“We know aging isn’t something people want to think about, but we want to make this day serious while also not being sad,” says Lift Caregiving founder Katie Gilstrap.
Lift Caregiving is a website for family caregivers that provides expert content from VCU Medical Center as well as from local service providers. The site offers advice, a list of trusted providers, guides and assessments for caregivers in need of assistance. There is also an online shop through Lift Caregiving that features items to assist in the aging process, such as walkers, canes and shower railings. “This Saturday’s Modern Aging event is a way for us to bring the Lift Caregiving website to life,” Gilstrap says.
(Note: to read a recent Richmond magazine feature on geriatric care, “A Fragmented System,” and accompanying articles, click here.)
Everything offered at the Modern Aging event is completely free to those attending; flu shots, health screenings, on-site respite care, diabetic meter testing, and advanced medical directive consultation and development will be conducted by medical experts from the VCU Department of Gerontology and Section of Geriatric Medicine, as well as representatives from HCA Virginia Health System.
A two-part food demonstration is scheduled from noon to 12:45 p.m., with Dr. Peter Boling, director of long-term care and geriatrics at VCU, first discussing the benefits of eating healthy as a person grows older. A brief cooking demonstration will follow Boling’s talk. “Too many people are eating frozen or canned foods for a majority of their meals,” Gilstrap says. “This demonstration will have some great tips on how to keep your loved one eating healthier.”
In addition to advice from medical experts, financial advisors and power of attorney consultations will be offered for free, as well. Medicare experts will also be available to discuss recent Medicare changes and cut-off deadlines. “There will be dozens of opportunities for caregivers and aging individuals of all stages to get assistance with health care,” Gilstrap says. “We will even be offering up free chair massages for caregivers, and who doesn’t love a free massage?”
The Modern Aging event is free and health insurance is not required, although presentation of a health insurance card is necessary to receive a flu shot.
Fabergé works — among them cigarette cases, animal figurines, parasol handles, silverware, picture frames and of course the Easter eggs, both large and tiny — represent VMFA’s entire collection (rarely on display because of space issues) and those of other collectors and museums.
Most of the pieces are petite, making display space an important consideration. Because they are placed in large cases on the wall and in the center of the room (allowing a 360-degree view of the eggs created for Czar Nicholas’ family and other significant pieces), viewers can pay attention to the incredible detail achieved by the St. Petersburg artisans. Signs posted on gallery walls give a good sense of 19th-century Russian history and the techniques employed by the House of Fabergé, which was destroyed after the revolution, with many pieces melted down into precious metals.
At the entrance of the exhibit is a stunning diamond tiara that made more than one woman gasp in admiration; you can buy your own (plastic) replica at the gift shop, although that doesn’t seem to be quite as magical as the original. Another noteworthy piece is the Nobel Ice Egg, an enamel egg etched with frost and commissioned by Emanuel Nobel, nephew of the Nobel Prizes founder.
To celebrate the exhibit (running from July 9 to Oct. 2), musicians played Russian classical tunes, and guests dined on caviar, roasted potatoes, borscht and smoked sturgeon.
Amid the opulence of the Fabergé pieces, there is a sense of foreboding; many of us learned in history classes about the assassination of the czar and his entire family, whose pictures are liberally displayed in the exhibition, and who are so closely linked to Fabergé. The museum has achieved something special here, a bit like reuniting a family scattered by war.
But when opportunity arose to wrangle over the proposed budget amendment during council’s Friday work session, council members chose to advance the amendment.
“There was general agreement that the $100,000 would be included in the [proposed] budget,” City Council Chief of Staff Daisy Weaver said late Friday afternoon.
Councilman Marty Jewell had only a day before called for Graziano’s resignation because of her proposal. On Thursday, he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "I'm not accusing anybody of anything but it looks so bad."
Weaver said that none of the council members made a fuss over the sum.
Councilwoman Cynthia Newbille was incensed that conflict arose in the first place.
“Kathy Graziano and Mike Herring (the commonwealth’s attorney) are incredible public servants,” she said. “It’s outrageous to suggest that somehow something inappropriate happened.”
But suggestions were not only made, they were flung around, enough so that Herring was seriously worried before the work session. He said that he was concerned that “a war of words might jeopardize compensation for my lawyers.”
The weeklong controversy arose after Hathcock, who was charged with misdemeanor assault and sexual battery of city council aide Jennifer Walle, appeared in Richmond General District Court on Tuesday.
Hathcock was ordered to undergo sensitivity training and complete 100 hours of community service. His case was continued until September. At that point, the charges against him could be dropped under an arrangement worked out with prosecutor Michael Holloman, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Herring’s office.
In an online CBS-6 story about Herring asking Graziano for the budget amendment, Herring said, “The subject of the silliness of Hathcock and Walle never came up.”
When asked by Richmond magazine to explain the comment, he said that the case “troubled him.”
“Normally, a person who has been the victim of a sexual battery, they call the police, not human resources, “ he said. “It seemed as if the case ended up in criminal court as an afterthought. I am not passing judgment on Jennifer Walle or Hathcock, but it troubled me that it ended up in my office eight to nine months after the incident.”
Herring said that Holloman’s “agreement is absolutely fair” and that he “didn’t in any way influence it.” He said that turned the case over to Holloman in an effort to “erect a functional Chinese wall” between him and the case.
He pointed out that increasing his budget has been in the works ever since a study was undertaken a year ago to figure out how much it would cost to bring the salaries of Richmond prosecutors into parity with those of their counterparts in other counties. He said that entry-level attorneys in his office are paid about $10,000 less a year than those in the surrounding counties. As a result, Richmond could lose its best prosecutors, he said.
Herring said he called Graziano after trying and failing to get in touch with Ellen Robertson, council vice president. After he suggested that his budget be increased by $230,000, Graziano was not encouraging. He said he realized that he had “a snowball’s chance in hell of getting” the higher amount. “I asked for $100,000 because that’s what I thought I could get. What I am a little troubled by is that people would think I would jeopardize the credibility of my office for the sake of this request.”
More than 100 pediatricians from the Richmond region have banded together with one thing in mind — a free-standing hospital where optimal medical care is available only for children, and all under one roof. Such a facility would have made Leigh Bernard’s life infinitely less complicated.
“My 9-year-old twins, Taylor and Sydney, were born prematurely in a Richmond hospital in 2001,” Bernard says. “Taylor sustained a birth injury, which caused cerebral palsy. I was told she would never walk, to give up, that there was no use in trying.”
Instead of giving up, Bernard has taken Taylor to six states, besides Virginia, seeking medical care she couldn’t find in Richmond. Taylor, who sees six physicians and three other specialists in support care, did walk at 5 but is now relegated to a motorized wheelchair, with the goal of using a walker.
“We don’t have a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach in one place here, therefore, the care isn’t optimal,” Bernard says. “Most children with disabilities also have other issues, like nutrition. That’s why it’s so important to have secondary services available.”
A full-service children’s hospital has been discussed in Richmond for at least 40 years. Dr. Ted Abernathy, who established a practice here 37 years ago, is one of the leaders of PACK: Pediatricians Associated to Care for Kids, formed in March.
“We envision a campus with inpatient and outpatient care, medical offices, accommodations for parents, healing gardens, a petting zoo and a playground,” he says.
“We’re in the process of creating the Virginia Children’s Hospital Foundation,” Abernathy continues. “We hope all of the area hospital systems participate with us to make this dream a reality. The next step will be fundraising. We’ll be reaching out to the philanthropic community and everybody willing to give us a nickel or a million dollars.”
Dr. Melissa Nelson, a Richmond pediatrician previously employed at Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, stresses the benefits.
“There’s less fragmentation of care, better communication among physicians, nurses, therapists, staff,” Nelson says. “We have quality medical professionals here who care deeply for kids, but they’re spread all over town, and that’s getting worse as each of the individual hospital systems develops their own separate piece.”
Dr. Frank Mazzeo agrees. Currently a pediatric anesthesiologist at St. Mary’s Hospital, Mazzeo previously worked at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital in Charlottesville.
“I took care of many children from Richmond at U.Va., and when I worked at the [Children’s Hospital of] King’s Daughters in Norfolk,” he says. “Unfortunately, most, if not all, of the inpatient services for children in Richmond is at hospitals that primarily care for adults. I’d venture to guess that adult hospitals in Richmond have a pediatric caseload of about 10 percent, so it’s a very small part of their service.”
Dr. Judith Grossberg, who has practiced in Midlothian for 18 years, believes that a facility serving children exclusively can enhance care while benefiting the community.
“The pediatricians in town give the kids really good care, but we can make that great care with a children's hospital,” Grossberg says. “It will enable us to recruit and retain specialists the community needs so we don’t have to send kids outside the city or the state. It will also be a draw for recruiting executives. It’s a chance to bring the community together behind a cause that’s important.”
Besides Richmond, only three other metropolitan regions in the United States with a population large enough to support a children’s hospital don’t have one.
Dr. Keith Derco, a Richmond pediatrician for 15 years, also wholeheartedly supports the effort. “Ideally, we’d be utilizing all the resources we have in town, creating an environment where the experience is centered around the children and their families, but we’re still in the concept phase. The vision we have is to develop an entity where the child comes first. The most important thing, though, is to get going on the vision.”
©Nancy Wright Beasley. All rights reserved 2011.
Today, though, the school hosted a rarified crowd, U.S. Sen. George Allen and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, as well as a Richmond-centric academic elite.
The occasion was a dedication centered on a national program to refocus students on the country’s founding principles. Maggie Walker is the first school to receive bronze plaques etched with original versions of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the national politicians dedicated the plaques and discussed the documents in a conversation moderated a VCU political science professor Robert Holsworth.
But the ceremony doubled as the first celebration of the founding of Maggie Walker Governor's School, and for many in the crowd that will be the key event.
The 2010-2011 academic year marks the 20th year that this Governor’s School has existed and for students, parents and especially faculty the milestone is enormous because of the obstacles—no permanent home for years, a paucity of funding, and fierce opposition because of its reputation as an elitist, largely white school—that it overcame to get where it is today.
“It was a very unique situation,” says Pat Taylor, among the school’s first four teachers in 1991. “We believed we could change the world one student at a time. But was there tension? Absolutely.”
The school began with an idea—to create a Governor’s School that would prepare exceptional students for leadership in an increasingly globalized world. During its first year, the school’s 70 students attended classes in Thomas Jefferson High School, a magnet school with a largely black student body.
The Governor’s School was to grow each year while Thomas Jefferson students were to move to other nearby schools. But the plan met with angry resistance from students, parents, and city officials who believed Thomas Jefferson students were being big-footed.
On one occasion, Thomas Jefferson students marched to City Hall, demanding that the Governor’s School students leave, says Taylor, now retired. “We weren’t trying to take anything away. But we were made abundantly aware that a traditional and a history at the school was being threatened.”
Thus started a decade-long effort to find a different home, which climaxed in 1999 with a proposal to renovate and use the old Maggie Walker High School, closed and left to deteriorate since 1990. On the day the Council was to vote on the plan, Councilman Sa’ad El-Amin protested, describing the ethnic breakdown of the school as “atrocious.” After a heated session, the Council approved the renovation but with the caveat that efforts to increase black enrollment must be intensified.
Amid the fray was Bob Mooney, a quiet but powerful Richmond businessman and philanthropist, who led the school’s Renovation Foundation. He was instrumental in coming with the persuasive funding scheme—a third of the $22 million came from the sale of historic tax credits; a third from private donations, including Mooney’s own sizeable contribution; and slightly less than a third from participating school districts.
Since Richmond would pay only get a newly renovated building and pay for less than a tenth of the cost, the deal became hard to turn down. Mooney says “everyone who’s been involved has commented that it’s great example of regional cooperation.” Because 12 different school divisions with widely varied interests and problems somehow managed to agree.
More than 10 years later, Maggie Walker continues to grapple with a race gap; only about 6 percent of its 700-plus students are black and 1.4 percent are Hispanic, according to school’s website. And economically disadvantaged students who manage to get into Maggie Walker often have fewer options after they graduate. “We have a lot of super, super bright kids who can’t go to the college of their choice” because of the expense, Mooney says. So he’s now working to increase the $5 million available in merit scholarships for each graduating class.
But while the school’s racial composition still disappoints, its accolades in various forms do not. For the last three years, Maggie Walker has earned the rare distinction of not being included in Newsweek’s top schools ranking because its students are too smart. Instead, Newsweek places Maggie Walker on its list of “public elites” because the school’s high SAT scores indicate most students are extremely gifted.
If asked, Phil Tharp, a top administrator and among the school’s first teachers, will reel off the accomplishments of recent grads: One got his doctorate in astrophysics at the age of 22 and now works for NASA; another works as lead counsel for environmental affairs for New York City; a third was a Jeopardy contestant.
Inside the school, a sense of excellence and privilege is subtle but clear.
The walls are hung with drawings that look like the work of college graduates, even professionals. In many classrooms, students are taking advanced college courses taught by VCU professors.
There are no hall monitors or passes. Instead “students are trusted to be doing what they say they’re doing,” says Molly Dawson, a senior who gives school tours as part of her community service commitment.
She says she appreciates the school because “everyone understands what you’re saying,’’ meaning that her comments in class don’t go over the heads of less intelligent students. “Here, everyone is interested in learning as much as they can. Here it’s OK to be smart.”
