by Nick Thomas

While most of us will be remembering mothers on May 10 this year, entertainers who worked as child actors in television sitcoms may also have special memories of their ‘TV mom.’ For Paul Petersen, that was Oscar winner Donna Reed, matriarch from “The Donna Reed Show.”

“It’s kind of an archival look back at an iconic television show,” said Petersen who, like Reed, appeared in all 275 episodes during the series run from 1958 to 1966. “I wanted the book to not only examine the people who made the show, but to put television in the historical context of the period. During the 8 years, we went through a lot including illnesses, accidents, and national incidents from that era.”
One of the most memorable was the 1963 Kennedy assassination.
“We were rehearsing and a guy from the radio station across the street called with a real quiver in his voice asking for Donna,” said Petersen who remembers answering the phone. “Donna then told us the president had been shot and it shut down the studio. We just packed up and went home for a very painful weekend.”
Most of Petersen’s memories of the show are far more pleasant, however, like the first day filming on the set.
“Donna was from a little town in Iowa called Denison, in the county right next to where my mother was born around the same year,” he explained. “When I got the job, the most excited person in my family was my grandfather who insisted on taking me to work to film the pilot. He marched right up to Donna and said, ‘Donna Belle Mullenger (her birth name) I knew your dad!’”
Reed was gracious, and remained personable and well-liked throughout the series, according to Petersen. “We all got together for lunch and were very close – uniquely close compared to other television families.”
A potentially tragic incident occurred when Paul crashed his Pontiac Grand Prix during the series. But Donna came to his rescue.
“The accident was my fault and for punishment I had to ride a bicycle 8 miles to work every day. But Donna and Tony (her husband) felt sorry for me and gave me a brand-new Volkswagen Bug. I loved that car!”
During the show’s run, Petersen obviously called Reed ‘mom’ while filming, but it was always ‘Miss Reed’ away from the set.
“It wasn’t until four years after the show ended when I was in my mid-20s and we were at Chasen’s restaurant that I remember her learning across the table and saying, ‘Paul, I think it’s time you started calling me Donna!’”
Having a close ‘second mom,’ especially a famous one, could have created friction between Petersen’s real mother and the actress.
“I remember in an interview my mother said, ‘how could I ever compete with Donna Reed?’ But she understood I had an ongoing professional relationship with Donna that sometimes required spending more time with her than my actual mother.”
“Donna was my de facto mother and guardian on the set, a pretty safe person to leave your kids with,” added Petersen. “She was an Iowa bred farm girl, the oldest of five children, who had lived through the depression and came out to California to be a Hollywood star and succeeded. She was a wonderful role model.”
In 2018 for the anniversary of the show’s first broadcast, Petersen (and coauthor Deborah Herman) released “The Donna Reed Show: A Pictorial Memoir” (see www.micropublishingmedia.com).

Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery and has written features, columns, and interviews for over 800 newspapers and magazines. See getnickt.org.

Story and Photos by Marise Boehs

INCLUDED IN THE RENT seems to be the catch phrase when talking about Carlston Adult Community and its luxury senior independent living. Located near Porter and Robinson, in the heart of Norman, Carlston is safe and quiet and fairly new.

Carlston offers a variety of amenities but the most impressive is the onsite restaurant with open dining. “They can come down to the restaurant and order off the menu,”  said Judy Ernst, Executive Senior Supervisor. “Breakfast is available all day,” she continued. “Our chef is a scratch cook, he cooks it when it’s ordered.”

Also in the restaurant is a coffee bar that has cappuccino, fresh brewed coffee, hot water for tea and hot chocolate. “It is available all the time,” she said. Restaurant meals, coffee and cappucino are all included in the rent.

Basic TV and internet is also included in the rent. “When a new resident moves in, they bring their TV and we hook it up,” she continued.

Washers and dryers are in each apartment. Utilities are included in the rent.

“We have morning and afternoon transportation. A resident can put their name on the list and their destination and we take them there. A doctor’s appointment needs to be scheduled ahead of time and if a resident needs to be in OKC or somewhere farther we use a driving service and we pay for that.” Transportation is included in the rent.

Upstairs offers a fitness room with treadmills, a recumbent bike, and a small barbell rack. Down the hall is a pilates room with instructor. Fitness gym and pilates is included in the rent.

The facility has a variety of game rooms for group activities and quiet sitting areas for reading. The ground floor has a 120-person capacity safe room that has comfy chairs, a TV and a bathroom to ride out the Oklahoma weather when needed.

During March and April, Carlstone is having a move-in special. A one bedroom, one bath apartment is $1999 a month for 6 months.

Call 405-701-2951 for a tour to check it out. See for yourself what’s included in the rent!

Visit us at Carlstone is located at 501 E. Robinson, Norman or https://www.thecarlstone.com/.

Mercy family medicine physician Dr. Erica Dearman has shifted the focus of her practice to meet the unique needs of Medicare patients in the Oklahoma City metro area.
Dearman, a Mercy primary care physician since 2019, is passionate about caring for seniors and older adults and helping them navigate the natural life changes that come with aging.
“Many seniors are suddenly facing complex medical diagnoses, decreased physical abilities and fewer social interactions than they used to have,” Dr. Dearman said. “The focus of my practice and this new model of care is to work closely with these patients to help them optimize their quality of life in all areas.”
Dr. Dearman’s Medicare patients will have extended visit times and be seen more frequently to keep chronic conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease under control.
“The heart and soul of my practice is to help seniors stay out of the hospital and lead long, healthy lives,” Dr. Dearman said.
Patients will also have access to the full suite of services available to all Mercy patients, including Mercy on Call, the after-hours help line staffed by a full Mercy care team, and access to MyMercy, a free app and website that make it easy to manage doctor visits, medications, tests and billing in one convenient place.
Dr. Dearman will see patients at Mercy Clinic Primary Care – Edmond Memorial. Call (405) 341-7009 to schedule an appointment or book online here.

Brad Benefield hasn’t tested positive for Covid-19 since April.
But as spring turned to summer, and now fall, Benefield is growing increasingly concerned about his bout with the virus known technically as SARS-CoV-2.
“One thing everyone told me to do once I was symptom-free was to donate plasma to help others recover, or donate blood for antibody studies,” said Benefield, whose wife, Beth, works for the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. “I haven’t donated yet. Thing is, they said to be symptom-free.”
Although he tested positive for Covid-19, Benefield’s initial encounter with the virus was mild. After losing his father-in-law to complications from the virus, he considered himself lucky.
“No fever, no loss of taste or smell,” the 38-year-old Moore resident said. “I just felt cruddy. I had a cough and was always tired.” But months later, he said, he continues to feel fatigued. “That has me worried. It’s alarming to get winded and have to rest after moving a 5-pound glass punch bowl to the car.”
While the virus has cleared Benefield’s body, its fingerprints remain. That means he joined an unenviable club: the Covid long-haulers, as they’ve come to be known.
As the pandemic marches on, physicians around the world are reporting an increasing number of people feeling the lingering effects of the virus. In one study in Europe, researchers found that of 143 people with Covid-19, more than half reported fatigue and 43% had shortness of breath an average of two months after their symptoms started.
“A growing number of patients report dealing with a sort of ‘brain fog’ that makes it hard to concentrate. Others report breathlessness, muscle aches, lingering cough and chronic fatigue,” said OMRF President Stephen Prescott, M.D. As confirmed Oklahoma cases have now surged past 80,000, Prescott said, accounts like Benefield’s should serve as a warning to those who have relaxed their precautions surrounding the coronavirus. And at OMRF, researchers are part of a worldwide effort to understand the virus, including its long-term symptoms.
OMRF scientist Linda Thompson, Ph.D., is leading the foundation’s study of the body’s immune response to Covid-19. Thompson, an immunologist, attributes the long-term symptoms to the initial havoc the virus wreaks.
“It’s not that the virus is sticking around in the body,” said Thompson, who holds the Putnam City Schools Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research at OMRF. “The body’s immune response seems to go haywire, leaving lasting damage behind. In some people, we’re seeing it in the lungs. Others in the heart. Some even in the brain. Only time and more research will tell the extent.”
However, social media posts suggesting the virus might go dormant like varicella, the virus that causes chickenpox and can later rear its head as shingles, are unfounded. “Some viruses incorporate themselves inside of our genetic material. Covid-19 does not behave this way,” said Thompson.
For long-haulers like Benefield, the virus doesn’t need to reactivate to cause long-term issues. Half a year after testing positive for Covid-19, he still doesn’t feel back to normal.
“When I got sick, my biggest fear was the unknown,” said Benefield. “Almost seven months later, that remains my biggest fear. Just because you beat it doesn’t guarantee you get better, and I don’t know if or when I ever will.”

Story and photos by Darl DeVault

Seniors either retirement privileged or close to that status face an important question around the world as we now see the importance of aging in place brought on by COVID-19-driven orders to shelter in place.
The question for those trying to add to the quality of life they have built for themselves throughout their decades of hard work and life experience is do they allow themselves to become dependent?
Seniors have grown up in an age of independence, of individual rights for those pulling for the greater good.
We have recently heard many directives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during this COVID-19 Global Pandemic. The CDC says during a COVID-19 outbreak in your community, stay home as much as possible to further reduce your risk of being exposed.
Perhaps for seniors the CDC’s definition of aging in place “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level” should define their future.
A member of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, Kara De La Pena, who owns a metro urgent care mobile practice, is advising her patients to make changes to their home to compensate for their disabilities. This allows them to age in place.
And yet many healthy, disability-free seniors have chosen to amass in retirement communities. With 15 years of delivering medical services, De La Pena has seen a downside to this choice recently while delivering urgent care to her patient’s home.
“The number of patients with serious complications I have seen recently during this pandemic is astounding—often times requiring careful consideration of sending them to a higher level of care or leaving them to manage their symptoms,” said De La Pena, an advanced practice registered nurse whose practice is based on making house calls.
Her certifications in advanced cardiac life support, basic life support, and pediatric advanced life support allow her to fully evaluate her senior patient’s situations. De La Pena has been adding aging in place expertise to her delivery of medical health care as the owner of NP 2 Go.
She says although centers that cater to disability free seniors have a great array of services and amenities, they also come with a serious medical restriction.
Those places are only as medically secure in a pathogen pandemic as the least informed and observant of warnings of social distancing among that population.
While these retirement communities tout wonderful food, convenience, comfortable-bus special excursions to cultural events they fall short in medical privacy. Someone trying to self quarantine cannot prevent other seniors from ignoring the scientifically established demand to stay in their area during a pandemic.
It is not physically possible for self-quarantining seniors to live in a totally private area in a retirement community. Even the milder restriction of shelter in place is impossible when others can insist on inflicting their social visits.
Sharing beautiful common areas can be a minus, just as the pressure to attend a variety of planned activities can short circuit the best intentions to be safe. Some residents may not be able to resist the temptation to socialize with friends and neighbors every day.
Seniors trying to do the right thing in a pandemic are at the mercy of those people who have the least ability to understand science. Some people do not understand the gravity of the situation, or exercise social inhibitions in a time of emergency.
If a senior remains in their home, aging in place, they are far more likely able to avoid a medical emergency based on the spread of a pathogen.
“Sheltering in place is nearly impossible in communal living, which is why aging in place is of utmost importance-now and in the future,” De La Pena said. “Our physical health and mental health often meld together for a balance which creates a homeostasis that directly affects our personal health. Aging in place provides independence, prevents communal illnesses, and promotes self-care.”
Aging in place means solving safety and inappropriate accessibility issues. It creates home living that is safe and accessible without sacrificing individuality. With our leaders calling this pandemic a war, why be on the front lines when you can choose to be a non-combatant by sheltering in place?
“For my older patients there are no potentially promising treatments available in this COVID-19 crisis. Sheltering in place is the only course of action that reliably gives seniors the possibility of a treatment benefit,” De La Pena said. “If seniors have already given up their right to age in place, they have no confidence that the possibility of a treatment benefit is in the offing.”
Now many seniors and retirees can see had everyone been able to truly shelter in place from the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, there would have been far fewer deaths in their demographic.
Instead, because of illness and disability and the choice of leaving their homes, many seniors were extra vulnerable while amassed in facilities other than their homes.
The concept of aging in place is as new as the agenda of collective living in retirement and yet it is lagging in importance. A major reason the concept is not widely advocated is business cannot make a great profit from sharing this information with the public.
Business can make a profit by building facilities and luring people out of their homes to be a part of a larger collective.
America has just received an enormous wakeup call about how dangerous this collective living can be. Again, if everyone deemed vulnerable who did not require daily medical attention could have self-quarantined our nation’s COVID-19 virus stats would look much better.
The government has created a new phrase in the last few years—disability free aging.
With the new pathogen pandemic connectedness apparent in the world it begs the question. Shouldn’t those seniors and retirees who are disability free be clinging to the independence and relative safety of living in their own homes.
“Again, while I visit a cross section of ages as patients in their homes, I am very concerned for our senior population with COVID 19 spreading. Aging in place is the safest form of defense for seniors now,” De La Pena said. “I plan on highlighting more government initiatives and programs to help seniors stay in their homes as long as possible. By performing aging in place assessments, I hope to empower more seniors to find ways to age in place as long as their home is a viable sanctuary.”
She recommends everyone with questions about the aging in place agenda visit this informative section of the federal Web site: www.nia.nih.gov/health/aging-place-growing-older-home
Steve Persa, 77, is staunchly an aging in place advocate in Oklahoma City. He sees this pandemic through the eyes of a retired Oklahoma Blood Institute employee who helped solve Oklahoma’s blood supply problems for decades.
“As long as I am healthy and mobile, I will continue to live in my home,” Persa said. “This latest COVID-19 shelter in place episode reinforces my resolve to do so.”

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