The Milwaukee Jewish Home and Care Center is proud that it never has to turn anyone away, said JHCC Foundation president Nita Corré in an interview last week at her office in the Chai Point Senior Living Apartment Complex.
Although that has been increasingly difficult to do financially, it will be easier in the future because of a $38 million gift from Milwaukee native Lillian Garner.
“I just got a call today, from a man who said, ‘I have exhausted my funds, I’m old and I have no place to go,’” said Jewish Home admission coordinator Elizabeth Blischke, in an interview in her office on Friday.
“The Jewish Home always has its arms open,” she said, and noted that she was able to allay her caller’s fears that his indigence would affect the care he received. “No one will know you have no funds,” she was able to assure him.
“[The home’s] mission is to provide care to the frail Jewish elderly, regardless of their ability to pay,” said Mina Tepper, president of operations for the Sarah Chudnow Campus, Chai Point and the Jewish Home.
The newly remodeled Jewish Home is just one of a number of residential alternatives for Milwaukee’s Jewish seniors, depending on their physical, mental and financial condition. Most of its residents are in their 80s and 90s, and their average stay is about two years.
The home provides 160 beds on four floors arranged as “neighborhoods” that specialize in a range of services, including short-term rehabilitation, long-term care, respite care, hospice care and dementia care.
Passion in common
Garner died in July at age 95 in La Jolla, Calif., where she had lived for more than 20 years. This past November, the home announced that Garner had made this bequest, which could be one of the largest single donations ever made to a Jewish nursing home in the United States.
While the foundation guarantees the Sarah Chudnow Campus, Chai Point and the Jewish Home, the Garner bequest applies only to the home.
The bequest will be invested to provide income for the facility and in this way, it will be able to ensure the future of the home, Corré said.
The home will use approximately 4-5 percent of the income to supplement the funds it receives from its Title 19 residents, who comprise about 70 percent of the home’s total resident population, she said.
“We are so caught in the health care challenges of this country,” Corré said. While health care costs are increasing dramatically, Title 19 and Family Care rates have only increased 1-2 percent per year in the last several years, she explained.
In addition, when the home was remodeled, it gained square footage and reduced the number of residents from 232 to 160. Now, with more space per resident, the cost per resident has increased.
All of these factors have widened the gap between the home’s income from Title 19 residents and its costs to care for them, she said.
Corré started working at the home as a volunteer when she came to Milwaukee as a young mother about 40 years ago. She became the home’s director in 1978.
“I had a great concern when I ran the home,” she said. “When I first started, there were times when we could not meet our payroll.”
So in 1986, she charged the board of the home with establishing the JHCC Foundation “to subsidize the home’s operating deficit,” Corré said. She became the foundation’s president.
Corré said that Garner’s gift will allow the home to continue “to do what we are doing” and deal with the challenges of the future.
“It’s a gift to the home, but it helps the whole community because we won’t have to go to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation to ask for the funds,” Corre said.
Garner spent almost 50 years working in her family’s Milwaukee furniture-making business. She visited the Jewish Home just once some 10 years ago.
But she and Corré, who shared a passion for the mission of the Jewish Home, developed a close relationship and a high level of trust, Corré said. She spoke with Garner by telephone and visited her often.
Corré is committed to honoring Garner’s wishes and her memory. “I feel so responsible,” Corré said. Garner “worked hard to make [this money] and we owe it to her.”
The home also will honor Garner’s memory with the Lillian and Lawrence Garner Room, which will be furnished with pieces made by the family furniture company and a silver tea set.
“We will have a fancy tea party there for the residents every month,” Corré said.
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