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Author Brings Porter Health And Rehab Center National Recognition

photo by Mike Cameron Author Sue Halpern.

Friday May 24, 2013

By Mike Cameron

Making Helen Porter Health and Rehabilitation Center more “home-like”, for its residents, has been and continues to be the primary goal of Executive Director, Neil Gruber and his staff. Always the innovator, Gruber is constantly searching for creative, outside-the-box strategies that will help make the people who live at Porter more comfortable and empowered to lead more fulfilling lives every day.
Critically acclaimed author Sue Halpern could sense this special bond between Helen Porter's management, staff and the residents they serve. She felt so strongly about it that she approached officials at the nursing facility and inquired if she and her dog Pransky could be allowed to interact with the residents on a regular basis. The two of them would become a certified therapy team and Halpern has chronicled many of her experiences at Porter, in her latest book; A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home...Lessons in The Good Life From an Unlikely Teacher.

In comments prior to her recent official book launch and signing on Thursday evening May 16th 2013 organized by The Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, Halpern told a large gathering at the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Middlebury that, Porter Health and Rehabilitation Center was an “Amazing institution in our midsts with amazingly welcoming people who work and live there.” She gave several examples of residents whom she and Pransky have interacted with over the years, giving readers just a taste of what was to come when they read her new book.

Halpern then went on to read from the text of her new book and at times drew enthusiastic applause and laughter as well as serious introspection form those in attendance. It was evident that she was enjoying the moment in a friendly, welcoming, hometown setting. Again reflecting on her Porter experience, Halpern was asked during a question and answer segment after her presentation what she found the most surprising about her time at Porter. “How much fun it is,” she explained with a warm welcoming smile and then added, “experiencing the wisdom that is embedded in places like Porter.”
A national television audience will welcome Halpern when she appears on the NBC Today Show in June to discuss her book and bring accompanying notoriety to Middlebury Vermont and in particular to Helen Porter Health and Rehabilitation Center.

The Voice asked Helen Porter Executive Director, Neil Gruber about the national recognition that will come from the book and the network level television coverage. “ I think it captures how Helen Porter has changed over the last few years and our culture change, which means that we are becoming more and more home-like. People have dogs and cats in their homes, and at Helen Porter we have Pransky and any number of other therapy dogs and other well behaved dogs that come and visit residents and help to make the environment more and more home-like as we can make it. If they can't be home and need our care we want it to be the next best thing to home.”

About the national recognition, Gruber explained further, “I think it means to our community that Helen Porter has been a leader in moving ahead with culture change and people can be reasured that the skilled nursing facility that Helen Porter is has great long term care, memory care, and rehabilitation care with innovative programs like dog therapy and many other programs. It is a vibrant place in that we have events like Halloween, pumpkin-patches, we take residents on cruises on Lake Champlain to perhaps fulfill a life-long dream before they are no longer a part of this world. We try to be creative to raise funds like kayaking the length of Lake Champlain so that some of these things can be realized. It's important for people to realize what is available to them right here in their own back-yard. We
continue to reach out because we are the community's nursing home here at Helen Porter,” Gruber explained.
Sue Halpern's latest book, she has published five, isn't just about her dog Pransky although the lovable canine is prominently featured on the cover. Closer inspection reveals an important clue in the second part of the title: “Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher.”

Once the cover is turned, those lessons begin and they are profound, as Halpern and her dog go about their weekly work at Porter Health and Rehabilitation as a certified therapy team, interacting with residents and sharing a special bond.

Pransky loves people, they love her and the author who has written five previous books demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she loves both. Her continuing search for what makes up the human condition, and leads to lessons in the “Good Life,” results in rewarding encounters with Porter residents on every visit.
Halpern is engaging, articulate and charismatic, she has earned a Doctorate, is a Rhodes Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow. During her career she has taught Ethics to second year medical students and is currently a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. She lives with her husband, the writer, environmentalist and environmental activist, Bill McKibben and Pransky in Ripton Vermont.

The collaboration between author Sue Halpern and Helen Porter Health and Rehabilitation Center in Middlebury Vermont has evolved into a special bond as the culture-change of nursing home care continues under the inovative leadership of Neil Gruber and others like him across the country. Sue Halpern's new book, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home...Lessons in The Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher, allows the reader to witness some of this culture-change, first hand. The lessons learned will last a lifetime.

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