| 9/3/2009 11:07:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Pictured above is an artist's rendering of the planned inpatient care facility. |
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'Road to Rainbow' under way
By Pam Chickering Wilson
Union staff writer
JOHNSON CREEK - Backers of a Rainbow Hospice Care inpatient facility reached an important mile marker Wednesday with the dedication of a road leading to the Johnson Creek property where the facility is to be built.
Calling the ceremony "Road to Rainbow," supporters of the long-planned hospice care facility welcomed a standing-room-only crowd Wednesday to a pavilion in the middle of the still-muddy Remmel Drive extension, which is slated for completion in November.
From the site, guests could see a panorama of countryside cut by brown lines marking road construction. A cornfield and forest stretched on one side of the pavilion and the mall strip marked the edge of village development on the other.
The reception featured speeches by five people involved with the planning process, as well as an impressive array of desserts provided by WWGC LLC, the group of local businesspeople who donated a large parcel of land to the hospice for this purpose.
Karen Carrig, president and CEO of Rainbow Hospice Care, based in Jefferson, said that she hopes to see construction of the actual facility begin in 2010. In the meantime, the Rainbow Hospice Foundation is working hard to spearhead the fundraising effort, with approximately $2 million yet to raise.
Dennis Mudler, chairman of the Rainbow Hospice Care Board of Directors, called it an "exciting, exciting day."
He emphasized that Rainbow Hospice still considers home healthcare to be its main mission, but that the addition of the inpatient facility would enhance Rainbow's core services.
Those who have experienced Rainbow Hospice's caregiving find that "it's truly a defining moment," he observed.
Mudler said that he has toured several similar facilities around the state as they have become more prevalent and has been extremely impressed at what they can do for patients at the end of life.
Mudler recognized the Rainbow Hospice board, the cornerstone members who helped kick off the fundraising effort, and major community contributors, including WWGC LLC, made up of Lyle, Jim and Chad Wuestenberg; Jim Glover; and Pat Caine.
Mark Johnsrud, the new village administrator for Johnson Creek, shared an Abraham Lincoln quote that also is reproduced on the Rainbow Hospice Care website. It states, "In the end, it's not the years of your life that count; it's the life in your years."
Citing the village motto, "Crossroads with a Future," Johnsrud said that the Rainbow Hospice inpatient facility definitely is part of that future and an improvement that will better the quality of life in Johnson Creek and across the area.
"It is a great day in Johnson Creek," he concluded.
In her remarks, Carrig said that next year marks Rainbow Hospice's 20th anniversary, noting that it would be great if that milestone coincided with the construction of this new facility.
During the past two decades, she noted, the independent nonprofit agency has served thousands of patients and family members throughout greater Jefferson County, and it will continue to do so into the future.
Rainbow Hospice's service area extends from Whitewater to Watertown, from Cambridge and Waterloo to Sullivan and Palmyra.
The addition of an inpatient facility does not mean that Rainbow Hospice would abandon its home care, Carrig emphasized.
Rather, the eight-bed facility would be designed to house the most vulnerable people at the end of their lives, those who require 24-hour care, and to provide a level of care currently unavailable to local hospice patients.
She said that through the years, Rainbow Hospice has benefited from the support of many contributors, large and small, but none has stood out more over time than Jefferson's Tomorrow's Hope, which has raised many thousands of dollars each year for the last dozen years to help the local hospice extend its services.
Just last month, Carrig said, Tomorrow's Hope held its major fundraiser, the Walk Fest, which brought in more than $202,000 to improve the healthcare system in the local communities. Rainbow Hospice is among the beneficiaries.
Carrig asked guests at the reception to shake their neighbor's hand in recognition that they share the virtue of caring for the most vulnerable members of society.
Vicki Zick, Johnson Creek village president, told those gathered that she admired the dedication and sheer tenacity of Rainbow Hospice Care planners, who foresaw the need for such a facility and started to pursue this plan in 2003.
"Most of us would have given up on Johnson Creek a long time ago," Zick said, noting that hospice planners selected Johnson Creek as the ideal location as it lies in the center of the hospice's service area.
Zick commended the partnership of Rainbow Hospice and WWGC as a "perfectly harmonious marriage" of businesspeople working together so that all will benefit.
Also offering remarks was Chuck Frandson, president of the Rainbow Hospice Foundation, who recalled early moments in the planning process when the facility didn't seem nearly as certain as it did now. Particularly memorable, he said, was a trek he and a fellow hospice planner took around a wet and muddy cornfield while scoping out one of many locations being considered in the village. As they got further and further out in their explorations, he said, they became more and more turned around.
"Our partnership with WWGC puts us on high ground, literally and figuratively," Frandson said.
The foundation president asked guests to imagine what it must have felt like to start the first school in a settlement, or to bring the first hospital to a community that did not have one before.
As with these efforts, this has been a cooperative community venture led by the local residents, he said.
When the inpatient facility is ultimately built and members of today's audience come to the facility to visit a loved one, Frandson said, they will be profoundly grateful that "we built this."
Frandson ticked off a short list of some of the people who have contributed to the capital campaign so far, including a soft-spoken widow who designated her gift to the memory of her husband, a young woman who donated money in memory of her grandfather and a "fellow who called Rainbow Hospice members 'angels.'"
"Today, you stand among people whose generosity and charity for our worthy cause came before profit and personal gain ... " Frandson said.
The vision of a Rainbow Hospice inpatient facility will become reality "if we create it together," he added, calling on the entire community to commit itself to the cause.
"The next time we get together, I want to be inside (the Rainbow Hospice inpatient facility,)" he concluded.
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