The Official Blog of Episcopal Retirement Services

Refresh Your Soul 2019 Keynote Speaker Kathryn Spink sat down with us (virtually) and answered a few of our questions.

Episcopal Retirement Services’ Great Gatsby Gala on Sept. 20 was, to borrow a popular 1920s phrase, the berries!

More than 300 guests, many decked out in 1920s attire, were treated to an evening filled with live music, delicious food, silent auction, and dance performances, all emceed by WLWT-TV News Anchor Courtis Fuller.

Every day, we at Episcopal Retirement Services work hard to uphold our belief that older adults should live with dignity and comfort in a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment regardless of their financial situation.

But it’s not every day that we receive an award for those efforts. That’s why we’re so proud that Homebase Cincinnati honored us with its “Inspired Placemaking” award for the Marlowe Court community for limited-income seniors in Cincinnati’s College Hill neighborhood, which opened in May.

Leon Gulley with George Beyheimer in the Marjorie P. Lee Dining Room.

At Episcopal Retirement Services, we are guided not only by our mission to enrich the lives of older adults in a person-centered, innovative and spiritually based way, but also by our six core values.

Rooted in our Episcopal faith tradition, these values create an unwavering and unchanging guide for how we advance our mission at our retirement communities in Cincinnati and Louisville and through our many community programs and services. They are:

Bonnie Green, Resident Assistant at Marjorie P. Lee with Susannah Jonas, Stephanie Anton, Brenda McIntyre, and Judi Dean.

Every year, Episcopal Retirement Services honors non-management team members who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to exemplify our person-centered values and actions with the Martindell Award.

The Martindell Award was established by the late Trish Martindell, who served on the ERS board for seven years. Her inspiration for the award came to her father John Wahlberg’s caregivers at ERS.

We have exciting news here at Episcopal Retirement Services: This fall, we completed a $4.25 million capital campaign in support of the $20 million renovation of the Marjorie P. Lee retirement community in Cincinnati’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

We achieved this monumental goal thanks to the generosity of 90 individual donors, foundations and faith-based supporters. The completion of the capital campaign will ensure that ERS completes the $20 million renovation in its entirety. The balance of capital needed to finance the renovation came from a 2017 bond issuance that was privately placed at BMO Harris Bank in addition to ERS cash.

This year, Episcopal Retirement Services was pleased to welcome three new faces to its Board, bringing with them very different backgrounds and areas of expertise but one shared vision: to improve the lives of older adults.

Today, we’re pleased to introduce to you Dora Anim, Gerron L. McKnight, and Barbara Talbot, all serving their first term on the Board.

Mark your calendars: Parish Health Ministry’s annual Refresh Your Soul Conference will return to the Cintas Center at Xavier University on Monday, March 18, 2019.

Registration for Refresh Your Soul is now open and the popular conference tickets are selling quickly. Here’s what you can look forward to during this day devoted to “Living Well with Purpose.”

When it’s time for you to seek residential care for an elderly loved one — whether it’s independent living, assisted living, memory care or skilled nursing care — it’s critically important to consider a senior living community’s ownership and mission.

There are for-profit, corporate-owned retirement communities and not-for-profit, often faith-based retirement communities, many of which are faith-based. On the surface, they may seem to offer the same basic care and services. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find some significant differences in important areas.

The 2017 annual report for Episcopal Retirement Services is out, and it’s official: 2017 was our best year yet.

We mean that not only financially, but also in many other areas that support our mission of person-centered, dignified care for seniors in our community.

“This rock-solid position will not be a place for us to rest on our laurels as an organization. We plan instead for it to be a launch pad for ERS to lead future innovation in aging-care services,” said ERS President & CEO Laura Lamb in the Spring Issue of Linkage.