Holly Hoffman, M.D.

The following is a machine generated transcript of the interview:

My name is Blair Williams and I'm here at the Cumberland County Historical Society Today with Holly Hoffman, it's all right. That's correct. Today is May 21st 2021, and so I usually start off just by asking to provide a little background so Holly where were you born and where have you lived?

I was born in Scenic Deer Park Maryland near Deep Creek Lake and we moved to Northeastern Ohio, when I was a year old stayed there till I was 14 moved to Sun. Trup Florida. Stay down there until I graduated from medical school and then interviewed and 10 different places in the northeastern United States and landed in Carlisle and I've been here ever since.

When was that that you ended up arriving in Carlisle? I officially started working here. August 19th of 1985. I actually celebrate that anniversary in annually. And basically, I you said you were interviewing in the Northeast is that family or that's just what you were sick of Florida. I have no real attachment to Florida.

It's way too hot and even for my tastes way too many reptiles and insects so I wanted to get back up into the Northeast and it's the geography and climate that I prefer. Okay. Your family area as well or I landed in Carlisle the only reason I interviewed here in the first place is I do have an aunt uncle on my mother's side here in town or at least that did my uncle has since passed but my aunt is still here well what were their names they'll enchant your Brennan okay, my uncle was a pharmacist here in town for many years my aunt had a library degree but worked primarily for habitat for humanity for a good number eight years as a volunteer.

So I mean just going back a little bit um, can you tell me a little bit about sort of any childhood early childhood disasters or dreams so the formative disaster that really prompted us to leave Maryland was the school bus collision and Garrett County Maryland that occurred in. September 10th 1959 yeah that sounds like forever ago and I was not very old at the time.

I was a whopping, you know, almost five months old but my brother was on that school bus and was one of seven children killed in that accident which obviously impacted our family immensely. I don't know this for a fact but I'm pretty sure for a while my mom totally lost it and I was raised by strangers for a whole and then it was just a place, you know, if you have a big trauma like that people don't tend to hang around in that spot and leave.

So that's when we moved to Northeastern Ohio bad my dad had some friends there and we moved up to North Madison Geneva area of Ohio and he gave me some documents related to that and your brother's name was Lee then yeah Lee Hoffman and he was 11 at the time he died your parents ever talk about him more about the tragedy more, you know, it's a really interesting thing that happens it's like this elephant in the room yeah you you were not allowed to talk about it if you brought it up it was quickly shut down years later my sister and I held a memorial.

For end up being the 45th anniversary of that accident and put a memorial in near the site and we were searching for things related to my brother and we had always thought that you know, it was my dad who it was actually my mother's steps that way and we thought it was my dad that was kind of hiding things and shooting things down and here it had been my mom all along she would try to throw stuff away that reminded her of Lee and then my dad would find it in the garbage and he had had a little box that he just kept putting all this stuff in as she tried to get rid of it and Turned out he had kept it all and we were able to retrieve a whole lot of items from these life for that memorial.

Was actually very good. Any he said you were all of five months old right so I mean you have so this is secondhand knowledge and it was really fun at the memorial to get to meet other people that have been on the bus and survived first-hand witnesses to the accident it was basically the school bus was in the middle of the track hadn't engine stall out and the bus driver hopped out thinking you'd repair the engine because there was no train coming at that point in time and then when the train sounded its whistle and they started to approach they didn't have time to get all the kids off the bus.

There were not those drop-down railroad crossings at that time and actually that accident became the impetus for a whole lot of these safety features both at railroad crossings and on school bus they know the whole back exit door thing came out of that accident, so it ended up having positive impact going for from that point in time what was thinking.

I mean, every time I wrote a school bus every time they approached a railroad crossing they would stop they would open the door to listen right and that that really all probably came out of that accident. It was you know, I don't want to go into some of the more barbaric details but it was it traumatized a whole community.

I even have a telegraph yes, they telegraphed from the governor of Maryland to my parents. And that archive of things that we recovered so. Yeah, it was again your whole life kind of forms around an event that you really don't have any direct recall of mm-hmm. But. The other fun thing though, you mentioned was dreams yeah, well yeah, I'm gonna deflect to dreams now one of my very favorite television shows when I was a little kid was this show called doctari and if it was around a veterinarian that worked in Africa in a compound and he had Clarence the cross eyeline people in my vintage would watch this video will remember that show just totally loved it aided up was very interested in animals most of my early life.

I wanted to be a veterinarian. So fast forward to. 2009 I started working with a pastor down in Emmitsburg Maryland and we formed a mission to Africa and went to a friend of his and in eastern Kenya named Joshua Machinga, he has an orphanage in school there and. As the doctor they're doing some medical mission work this will heal you word for dr being doctorial all of a sudden that early childhood memory of doctor now.

I'm getting called doctory yeah, so it's really interesting to kind of connect those two things in a first occur to me, hey wait, you know that used to be my favorite television show now I'm getting all bad so it's amazing how things in your life will reverberate into your past and future will connect that some points it's full circle one, you know, so, This is kind of not coming around County, but I'm wondering what what a church in Emmitsburg Maryland, so it is Elias Lutheran Church in Emmitsburg.

Pastor John Greenstone there actually had done his vicarship which is like an internship up here at Saint Paul and Carlisle, okay and he and I had worked together on Bible school in a few other projects then and when he had met Joshua when he was still farmer John and when he became a pastor Joshua said, well you need to bring a team over here and I was the logical person because I could kind of bring the medical part he could bring more the churchy part and we went on our first trip in 2009, but we have gone on a total of four trips who won 2009 2011.

And 2018. Well the reason I ask is my wife is from just outside, Emmitsburg. And so marriage is she and her family have been involved with the church there. Toms Creek. I know Tom's Creek and actually one of our recurring volunteers is from Times Creek Methodist Church as well, Phyllis.

So yeah, so that's that's the reason I was wondering. Just because it's a church that I got married in actually so how about that yeah so this is that small world thing which happens over and over again in Carlisle yeah I was like and we also said that about Emmitsburg because actually Dr.

Bill Curry here who is the oral surgeon one of the oral surgeons in town his wife is from Emmitsburg and Bill has been with me on two of those trips to East Africa, so and there was a lot of intersectionality through Emmitsburg as well, so we've always said that Carlyle and Emmitsburg are the centers of the University.

Well yeah, we're just proving that point further here.

So. You mention that you know, your early childhood dream was to be a veterinarian some wondering how did you end up not you know, still the medical field but not as bad yeah as you get to be in your later high school years and you start to look a little closer at reality.

I realized that. It's actually harder to get into veterinary school and the reimbursement scene is not as good as I think well, you know, what is things that also interest me so as I tell all my veterinary friends because my vets and I are pretty good friends, we compare note some of our job just draw duties are all the time and how we treat various things.

I said I just I kept professionally medicine. I just decided to specialize in one species of small mammal children and one of my partners Dr. Deborah Robinstein also had wanted to be a vet when she was younger, so. I think a lot of people in pediatrics kind of share that past passion.

Well, I mean, so I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about more about your own children. My own children are yeah, it's very hard for me to say words like oh my baby is 26 years old my daughter Marie who lives in Pittsburgh and works for Ikea lives in she's 26 just turned that way last week so actually earlier this week we are actually having this interview on what was her due date made 21st she shared my passion for animals we did a lot of wildlife rehab as she grew up.

She temporarily was a veterinary technician out in Pittsburgh but like myself realized that there was not a whole lot of future in that switched over to retail she has always loved design she had the IKEA catalogue memorized before she left high school and I was kind of browsing one day in my computer and saw that there was a mid-level management kind of a low-level management position opened up and and Ikea, and I said, hey Marie apply for this and she did and she got the job and she has been there ever since loves the job loves the work culture there.

I don't think I will. Ever put. Her out of Pittsburgh or IKEA right now doing something else she really loved in childhood was art and design so she's actually helping design kitchens and living rooms and storage and all that fun stuff so that's her story my son is named Ryan he lives currently in Enola and he has kind of he wanted around right after he left high school tried college at Shippensburg, that was not for him worked for a while with my cousin down in West, Virginia and a Maryland and ultimately did end up back in Pennsylvania got married, oh gosh, he had not make a married four years ago and are living and working in the Harrisburg area both of them, he works for overnight office, she is currently working for Penn State help.

Well, I'm just thinking I mean and we've been joking here at the historical society a little bit about. This sort of the folklore about the well that is getting a new side about how you know, you drink the water is of Carlyle and you never end up coming back so you might be surprised with your daughter there in Pittsburgh.

I don't know okay let's look at Ikea opens up closer to Chicago. I think she's pretty dug in there and she likes it her miles a great. I mean Pittsburgh is a great place to I really enjoy going to visit her there yeah a lot it's like a collection of small towns that just kind of happened to build up around a little river port there, so now um did.

Where did you buy I guess what school district did your children attend oh my daughter was solidly South Middleton by that point of point of my life by the time she was born I was settled and I stayed in the same house and she lived in the same house the whole childhood my son when I moved here when I moved here, there was no such thing as daycare believe it or not that was kind of invented right around the time he started school so he started his life actually at Bethel Christian Academy, which is now Carlisle Christian Academy went to school there for a while we moved houses and Schools he was a temporarily up in Bel Air for a while then a Grace Baptist for a while did a year at Trinity and then ended his high school career out at sad South Middleton also so he was all over the map we had the whole sampler of Carlisle schools.

Okay, yes supposing them were bubblers that at the end. Yeah, yeah. Um, Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think of most of most of the interviews probably unsurprisingly have been. Actually maybe a little bit surprisingly big spring and Carlisle, so I don't know if I've interviewed too many people with but you know, South Middleton all over the map too.

I like to keep things. Stick. I'm not somebody who likes to get bored, let's put it that way, so I keep my whole life interesting.

Okay, so um. I mean, we just talked about how you you ended up in. South Middleton but how did you originally come to Carla you talked about a little bit with the job but interviewing with various practices, so I interviewed with the ten different practices and I think I went as far west as South Bend Indiana and I knew I wasn't going to stay there the minute.

I got the airplane there is more change in elevation in this carpeting than there is in South Bend it is the flattest place on the planet. I'm like, oh no, I can't do this. I'm not a plains person. I need some mountains. I need some you know waterways stuff like that.

Interviewed up in New England area and just wasn't my cup of tea it was really my despite in addition to having my aunt and uncle in town it also is my favorite spot geographically it had the right climate the mountains things to do outside. I really enjoy some of my other hobbies and they're hiking and photography so I yeah this plant provides ample opportunity to do that and it's close enough to bigger places, you know, you can be in New York City in four hours and DC and two Baltimore.

's yeah, I mean, you can go all over the map here, so you have the advantage of being in a small town and yet you're close to a lot of other stuff so. I really kind of liked them pretty happy with my choice because I'm still here.

Now I don't know if this is correct but not you know, I think I remember hearing that in terms of like medical practices it's a little bit weird because you end up actually making more in more world locations than you do in say like the big city just because that's where everyone wants to be is that a factor at all in terms of where you are no financially in fact when I started working here.

I made I think it was like like 40,000 a year it was not I mean that is 1985 dollars yeah but it financially pediatrics is not lucrative we are way down there at the bottom of the income scale with the family practice doctors and the psychiatrists so. Income was nodded it was where I wanted to live where I wanted to raise kids really determined where I saw.

And then so what so what was your first job here in Carlisle then the same job I have now I took a position with Carlisle pediatric assistants and I have stayed there ever since when I first joined it it was Dr. Lin Hoffman and Dr. Steve Krebs, we incorporated Dr.

Elisa Rosario after that then Robin Stein and Dr. Waters and Teresa Frank and the men have all since retired so I went from being the first practicing female full-time practicing female physician in Carlisle, believe it or not, there were other ones. Here. Practicing that we're part-time that I was the first full-time one.

Yeah to gosh we can't even find men to employ in a pediatric practice. We were told by one recruiter that male pediatricians are just not something that's coming out of the pipeline anymore. So now we're in all female group. A lot of a lot of shifts in the cultured medicine.

Yeah that being among them, but yeah, I imagine. Going back to your earlier comment about just how it's just not as well compensated Probably There's something. Yeah, I did. Yeah, when the men do do pediatrics, they tend to go into the subspecialties, which do to have a little higher income associated with them.

Yeah, well, I mean just that, you know, I think it's the same, you know, a teaching over the years where you know, I kind of as a women became more teachers. I mean, the language is just stagnant stagnated, although you know, one of my critiques of our cultures that corporates income has gone up and wages for people that actually do the work are stagnated, so.

For we that's not part of this discussion, but what's a so you mention that you know, you're. It sounds like everyone else who has been practicing with you since retired if you're all the original ones have retired yes. So, I mean you've been there for you know, as you said over 35 years now, I'm wondering if you could talk about, you know, some of the things that you know, you really enjoyed that I've kept you there for 35 years.

So I don't understand the current mentality the current statistics say that a physician will stay in one job for two to five years like Why would you keep moving around like that? The whole joy to me of this profession is getting to know the families. It's in developing this trusting relationship with them that becomes longitudinal and especially around Carlisle where there's a pretty dug in population that never goes anywhere else.

You know, I'm taking care of I call them graham patients. Patients of mine that have grown up had children of their own still come to me and I even have one or two great grandpas at this point. So yeah the whole point and enjoy the job is those long-term relationships used I wish with people.

Yeah, I don't understand moving around a lot. Well I actually do have a little insight into that because you used to be able to not go into six digits of debt going into college and medical school and I think these count people come out of here now with have quarter of a half million dollars of debt and they really do have to look at the financial piece a whole lot more closely than I ever did.

Well, you mentioned that you don't like being bored. And so I'm wondering how how you managed to stay engaged and not bored doing the same job for 35 years? So the fun part of the job is no two children have the same personality no two family dynamics, they're alike so the innate nature of pediatrics it stays interesting just by who people are and how children grow and change over the years.

And getting to watch some graduate I get invited to a lot of high school graduations. I get invited to so many high school graduations actually but I can't really attend them all. It's actually tick and choose I get invited to weddings.

Yeah, it just it's that longitudinal relationship and watching all that change. So the job itself is never ever boring. Why? But I imagine too. It's changed pretty significantly over 35 years in terms of you know, what you do how you do it business aspects. In other words, there's what you do taking care of patients, and then behind the scenes part that the patients.

Don't really see directly because you know, we are an independent practice we are one of those dying species. You'll find actually most pediatric practices tend to be independent practices because we all love it for the same reason and want to control how we do things and stay in that same spot for that longitudinal relationship which you're not going to be getting out of these big healthcare systems.

So as an independent practice though, you are also a small business you got bills to pay you've got utilities the cost of vaccines, which is astronomical. Yeah. So we have a small business management and couple that with the changes we've seen in medicine. So when I came here as pediatricians and we had the small community non-four profit hospital and we covered the hospital nursery a pediatric floor and our office.

So the way the practice was structured when it was the three and that four of us with the men and I we would make rounds at the hospital in the morning. There was an on-call doctor who saw sick calls in the office but was also on duty to zip over to the hospital at any at the drop of a hat if there was a delivery issue, you know, sick baby something like that happen.

Vic emergency and emergency room. So we all made rounds in the morning went down to the cafeteria had coffee went over the office started the office hours kind of later, like at 9 o'clock 9:30 something like that. I don't. Even remember it's been so long ago And then went back to the hospital the on-call doctor would go back because there was no urgent cares after hours things we actually saw an emergency room.

You were allowed to do that because there was not this property idea of patients and who's they were and you know, the hospital didn't claim them for reimbursement purposes. We just you know, they pop into a room they registered. We've seen them there and that would be our patient in the emergency room.

Does not work in the current corporate medical culture at all, but while the hospital is still on nonprofit, that's how we did. Things. You know you were on duty all night so you get called out from emergency's regularly in the middle of the night. If there was a blizzard you parked your body in the hospital because it was too hard to come and go from the hospital from your office or your house, so you just.

Lived in the building and told you shift was done you're 24 hour coverage shift so and it changed in 2001 the hospital was sold to a for-profit cut corporation changed hands now a number of times. Yeah from one corporation to the next to the next and then the hospital system started taking over and conglomerating and you know, culminating in us becoming pinnacle and then UPMC Pinnacle and now that's all strictly UPMC so.

Through the years as we improved our care for things like diabetes and asthma we actually didn't need to have a pediatric floor anymore. I think I was department chairman at the time and I counted back and I said, you know, we have only admitted it was less than 20 kids across the entire year and was getting harder and harder to keep good pediatric nurses trained to do that job because it's really different than adult medicine.

So we made the decision. I'm gonna. That's probably been 12 years ago that we decided we just can't keep this pediatric floor open anymore, we'll just send all our kids that are sick enough to be in a hospital over two what was then? Harrisburg hospital order for she. And then.

Proceed a couple more years and the men are all retiring and it's a very different thing to be on duty for all day and in office then all night nursery and then part of the next day in the office it's different to do that when you're 30 something and groups when you're now 50 something so we girls were aging the men we're all retiring and we said, you know, we need to get out of this nursery business so about five years ago, we stopped doing hospital medicine at all and now we're strictly outpatient in the office.

And this is gonna sound like a weird thing to say but after 30 years of doing work a lot at night, I had to learn how to sleep it was not a skill I had used in 30 years so actually sleeping through all my was something I actually had to relearn and it took a couple of months yeah which sounds odd to people who had never lived that way but no yeah imagine yeah.

Well I mean, so I mean, we've been talking a little bit about how the job has changed so. You know, what are some of the the positive or other positive and negative aspects that sort of shifted over the years? Well I certainly have not appreciated at all the corporatization of medicine in my early years where it was a community hospital not for profit and you know, we have remained independent it was literally the practice of medicine and taking care of people mm-hmm, it has gradually shifted to the business of medicine.

And. And I almost feel like my current job where you have all this data entry into a stinking computer screen you spend at least as much time looking at a screen as you spend looking at people that I am more of a well-trained data entry clerk than a physician.

On the other hand the advances in pharmaceuticals have made the actual pharmaceutical care of people a better thing, so you know, I think Peter people enjoy better overall health, but if they expense of the physician patient relationship. Which is what I mean, you said it earlier is being the part about the job that you really enjoy exactly so much am I looking forward to?

This absolutely in fact I'm kind of almost counting the months, so it's gotten to that point well I imagine especially this last year as it made things the pandemic has really I mean it upended life for pretty much everybody we had to invent telehealth on the fly. I mean, we went from the Monday after the lockdown started came and said, you know, we really need to develop telehealth to having it operational by Friday so we got that up and running really quickly, you know, there's a learning curve doing how to do that we finally became a Nation site just a couple weeks ago because they didn't let the doctors start giving vaccines which is the weirdest thing to me in a preventive health specialty where a huge amount of what we do is prevent a medicine and vaccines to have the the government both federal and state telescope, you don't really know how to do vaccination like huh, what planet are you living on?

I think I am most of my vaccines as a child, so yeah. You're absolutely very very good at it we. Pay for these eight thousand dollar medical grade refrigerators what they continuous temperature read out that the alarms in your house if it goes out of range and somebody has to come into the office through all the vaccines and are cooler and take it over the hospital.

I mean, you know, we have more state-of-the-art vaccine than they ever even dreamed about but somehow we didn't know about that but, What's a was that that shift? I mean, you said Monday to Friday you got to tell health up and running. I mean was that complicated by the fact that you're in ending or was it maybe you made much easier because you're only doing it for?

The dark in your building. We didn't have to do something system-wide across several hospitals and multiple owned practices, so actually that made us much more nimble. I think than maybe big practices that work for like Penn State Health and places like that. Do you think you'll go back to or do you think that's something now that you'll always offer?

I speak to a health is here to stay. I don't think you'll ever be able to pull that back it works really well for a number of things. Rashes people that are on vacation in another state can still be seen by their own primary care doctor via telephone. If they have their cell phone with them, you're good.

Behavioral health things where you don't you're really doing more talk medicine than anything physical and we do a whole lot of behavioral health of depression anxiety ADD that kind of stuff. So that all ends itself. Kids that have gone off to college can still kind of do their behavioral health and talk about concerns that they're having with other medical issues from afar, so I think telehealth is here to stay and I think it Wasn't actually a good addition It's one of the silver linings of the pandemic.

But that's something that you brought up. Because I know my wife is someone who saw her pediatric physician. I think until she was like 21 and I was on the other hand. I stopped seeing mine. I think I had a fairly early age. So what is the range of ages that you treat?

So you have just fallen into one of my truisms by the way because it is the girls get really bonded to their physician and yeah, we basically have to tell them listen, you're getting married next month. You're expecting a baby. You really need to find a grown-up doctor because you can't be a kid and have a kid at the same time.

And the guys are out of there pretty early, you know, they're mostly out of there at 16 when the internal medicine practice is will take them. So technically, my job description is pediatric and adolescent medicine. And so from birth all the way up to when you graduate college. Now, we have to put kind of an age limit on it because some people who go to graduate school think they can still sneak in and they're like, no, no, no, you're in an adult.

So. Technically up until age 22, okay? Yeah, so I guess my wife wasn't the outlier that she was on later typical of HTML. Okay. So I mean. Now I mean you mentioned that you're thinking about or about to retire in a few months or a year or two. So like three but yeah on the opposite end of the spectrum what advice you give to someone who should.

I understand that you have phenomenal amounts of debt but. Some things money just can't buy and one of them is those longitudinal relationships with patients that you will value that you will be part of their extended family and invited to their wedding said I have one patient that invited me not just to her wedding but to sit at the table and you know with her family because that's how closely were.

So, you just can't trade that for money. Money isn't everything. And being independent is a fabulous job because you get to control everything about your life the hospital corporations. Lure people in with a lot of lucrative contracts, but then they start pulling all the lucrative stuff out and making the work more and more and that's why people leave after two to five years.

You got to look at both sides of the coin. Do you find that a lot of the? I guess the new Physicians coming into your office are I mean is that something that you look for is someone who you think is going to stick around for a while? Absolutely 100% now.

Again, because we are an independent practice we don't have the big financial backing we can't offer those huge deals initially that the hospitals do. So a lot of them will go to the the hospital-based practices because we just don't have that kind of money. We actually have to work with like years of my hospital checkbook and not this big business kind of model of kind of debt leverage against future income and stuff like that.

So, But can the advantage of that is complete control over life. And I'm not going I'm not going to sell out. We have amongst the girls we've decided we are never going to sell out to a hospital corporation. Now how many people I mean, are they all partners or they're associates?

So we have three full partners in the practice one employed physician and one of employed position assistant. And the rest of them are everybody else's answer staff amazing and. Business office stuff.

And those yeah, these are all I'm assuming people have been there for a long time. See, I mean, you also get everybody this there right now has came there and stayed there and it's the culture and I think when people come to interview if that staying in one so that makes them nervous, they're not going to look twice at us for some people saying one spot is attractive and then they will.

Yeah. And we always you know at the end of the day every time we've recreated for new partners the right person is come along and when when they're a fit they're a fit and it works. Do you find it's people who are I mean broadly speaking who are from the area or I mean, are you pulling in from all over the place?

A little of both most people are from the area. I'm one of the ones that was not from the area.

Dr. Waters came back because she had family here her parents were here and getting older. Dr. Doug grew up down in. Gettysburg area Hanover Dr. Frank is from all over the place because she was the military so she's been here there and everywhere Diana Rudy grew up in the more estate college went to school and were State College areas.

So our PA.

What's so kind of shifting gears a little bit? You mentioned earlier doing? Submission work and. Kenya, but I'm also seeing here that. You at some point decided to pursue a master's degree in theology how did that decision come about at some point along my career path? I realized that while my medical training had prepared me to deal with strictly medical aspects the a lot of what I deal with especially without a lessons is more.

Not just behavioral health but but life events and how to handle kind of spiritual and and kind of existential crises baby would that be a good word to me a lot of adolescence experience so the the impetus was initially to just go take this course that they offered down at what was them?

Gettysburg Lutheran seminary in pastoral care and counseling like the real okay get a little background in counseling the kind of coheres with my spiritual upbringing and, Beliefs and I went down there and this is for real experience. I am not making this up. I went to my first session of this class.

I went to put my foot out of the car and it was like this electrical service through my foot. I actually remember bringing my foot back in and doing it again wow. But I had no clue what that meant but it just kind of sucked me in and then I kind of got addicted to the whole idea of kind of the.

Spirituality in life and and kind of decided to pursue a degree in what again that changed name to everything changes as a diagonal minister and the reason I love that so much is that nobody really knew what that was and you got to trying to tell people this is what I do and you kind of almost got to invent it because the church wasn't even really sure what it was the idea was that you were to merge your work and your your theology and do something kind of mission oriented.

I said perfect, you know, that's exactly what I want to do. It is supposed to be a two and a half year degree but because I was doing a part-time online weekends and when I could squeeze it in around more than full-time pediatric job it took me from 2003 to till 2009 to finish and then in 2010 I was called to Saint Paul as their diagonal minister.

Then the church kind of dumped the diagonal ministers the deaconesses and this other group called aims which are primarily church musicians and educational savages dumped us all into one book are called deacon so now I am a deacon but the job that I do has not changed at all, it's really kind of working at the intersection of the church and health.

And that has taken on a whole variety of different roles, so the the mission to East Africa, so I work actually out of three different churches. Elias and Emmitsburg. Saint Paul here in Carlisle and then Christ Lutheran Church and Harrisburg. Chrysler Lutheran Church was taken over by the Pastor that was called there when I started working there was a Reverend Jody Sillacker.

And she had been sent to that church by the Bishop at that time to basically help the church gracefully close. She got there and saw she had a background in nursing got there and saw that this could really be a kind of fertile ground for doing mission work in a very poor part of the city.

So that is near a kind of instantly Allison Hill neighborhood. A lot of people of color immigrants a whole lot of need and so rather than closing it down, she turned it into this very fertile health ministries, which is what it's currently called Health Ministries in Christ Lutheran, and I'm the medical director there so I go over there once a week when I Am when I do on call for my practice instead of working in the office the next day half day I go over there and do a lowest prenatal clinic.

You might sit and wonder why is a pediatrician doing prenatal care? Well, the OB doctors really can't work outside of the hospital they are covered by institutional malpractice and this is it only covers them for working in that system so they can't go out and do these volunteer opportunities like this and doing a lot of adolescent gynecology through the years.

I said, okay, I can kind of you know, as long as we keep this low risk and I have real OV doctors backing me up we can do. This So Jody and I kind of form that clinic and that started 14 years ago and I've been doing that ever since.

Most of the immigrants that we take here, so the criterion to come to that clinic are that you can't have any type of insurance which is very different than any other yeah medical care you will get. We pick up all the people who throw it fall through the cracks and the system.

We work in partnership with again formerly. Holy Spirit Hospital now Penn State Holy Spirit that they've gone through all their changes and ownership as well. But at the time that we started this clinic that was still run by the Sisters of Mercy and they controlled really what the budget of the hospital was and made sure that that's why there's always been a lot more mental health care there because that has a lot of expense and very poor reimbursement for hospital systems and most of them don't want to have much to do with it.

So and they also wanted to fund outreach clinics like what we do at Chrysler Pastor Jody had actually grown up Catholic and felt called to the ordained ministry so that required I shift intolerant. Of some which you see a lot of recovering Catholics as we call it in the reference church and so she took great joy too of walking into the Roman Catholic Hospital with a cleric on.

So it has had a lot of fun with that. But at any rate so she was all connected to the sisters and helped found what is now the Penn State Holy Spirit outreach clinic which operates out of the basement of the church and then Christ Lutheran Health Ministries, which includes my prenatal clinic.

Drof does a drop in urgent clinic once a week and Truly got incredible funding mostly through a. Blue Cross Blue Shield, what is a high mark now to have a dental clinic there?

They use volunteer dental hygienists from hack they actually do dental cleanings during the school year gives the hack students the place to do their required service so it just has worked out so well well funded by other churches as well because it is such a rich outreach site so I'll get pastor duty credit for ignoring the bishop and saying no this is exactly what shirts should be and should do yeah.

My my the form my ministry here in Carlisle has taken has been very different because of my work over there with a lot of immigrants. I got very tied up in immigrant. Things and especially we called a youth minister who is Tanzanian, so I had to walk him all through the religious workers visa process.

Moses can be shale give a shout out to Moses and. Learning about the immigration process and how burdensome and onerous and prolonged and really really ugly and unfair it is has maybe a pretty. Vigorous advocate for immigrant rights so I do a lot of that back in June of 2019 I believe when you had saw those videos of children getting yacked out of their parents' arms that are southern border one of our church members stood up and said we need to do something about this she stood up after a service and said everybody who's interested have a meeting after church and that was the birth of a team we now call the week here team.

I don't know if you remember but let Melania Trump wore that awful coat that said I don't care to you and so that's where our name came from we care. And we've worked a lot with. Luther immigration blah Lutheran immigration and refugee services and you know continue to do a lot of work around immigration but then we've also been very open as we've been meeting to the work of the Holy Spirit so we noticed during a Bible study that we were doing there was a homeless gentleman sleeping in our.

Little court now if you've ever been to Saint Paul there's a little courtyard that faces on to West streets yeah and it has like the entrance into stock hall and used to be where project cheer entrance was and everything so that's where this gentleman was sleeping and that led us to have a meeting with pastor about you know, what we do about you know, providing a space for these homeless people that are using our courtyard for shelter that they don't have to sleep outside in the elements.

He invited us to become involved with the apartment ministry at the church. So think of kind of segue over to the apartment ministry kind of dates back to Jimmy George being a member of Saint Paul. I'm back into the 70s those apartments that are attached to Saint Paul on West Lauder Street are all owned by the church and have been operated as subsidized housing since the 1970s and I don't think that's a well-known fact but we got involved in that and it turns out that one building 221 had fallen into a state of disrepair.

If there was a while that apartment ministry started by Jimmy George all got older and no new replay. Ments came in and so they became unable to continue They were actually in there doing all the repair work and all the update and everything. So we tried temporarily using an unnamed management company to run the apartments.

It was a disaster. They raised the rents didn't do any repairs and after one particularly frustrating event they fired us and we were really happy they fired us because then we took it back over again. But it left a whole lot of deferred maintenance four years worth of deferred maintenance and one building that really is just too slim like to put people in.

Yeah. So, Intersect that whole timeline with the week here team getting involved with the apartment industry. One of our members Gale Dupont is sitting on the Carlyle. Ave casino network which is formed kind of primarily through Dickinson but all the community leaders and all the organizations get together in that and she learned about community development block grants being offered by the county in the aftermath of the pandemic.

So we applied for one of those and were granted close to 400,000 dollars to repair that one building. Thank heaven for the part. Nership for better health, which was formed after the old nonprofit hospital all the proceeds were put into that nonprofit and they do a lot of health-related granting grant making.

They gave us another grant to help repair the other existing apartments and get all that deferred maintenance caught up. So suddenly, I find myself now need even the homelessness and apartment ministry. I remember what I said about not liking to be bored. Yeah, yeah the church made it even more exciting but it's all been fabulous.

I'm good. So we continue to do all our work around immigration and now we're tied up in the, Housing industry and homelessness and we put out. I don't know if you've seen in that same courtyard the giving tree. We decided to make things available to homeless people in the community that they didn't have to go far from the community care shelter to get.

So we just hang out all kinds of things that have been identified by the clients there as needs and they can just come up to the tree. They're in plastic bags. You can come up to the tree and take what you need off of it. There's everything from food to package the tape tissue.

Used. Socks during the winter we had gloves hats blankets all kinds of things out there. So we're kind of running all those things now through the week here team and it's and and that group of ladies is passionate advocates also for all these things. So I blessed to have these.

This team that's working with me and expanding what I could have done on my own so much more about it. Yeah, it's well I should have asked this earlier but you mentioned that it was in 2003 about you attended this pet store and counseling class were you already a member of the Lutheran Church at that point or so I was one of it what they call cradle through my grandmother actually immigrated from Norway and Norway Lewis and Church was the state church for Norway at one point in time.

So much of Scandinavia is basically was. Lutheran, that was just what you were. She imported that you know. How I grew up. So, I've already always been a member of Euron Church. Okay.

So I do also and you mentioned that you've been involved with three ministries you talked about Harrisburg. Carlisle is there anything Emmitsburg that you're doing as well or Emma Sperger is one where I do the emissions to East Africa. So that's really my soul function with that church is to help run those missions and again, they it doesn't sound like much to go somewhere for two weeks with the amount of logistics, it takes to get a team assemble get them training get all the materials you need set up all the connections on that and for travel it's work so that that can be a pretty big thing in the Years that we do that.

The Pandemic obviously has this pretty shut down at the moment and we don't know exactly one will be back but it'll happen. I have a whole my son's little bedroom in my house is full of donated supplies. I have minions and several locations that kind of gather plastic expires in the United States.

Did you know that? You know or you have single use things that you can't use again because in our culture that there's a lot against reusing an amboob egg so I go over there and I teach what's called helping babies breathe training, which is where you do just room air and amboob bag and mask for babies who are born with a heart rate, but not breathing and you can kick start them and reduce the mortality infant mortality rate.

By nine percent just doing something simple like that. So I go over there and I teach the native women like the village midwives and they have some kind of very. Not that well-trained. EMT style health care personnel teach them that technique can go around to the villages and do that.

And then you may mention this earlier night Samantha missed it. We're wearing Kenya. It's a little town called QBD me. It's really close to Cataly. North of Eldarity, you have to know your Kenyan geography. But kind of close it's on the western park close to the Ugandan order. Just um, My graduate school work was um, international development, all right my I should say my graduate assistant job was with a the University Albany Center for National Development and I had a number of large projects and cameo so I met.

A bunch of Kenyan politicians and parliamentarians and. So they're here there were an interesting group yeah Joshinga, there has been asked to be a member and he's works for some government agencies again whose background was also an agriculture and sustainable agriculture as farmer farmer pastor Johnstone farmer John, I'm not sure what we're to say that and but they both have that background in sustainable agriculture so that technically is Josh was paying job for the government is a lot of agricultural jobs, but then he was asked the site that he was plopped on had land and so he had.

A Catholic church actually asked him to build some school buildings and use that as a school and then when they got other land he was left with the school buildings and started his school. Yeah, I imagine Tim I mean actually you've been involved in Kenya and during some interesting years.

I mean with evolution and new constitutions and all sorts of stuff so I'm not much you followed that but it's good if they the interesting thing is it's just like Carlisle where that stuff can all go on but it really doesn't impact your day to day life, so the Kibanini would be a lot like the Carlisle of Western Kenya, it's a place a lot of people pass through and know and cataly especially is kind of.

The other day-to-day life there hasn't changed it's a rural farming community I joke with everybody of a picture of my office and the kids will all know this I have a picture of a giraffe it's taken on a mountain and you see down into a valley in the background and if you didn't have the giraffe in the foreground, you wouldn't know that you weren't looking at a picture taken off a flat rock and newville it looks just the same as a lot of farmland a lot of corn growing my joke is that, you know, I want halfway around the world and I got off the airplane and it was Newville, except the Amish people turn black.

Yes, well we share on this planet we share a whole lot more than people understand yeah, we are all the same people trying to test survive and be happy. What I mean, you've talked quite a bit about sort of the impact that the various ministries have had. I'm wondering oh is there anything else that you want to mention about or that?

Yeah, I've dabbled here in Carlisle in nursing home ministry. I find that. Sad because at the end of the day your ministry dies because all the people died yeah, so that's not really what I'm cut out for and I don't think I'll take on any more of that going forward.

I'll kind of make a tribute here to Diane Harper who was instrumentaling to getting us a we did a spiritual support group at Forest Park Nursing Home and that was that was a fantastic group of people to and one by one they just all blanked out and yeah, I imagine it's a very different mindset you have to have as compared to sort of pediatric and adolescents where you know, yes and no I find myself very comfortable in a dementia unit because in a dimension unit, it's a lot like working with a group of two and three year olds.

Well, I'm just thinking I mean, but you're not able to build that sort of. Right, this is there's nothing longitudinal and it's always going to end.

Well, um, What are some of the other things that you enjoy about living here and Cumberland County? I mentioned the fact that I really enjoy the outdoors in nature and since a pandemic and social justice thing. I've been reappointing myself with state parks and you know local parks and things like that just a couple of days ago.

I went over a hiked around Wildwood Lake which is a three three mile circuit and it's not for the faint of heart. It takes you about two and a half hours to do that because there's a lot of up and down on the eastern border of the lake so and and I love to do photography, so I take my camera over there and do that.

Went to 400 hadn't been to 400 since my Son was able What happened to me I just stopped going to all these outdoor things I got so wrapped up with doing degrees online and practicing medicine and organizing all these other things. I'm gonna have the little buffalo last year for the first time a long time.

Pennsylvania has so much to offer in great outdoor spaces and it's not hard to social distance around here, so I still love the Carlyle area for that. You can just do a lot of things that we love. We're trying to think back to my interview with Dr. Rosario and I he was also interested in photography, wasn't it?

Yes. Is that something? That yes you know and he and I've always dabbled in that he obviously being retired has a whole lot more time to do it and he's a wild with like all the time but yeah, we shared that passion. Is that just is that a coincidence or do you find a lot of doctors?

I'm trying to think there there's a doctor in boiling Springs who I think was also a big photographer. I'm blinking on the news. Yeah, and I'm not coming up with that. I don't think that's a real real problem one. I think there are a lot of physicians involved with the arts.

Y sidelines is to do acrylic pouring and acrylic art Thought Mondelez, you know, I'll try any medium and see how much I like it. So yeah just doing art. You have to have something like that to balance the heavy left brain this that goes into the medical world which is you know, I'll based there's the relationship part but there's also the heavy science part of it that you always have to keep running in the background and if you just did that you just get too narrow, so I really like having more of the right brain artsy stuff going on at the same time keeps me same.

Going again, you know, they don't want to be bored. I imagine too. I mean, that's you know photography and I imagine being outdoors. I mean that makes it a little bit easier to engage that photography. I enjoy nature photography. Dr. Iserio really enjoys birds. I mean, so a lot of his stuff focuses around birds.

I'll take pictures more plants and I like my gig with photography is as. For still photography for things that don't move. I like to look at aspects of that thing that nobody else would even notice like walking by like the underside of a mushroom, you know, the very deep inside of a plant.

Now I mean there's a lot of your photography based here in the county or is it a little bit more I would say most of my photography would be based here in the county it's things in my own yard or at all the state parks that I can see.

I'll just mentioned we have a large photo archive that we're always looking for more stuff so yeah. I'll talk more later about that.

Alright so to you also mention here that you know, the acrylic pouring is that how did you find yourself doing some of these other artistic pursuits, you know, we're all minor experts on things via YouTube so I just happen to watch a YouTube video that looks like fun so I bought some of the materials and the next thing you know, you kind of do the next thing in the next thing and all of a sudden my entire what's called a formal dining room is now a consumed by artist supplies, so yeah, that was just one of those.

Almost like a little disease the group. And I will not claim to be fabulous at it but it did make me join the Carlyle arts learning center another thing. I appreciate about they appreciate about Carlisle is the arts community and all the opportunities you have to explore. I've taken photography classes there and done pottery workshops.

I'm not very good at wheelchair pottery that is like I really horrible with that actually feeling what you're not good at sometimes too. There's those arts here too I mean and courtesy of Dickinson College you've got the beginning international community you've got the word college. I mean Carlisle was just this fabulous place with a whole lot of stuff going on you mentioned that I believe that your daughter was also really interested or in design is that something that she picked up from you or was that or did you pick up it from her?

I always did the photography and art when I was younger, I think it's maybe more genetic, okay? I think she just gravitated the same kinds of things that I was always been interested in. And even my son has that art book he does he discovered woodworking now that comes that echoes up from my maternal grandfather and from my own father they both enjoyed a lot of woodworking he is phenomenally good at it he does inlay work he has all these exotic woods he has made himself his custom dusk that is just gorgeous yeah and then from there he branched out into leatherworking so yeah, we all have that the whole family I think has this massive artsy streak in it too.

Well, so just kind of you know wrapping things up a little bit you've been here now since I didn't believe you said 85 correct so how I mean, how is Carlisle and the county changed her? I did not change this much as you think it would have. It's grown in some very fabulous ways you know there's learning center was not there earlier and the parks have always been here so those I've enjoyed the whole time.

I remember when town ended our medical office is right there at the intersection of all that bottom road and 81 and there was the two gas stations on the other side of 81 from our office town ended there, there was nothing out that way and now you've got that whole corridor full of businesses and medical offices in the hospitals out there now so I've watched that growth there, you know developed.

When it's popping up all over the place to the point that I worry a little about whereas our farmland all going yeah, so it's changed, you know in good and bad ways it's growing a lot and more things still to do that. I enjoy we have the historical Society should say has the two mile house and it's amazing to look at photographs of what that used to be used to look like it was liminal we're all by itself yeah.

And that's been consumed yeah.

Boning on have you noticed any demographic shifts or I mean, you talked a little bit about immigration. I know there have been a few. Show me it's really hard to know if the immigrant communities here I know and we have a huge boss Nanamaker community and it happens that way because I've studied immigration now you get one family and then they bring their family in the next thing, you know, you've got a lot of people from that town and so you kind of pop up little immigrant communities that's way.

I'm sure that's how the Germans settlers who originally came here. I'm sure that's how it happened then, you know, the immigration has never really changed it's just different people who look and sound different across the years, but it's always the same thing well we have a Somali community here a Latino community.

We have our immigrant community still and so I've been surely they kind of get adapted the area. I know one thing that you know, we we talk about a lot or we did a few years ago was sort of what the the downtown I'm wondering what was the downtown like when you first moved here.

You know there were different businesses businesses come and go the pandemic I think is affected this a lot more than the preceding years. I mean because you know eateries come and go and you know storefronts the niche markets come and go. I think it did a world of good to change it from four lanes of traffic to two lanes with the bicycle and parking lane yeah that was phenomenal.

I think that was one of the better moves that the ever made because it makes it much more user-friendly to be downtown. For the. You knew were parking meters. I think that's really bringing us up to speed with places like, you know, bigger cities like Pittsburgh and places like that.

So I you know, I see all that as positive development that would attract more people to come to the downtown area. Wondering what are your what are your kids think of? The road diet. The road diet that switching of four legs. You know, I'm not sure either of them comes back and spends enough time in Carlisle to have a lot of thinking about that.

My daughter was more impressed with all the renovations we did over at Saint Paul because you know, we took out what used to be really ugly. That that 70s olive green carpeting with all the multi-level thing going on and put in a very nice week took out the dropped ceiling and opened back up the what is now.

It used to be called the parlor. It's now a nice meeting space with updated flooring and in its own separate kitchen and yeah, it was a. I've only been in Saint Paul once or twice, you know, it's for. Hope Station kids grouper. Right teenage after school room, we did some interviews with them.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. And we've always used the church. Wait, that's one of the things I've really enjoyed about Saint Paul as we've tried to make it available and useful to neighborhood groups. So you have AA and amends and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and Hope Station activities and you know tried to be really.

In the neighborhood working with the neighborhood and and making the space something that is usable and benefited beneficial not just the Sunday place but seven days a week somebody's in there doing something from the community as well. The reason is about the road diet is I I think I came to Carlisle once before the road diet.

I really didn't remember it. But because we're so easy to just pass through and hard to park. Maybe we were I was going to dig in since I don't know how much you know, I was just, Pretty brief but I've lived here now for you know, only having known the you know with the two lands but the the vitriol that some like longtime residents have for all it's so terrible.

Wait. It blows my minds I didn't know if that was just like a local people who you know have lived elsewhere and they just have like a different appreciation for. A functional road. I guess. I don't know. For me it made it made it less attractive for tractor-trailer traffic to pass through downtown and.

Yeah, I made it more of a place to stop and stay. Yeah, and I think that was a good change but I'm sure there are people who people who probably work with the trucking industry or transportation industry or entirely the opposite. We're want to be line through and be done with it.

Yeah. So yeah, no, I mean, I think I made it much more inflating. I guess it's the word. I would use. Yeah. Alright and you know, I always I always end by asking if there is anything that I missed. I didn't ask where that you want to mention before we stop.

I really think so. I think we have covered everything that I could think about about being in Carlisle for all these years and then some things I had never even thought to mention I guess what expressed my appreciation for the historical society for doing this kind of an oral history project and for.

Forcing me to think about my whole life perspective as I'm kind of approaching retirement that's kind of been an interesting exercise. You know, we can also think Terry Rose, yes new wife. Is a phenomenal human being I'm not sure how he managed to marry two such phenomenal women in his life process something about him.

And I just give thanks to the Carlisle community for being the place that it is that you know through the years that it is thought to try to make itself into what it really is, which is an attractive place for people to live and work. Well, thank you again for for speaking with me today and for sharing your stories.

Thank you for having me.