want to be king.
He envisioned another life,
dreamed of open borders,
less ocean, more scope.
So he migrated to America.
One of his relatives is now king.
He’s happy to be here,
vacuuming rugs, secretly knowing
he still is, will always be,
the Prince of Yap.
I suspect that other members of
the staff are also secret royalty, probably not in the same sense John is, but
royalty nonetheless. All people of great value with wonderful stories to tell.
