Sycamore (IL)
Daily-Chronicle
SYCAMORE - If she could, Sharon Brandt would give the
city of Sycamore a pat on its back. Brandt, of Wausau, Wis., was in Sycamore in
early March because her son was receiving treatment at Kindred Hospital Sycamore, a long-term acute care hospital.
During his stay there, Brandt stayed at the
Pay-It-Forward House.
“The house, the way they have it fixed up, it’s
gorgeous,” she said. “I cannot believe all of the people who donate things. It’s
unbelievable what the people have done in Sycamore. We need more places like
that.”
The Pay-It-Forward House is a hospitality house in
the 700 block of Somonauk Street in Sycamore that provides lodging, for a
nominal fee, for family members who have a loved one at a DeKalb County medical
facility. More than 500 families have stayed at the house since it was founded
five years ago, and more than 5,700 nights of rest have been
provided.
And it’s run almost exclusively by volunteers. They
clean, they bake cookies, they plant flowers in the garden, they shovel snow,
they write thank you notes to donors. Bills are paid through donations.
Collectively, hundreds of local residents have
furnished the house, paid for its upkeep and volunteered their time and talents
for free.
“Most of our volunteers will never meet our guests.
Our community members will not stay at the Pay-It-Forward House,” said Joyce
Mathey, president of the organization’s board. “They just know they are doing
something good for someone else.”
The house is celebrating five years of
operation this year, starting with a birthday party Wednesday. The seed to start
the house was planted in the mind of Mary Lou Eubanks about six years ago, when
her sister-in-law, Carol, was suffering from stage-four breast cancer. She was
transferred to Kindred Hospital to be weaned from a ventilator.
The family was lucky, Eubanks said, because they
could walk to the hospital. But they encountered others who were commuting,
often for hundreds of miles, to be with a loved one. Her husband said the
hospital needed a hospitality house.
“Those were fateful words,” said
Eubanks, the executive director of the organization. “Less than a year after he
said that, we opened the Pay-It-Forward House.”
Good Deeds
The name of the house is taken from a book, by
Catherine Ryan Hyde, that promotes the concept of repaying a favor by doing a
good deed for someone other than the person who did the initial
giving.
Eubanks started her quest by approaching Kindred
Hospital CEO Cindy Smith to gauge her interest level. Although the house
is open to family members who have a loved one in any DeKalb County medical
facility, 90 percent of guests are connected to Kindred.
That was in May of 2004. By August, she was back in
Smith’s office, and opened the blinds of her office to show her where the
hospitality house would be - across the parking lot. The organization also asked
for financial support from Kindred; the hospital and its foundation have
provided $50,000 to the house over the past five years, Eubanks said.
Smith said she initially questioned if a suitable
building could be found, and she chalks Pay-It-Forward’s success to the
determination of Eubanks that she not only found a house, but that they found
one so close to the hospital.
“It couldn’t have been any closer,” Smith said. “The
Pay-It-Forward House has been a godsend for us.”
Family members often
have to travel “tremendous distances” to visit patients in the hospital, and may
have exhausted financial resources that make it difficult to afford a hotel
room, she said. In the past, family members have spent the night in their
vehicles in the parking lot or in a chair next to the hospital bed. The house
provides them with a place for respite.
Guests of the house often
describe it as a blessing, volunteer Marge Johnson said. They can read, watch TV
or check their e-mail in the basement family room. They can get a snack or cup
of coffee in the kitchen, do laundry, sit in the landscaped backyard or rest in
one of the upstairs bedrooms.
Jean Murawski of Lake in the Hills was
checking her e-mail Friday. Although she has a place to stay while her husband
is at Kindred, she still stops by the house often to use the computer, read a
book or just relax.
“It is a lifeline, believe me,” she said. “... It’s home. It’s very comfortable.
You feel like you’ve known the place forever.”
Ricardo Torres, of Mexico,
Mo., has been staying in Illinois for the past three months as his father
recovers from complications of diabetes. He’s been at the Pay-It-Forward House
since Monday.
“It’s close to my dad,” he said. “I can go visit him every
day. It’s comfortable and welcoming.”
Johnson said she has volunteered as
a greeter at least once a week for the past five years because of the people,
and notes that she walks away able to say “Today, I made it possible for someone
to feel comfortable.”
‘Little donations’
The house itself
is rented for $1 a year; a local family purchased it and rents it to the
nonprofit. There was work to be done on the house once it was acquired, Eubanks
said. A sprinkler system had to be installed in the laundry area, an emergency
power system had to be installed so back-up lighting would be available if the
power went out, and the smoke detectors in the house had to be connected. To
furnish the house, they put out a call for gently used furniture.
“We
never really asked for money beyond that initial request,” she said. “We would
say, here’s what we need, and we’d stop. People just rallied. Every time we have
a need, just stating the need has brought a response.”
Two weeks before
the house was to open, for instance, Eubanks made a presentation where she said
the house still needed beds. Fifteen minutes after getting home, someone called
to ask if she could write a check to be used for a mattress.
“This place
has been built on little donations,” Eubanks said. “It’s an incredible story of
$5 here or $25 or $100 there.”
There are hopes to expand. In 2009, the house
could not provide 176 nights of rest because there were more people needing a
place to stay than available beds. The organization is starting host homes,
where community members with extra space open their homes to guests who have
stayed at Pay-It-Forward before. They also work with local hotels to get good
rates.
But the main goal remains the original aim of the house - to
provide a quiet place of rest.
“When we opened the house our dream was to
provide a home for the families,” Mathey said. “In our wildest dreams we never
expected or anticipated the amount of community support, how the community has
embraced the house.
“We never anticipated it would be this successful, or
this rewarding.”