CORRESPONDENTS: St. Luke Living Center years ago
By SUE GUTSCH
St. Luke Living Center reporter
St. Luke Living Center bakers became "sidetracked" again this week making applesauce brownies Friday morning, a recipe of Tracy Koch of Centralia. These bar cookies were moist and full of chocolate chips and English walnuts.
Speaking of our bakers, we have received the cookbooks Centre High School's IHT (In-House Training) class constructed for us. It includes pictures of our bakers at work plus 42 cookie recipes we have made in the past nine months.
Thanks to IHT instructor Lisa Beye, creator Bridgette Burns, and hard-cover producer Lynley Remy.
Bingo players lined all sides of two tables in our large courtyard-window dining room that afternoon. Pat Smith and Bill Schimpf helped us with three-layer cakes, picture frames, and blackouts as well as regular bingo. Pat also served homemade zucchini bread.
A good portion of Saturday afternoon was spent helping Pearl Baxter celebrate her 98th birthday. Pearl's friend Margaret Cook of Emporia brought cookies, ice cream, nuts, mints, and napkins. She was assisted by Evelyn Hett. Many residents and friends enjoyed the refreshments and wished Pearl a very happy day and many more.
The Rev. Carl Helm of Marion Christian Church was our guest minister Sunday afternoon. JoAnn Helm and their son-in-law, Chris Ensley of Manhattan came with him and Chris played his guitar as we sang the hymns. Pastor Carl also sang a solo for us in his lovely, full voice.
Many of our residents have cleaned ducks, but never more than 1,000 in an afternoon. The project began Monday afternoon with volunteer Marie Navrat, Ruby, and May, but soon others pitched in or were drafted. The little rubber dinky ducks had "raced" during Chingawassa Days Friday evening and were somewhat grim.
St. Luke sponsors the event and proceeds are earmarked for the establishment of a cardiac rehab unit at our hospital.
We weathered the numerous blizzards in the dugout with Molly and baby David John, and finished our book, "Young Pioneers," Tuesday morning.
Pastor Mike Eurit was here after lunch to bring the sacraments to those who desired to be served communion.
A short time later, Jean Case and Iris Summers, representing St. Luke Hospital Auxiliary, came to spend some time visiting and brought refreshments to share. This month there were cookies, snack crackers in little muffin cups, and large crackers with cheese squiggled on top, served on checkered red and blue paper plates and napkins.
During the recent three-day annual visit by the state surveyors, as is usual, the team requests a private group visit with the residents. Our staff was very pleased to learn, during the exit conference, that the survey team was overwhelmed with the positive feedback received from our residents. They noted how freely the group spoke about living here and their involvement in all the activities and decisions made.
There were many eager passengers when it was announced Khrista would be here to drive our large van on a Thursday afternoon outing. As we drove to the reservoir, around and back, it was good to see the green row crops and alfalfa and the wheat fields maturing into gold.
