Grants carry on nursing home’s work
No longer able to see its way to long-term financial stability, the board of the Isabelle Ridgway Care Center made the difficult decision a few years ago to sell the historic operation to a for-profit company.
But Ridgway’s legacy and her mission — to bring comfort and care to elderly, impoverished AfricanAmericans — are set to thrive anew.
“I’m excited that we will be able to continue her interests,” said Patricia Mullins, former president and CEO of the care center. “We’ll do it without the bricks and mortar.”
The founding board of the Isabelle Ridgway Foundation, established following the sale, announced on Thursday the creation of a new endowment to honor Ridgway’s work.
With an initial gift of $ 3.1 million, it already ranks among the largest charitable funds created for African-Americans in Ohio, according to the Columbus Foundation, which provides administrative services for the Ridgway foundation. And the Ridgway Foundation likely is the only one in the state focused on research and other efforts that aim to improve the lives of elderly blacks.
“We were very deliberate in that regard,” said board chairman Mark Hatcher. “We did not see any philanthropic organization specifically poised to address the needs of the African-American elderly population here in central Ohio.”
Ridgway began her work in Columbus in 1912, drawing from a pool of love, faith and determination as she and her friend, Dollie Whittaker, founded the Old Folks Home of Franklin County on North 21st Street.
“There were not many options,” Mullins said, but Ridgway persisted on behalf of the poor and elderly and marginalized. She relied on churches, farm markets and neighbors, many of whom kept “penny boxes” in their homes to collect coins for Ridgway.
“There was no Medicaid, no Medicare and not much in the way of charity to fund nursing homes,” Mullins said. “I’ve often thought, ‘How did she do this?’ But it grew.”
The name and location would change a few times until the 100-bed Isabelle Ridgway Care Center was built at the corner of Hawthorne and Taylor avenues on the Near East Side. A $ 2.8 million federal grant and smaller contributions from Battelle and the Columbus Foundation helped fund the new center, whose completion was featured in the Dispatch in 1976.
It soon became a cornerstone of the community.
Mullins, who had worked in other nursing homes and senior communities, spent 20 years at Ridgway. The history always seemed palpable.
Isabelle Ridgway’s legacy and her mission — to bring comfort and care to elderly, impoverished African-Americans — are set to thrive anew.
“After I interviewed for the job, I started to learn about her,” Mullins said. “I thought, ‘ These are going to be some big shoes to fill. And if her feet are smaller than mine, it’s going to hurt.”’
Ridgway died in 1955 at the age of 97.
The nonprofit center had good support and dedicated staff, Mullins said, but struggled under changing funding and regulation structures.
Almost all of its residents and patients were low-income, Hatcher said. “To be a free- standing facility, you need a mix of government and private pay,” he said. “It was not a sustainable patient mix.”
The foundation, he and Mullins hope, can last indefinitely.
The first grants were given out Thursday to the King Arts Complex, the African-American Alzheimer’s and Wellness Association, Central State University and the Mount Carmel Foundation. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University also will receive funding to provide benchmarking research.
“We plan to use that research to inform our grant process,” Mullins said.
Ridgway, she said, “believed in a world where we treat the aging as our elders. She taught us that dignity is ageless.”