“Life has been very good to me.  I just want to share it.” This is how VCC resident Beverly Moore opens her life story, one she describes as a ‘wonderful whirlwind.’  Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, she was named for Beverly, Massachusetts, the town where her birth nurse lived.   Yet the name on her birth certificate remained “Baby Girl Borland.”

Bev embraced independence early, bussing to work at a local dry cleaner while still in high school. Soon she was a manager there, thriving on the responsibility. At 21, she married Brian Moore, a young MIT student. As part of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), her husband joined the Air Force right out of college and launched the young couple into a life of mobility.

Bev and Brian had two children, Michael and Pamela.  Tragedy touched Beverly’s life when she lost Michael.  He was 21 when he died. She gave him one of her kidneys and would have given them both if the hospital had let her; but he lived only another 18 months. Michael’s passing broke her heart, but in characteristic strength, Bev remains grateful he is in heaven and no longer in pain. She still talks to him every morning and night, with his photo at her bedside.  “I found out about Michael the archangel after I named him, and now I know why I named him that, because Michael passed away.”

Bev’s daughter Pamela—a long-time Vashon resident who runs her own business—has been a stabilizing force in mother’s life since she was a little girl. “Pam is a just a marvel with her business and a wonder in everything she does,” says her adoring mother.

Beverly’s gregarious personality led her to a successful career in the hospitality industry.  She began as a greeter at the front door of the Hyatt on Union Square in San Francisco. Soon the manager took note of her natural gift with people. “She came over to me one day and said ‘you do a really good job. You shouldn’t be here. You should be at the front desk with me. I need someone like you.’ So, I became a front desk clerk at the Hyatt for quite a few years.” From there she worked her way into a corporate position. Bev’s career has always driven her to working with people, and that naturally social personality still glows.

Several years ago, Pam encouraged her mother to move from California to join her and her husband on Vashon Island. Her first apartment in the heart of Vashon town was close to all the action. She loved it. When the time came to transition to Vashon Community Care (VCC) she dreaded the move. She was, after all, still full of energy and spirit that she didn’t want to lose at a care center.

After three days at VCC, she was happy. “I didn’t have to clean anymore. I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to cook. And I love it here. The people who work here are amazing. How they put up with us, I don’t know.” Bev takes advantage of all the activities at VCC, which allows her to indulge her social nature. She enjoys all the outings, rarely misses a game of bingo, is the life of the party at Friday Social Hour and can be found around any corner building strong friendships with other residents. One of Bev’s favorite activities is to sit on the bench at the front of the building, greeting families, staff, and residents alike as they enter. Her days of hospitality are still with her. Bev is also still driving, which gives her the independence to enjoy Vashon town and make easy visits to her daughter’s house. “My life is pretty perfect,” she says.

“It’s interesting. I’ve done an awful lot of retro-active dreaming, thinking, remembering while I’ve been here (at VCC),” says Joy Goldstein, a four-year resident of Vashon Community Care.

Kind and assertive all at once, Joy remembers that she was five when her father died. “I was old enough to understand that ‘dead’ meant never coming back.” Her grandmother, in an attempt to quell her tears, told her that Dad was in heaven and was happier there than he could ever be on earth. “Can you imagine,” Joy says, revealing her views on religion, “giving that instruction to a five-year-old? My grandmother was a certain brand of Christian.”

Joy was born in San Jose, California. Her father’s early demise caused family upheaval, a downsized house and her grandmothers’ permanent residence there with Joy, her younger brother and her mom. “We kids took turns sleeping with mother or in the dining room because the house had only two bedrooms.” Despite some failing cognition, Joy’s considerable vocabulary enables vivid descriptions as she mines the recesses of her memory for childhood stories.

Just as they moved into their new house, World War II started and her mother – like most able-bodied women of the time – went to work. “There were many childcare options at the time because ‘they’ wanted all the moms to go to work,” says Joy. “My brother and I went to a day care near our house. It had five trees, and if you started in the right place you could go all around the yard without touching the ground.”

Joy describes her childhood as ‘a tough time,’ a time she’s reflecting deeply on now at VCC where distractions are few and time is abundant. “You take me back there and I sometimes have a hard time climbing out,” Joy says in reference to her current reflective mood.

Her mother eventually married a man Joy admired a great deal. “One of the things I look forward to about dying,” she says, “is to see my stepfather again.” Joy believes the stories her mother gave about her stepfather were designed to make the children afraid, but she’s been ‘talking to him’ in her head lately and thinks he must have been ‘quite a guy.’ She remembers a few of his more playful antics as well as a special evening he gave her as a budding young woman. He persuaded Joy’s mother to allow him to take her dining and dancing at San Francisco’s famous Fairmont Hotel. “It was a very big deal. So, I can hardly wait,” she says, “to get to all of those people and find out what they saw in those moments…because, here’s what I saw.”

As she sorts through memories, Joy recalls that before her mother remarried, she seriously considered suicide but stopped herself for the benefit of her children. Joy reveals a challenging relationship with her grandmothers when she says, “I’m glad she didn’t kill herself ‘cause those two kids would have been left in the ‘loving care’ of those two old ladies.” And, it all worked out because her mother did find her stepfather, and he provided well for the family both as a military officer and later as an entrepreneur.

Her life as the child of a military officer included multiple moves and multiple schools. “I was a bright kid,” Joy says, “but if you’re a bright kid in a new school, no one likes you. They have all the friends they need.”

“I’ve been playing a lot of those old records in my head lately,” Joy says. “I’m doing it because my parents raised me on the advice of B.F. Skinner, that SOB.” Skinner told parents to avoid handling their children when they cried. “There I was, a little kid, and when I cried nobody came. But when I got here to VCC, I learned that when I pulled the cord somebody would come! And they would say ‘what can we do to help?’” She appreciates that VCC staff people not only come to help, but they enter the room smiling. “The staff here is 99 and four 100ths percent caring and they’ve been trained to express it.” Her message to the VCC staff is “You may not realize it, but you’re embarked on a healing process here.”

Joy eventually married and had two healthy children, Michael and Fred. “And, even before I had the second child, I decided to stop at two. I had done my part to re-populate the world. And, I wanted to be free to say to any man ‘I don’t make babies. If it’s babies you want, you better go someplace else.’” She credits that decision with allowing her to move on with her life into other things, including an education at Antioch College. “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity,” is a Horace Mann quote she embraced as her life’s mantra.

Joy is well known on Vashon Island for her political activism, a passion she says came from her kindergarten teacher mother whose students were racially and ethnically mixed. Her Japanese students were deported when the war started, and Joy’s mother was furious. Though she tried to take the remainder of her kindergarten class to the train station to bid farewell to the Japanese students, she was halted by military bureaucracy, according to Joy. So she sent them off on her own. “That’s the first place I got the idea of standing up for what you believe,” Joy says. It’s a practice Joy continued throughout her life. As one of the founders of Vashon Household, Joy has left a legacy of concrete action in behalf of those who can’t help themselves. For her many years on Vashon, Joy was a fixture at the four-way stop on Bank Rd. and Vashon Highway each time there was an opportunity to stand up for social justice. “I did it not just because Mother did it. I did it because it was the right thing.”

Renate Groth moved to Vashon Island so she could build a house in this beautiful place. The route she followed on her journey here took her from Germany to California with a couple detours on the way.

Renate, her dad and brother Peter emigrated from Germany to escape Communism and eventually landed in Sierra Madre, California some sixty years ago, shortly after her mother died. Renate was in elementary school and feared she’d be held back because she didn’t speak English. But, as she puts it, “I remember the teachers were exceedingly loving. That really helped me.” They were sponsored by a family in the town’s medical community and lived with them while her father, worked as the church caretaker.

Renate’s ability with languages helped her along her life’s path, first as a teacher. Then, when she got to the Pacific Northwest, she worked at the UW’s School of Medicine. Her horizons expanded when she served in the US Peace Corps in Rustavi, Republic of Georgia. There she wrote grants to fund athletic equipment, books, computers and a complete renovation of the school library. She’s a retired educator who continues to learn.

Always looking for new challenges, Renate spent time playing the flugelhorn in a Seattle area drum and bugle corps. She was proud to march with the band and says it built her confidence. As part of Vashon Island’s Chorale, she found a home for her love of music. “It was hard work, but so rewarding,” she says of singing with the Chorale. And, most of her Island friendships were forged there. She still sings at VCC every week with “Music Mends Minds.” “I adore it!” she says.

Renate says her gratitude has grown in just one year at Vashon Community Care. “The people. I love the people.” She says the people at VCC help her overcome her innate shyness and help her participate in the camaraderie here. She claims her most important lesson in life is to care for people…and for animals. “I’ve missed more people in my life,” so the community she has at VCC fills that gap. And, she loves the pets who come to visit.