Volunteers help residents of Missouri Veterans Home attend on-site church services

Cody Daub, 11, has become a mainstay among the Sunday volunteers at the Missouri Veterans Home in Cape Girardeau. He helps residents get to chapel services.

For two years, Daub has accompanied his grandfather and other members of the Scott City VFW Post 6407 to the veterans home, helping rearrange furniture, checking microphone batteries, pushing residents' wheelchairs to the home's lobby and joining them for post-service lunch.

"They told me I'm the mascot," said Daub, smiling with pride. He makes the trip each week with his grandfather, Norman Brant, a Scott City councilman and Scott County's highway administrator, and other members of Post 6407; on Sunday, Daub was joined by his great-aunt and post auxiliary member Mary Sue Wright and Post 6407 member Gary Pennington, a Vietnam veteran, all of Scott City.

"If it wasn't for these men and women veterans, we wouldn't be able to walk around the way we do," Wright said.

Activity aide Paula Wyckoff has worked at the veterans home for 13 years. She cheerfully slaps a counter on the way to greet a patient, asking him if he would like to attend services. He would, so she pushes his wheelchair to a nearby hallway, handing the chair off to Daub, who carefully rolls his charge to the lobby, near the tall glass double doors of the tiny chapel.

"Because of all these volunteers, our church services are great," she said. "If we didn't have volunteers here, we couldn't do all that we do as far as social activities."

People like Cathy Shelp — strangers to Daub — are grateful.

"It's wonderful," said Shelp, who cared for her father for four years at her St. Louis home before finding a room for him at the Cape Girardeau veterans home three weeks ago. Because her father has dementia and is a flight risk, he stays in a secure part of the home, she said. The chapel services offer a change of venue, if only to the lobby.

"At least they have someplace to go," Shelp said.

"Some of 'em can't barely get around," said Daub, a fourth-grader who thinks about becoming a nurse when he gets older.

Just as the last few residents are wheeled into place, Paul Bell arrives to preach. He whisked into the door, put his top coat on a hanger and signed into the volunteer book.

Bell, 73, a retired sign painter, has logged 1,100 hours during more than 15 years of regular preaching to the veterans. He replaced a member of the First Assembly of God's congregation who had previously conducted the services.

Bell has no divinity degree, but said, "We're all ministers, when you get down to it."

He leads hymns as volunteer Marie Brantley plays piano. He preaches about having a good attitude, even in bad times and rails a bit at what he called today's 'if it feels good, do it' lifestyle.

Marlen Oehl said the weekly services are nice, despite some distractions.

"It's our way of life," said Lorene Oehl, of Oak Ridge, who arrived early to attend with her husband, pushing his wheelchair herself. "We've been going to church all our lives."

As the worshippers sang and listened to Bell preach, the double entry doors periodically slid open, sending a crisp breeze through the room. Shift workers headed to their stations and visitors looked for family members among the chapel's congregation. Wyckoff wrapped blankets around the people who felt chilled.

Bell contends calmly with various interruptions from his audience — some cough loudly as a result of medical conditions; others will simply speak up in response to something he has said or because dementia has eroded group social skills. Aides sometimes need to walk among the patients adjusting a medical device or simply offering a comforting presence.

"I've learned to observe what's going on but not let it bother me," Bell said, and a case in point was Sunday's visit by the Cape Girardeau Fire Department. Firefighters had arrived to check on a minor chemical interaction in a far wing of the building. They did not disrupt the service. A nurse said it was providential that many of those at the chapel service would normally have been in their rooms in the affected wing of the home.

Bell laughed and recalled an old family friend, former Scott County sheriff and state senator John Dennis, disrupting services by ordering the preacher to round up those in the room for an arrest.

"I told him, 'There's just enough room here for one of us to talk,'" Bell said. "I told him I'd take care of it and after a few weeks, he stopped."

After the services, Daub helped push the lobby's couch back in place and return the folding chairs to storage. He'll be back to visit his friends next Sunday.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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