Cook, BMA Management, Centralia, IL Beth started out working as a dietitian in hospitals and nursing homes. She discovered senior living when her husband's uncle found a home there. She took a job as a dietician in a senior living community and soon found herself doing one of her passions -- cooking. She learned to cook when living in a boarding school run by nuns. The other kids would go home on the weekends, but she had no home to return to so she'd go to the kitchen and learn to cook. "The kitchen was my comfort," she says. When she left boarding school she took cooking jobs in restaurants, went to college and worked night shifts. "Cooking brings people together," she says. "There are so many heroes. I just want to be a little voice of happiness in the world." She continues to work on a farm with her husband about 25 miles away from her job.
Each year, the ALFA Hero Awards recognize individuals who are ideal representatives of the hundreds of thousands of people serving in senior living communities. Visit www.alfa.org/hero for more information.
My mother died when I was 11, just before my 12th birthday.
So I went to the boarding school three weeks after she died, and it was a shock.
It was a whole different world.
Couldn't even talk to your own sisters or anything.
But on these general weekends, when the other kids went home,
I got to go in the kitchen, and this little nun took care of me.
And then, of course, when you come out of school,
and that's the jobs there are, like in restaurants and things.
So I worked as a waitress.
There were so many people along the way that helped me.
And God gave me so many chances.
I guess I just loved older people, because I loved my grandmother.
I loved her.
I love it.
They just, they're so kind to me.
They're just so kind to me.
She is just a ball of fire.
She is a hundred places at once.
We would not function very well without her.
She's the heart of the kitchen and the home.
She inspires the rest of us and makes us do better.
I just would like to highlight the need for places like this for people to come to.
They all have a story.
They all have a life.
They just didn't just show up here.
I mean, I know some of these people and some of them I don't, but I learn about them.
They've had lives.
They've made this world what it is.
They should have the right to have a decent place to live and somebody to take care of them.
Give the help that they need, but encourage independence as much as possible.
To see people happy and to feel like this is what God wants me to do.
The faces out there, to see people happy.
We're better people because of her.
And we thought it would be a good idea to nominate Beth, and you deserve it.
We ask you that you are a 2014 Alpha Hero Award winner.
Oh my goodness.
Overwhelmed and just humbled.
I'm just so glad they put up with me here.
I love this place and the people.
This is such a good thing we have going here.
We love you.
