A few short years ago I was sitting in Bob Colvin’s office at Memorial Health Medical Center, Savannah’s safety net hospital and strategic ally to Union Mission. He sat in the power chair that he liked and I had my feet propped on the coffee table.
Over the previous decade we had done some amazing things together along with Peter Doliber at the hospital and Kelly McDaniel back at Union Mission.
We had pioneered the respite care movement, demonstrated significant cost savings formulas by establishing alternatives to Emergency room treatment and hospitalization, and crafted the redirection of an entire chronic needs population (homeless people) from a hospital to a community setting like Union Mission.
No one had ever done these things before (sorry Jim O’Connel, you are still the gold standard but we did all of these things first!) and had won a lot of awards because of it. Our relationship and our organization’s partnership had surpassed a decade.
“You know what Mike,” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I feel like a dinosaur. No body stays at a hospital for twelve years. All of my friends tell me that I’m nuts to still be here.”
His eyes looked weary. Taking my feet off of the coffee table I leaned forward to respond.
“You” I said? “Try 20 years in the front lines of homelessness. The average tenure is two-and-a-half years. Add what I did before and it’s almost 30 years.”
“Yeah but it’s just a homeless shelter.”
Bob knew how to get me going. I busted out laughing and we both agreed to go out for beers soon to talk about the dinosaur landscape.
Not long after that Bob left the hospital. We remain friends and in touch though I will never comprehend why he returned to his home state of Idaho to live across the gorge from the guy that played Horshack on “Welcome Back Kotter”.
I lasted another three years and then “the time of Middle Earth had passed” and a new breed came who were different from the dinosaurs that we were. They believe in short term fixes and not long term results.
One of the things that I learned through my career is that if you believe in something you stick with it. It may fail but you learn from the failures and keep at it until you succeed. Perseverance and faith breed success.
Success came early for me at Union Mission. Grace House, the Magdalene Project and Phoenix Place were all built in the first three years that I was there.
Then it got harder. The Employment & Training Center took five years. Expanding Phoenix Place took five too (at the same time though). The J. C. Lewis Health Center took four after that. The Ben & Bettye Barnes Center was a gift from nuns that we used HUD money on because the relationships we had with government allowed us to suspend the rules for how to spend it. The Behavioral Health Center took seven years. Dutch Town took five years too.
Somewhere in there we sold Potter’s Place, closed the Hacienda, and birthed and killed many Sacred Cows along the way.
It was with alarm that I read of Memorial’s decision to replace Phillip Schaengold as Bob’s replacement. He’s been there less than two years. It’s hard to do much anything in two years.
But the days of Middle Earth have passed. Everybody wants perfection now without the hard work that it takes to get there. Small minded people want debts retired immediately and it doesn’t matter what that cost to the greater good or the smaller satisfactions of life. Instant gratification rules!
But I choose to remain a dinosaur. A feisty one who will relentlessly pursue what he has faith in, but a dinosaur nevertheless.
