Senior Outreach Services: Client Services | Individual

Senior volunteer becomes client of service agency
01/01/04
Donna Lacoboni
Plain Dealer Reporter

Glaucoma blinded Ella Lashley four years ago and took her off the streets she used to pound to visit elderly shut-ins. Now she gets what she gave.

Senior Outreach Services Inc. provides Lashley, 73, with home health aides who cook her breakfast and help her bathe. She gets a ride five days a week to a community center for lunch, music and art therapy, manicures and visits with Tex, the spunky terrier. She has learned tai chi and meditation.

A man towers over her wheelchair patiently feeding her a balanced lunch. "I'd be dead" if it weren't for Senior Outreach Services, Lashley says. "It's my turn now, after giving it for so many years."

SOS assists 550 seniors a year on Cleveland's East Side. It is based in the basement of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church on Cedar Avenue. Executive Director Delores Lynch hopes to move to a larger facility and expand the pro grams this year. "I want to bring high school students and line dancing to our clients," she says. Lashley most enjoys the singing - Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday songs. And she wouldn't mind if LL Cool J paid a visit. "That's my boy," she says, smiling. "I got a look at him when I could see. Mmmm, mm."

Lashley also looks forward to kidding with Charles Beard, the 56-year-old volunteer who loads her plastic fork and says "Mmmmm" to cue her to open up. He scolds her, too. "Wipe your mouth." And "That's enough water. You'll try to fill up on it."

SOS, founded in 1979, is based on African village life, which emphasizes respect and caring for elders. Lynch plans a senior prom for the organization's 25th anniversary this year. With a $400,000 budget, it provides 30 jobs and limitless volunteer opportunities to shop, clean, do laundry, visit and telephone older neighbors.

Some of the volunteers are older than the people they help. Three home aides and two lunch deliverymen are more than 70 years old, Lynch says. "One is 84." Lashley says it took some getting used to being bathed by female aides. "It was weird at first, but now it is relaxing mentally and physically. I get a back rub. I'm Queen Ella in the morning," she says.

And there's Debora Pruitt, 46, who fusses over the seniors as she sings hymns. Pruitt clips and files their nails and massages their hands. "They've got to have pretty hands for the holidays," she says. "It becomes an addiction when you get around seniors, and a privilege."

To read all of the Holiday Spirit stories online, go to www.cleveland.com/holidayspirit.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: diacoboni@plaind.com, 216-999-4852

© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. Copyright 2004 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.

 
 

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