| Volunteer
Programs
Additional Keystone Hospice
Volunteer Profiles:
Fundraising
Auctioneer
Connie Mazzochetti
Dr.
Frank Bernt, Director of the Faith-Justice Learning Institute, St. Joseph’s
University
Conductor
Michael Johns and the Here’s to Life Orchestra
Reverend
Joseph Craddock & Sister Mary Early
Bedside
Harpist Marilyn Lemke
"Multi-Purpose"
Volunteer Sue McElroy
Keystone's
First Couple: Art & Shirley Rowe
Holiday
Food Drive at Lansdale Catholic High School
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Nonagenarian
(and Former House Resident!) Mary Rose Nuse
Click
here to read a Chestnut Hill Local feature about Mary Rose...
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2007 profile written by
Keystone Hospice Volunteer Marilyn Steeg
One of the 95 volunteers at Keystone House is a dynamic woman with Paul
Newman-blue eyes, silver hair, a flawless complexion and engaging smile.
Mary Rose Nuse just celebrated her 90th birthday but is not a typical
nonagenarian.
Co-volunteers and Keystone staff helped her celebrate in a room that she
knew very well -- in 1939. At that time Keystone House was an apartment
building where she and her husband, Jack Eagleson, lived as newlyweds.
What was once her bedroom is now the hospice's living room. "Our
fireplace burned cannel coal but it still was very cold in the house.
I developed pleurisy, and so we moved to Oreland, where we raised our
children."
Now the house consists of offices, a beautifully decorated living room
and adjacent dining room for the residents, and 19 patient beds. Volunteering
one day a week for the past five years has given Mary Rose a better understanding
of the "mysteries of death." "I hope to be able to continue
to live in my Flourtown home, but if I ever need hospice care I will come
here to Keystone. This is a loving home — about as far from a hospital
as you can get."
"Most patients are positive and peaceful. I've never heard moaning
or crying; perhaps a response to the cheerful atmosphere that the staff
creates. There are AIDS patients, many of them young, but also people
of all ages with cancer, and then the older people. No one is turned away
from loving care at Keystone."
Mary Rose likes to massage patients' feet because it's a way to introduce
herself. Conversation follows, usually about their families. To provide
families with a lasting memory of their loved ones, Mary Rose records
on tape, patients' reminiscences. She has heard some fascinating stories,
both happy and tragic, and cherishes this aspect of her patient support
work.
While rearing their seven children, Mary Rose worked as junior school
secretary at Ravenhill Academy in exchange for tuition for three of her
daughters. Her husband was an engineer with Acme Markets. Their children
now live in California, New York and the Philadelphia area; she also has
18 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Mary Rose spent many years
counseling battered and abused women in Maine, where she married her second
husband who had retired from teaching art at the Penn Charter School.
She was widowed twice.
Mary Rose has just finished a 300-page book about her life, called "Chapters"
- just for the family. The five chapters are entitled Childhood, Adolescence,
Marriage One, Marriage Two, and Old Age.
In it she discusses her life, recalling the flu epidemic, the Depression,
World Wars I and II, and travels in Alaska, Europe and the British Isles,
Japan, and Russia — "a small piece of history," she said.
The area around Keystone hasn't changed much since their year of residence
in 1939, although there were trolleys, instead of buses, and they walked
to the Acme Market where Borders is now.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Mary Rose is
also featured in Keystone House's 10th anniversary publication “The
Living Legacy of A Home With Heart” by local author Paula Riley
that traces the history of Keystone House over the past two centuries.
Click here to request your
copy or view on-line by clicking on cover. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required.)
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