The Official Blog of Episcopal Retirement Services

We are living in an exciting time during which knowledge changes by the day. Also changing, if we’re open to it? How we use that knowledge. Enter one of Episcopal Retirement Services' Core Values: Progressive thinking. Our Core Values are central to our Ways of Working, and therefore guide everything we do. Here’s a closer look at why the mindset of “progressive thinking” matters so much to the culture at ERS, and how we’re making the most of it—for staff, our residents and the community at large.

Refresh Your Soul 2019 Speaker Rabbi Abie Ingber sat down with us and answered a few of our questions.

ERS: We’re riding on an elevator. You have 1 minute to tell me your story. What is it?

RABBI: Just like everybody else, I was born before I was born. I inherited the Holocaust experiences of my parents, even though I was born in freedom, and here in America. I served for 30 years at the University of Cincinnati, retired once, then served for a decade at Xavier, and retired a second time. Now, I am pursuing projects that I am really excited about, and serving as Rabbi-in-Residence at the Episcopal Christ Church Cathedral. I am very eager to be one of the presenters at the Refresh Your Soul Conference on March 18 at the Cintas Center at Xavier. 

When the deal was done, and St. Paul Village became the third member of the ERS affordable living family, the CEO of ERS, Doug Spitler, sat down with Jay Kittenbrink.

Kittenbrink, a Madisonville native, had run his neighborhood’s largest retirement community for twenty-six years, with varying results. The buildings were growing old and tired. The people had stopped coming to rent the 80 efficiency units.

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.