By Lorraine Bennett
Staff Writer
Bill Curns has led an amazing and active life, first in the military, then in hospital maintenance, master electrician and as an all around jack-of-all trades for Hinton Rural Life Center in Hayesville. He recounts the myriad phases of his life with the flair of a master storyteller and a merry twinkle in his eyes.
These days, however, Curns is battling myriad health issues. He has survived five heart attacks. He has three implanted stents, he’s on a constant oxygen supply, takes thyroid and other medication, has lost one kidney and part of another, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and suffers from other maladies linked to exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants used during his stint with a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit during the Korean war.
Recently he learned the home health aide who helped him by buying groceries, going to the laundromat, doing light housework and keeping him company is out of commission for the present and unforeseeable future.
Enter Jane Hart, founder of Hayesville First United Methodist Church’s Hearts in Ministry program and Charlie Perry, one of Hart’s newly-minted volunteers.
During a warm and relaxed afternoon on Curns’ porch, which is attached to the house trailer where he lives, Curns sat with Hart and Perry, recounting parts of his previously busy life. Perry tells Curns he lives just down the road and passes by Curns’ address when he travels into Hayesville. Perry makes plans to check in, stop by or do whatever Curns needs while the issue of the absent home health aide is resolved.
That is the essence of Hart’s new program, bringing together a need and finding a way to fulfill it.
Hearts in Ministry — Hart calls it the HIM program — does not work to supplant social services or other assistance the home-bound and frail elderly already receive. Many home-bound Hayesville residents have needs local social service programs simply cannot meet.
According to Hart’s program brochure, 30 percent of Clay County’s 11,000 residents are 65 years or older and half of its veterans — estimated at about a thousand — are 65 or older and many live with poverty and/or disabilities.
“Hearts in Ministry is a program of HFUMC that works in cooperation with other providers and agencies who seek to provide support to Clay County, N.C. frail seniors age 60+ who live independently, suffer from chronic or terminal illness and are in fear of being forgotten,” her brochure reads.
Hart began her program in August and already she has a stable of 20 volunteers, 16 already screened and trained to volunteers who can help those needing light housekeeping, yard work, grocery shopping, minor home repairs, transportation, constructing wheel chair ramps and conversation.
To join the program volunteers must be 18 or older, complete an application and background screening and attend orientation before being matched with a person who needs help. Volunteers are accompanied on the first visit and then receive ongoing training and support as they need it.
The services are offered free of charge and Hart knows the program can work because she has done it before.
While living in Jacksonville, Fla., she started Hart Felt Ministries Inc., recruited more than 700 volunteers and served more than 1,200 frail Jacksonville seniors every week. She moved to Hayesville in 2016, but Hart Felt Ministries is still going in Jacksonville, she said.
The new ministry in Hayesville already is serving more than a dozen individuals and Hart expects that number to grow.
Curns, who is receiving help through various social agencies and the Veterans Administration’s pulmonary, cardiology and dermatology services, recalls the days when he worked at Hinton Center helping to erect buildings, doing home repairs, managing guest services, performing electrical work and completing other tasks.
While he was employed at Hinton he also taught some electrical engineering classes at Tri-County Community College, he said.
That all changed about six years ago on Memorial Day weekend when he had his first heart attack. He remembers getting into his pickup truck at Hinton Center. The next thing he fully recalls is being picked up by helicopter near the cemetery across the street from Mariolino’s restaurant.
Now he is dependent on other people for much of what he needs.
“I’m getting physical therapy a couple of times a week and I had an aide coming a couple of days a week to help me,” said Curns, who spends his days attached to an oxygen tube. Now the aide will be missing in action with a wrist injury.
“I’d like to check on you now and then,” Perry told him. “Often I’m passing right by when I’m going to Ingles.”
Perry’s offer exemplifies how Hart’s Hearts in Ministry program can step into the gap.
Recalling the work he once did for other people while at Hinton Center, Curns summed up his feelings toward the program.
“The circle of life is coming back around,” he said.