Vets Home carnival celebrates residents
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Hollidaysburg Veterans Home personal care resident Rick Orlowski works out in the gym at MacArthur Hall twice daily and can come and go in the wider community as he pleases, so the home's carnival Thursday wasn't as big for him as for the more constrained residents of the skilled nursing facilities in Eisenhower and Arnold halls.
"These people are stuck," Orlowski said of the skilled nursing residents seated at picnic tables under the patio roof and on the sidewalk at Eisenhower -- some of them many years older than Orlowski's 67 and some of them in wheelchairs. "I'm happy for them," he said.
The carnival and other such events to mark the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs Veterans Home Week were meant for people like Jean Seymore, 90, who was playing 500 rummy with family members and who earlier danced with her son Bill Seymore to a polka played by Rosie and the Jammers.
State Bureau of Veterans Homes Director Barb Raymond sat down next to Jean for a time and teased her about the dancing.
The week's activities at the DMVA's six homes are "an opportunity for the staff to show appreciation for what the residents have done," Raymond said.
The DMVA's veterans services have been a revelation for Bill Seymore, based on his prior belief that service for veterans at all levels was a government stepchild, he said.
He became aware of the stunning disparity between that earlier belief and the reality of the state services when he first connected with a Centre County-based DMVA official working on behalf of his father, whose military career ended with a ROTC position at Penn State, Bill Seymore said.
His mother is now in an "ideal" situation, where she likes the people and keeps busy with cards, word games, movies and other activities, Bill said.
"It's awesome," he said of Thursday's carnival.
The facilities themselves are old, but the home recently began construction on a long-awaited replacement facility for skilled nursing residents, he noted.
The whole experience with his mother has been "a wonderful surprise," he said.
Orlowski has lived at MacArthur for eight years.
He first came to live in personal care after getting sick, with "nowhere to go," he said.
Friends ask why he stays.
"You always have toilet paper," he said, laughing -- and conceding that it's a strange way to express how he feels about the security the home offers.
A native of Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, he enlisted in the Marines in 1974, serving five years.
He was stationed in Kenya, Egypt and Alaska, in a reconnaissance unit and ended up a sergeant.
He didn't go to Vietnam, although he would have gone wherever they sent him, he said.
He's "probably" glad he didn't end up in Southeast Asia, given what he's seen the war did to many servicemen who went, he said.
While they are "some of the most fantastic" acquaintances he's ever made, they also are burdened with lots of post-traumatic stress and with lost "faith in humans," he said.
Orlowski entered the Marines because he'd been told that was "the toughest place" and because he liked a challenge.
He went in confused about his place in the world.
The Marines cured those issues, because of its structure. "I needed to be told what to do," Orlowski said.
The Marines gave him faith in his own abilities, and he exercised those abilities well enough to become an instructor in field skills.
He loved the service, because "everybody was green," he said:
They all wore green uniforms.
While recruits learned about people of different cultures and types, there were no problems in the service connected with race, color or creed, Orlowski said.
"It reduced people to just people," he said. It also cultivated camaraderie and trust.
It was the kind of trust such that when you called for a helicopter to get your group out of somewhere, it happened -- "no questions asked," he said.
If he had it to do over, he would probably have stayed, he said.
As it was, he went to Edinboro College on the GI Bill, taught rappelling in Erie and ended up in New Jersey with the help of a cousin and someone who knew someone who knew someone as a union employee in the glazing trade.
He worked for 20 years installing window frames and glass in skyscrapers.
He was in Jersey City next to the Hudson doing installation work on the 14th floor of an empty building on 9/11.
He had just remarked to a co-worker what a beautiful day it was when they felt "a little concussion" as the first plane hit.
"We didn't know anything," Orlowski said.
They heard on the radio that it had been a small plane, and they were skeptical about that.
They were watching when the second plane hit, he said.
They saw the first tower crumble and heard the booms as the floors pancaked on one another going down.
They were on their way home when the second tower crumbled.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.