One hundred years ago today, May 31, 1912, the Jewish community established the Moshav Zkeinim Home for the Aged Society. Now known as Village Shalom, the continuing care retirement community began celebrating its 100th anniversary earlier this year and will continue to do so through its Ages of Excellence Celebration in November.

One reason the facility is able to celebrate this milestone is a successful effort that culminated last fall in which the continuing care facility was able to reduce the $40 million in capital debt on its 26-acre campus to a more manageable $16 million.

“We have so much to celebrate,” said Matthew E. Lewis, Village Shalom’s president and CEO. “Having such a successful capital debt reduction campaign has truly solidified the financial stability of the organization.”

“To be able to carry that forward and celebrate 100 years of serving the Jewish community is really special and it’s really meaningful. The timing of it has just been a real blessing. It certainly has given us much more to celebrate.”

Today there are approximately 100 Jewish senior living facilities in North America. However other communities haven’t been as successful as Kansas City in maintaining these facilities, with at least three closing in the last five years. Michael Abrams, chairman of the board, believes the Kansas City Jewish community should be proud it’s been able to support Village Shalom.

“Our tradition teaches us a community is judged on three questions: how we educate our young, how we treat our poor and how we care for our elderly. We can all take pride in that through Village Shalom we’ve been able to fulfill the obligation of caring for our elderly and will continue to do so in the years to come,” Abrams said.

Lewis, who is not Jewish, noted that one of the main reasons Village Shalom has survived and thrived over the years is due to the depth of support it receives from the Jewish community.

“It’s not just the financial backing of our facilities. It’s the commitment, the caring, the volunteering … all of the different aspects of how this organization works. I’ve worked for other faith-based retirement communities, and I think truly the Jewish community’s commitment to caring for the elderly far surpasses any other faith-based organization that I’ve worked for,” Lewis said.

In particular, Lewis praises the support the board has provided over the years.

“We’ve always had and we continue to have very strong board leadership. I’ve always been grateful for the people from the community that have given so much of their time to serve on our board. It’s a huge time commitment,” he said

Staying on solid footing

Lewis has been with Village Shalom for 12 years, first serving as chief financial officer. He will celebrate his seventh anniversary as chief executive office tomorrow, June 1. During that time he has always had to keep an eye on the financial situation.

Administrators often worry about reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid, entitlement and insurance programs that many residents rely on. Those revenue streams are very tenuous and often vulnerable to budget cuts.

While revenue from those programs will continue to be unpredictable in the future, Lewis points out that Village Shalom’s occupancy rates continue to be strong.

“Last year, 2011, concluded our fifth straight year of 95 percent occupancy or higher and we’re on track to achieve that in 2012,” Lewis said. “Five years and running is a pretty remarkable stretch.”

Not everyone Village Shalom serves is a resident, and those numbers continue to rise as well.

“For example our dementia day program, on an annual basis, typically serves 100-plus people. We provide outpatient therapy and our wellness center has community participation. So when you look at all of the unique individuals that we serve, it’s well over 700 people on an annual basis and that number has really continued to grow over the last several years,” Lewis said.

When he became CEO, one of his primary goals was to build a management team that not only had more experience within their respective areas of expertise but also more industry experience.

“I also worked hard on retention so that Village Shalom had stability on the management team level,” he said.

Along those lines, he also set in motion plans to attract high-quality employees and retain them through training, staff development and employee recognition and appreciation.

Lewis can point to the fact that strides in those areas have led to decreased employee turnover in five of the last seven years. In 2004, employee turnover was 101 percent. In 2010 it was 23 percent and in 2011 it was 30 percent. Lewis said the industry average is between 60 and 70 percent annually.

In the next 10 years, Lewis said continuing to attract quality employees will be one of the facility’s challenges.

“There are a lot of good nurses and staff members that are very good in terms of their skill set or their clinical knowledge, but we also seek staff that care very deeply about our mission of taking care of the elderly,” Lewis explained.

“We want our staff to provide our residents with a dignified quality of life that far surpasses other organizations. It takes really special staffers to do that,” he continued.

Providing quality care

Indeed Lewis is proud of the care Village Shalom offers seniors, and said it can’t be matched anywhere else in the community.

“People of other faiths truly know the quality of care that we provide, so they understand that there’s a real commitment to that,” Lewis said.

The CEO feels that Village Shalom’s commitment to quality care distinguishes it from other similar facilities in the area. He also feels Village Shalom offers unique things others don’t.

“Certainly one of the things that comes to mind is the gallery. No other facility that I am aware of has a gallery or something that even compares to what we have,” Lewis said.

He said Village Shalom is always challenging itself to do new and creative programs and activities for its residents.

“We do much more by way of programs and activities than any other facility within the metro area,” he said. “We provide well beyond just the typical things that you would think of. We do those things, too, and they are important, but we try to go above and beyond. We try to inject new activities.”

Lewis said meeting individual interests is another thing at which Village Shalom excels.

“We do a lot of group activities and programs, but we go above and beyond to see that the individual interests and hobbies of our residents are met because that’s important to the individual. We strive to provide that holistic care,” he continued.

The celebration

Lewis said Village Shalom is currently firming up details to share several celebratory anniversary events with the entire Jewish community. Dates have not yet been confirmed, but they include a birthday party at Village Shalom, a speech at the White Theatre by Rabbi Irwin Kula, the president of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and the annual Ages of Excellence Event in November.

Village Shalom’s humble beginnings

In 2012, 91 Orthodox Jews signed the charter for the Moshav Zkeinim Home for the Aged Society. A 14-room house located at 29th and Troost was donated by Herman Appleman in 1918. Named the Michael Appleman Home in memory of Herman’s son, it began accepting residents in 1918 and served the community at that location for nearly 32 years. A neighboring house was purchased to provide additional residential space, and its garage served as the facility’s synagogue.

Ground was broken for a new home at 78th and Holmes in 1948. Two years later in 1950, 18 senior adults moved into the facility, which was now called the Home for the Jewish Aged. At that time it could accommodate 76 residents. In 1954 a Special Services unit opened, increasing the home’s capacity to 90 residents.

The name changed again in 1967 to the Jewish Home for the Aged. The home’s capacity doubled, increasing to 181 residents, in 1968. A new name, Jewish Geriatric and Convalescent Center, was adopted in 1970, this time to reflect an expansion of services.

Shalom Plaza Apartments and Multi-Activity Senior Center opened next door to JGCC with 125 apartments in 1978. In an effort to identify that JGCC and Shalom Plaza facilities were branches of a single organization, the home changed its name to Shalom Geriatric Center in 1985.

Plans for the new Village Shalom, located on 26 acres in Overland Park, were finalized in 1997. Village Shalom opened its doors to the community almost 12 years ago on June 20, 2000.

Sidonia Perlstein survived the Holocaust to become a talented designer and seamstress. But when Perlstein died on Mother’s Day six years ago at the age of 93, she was still a mystery to the daughter she had raised alone in western Massachusetts.

“My real mother was someone I never truly knew,” said Hanna Perlstein Marcus.

But Sidonia’s death only made Marcus more determined to understand her mother and seek out the father about whom she would never speak.

Marcus recounts what she learned in her memoir, “Sidonia’s Thread: The Secrets of a Mother and Daughter Sewing a New Thread in America.” It is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

“Piecing together her story showed me a mother who was a stronger, more resilient and courageous person than I ever thought,” said Marcus, who is 64.

Their story begins in 1947 in a displaced persons camp near the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northwest Germany. In her mid-30s, an unwed Sidonia gave birth to a daughter she affectionately called “Hanele” (little Hanna). Two years later, the two immigrated to the United States. Since they had no American relatives to sponsor them, the American Joint Distribution Committee randomly assigned them to Springfield, Mass.

The author has connections to Kansas City. Steve Rothstein and Ann Rothstein Cromer (now Chana Cromer of Jerusalem), are two of her only cousins in the entire world.

“Steve’s mother, Olga, and my mother were first cousins since their mothers were sisters. They came from the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine-producing region in Northeastern Hungary. Olga, her brother Ference, who returned to Hungary after being liberated, and my mother were among less than a handful of that extended family who survived the Holocaust. When they arrived in America, Olga and her family settled in Kansas City,” Marcus said.

Marcus said Sidonia was blessed with a self-taught talent for sewing and a flair for fashion.

“She was a fashionista and a great admirer of Jackie Kennedy. I’m tall and thin, so I was her perfect model.”

Although mother and daughter were close, Marcus felt that her mother wanted to keep part of herself at a distance. For example when she was 6, she asked about her father.

Her mother’s “response was cold, and she was unwilling to talk,” Marcus said. “I never asked again.”

Both mother and daughter always wore clothes designed and made by Sidonia.

“For the most part, I realized the clothes she made were stunning. I was wearing couturier clothes when I was 13 years old,” Marcus said.

Sidonia went from working in a dress factory to becoming a foreman and finally opening her own business as a fashion designer and seamstress. One grateful customer gave her “Coats and Clark’s Sewing Book: Newest Methods from A to Z” (1967), the only sewing book Sidonia ever owned. She never opened it, but the book always sat on a table in her sewing room.

Marcus went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology at UMass.-Amherst. Wearing her mother’s designs, she was voted one of the best-dressed women on campus.

At the University of Connecticut, she received master’s degrees in counseling and social work. As a licensed clinical social worker, she embarked on a career in social work and public sector human services. After marrying in 1969, she had two children, Brenda and Stephen, and settled in Vernon, Conn.

In the mid-1980s, Marcus and her daughter accompanied Sidonia to her hometown in Hungary.

“When my mother and her family were deported, they always thought they would be back,” Marcus said. “They had treasures hidden for safekeeping. We were searching to see if there were mementoes of the family I never knew.”

They didn’t find anything, but Hungary reignited Marcus’ interest in her mother’s past.

“The trip was a turning point. My feelings changed, and I wanted to write about it,” she said.

In 1998, while helping the then 86-year-old move into senior housing, Marcus looked inside her mother’s nightstand and found it filled with photos and with papers and letters, in Hungarian, Yiddish and German.

“I took them without her knowing it, and had them translated,” Marcus said. “They revealed unexpected surprises” — including that Marcus’ father was much younger than her mother and didn’t want to commit to marrying an older woman. There was enough information for Marcus to trace him to his home in Israel.

“When I finally called my father, he was neither cordial nor receptive to my requests to arrange a meeting between us, having never revealed my existence to his family,” said Marcus. “My childhood dreams of finding a father who would welcome me with open arms were shattered. Although I eventually met the daughter he had later in his life, it never turned into a lasting relationship.”

Drawing on the papers from the nightstand, the trip to Hungary and her childhood memories, Marcus assembled a picture of her mother.

Sidonia was a “content and somewhat sheltered woman who came from a close-knit, large immediate and extended family, all lost in the Holocaust,” said Marcus. “She was a changed woman after the war, very insular, solitary and reclusive — unable to reveal how her child was conceived, her correct age and why she behaved in such a withdrawn manner.”

Sidonia and her sister Laura were interned at Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. Laura died of typhus only two months before the liberation of Bergen Belsen in April, 1945.

“In Dachau, during a roll call, the officer in charge asked if anyone could sew,” Marcus said. “My mother must have shouted louder than any other woman with her hand raised because she was chosen to work in the camp’s office. She sewed ripped seams, buttons, and replaced zippers for the soldiers and office staff during her last few weeks in Dachau. Because her leg was broken just a day before [that roll call], I have always thought that her sewing skill actually saved her life during the Holocaust.”

Following Sidonia’s death in 2006, Marcus began to think about writing the book. “My mother went to her death without knowing I had uncovered these treasures in her nightstand,” Marcus said. “She never told me secrets. We were keeping secrets from each other.”

Originally, Marcus planned do genealogical research by finding people who knew her mother in Hungary or in the DP camp. She succeeded in contacting some of them, but nearly all were reluctant to talk.

“So I decided to write mainly from memory,” Marcus said. “My research was not scholarly. This is a very personal story.”
As she began to write, Marcus remembered the sewing book the customer had given her mother. With permission from the Coats and Clark Company, Marcus used titles and excerpts from the book to serve as the “thread” to tie her own book together.

“ ‘Sidonia’s Thread’ is really about Sidonia. I am the facilitator to tell her story,” said Marcus.

Parts of this article were originally published in The Jewish Advocate of Boston.