GIVING BACK I COUPLES
Schlegels have successful businesses and numerous accolades, but real satisfaction comes from making seniors happy
Ron and Barb Schlegel enjoy making seniors happy.
RON SCHLEGEL enjoys seeing people smile when he strolls through the door of one of his long-term care and retirement communities that he designed to feel like a village. Those smiles are better than gold. If all he’d wanted was a “nice living” after his retirement as a University of Waterloo professor, owning one retirement community would have done the job, he says.
So why, he muses, does he have 12 long-term care and retirement villages across southern Ontario, with another under construction in Windsor?
Why is he opening a 14th on UW’s north campus in 2015, where teaching and research will also be a focus?
“It’s because my return on my investment is the joy I see on the faces of the residents,” says the soft-spoken man, recently invested as an officer of the Order of Canada.
“I love it when I go in there and I see them having a good time; where we can make it so they are living a life of purpose and not just vegetating until they take their last breath.
“They’re living a life of zest and purpose.”
Ron’s wife, Barb, also feels energized by smiles on residents’ faces. She especially enjoys inspiring those smiles.
Twice a week, Barb visits at the >>
>> Village of Winston Park in Kitchener where she has lunch with her brother and cousin who live there. Along the way, she stops and chats with the other residents.
“She speaks to everybody,” says Melanie James, director of recreation and volunteer services at the Village of Winston Park. “She feels like she’s part of Winston Park to me.”
The couple like to attend events at Winston Park. They sit with residents at barbecues and buy the handmade dollhouse at the Christmas bazaar. They celebrated a wedding anniversary there with family, friends and residents.
“They wanted it at Winston Park and they wanted residents to be invited,” James says. “They’re just down-to-earth, humble people.”
On this day, interviewed at their gracious home on a rolling country road on the southerly edges of Kitchener, Barb shows a name tag that a Winston Park employee made for her. “Thanks Barb for the Smiles,” the tag says. “I was so proud of it,” Barb says. “I wore it in Sobeys.”
That celebration of other people’s happiness is characteristic of a couple known for improving the quality of life for senior citizens, and for doing it with imagination, hard work and humility.
They own a myriad of businesses that speak to their roots and their passion for both senior citizens and farming.
The development of Schlegel Villages’ 14th retirement community on the University of Waterloo’s north campus will create a 192-bed long-term care home as well as provide assisted living, independent living and a satellite location for the Centre for Family Medicine.
As part of the village, researchers and students from UW, Conestoga College and the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging will work with residents to help improve their health and quality of life.
Ron will gently correct you if you call his retirement homes “facilities.”
The innovative design — his own — gives a village feeling. The indoor main street and town square with awnings, “store fronts,” street signs, windows and skylights are praised for encouraging people to mix, and to feel that they belong to a community.
“I don’t like calling them facilities,” he says. “They’re called villages not because it’s in vogue, but because they really do function as a village.”
The family also owns Homewood Health Centre, a 312-bed hospital specializing in addictions and mental health treatment in Guelph; Homewood Human Solutions, a national employee assistance company; and Schlegel Urban Developments, which counts Williamsburg Town Centre and Eby Estates among its residential and commercial projects.
Ron founded two research institutes, donating tens of millions of dollars to the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging and the Homewood Research Institute, affiliated with the Homewood Health Centre.
A recent acquisition doubled the family’s commercial turkey farm enterprise, making it responsible for more than 10 per cent of turkey production in Canada, Ron says.
Altogether, the family businesses employ 4,000 people whom they call “team members.”
Few people know the extent of the family’s business interests. “You don’t know any of this when you first meet him,” says longtime friend and fellow researcher Mike Sharratt.
“He’s self-effacing and he’s always chuckling. He’s got a good sense of humour and sees the positive side of everything,” says Sharratt, president of the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging which has done more than 50 research projects since the institute began in 2006.
With all their businesses, research interests and generosity to organizations such as House of Friendship, Habitat for Humanity and Mennonite Economic Development Associates, people are sometimes curious to know more.
“I don’t know what it’s worth,” Ron says. “I know banks need to know because we borrow.
“I need capital, not to flaunt it, but it’s a resource.” Nor does Ron count the honours that he has received. In addition to being invested into the Order of Canada, he has been presented with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal, Waterloo Region Record’s Barnraiser Award and is in the Waterloo Region Hall of Fame.
In fact, Ron used to ask people not to give him accolades. “It made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to that kind of thing.” Sharratt remembers how it took “vigorous” persuasion to convince Ron to let the Schlegel name stand as a way to brand the “continuum of care” model in the villages and their innovative programs. “He had been invisible by choice,” Sharratt says. About 10 years ago, Ron’s good friend, former UW president David Johnston, now the Governor General, asked Ron to reconsider and allow his contributions to be more publicized.
“He said it will inspire other people to give and innovate,” Ron says.
Johnston says the couple inspires “all Canadians.” “How lucky we are to have this extraordinary family in our community,” the Governor General says in an email to Grand magazine.
“They simply represent the very best of Canadian values: hard working, entrepreneurial, always giving back and building the communities around them.”
Johnston says Schlegel’s research institute will mark Canada as a world leader in applied research in its field and “will improve the lives of so many around the globe.”
On this day, Ron is quietly proud of the photograph he’d just received that shows him and Johnston together at the May ceremony in Ottawa where he was recognized as an officer of the Order of Canada. The Schlegels were Johnston’s house guests at Rideau Hall.
Success hasn’t changed the couple. “We are who we are,” says Ron, 70.
The couple live in the same house they built on a hill about 30 years ago after Barb, now 71, had a serious stroke when she was only 39 years old. A spacious kitchen, dining room, living room and bedrooms are on the first floor for easy accessibility.
Floor-to-ceiling windows give a panoramic view of the hilly farmland surrounding them. Once in the cattle business, Ron used to keep six to eight cows on the fenced property below their windows “just so I could look at them.”
An indoor swimming pool, built on the bottom level for Barb’s exercises, is now popular with their grandchildren. Photographs of Naomi, 10; Nicholas, 4; and newborn Jackson cover the kitchen refrigerators.
Barb’s optimism, friendliness and sense of humour stand out more than any limitation. As a result of the stroke, she is unable to drive and someone else makes meals.
But she refuses to let anyone else do the laundry. And difficulty with reading hasn’t stopped her from being curious and informed about what’s happening in the community. A “news fanatic,” she’s glued to the TV news each evening. “I want to know what’s going on,” she says. Her experience fighting back from the devastating stroke – she spent months in >>
>> hospital and rehabilitation – has helped make her an empathetic and understanding ally for senior citizens living with challenges.
“She can relate to the residents more than the average person,” Ron says.
“When we’re building a new home ... her observations are incorporated into the design.”
These days, Ron is getting back up to speed himself after suffering from acute pneumonia in February 2012 in Florida. He was airlifted to St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener. Until the medical cause was found, he’d been sick with pneumonia a dozen times over a three-year period. “I was having some pretty close shaves.”
Still, retirement is not in the cards. “I haven’t started working yet, so how can I retire?” Ron jokes. “I just love developing new things and innovation. . . . I have a hard time slowing down because I enjoy everything.”
The couple’s three sons are instrumental in the day-to-day business of RBJ Schlegel Holdings.
They are well familiar with one of their father’s favourite sayings: “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Ron also likes the phrase: “All callings are great if greatly pursued.”
James, 45, president and chief executive officer, and Rob, 48, chief financial officer, are chartered accountants. Brad, James’ twin, is vice-president of design and construction. Brad is a former professional hockey player who played with the Washington Capitals and Calgary Flames and was part of the Canadian men’s hockey teams that won two winter Olympics silver medals in the early 1990s.
James talks about his hard-working, visionary father and his inspiring mother when he welcomes new employees at an orientation session. He jokes about his father’s boundless energy and he praises his mother’s determination. “She has had a difficult life in many ways,” he says.
“But she has rallied from that and she’s such a wonderful example of resilience and perseverance and resourcefulness.”
Barb jokes that while Ron was a fast runner when he was a teenager at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate, she was faster. “I caught him,” she says. Ron, who grew up in Ailsa Craig, near London, had been sent by his father, Wilfred, community leader, farmer and Mennonite pastor, to the private Mennonite school in Kitchener for Grades 11 and 12.
“I was sent there to keep me on the straight and narrow,” he says, laughing.
His father, Wilfred, born in Tavistock, had only a Grade 8 education, but was well-read and entrepreneurial, and his advice was often sought by community members. Wilfred had led a group of families to Ailsa Craig after he became disenchanted with their conservative Amish-Mennonite church.
Barb Becker, who grew up on a farm near Kitchener, shared Ron’s church background and participation in sports. Her father, Max Becker, had a lot in common with Ron’s dad.
Barb remembers Ron’s first day as a Rockway student. He wore his gym shorts to go running. It was the last time he did.
“I was hauled into the principal’s office because you weren’t allowed to wear shorts in gym,” he says. In 1961, the school was conservative and strict about such things. Boys wore pants, even in gym. Girls wore dresses; no lipstick. From the beginning, Barb knew that her smart, athletic boyfriend was an independent kind of guy. “My dad was pushing me to become a medical doctor and I was pretty independent,” Ron says. “I didn’t do it because my dad was pushing me in that direction.” Instead, he studied for an honours degree in physical education and math at London’s University of Western Ontario, now called Western University.
Later, he earned a master of science degree from the University of Illinois in exercise physiology, and then a PhD in social psychology and preventive medicine from Ohio State University at Columbus.
The couple dated after high school and through Ron’s undergraduate years, marrying on June 27, 1964. Barb worked as a Royal Bank teller until their first son, Rob, was born. At that time, Ron was still in school. He’d bought a farm, and added a second cash crop and cattle farm soon afterward.
He also did custom farm work for other people. “I did hay and straw baling for people around London.”
He applied for a job as a high school teacher in London while he was still completing his master’s thesis. The principal was reluctant to hire him. Teachers with master’s degrees don’t tend to stay, he told Ron.
“I felt confident in assuring the principal I’d stay teaching because I’d just bought two farms,” Ron says.
As soon as the school day was over, Ron was working on the land. Eventually, he was looking after the farms of five clients. Barb was busy at home. “She did all the work,” he says, smiling at her.
“At that stage, I was intent on being a high school teacher and farming.”
But a dean of the faculty of human kinetics at the University of Windsor had other plans.
Just as Ron was leaving for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to defend his master’s thesis, this dean offered a teaching position. Ron declined, but agreed to drop in and take a look around.
Later, he told his London principal of the job offer. The sympathetic principal advised him to take it. So the family, now with three young sons, moved to Windsor. Identical twins Brad and James had been born in 1968 – on the same day, July 22, as their older brother, Rob.
Barb was busy with three “rambunctious” little boys at their new home in Windsor.
Ron helped develop the university’s new health sciences curriculum, and was the swim coach, even though “I know nothing about swimming,” he says. “We didn’t win >>
>> many meets.”
Meanwhile, he persuaded his father to sell him his shares in a nursing home near London.
It was familiar territory. His father had bought his first small nursing home with about 30 residents when Ron was in Grade 5. The family lived in an apartment added on to the nursing home.
Every morning and night, Ron would carry meal trays to residents. He hustled home after school to do the job, then returned to school for sports. Sometimes he did his homework in the residents’ rooms so he could hear their jokes and stories. It was like living with 30 grandparents, he says.
“I had a ton of fun. It grew on me and it got into my blood. . . . Farming was in my blood and I enjoyed nursing homes because seniors were in my blood.”
In Windsor, Ron kept to a tight schedule. He worked at the university until 5 p.m., came home for supper, and took the three boys to the playground for an hour.
“Then I brought them in and washed them up,” Ron says.
“You washed them up, pardon?” says Barb, laughing. “He loved the boys and the boys loved him.”
After that, Ron would work until 11 p.m. Sometimes he held 11 p.m. board meetings by telephone conference.
Barb attended board meetings, and made curtains for the nursing home. “You did what you had to do,” she says.
For a couple of summers, as soon as exams were marked, the family rented a U-Haul and headed to Ohio State University where Ron was completing his PhD. Ron finished the degree during a sabbatical year.
But opportunity came knocking again. “I got a call from the University of Waterloo after I’d promised the dean at Windsor I’d come back,” Ron says. “That was my plan.”
The universities in Waterloo and Windsor had an intense rivalry, he says. “To lose someone to Waterloo was a sin for sure.”
But friends and colleagues urged Ron to take the UW job, and he told the unhappy Windsor dean of his decision.
The family headed to Waterloo where Ron would become an applied health sciences professor and make major contributions to the development of programs in health studies and gerontology. His keen interest in research led to the publication of more than 50 articles in scientific journals and books.
At the same time, “I started to expand the nursing home side,” he says.
After 19 years teaching, researching and developing programs, Ron resigned as a UW professor in 1991 to devote more time to his businesses and research.
“I worked with professors and we started enhancements, like the village concept,” he says. Among the advances, the awardwinning “functional abilities program” features full-time kinesiologists at each home assessing residents and designing individual programs to help them regain motor control and independence.
“We had people who were bedridden and in wheelchairs start walking again,” he says.
Research from scientists in the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging is helping seniors physically, mentally and socially.
When James was general manager at Winston Park many years ago, he’d sometimes hear a new resident’s relatives say their elderly mother was a “private person” who would rather keep to herself than participate in activities.
Then they’d return for a visit and say: “I can’t believe that’s my mother. She has come out of her shell and is attending events. . . . She’s having the time of her life,” James says.
Ron loves to hear stories of how senior citizens’ lives have been changed.
“It gives me pleasure to see that I had a role in facilitating that as opposed to the stereotype in some of the older nursing homes which still warehouse people away.”
If Ron had a wish, it would be “that I had another 20 hours in a day to do more of all these things I enjoy so much.”
That includes spending time with grandchildren. Just recently, at Barb’s urging, Ron bought a beach condominium in Florida with a view, as always, to the future.
“I wanted to buy this condo to help expand the interaction with the grandchildren as they grow up,” he says.