What do you hope the new year has in store for you? Cleveland County Habitat for Humanity

Health, health and more good health. Eileen Checorski

For Habitat I want us to build three houses and complete five mortgages. Tambra Gowin

That I don’t lose my sanity along the way. Susan Pearson

To deepen my relationship with Habitat through raising money to build more homes. Andrea Marler

The Robert Glenn Rapp Foundation has awarded the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation a four-year, $400,000 grant.
The grant will help two new scientists establish laboratories at OMRF. In their labs, they will study the cellular processes that lead to cancer, as well as diseases of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
“Our family is pleased to play a small role in the important work underway in OMRF’s cancer research laboratories,” said Jilene Boghetich, managing trustee of the Rapp Foundation. “Cancer seems to strike almost every family in some way, and our goal is to help OMRF’s scientists discover new methods to detect and treat the disease.”
Founded in 1951, the Rapp Foundation distributes funds to a wide variety of charitable projects throughout the U.S. This new grant to OMRF represents the latest in a long line of gifts that have helped the Oklahoma City-based nonprofit strengthen its scientific infrastructure.
The new funds will help support the recruitment of a pair of new scientists, Wan Hee Yoon, Ph.D., and Jiang Li, Ph.D.
Yoon joins OMRF from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and his research uses fruit flies to understand the processes of cellular decline that lead to diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Li also studies the basic cellular mechanisms underlying cancer and neurodegeneration, and he comes to OMRF from Northwestern University in Chicago.
The grant will provide funding for the purchase of sophisticated laboratory equipment and supplies for the new researchers. It will also help support salaries of personnel working in their labs.
“It’s hard to imagine OMRF as it is today without the enduring generosity of the Rapp Foundation through the years,” said OMRF Vice President of Development Penny Voss. “They’ve been true friends to OMRF and to medical research in Oklahoma, and they’ve invested in visionary projects that will benefit us all.”

Jeanne Kleinschmidt, a resident at The Fountains at Canterbury in Oklahoma City, earned a featured space in a national art calendar competition hosted by Watermark Retirement Communities.
The Watermark Expressions art calendar, created by Watermark Retirement Communities which manages The Fountains at Canterbury, is designed to be a source of inspiration for all those who receive it. Pieces of art submitted for the competition included sculpture, needlepoint, oil and watercolor paintings and mixed-media. Each month features a beautiful work of art and a brief background story detailing the artist’s background, personal history, artistic training and inspiration. The calendar is distributed nationwide.
Kleinschmidt’s oil painting, ‘Serenity,’ was selected as one of 12 features for the 2018 Watermark Expressions art calendar out of entries from Watermark communities located coast to coast. The work was inspired by Colorado scenery.
“The annual Watermark Expressions calendar competition is an opportunity to showcase the abundant creativity being cultivated in our community, as well as the many exceptional artists residing at The Fountains at Canterbury,” said Becky Strong, director of community life at The Fountains at Canterbury. “Jeanne is a brilliant artist and we are excited to see her honored with national recognition for her skills and passion.”
The piece was first judged as part of a local competition among residents at The Fountains at Canterbury. Three local experts narrowed down the pieces and sent the five best on to the national competition. Final selections to be featured in the calendar were made at the Watermark Retirement Communities’ national resource center in Tucson, Arizona.
Please call (405) 381-8165 today to receive a 2018 calendar at no cost while supplies last.
The Fountains at Canterbury is dedicated to being the first choice in senior living, providing a continuum of care including independent living, assisted living, memory care, innovative rehabilitation therapies and skilled care. The Fountains at Canterbury is managed by Watermark Retirement Communities and is committed to creating an extraordinary community where people thrive. To learn more, please call (405) 381-8165 or go online to www.watermarkcommunities.com.

The Stacie Daniel Success Story

Hunting is Stacie Daniel’s passion. She loves being outdoors surrounded by nature, the thrill of the hunt and truly living off the land. But Stacie was born with cystic fibrosis, a disease that not only threatened to end to her hunting days – but also her life.
“I remember my mom being in tears when I was diagnosed at six years old,” says Daniel. “They told her to love me while she could and pretty much wrap me in a bubble because the life expectancy at that time for someone with CF was 10 to 12 years.”
As a child, Stacie’s issues were mainly digestive. She didn’t start experiencing lung problems until she was a teenager. That’s when her disease started to progress. By the time she was 25, her lungs were only functioning at 30 percent capacity.
“I would get up every morning and start coughing,” remembers Daniel. “I’d have coughing fits that would last 45 minutes to an hour. If I got excited or laughed, or anything really, I would start coughing. It was miserable.”
Despite her deteriorating condition, Stacie did her best to live life to the fullest. She would try to go hunting as often as she could. “I wanted to enjoy life. I wanted to go out and have fun. I wanted to hunt and fish and be active and travel and see things. So I did.”
“Today, people with my disease are living well into their 30s,” adds Daniel. “Growing up with cystic fibrosis you know it’s coming – eventually. You just hope it’s later than sooner.”
At 29, Daniel was listed on the transplant list. She would wait nine months before getting ‘the call.’ “When you get the call, its earth shattering. It’s an answered prayer, it really is. But at the same time you know another family is now grieving. That part is hard to take.”
In August 2017, Daniel received a double lung transplant at the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center. Doctors say her new set of lungs is as close to a perfect match as possible. “Stacie is an ideal patient. Complaint and full of drive and dreams,” says Mark Rolfe, M.D. “She is the kind of patient that every transplant pulmonologist loves because she is so easy to take care of and takes advantage of the transplant to live life to its fullest.”
“I’m able to walk as long as my little legs will carry me, I don’t cough anymore and I can actually breathe. My energy is back and I feel great,” she declares. “But the best part is, I can hunt as much as I want to. In fact, I was out there opening morning of hunting season this year, which is amazing to me considering that it was only five weeks after my surgery.” Daniel shot a 9-point deer on the three month anniversary of her transplant.
In November, Stacie celebrated her 31st birthday … and thanks to the miracle of transplantation she no longer fears the inevitable. “I am not cured, I will always have CF and the sinus and digestive issues that go along with it. But the disease cannot get into my new lungs and it’s the respiratory issues that are the most fatal. So my prognosis is great and because of my donor and the generosity of his or her family, I truly have been given a second chance at life.”
Daniel hasn’t been in contact with them yet, but would like to someday. In the meantime, she will continue to share her story in hopes of saving even more lives. “In the last moments of your life, the best thing you can give is life. Check the little green box on your driver’s license and become an organ donor.”

Photography and Text by Terry “Travels with Terry” Zinn t4z@aol.com

Colorado offers many tourist areas. Two are the college town of Ft Collins and the mountain town and gate way to Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes park. Both offer a staggering amount of dining options and shopping experiences, sure to test your endurance.
For lunch in Ft Collins, the Mainline, 125 South College Avenue, is in an upscale modern renovated industrial building offering a diverse selection of food choices with courteous wait staff. Located in old town on its main street, is popular and validates its reputation.
The Perennial Gardener and Sense of Place, at 154 N College street, offers seasonal décor and specialty items. While the store is packed to the rafters with tempting objects, don’t miss the outdoors back yard with a choice of garden sculptures. Nature inspired gifts include scented candles, wall art, jewelry and even unique pajamas. In their own season, holiday items and ornaments abound. While strolling the town don’t miss the old town square and the candy store, Rocket Fizz.
When shopping on College, on Ft. Collin’s main street, be sure and drop into the Rocky Mountain Olive Oil Company (www.RockyMountainOliveOil.com) where you can sample many different Olive Oil infusions, and a few hole olives. I was looking for gourmet blue cheese stuffed olives for Martinis.
I found my olive search at Flat Top Mountain Trading Company, (145 East Elkhorn, 970-480-1445) in Estes Park, Colorado. The Olives are very large and the cheese as pungent as you cold want. Of course you’ll need to visit Estes Park and its main street filled with a variety of gift and food shops.
While in Estes Park be sure and visit the tasting room at Dancing Pines Distillery (www.DancingPines Distillery.com). Their Colorado Crafted Vodka is distilled from grapes 6 times in a column still with snow melt water from the Rockies. The Vodka has a faint hint of grape and is a truly unique vodka, just the kind of specialty you seek as a delectable souvenir. For a tasting of 6 of their liquor concoctions you can get a cocktail made to your specifications. You can choose from the Campfire Mule, of Ginger Beer with a choice of spirits, Chai Manhattan, of Bourbon and Black Walnut with Cherry Orange, among others. The tasting room offers comfortable seating and an elevated view of the shops below a mountain backdrop.
Visitors are encourage to take the Elkhorn Express Trolley located a the Visitor Center, 691 N, St. Vrain Ave, conveniently located next to the new parking structure. The trolley can make stops at Bond Park, The Ore Cart Rock Shop, West Park Center, the Trading Post, Barlow Plaza and the Grubsteak Restaurant. For availability and times check out; www.estes.org/shuttles.
Twin Owls Steakhouse, near downtown Estes Park on MacGregor Avenue is a natural choice for a mountain log cabin environment. Of course the food selections are numerous and the quality top notch, from prime rib, seafood to trout. Musical entertainment might be engaged on your evening experience. Our wait staffer, Sergei, was Russian charming and efficient. Reservations recommended. (970-586-8113) For overnight lodgings you may want to investigate the nearby Black Canyon Inn.
A trip to this area would not be complete without a stay or short visit to the iconic and historic Stanley Hotel. This hillside white visage is credited with inspiring Steven Kings’, “The Shining,” and tours of the property are available even if you can’t book an overnight stay. As with many famous and upscale hotels, a visit to their restaurant or bar can satiate your need of your atmospheric hunger. The Whiskey Bar offers quality beverages as well as you can order food, as the restaurant proper has limited hours. In coming years a maze, just recently planted in front of the hotel, will grow and offer an old world experience.
This is just a small sampling of two cities which you can explore when visiting Colorado.
For more on Estes Park visit, www.EstesPark100.com
For more on Fort Collins visit, www.visitftcollins.com

Mr. Terry Zinn – Travel Editor
Past President: International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association
http://realtraveladventures.com/author/zin

by Traci Chapman
Staff Writer

As Russell-Murray Hospice prepares to commemorate its 30th year in business, those associated with it are celebrating a new home and new levels of care to those who need it most.
“It’s appropriate we are here today, holding our board of directors and annual advisory board meeting, in our new building,” RMH Executive Director – and the organization’s first RN – Vicki Myers said. “It’s peaceful, it’s efficient, it’s just perfect for everything, and if Russell-Murray is here for 30 more years, this building is perfect for us.”
Myers made her remarks during the Nov. 15 annual meeting of the two boards at Russell-Murray’s new home, located at 2001 Park View Drive in El Reno. The new building, recently purchased by the longtime hospice care organization, is more than triple the space of its previous offices, located in historic downtown El Reno, Myers said.
“As we’ve grown, the staff really has had to try to work in a situation that just wasn’t feasible,” she said. “They were just crammed in with each other, and while everyone handled it very well, it just wasn’t working the way we wanted it to.”
That meant when a former medical office building located adjacent to Mercy Hospital El Reno came on the market, the organization jumped at it. The space meant not only plenty of room for a growing staff, but also room to grow and a more prominent location, headquartered not only near the hospital, but also other medical providers. That’s good news for the staff, but also for Russell-Murray’s patients, said Melodie Duff, RN, patient care coordinator. As RMH closes out the year and heads into 2018 – its 30th anniversary – Duff said staff and those associated with its success have a lot to be proud of, including 4,440 patients who have been treated and cared for by the organization’s nurses and caregivers.
“We currently have patients from infants days old to patients over 100,” Duff said. “We serve without care about their ability to pay, and we’re always there for them, no matter what.”
That’s something unique in Oklahoma hospice – and elsewhere – Russell-Murray Clinical Supervisor Missy Ellard said.
“If a patient qualifies and desires hospice care, we do not turn patients away based on their reimbursement status,” she said. “Many hospices, even not for profit hospices, have a ‘quota’ of non-reimbursable patients and will decline patients if they don’t have a payer source – RMH has never done that.”
That assistance totaled about $400,000 last year, Administrator Christina Ketter said. With $3.8 million in revenues and a $2.6 million payroll, Russell-Murray saw a jump in helping those who could not afford it.
“It might be younger people who lost their job and didn’t have insurance and, of course, the seniors who might not have access to Medicare or something like that,” Ketter said. “To me, our charity care, the way we look at our patients and how we treatment them shows what kind of an organization, what kind of people we are.” Russell-Murray’s approach has worked – from its roots as a small El Reno hospice care provider to an organization with offices also located in Kingfisher, Weatherford and Oklahoma City. In October, those sites combined served 118 patients through the work of 25 full-time RNs and LPNs, as well as several per diem PRN nurses, across RMH’s four offices.
“We serve approximately 75-mile radius surrounding each of the four offices,” Myers said. Even before the move, Russell-Murray was working to expand its services, not only to patients, but also their families. In March, the organization celebrated the opening of the Virginia E. Olds Resource Library, coordinated originally by Carol Russell Davis and Evan Davis and Vicky Joyner. When RMH began looking at moving, Carol Davis undertook the transfer of the library’s books to the new site, while Sue Pennington-Unsell is director of bereavement. Named for retired University of Oklahoma School of Social Work professor and longtime Russell-Murray counselor Virginia Olds, the library is unique among hospice organizations, Myers said – and is something that can help not only patients and their families, but also nurses who deal daily with end-of-life care and the emotional toll it can take. “We wanted to accumulate information related to social issues involved in bereavement, emotional and psychological resources, coping with these kinds of illnesses and more,” Myers said. “It’s important to remember that the patient isn’t the only person who suffers through an end-of-life illness – it’s incredibly difficult and stressful for their family, their friends and their caregivers.”
Those caregivers are the backbone of Russell-Murray’s nearly 30-year success, and they make those who work with them proud every day, Duff said.
“I can’t tell you how many thank you cards and calls we get, talking about how our staff treats their patients, and particularly those who can’t afford it,” she said. “We hear all the time that our nurses never judge and are always there to do everything they possibly can do – and that’s an accomplishment in itself.”