Testimonials
Since 1982, our mission and motivation has been to help seniors remain connected to their community by offering opportunities for high-quality affordable housing and housing support services
The following testimonies originate from conversations with seniors who have benefited from our intergenerational housing and community programs. We are grateful that these seniors took the time to share shared their thoughts about the way H.O.M.E. has impacted their lives.
We’re proud to share stories that demonstrate both the impact of our community’s support as well as the diversity of experiences among the seniors. Teachers, small business owners, world-travelers, care-takers and more; grandparent, parents, and children -- these are the Voices of H.O.M.E.
Constance and Curtis
For Constance Hatchett, 61, moving to Nathalie Salmon House was “an upgrade.” She and her husband Curtis had been living in senior housing elsewhere in the city, but the building lacked facilities they appreciate now such as the exercise room, library, and common room.
Originally from the West Side, Hatchett and her husband Curtis met and married after working together at Catholic Charities, then started a small business that provided security in the schools.
She also appreciates the mix of residents in the building and community activities that give everyone a chance to be together: “Everybody gets to know a little bit about everybody,” Hatchett says.
Delores
Every week, the H.O.M.E. Shopping Bus provides seniors free, safe transport from their residence to a nearby store where they can shop for groceries, medication, and household items. On this Tuesday, the destination of H.O.M.E.’s shopping bus is Fairplay, a popular grocery store on Chicago’s south side. As the bus pulls to the front door, Ernest is the first person to exit. A long-time employee of H.O.M.E., Ernest has been transporting passengers from senior living buildings around the city to local grocery stores for over 10 years, but he’s much more than a driver. Ernest is a friend, an advocate, a partner, and a champion for the older adults that he transports to and fro their buildings of residence. After hopping off the bus with a smile, he proceeds to assist every bus rider as they exit the vehicle, carrying bags, shopping carts, and offering a helping hand.
Following Ernest is Delores, a quick-witted and compassionate 84-year-old resident of the Willa Rawls building, who bounces down the bus steps and practically sprints inside the store. A senior in title only, Delores quickly navigates the store, smiling as she races down the aisles determined to make the most of her time on this trip. Delores has been riding the H.O.M.E. Shopping Bus for over 10 years and a resident of Willa Rawls for 22 years. While Fairplay is not the closest grocery store in proximity to her building, she prefers to wait for her bi-weekly bus ride with Ernest.
“Other people may give us a ride to the store, but they’re impatient and won’t take the time with us older folks like Ernest does. He cares, he’s patient, and we need that.”
Delores has been a loyal bus rider, having joined the Shopping Bus program as soon as it was available at her building, which coincides with the launch of the community program with H.O.M.E. A retired Jane of All Trades, while Delores is independent she values the joy and community that these regular shopping bus trips provide.
As she shops through the store searching for the items on her list, Delores stops to make conversation with other shoppers frequently. “I try to make the most of my time here because we only have so much,” she says, “but if I can have a chat, make somebody smile, that’s worth spending a little extra time. Plus, Ernest won’t leave us even if we are a little slow.”
Delores’s smile is infectious as she navigates the store, offering kind words to strangers, and cracking jokes with Donna, another H.O.M.E. Bus Rider, as they pass in the store.
“You sure got a lot going on in that cart,” Delores laughs as she and Donna’s carts almost collide.
“Got to put Ernest to work!” Donna replies, referring to the exceptional care and assistance he provides. Unlike other transportation services that seniors might access, Ernest goes above & beyond to help the seniors with their groceries as they get on and off the bus. Upon returning the riders to their buildings, Ernest carries their groceries into their building for them thus alleviating the problem of seniors choosing food based on its weight rather than its nutritional value.
After purchasing her groceries, Delores returns to the front of the store to await Ernest’s return as he assists a disabled passenger shop at another store.
“That’s what we do -- we’re family. Ernest is always there to help in any way he can, and you can’t get that anywhere else. I’m so grateful for Ernest, and I’m grateful for H.O.M.E.”
Larry
Larry Solomon, 77, is a Chicago native and one of the newer residents at Nathalie Salmon House. Solomon relocated to Florida, then moved around the South overseeing phone-book distribution for R.H. Donnelley. In 2017, he came to Chicago to be with his sister. When he went back to Nashville a few years later he found rising rents and gentrification had priced him out of the market.
He found his way back to Chicago, where transitional housing specialists at the Ark referred him to H.O.M.E.’s Nathalie Salmon House independent living apartments. “I was troubled when I came back to Chicago,” Solomon says. “I didn’t know where I could live and I didn’t know what I could afford.”
Three months after moving in, Solomon says he loves the amenities in the community room and appreciates the staff and his neighbors. “This is a great location and it’s got a good group of people, a very diverse group, he says. “I ride the exercise bike, I do the treadmill and the weights,” he says. “I like the pool table. I do really well on it.”
The Rowes
Over the years the Rowes have turned to H.O.M.E. several times for upkeep and repair including weatherization, painting, and, just this fall, a new hot water heater. The Rowes learned about H.O.M.E. around 2009 through a local neighborhood association. When Mike Laz, the Community Programs Director came out, “we clicked right away,” Karleen Rowe says. “He established immediate rapport and it’s been that way ever since.”
They say opposites attract and H.O.M.E. clients Karleen Rowe, 75, and her husband William, 78, are a case in point.
When they met, Chicago-born Karleen, 16, was a student at Wendell Phillips High School; her family ran a jitney cab business to help people travel around Bronzeville. William, 19, had just moved to Chicago from Aberdeen, Mississippi, to join his brothers working in the meatpacking industry.
The two tell the story of how they first saw each other at a skating rink on the South Side:
“I was with my best girlfriend,” Karleen recalls. When he saw me he said…”
“… Lawdy lawdy, look what’s coming in,” William chimes in.
“… And that was it!” they laugh together.
The two were married in 1964. William worked in the stockyards manufacturing district for the same company for 43 years, retiring in 2003.
Karleen got her degree at Chicago State University in 1971 and joined a wave of teachers who integrated Chicago Public Schools, becoming the first African-American to teach in her Northwest Side building the following year. She worked there nine years before moving on to another school. “I had to work harder to earn my reputation and prove myself to be a good teacher,” she says.
After Karleen’s mother passed away in 1987, they bought the home where they now live with their dog, Lucky, in the Rosemoor neighborhood on the South Side.
“One thing we have noticed is, Mike sends the best out,” Karleen and William said. “We recommend H.O.M.E. to other senior citizens. They make you feel appreciated, and it is reciprocal.”
The organization fills a significant need for the couple: their equity and savings have been severely depleted since the economic crisis of 2008. Financially, they say, life is getting harder, not easier: “After we pay our bills, there’s not a lot left over, so H.O.M.E. really comes in handy.”
Dawn
Dawn Montalvo has been caring for children for most of her life. You helped find her a place to stay when she needed someone to return the generosity cand care she puts out into the world.
Montalvo, 59, jokes that she’s the “baby of the group” at Pat Crowley House, our intergenerational community in Edgewater. She turns serious, though, when she describes how important it was for her to find H.O.M.E. in February 2019.
“Without H.O.M.E., I probably would have ended up homeless,” Montalvo says, “because my children wanted to be on their own and I didn’t want to burden them.”
Montalvo grew up on the West Side, attending the former Notre Dame High School for Girls, and has lived all over the city: Lincoln Park, Logan Square, Lakeview, Jefferson Park, and Rogers Park to name a few.
She began her career in customer service. But she found her calling when she and her now ex-husband participated in a program to provide intensive services to at-risk young women in foster care.
She spent more than 17 years working in schools, including 10 as a special education aide at Von Steuben High School, a Chicago Public School on the Northwest Side.
She loved helping to teach children on the autism spectrum, working with them to help them take tests, and supporting the teachers. But then she got sick.
“I started having some mental illness issues and it was affecting my job,” Montalvo recalls. “At that point, I... was in denial about being sick.” She left her position but couldn’t find other work. Eventually, she was hospitalized and received a mental illness diagnosis.
Over a period of several years, Montalvo has come to manage her illness. Just prior to moving to Pat Crowley House, she lived with her son Richard in Washington Park, while he studied for a master’s degree at the University of Chicago to start his own career teaching in CPS. After Richard completed his program, she started calling around in search of subsidized housing for herself.
H.O.M.E. was the first place to call her back - in fact, she never did hear back from many other places she contacted, she says. For Montalvo, Pat Crowley House has ensured she will not have to rely on her sons to care for her.
Her parents are deceased and a sister lives out of town. While Richard or one of her two other sons would have helped her out, she says, “I wouldn’t have wanted to ask. I probably would have cut off contact with them until I could find someplace [of my own].”
In addition to remaining independent, Montalvo says she appreciates that Pat Crowley House is “homey. It’s a really nice mix of having what you need to take care of yourself and yet having a nice atmosphere with people who care about you and still having people to interact with.”
DJ Larry
Your support provided movers to someone who’s an expert on helping people move, himself.
“I was one of those guys that liked to be dancing and clowning around in the family,” jokes Lawrence Elliot Sullivan – Larry to his friends. By the time he got to Hyde Park High School in the mid-1960s, that had become a serious hobby.
“I was spinning records out here at a young age,” he says. “Some guy had rented a place out on South Stony Island Avenue and called it Teen-ville, where kids could go to dance. I volunteered to play the records and he said, ‘Go ahead and bring your music.’” Inspired by the TV show American Bandstand, Sullivan played music his friends and classmates liked to dance to.
He followed his older brother Herman into the ROTC program at Hyde Park High. He remembers meeting his brother’s friend and fellow Hyde Park grad Jesse Brown, the future Veterans Affairs cabinet member for whom the West Side VA medical center is named. Like Brown and his brother, Sullivan enlisted, serving active duty in the Army in Vietnam and Germany for eight years.
Back in Chicago after his service, it was a natural to start up DJ-ing again. It became a job and then a career, as he joined a firm that entertained at parties across the city and even out of state on occasion. For a professional name, he chose his initials, LES (pronounced Les). As he became better known, Sullivan recalls, someone added the “Sir” on the front – making him DJ SirLES.
It was hard on his family life, Sullivan recalls: “I was in the clubs too much, but it was paying the rent.” At the same time, he fondly recalls meeting well-known performers like the Chi-Lites and others.
He still had a regular set at a club on 83rd Street two years ago, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Sullivan had to carry a portable oxygen tank to go out and eventually just getting downstairs was hard.
A social worker at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, where Sullivan receives care, helped him find a new apartment in an elevator building and a volunteer at the VA told him about H.O.M.E. “I’m feeling like, I got this danged disease, nothing’s going right for me,” Sullivan says. “I was worried I was doomed... but I’m even feeling better over here than I’ve felt in a good while.”
SirLES is on the move again – with your support, and some help from H.O.M.E.