A Caring Life

Building Relationships, Restoring Dignity and Growing in Health by Caring for Others

BY Aaron Santmyire ARNP-BC, DNP

Introduction

It goes without saying that life for your family and mine in the early 1920s in the United States was much different than it is today. Life may have been simpler, slower-paced, and more community-oriented, but in many ways, I submit it was much much harder. By harder, I mean many things. But specifically, the social programs and government assistance that many of us have come to rely and depend on today for care did not exist.

My generation has grown up knowing of programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Welfare, foster programs, government stimulus, and adoptions agencies that attempt to provide care for those who are in unique groups facing specific challenges. We also have job service programs, food programs, and child development programs that are available to help those in need.

But in the 1920s, these specific care programs did not exist in their current forms. When a family was going through financial hardships, suffering from sickness, or facing feeding a family with no job and no real jobs on the horizon, men and women were faced with some unimaginable decisions. Decisions that ultimately impacted the hearts and minds of those left in the wake of these decisions.

In the mid-1920s in Morgantown, WV one family was faced with challenge after challenge and the circumstances seemed to be going from worse to worst. (They had already been through going from bad to worse. ) The father of the family left his wife and his seven children for reasons some still do not understand, but evidently made sense to him. He left them with little money, food, and with time running out on the roof over their head. The rent on the house they were staying in was paid until the end of the month, but after that, they would need to find another place to live.

The house the family was living in was not a large one, but one that was on a major thoroughfare. It was on one of the main roads that the students at West Virginia University walked by each day to and from class. The students were seemingly all dressed in their dapper clothes and looked to be having the time of their life as they pursued this coming-of-age experience.

The seven kids living in that home were living in the shadows of West Virginia University. But , they would never experience it for all it had to offer. The life situation they had been handed made it personally impossible to be invited into that world. They had hope for a better life. But going to the university they could see and hear was about as far out of reach as having an elephant to transport them around town.

The end of the month came, and the family was forced to move from their rented home into a local apple orchard. Yes, you read that right, they moved into an orchard. The mother was working as hard as she could, but there was no way she could keep up with the rent and the food for her seven children. The owner of the orchard had offered for them to stay under the trees in the orchard and allowed them to eat any of the apples that fell to the ground. They could not pick apples on their own, but if the wind blew just right or the branches would be brushed against in the right way, the apples would fall. They used the apples to supplement the little amount of food they had.

It was in the fall of the year, a beautiful time in the mountains as the leaves begin to change, but for this family, the changing of the leaves brought shorter days and even colder nights. The only way they had to stay warm was to burn their possessions. They did not want to do it, but they finally resorted to burning their possessions one by one to try to stay warm. To say times were desperate, would be an understatement.

At first, they started burning the bigger wooden items. But they did not have many big wooden items. As they made their way burning through their bed and dresser, the family knew if things did not change, they would soon need to burn more precious things. Unfortunately, things did not change and one of the last things they had to burn were the baby dolls of the younger girls. For a family that had experienced so much heartache and pain, the burning of the baby dolls was so demoralizing and discouraging. And the pain of that memory was palpable for years to come.

The oldest sister had enough of the burning of their possessions to stay warm, eating just enough to get by, and sleeping out in the cold. While in town, she saw a sign at a church that advertised a harvest time picnic. The sign said it was open for anyone to come. It seemed to be too good to be true. She gathered the courage to ask the pastor if she could come. He responded kindly and welcomed her to the morning church service and then to the picnic.

She went home excited to have an opportunity for a free meal. She shared the great news with the rest of her family, but no one else was nearly excited as she was. They were not interested in going to a church service, even if there was a picnic to follow. They simply did not fit in. The oldest sister was undeterred, and on Sunday she made her way to the service, to the picnic, and then returned to the church for the evening service. Her life, and the life of her family, would never be the same. As this Sunday, everything would change.

That day at the church, she was confronted once again with the fact that life was throwing more at her than she could handle. Her dad had left and was not coming back. She was living and sleeping outdoors in an apple orchard and burning things to stay warm. She watched every day as students all around her were having fun as they should be and dreaming of a bright future.

She needed help, and she needed someone to care for her. As the oldest, she was doing a lot of caring for others but was needing to be cared for herself.

That Sunday at church, she got a lot more than a picnic lunch. She was fed both spiritually and physically. She made a commitment to turn her life over to Jesus. And the smile, that had been gone for far too long, returned to her face. The pastor and the church rallied around her and her family and cared for them at the lowest point of their lives. And in doing so set into motion a series of events that not only changed the present situation but impacted generations to come.

The church helped the family move out of the orchard and helped them find some solid ground that they desperately needed. They continued to feed the family physically and spiritually. And on the day I graduated from West Virginia University and stood on at the podium addressing the graduating class, I was reminded of my family history.

In my address to the student body, I shared this quote from Andy Andrews “Don’t squander your words or your thoughts. Consider even the simplest action you take, for your life and those lives you come in contact with matter beyond measure…and they matter forever.”

I had intentionally and specifically chosen this quote from Andy Andrews not just because I found it to be pithy, interesting, or a great moral proverb. His words were not describing something I only knew from a distance. But as I shared those words, I was describing the impact others have had on my family, as it was my grandmother who had to burn her baby doll for the family to stay warm.

There are many reasons that I believe that acts of caring have a greater impact than we will ever know. Acts of caring not only impact the person in front of you who you are caring for, but also impact the trajectory of the lives and generations to come.

By the time that I graduated from WVU, my grandmother had long been with Jesus. But I cannot help but think that when my grandmother was living that she would have imagined the story that would unfold in the years to come. That when she was living in the apple orchard watching the students walk by, that one day her grandson would by graduating from that same university and addressing the student body. She would never have imagined that several of her grandkids would one day be some of those students attending class and looking forward to their bright futures. Jesus and the church family had cared for my family and changed our history.

This is an excerpt from the introduction to Aaron’s upcoming book. “A Caring Life”