In addition to high-quality health care, the Elder Service Plan provides an exceptional quality-of-living experience. We know that hearing about our program from our members is the best endorsement we can share. Here, you’ll meet a few of the voices from our community.
Dolores Christoforo
Seated with friends in the sunny main room of the Elder Service Plan’s PACE Center in Winthrop, Dolores smiles broadly. “I know everybody,” she says. “Coming here is like going to lunch with the girls.” Since joining the Elder Service Plan, staff and other participants have become “like family.”
Twice a week, the Elder Service Plan van picks her up to bring her to the center to visit with friends, join in activities, enjoy meals, and see her doctor or physical therapist. “What more could you ask for?” says Dolores. “Every morning the care team meets to review how each one of us is doing,” Dolores observes. “They know us very well, and are always loving and kind. I used to worry about everything. Then I came here. Now I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Viola Ferullo
Viola moved to the Elder Service Plan’s Lewis Mall PACE Center after her husband passed away. “We were living in Winthrop with my daughter,” she says. “She stayed with me night and day. Now that I live here, my daughter has a chance to live a life of her own.” Viola’s apartment is wide, with windows overlooking East Boston’s Maverick Square. A comfortable bed, full kitchenette with a refrigerator boasting photos of grandchildren, and a large table leave plenty of space for her to move about in her chair.
Viola appreciates help in the morning to get dressed, and assistance within minutes whenever she needs to transfer out of or into her chair. That help enables her to have the independence she relishes to prepare her own meals, plan her activities, and visit with friends and family. “I’ve learned to do a lot on my own here,” she says. “It feels good.”
The Elder Service Plan’s physical therapists receive high marks from Viola. “I used to be afraid of falling when I needed to move out of my chair,” she recalls. Weekly sessions have strengthened her arms and back, and taught her how to push out of her chair safely to transfer to a car seat or for bathing. “I’m not afraid of anything now,” she says.
Frank Tripoli
If you lived in East Boston in the years before 1980, you probably already know Frank. “Everyone shopped at Frank’s National in Maverick Square,” he says. “It was the momma and poppa corner grocery store for 20 years.”
After a setback in his health, Frank and his daughters searched for an assisted living facility and found instead the Elder Services Plan’s supportive housing at the Lewis Mall PACE Center. “It’s been everything I expected, and more,” he says. “I’m very comfortable here.” His sunny corner apartment has a large kitchen area, a double bed, and a living area with a foldout couch for his family if they stay over. “I make my own breakfast every morning and go down to have dinner with the other residents a couple of times a week.”
While Frank enjoys his independence, he appreciates the Elder Service Plan’s convenience and support. “With the Elder Service Plan, it’s easy here for me to get the help I need. I have a doctor, an oncologist, a foot doctor, a dentist, and an eye doctor, all right here. If I need to go to Boston Medical Center, I just call my social worker, and she makes all my appointments for me. I don’t worry about transportation. I get all these things just for being a member.” Family man, businessman, and faithful Red Sox fan, Frank has had a wonderful life. “No,” he says, “it is a wonderful life.”
MARIE STAFFIERI
Marie Staffieri’s home at the Lewis Mall PACE Center is warm and welcoming. A talented crafter, her walls and counters are covered with delightful seasonal decorations. On this fall day, yarn-and-fabric scarecrows stand guard on her door and dresser. “I’m always making something in the Day Room,” she says. “The other residents’ grandchildren like to come by to see what I’ve put up on my door.”
Before Marie moved into Lewis Mall five years ago, “I wasn’t exactly Miss Congeniality,” she says. With multiple health conditions and a recent stroke, she needed help for everything. “I was a prisoner in my own home.” Marie had never imagined becoming housebound or dependent on others. “I love to go out!” Once, going out meant dancing. “My friends and I would go dancing at the Elks Club in Nahant. Then it burned down, so we got together at a different place every weekend after that.” After she met her husband, he told his friends whom he was going to marry. They said, “You mean Marie who loves to dance?”
As a mother with young children, going out meant the beach for Marie. “My children and I were out of the house from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. I would walk along the beach while they swam along in the waves.” Two large shadowboxes on one wall of Marie’s Lewis Mall apartment are filled with shells, coral, and other treasures. Each has a story of a day, a friend, a place, a memory.
Going out, for this East Boston resident, has also meant traveling around the world. “I’ve been to England, Brussels, Italy, Ireland, South America, and Greece. If anyone asked me if I wanted to go somewhere, I’d say ‘SURE!’” To go out today, Marie relies on the transportation services of the Elder Service Plan and the MBTA’s THE RIDE to go shopping and to the movies. “I get around,” she says. “I still love to go places. I was in a wheelchair when I arrived here. They gave me physical therapy five days a week. I went from a wheelchair to a walker in the first year. I told the therapists, ‘You got me on my feet!’ They said, ‘You did the work!’”
Marie says all the staff members at the Lewis Mall PACE Center make a difference. “We have everything you need here: physical therapists, a podiatrist, doctors, nurses, dentists.” As active as she is, Marie needs help preparing for her day every morning. If she were to fall, she would need help getting up. At Lewis Mall, Marie says, “You can get the help you need and still have a life. I can’t imagine a better place to be.”
PEGGY SULLIVAN
Growing up in Chelsea, Peggy Sullivan and her brothers were surrounded by large families. “Our neighbors, the Smiths, had 19 children, the Nelsons had 21, and the Bradleys had 10. There was always somebody to play with.” While life in lower Chelsea could be hard, Peggy smiles at the memories. “We were one big family. We didn’t eat at each other’s homes because no one could afford extra mouths, but everything else we did together. Thank God I was born in Chelsea.”
Forthright and outspoken, Peggy learned independence early on. She began working at Woolworth’s on Broadway at the age of 14 during school vacations. After graduating from high school, she went to work in business, although her spunk taught her to avoid certain positions. “Can you imagine me as a receptionist?” she asks. “‘Buddy, he doesn’t want to see you!’” Peggy kept up with her neighborhood friends through the years, going into Boston to see shows and traveling together. “We had a good crowd. I still see some of them.”
Eventually, Peggy gave up working to care for her elderly mother and older brother fulltime. Now with her mother and brother gone, Peggy lives with her cat Ree-Ree in a spacious one-bedroom apartment at the Elder Service Plan’s Barnes School. Her niece Marie calls every week and comes to see her often. “She’s always thinking of me.” Peggy enjoys the other residents at Barnes as well. Like her neighbors in Chelsea, “Everybody helps out everybody here.”
Despite fracturing her hip two years ago, Peggy is still as independent—and outspoken—as ever. Working with the onsite physical therapists at Barnes, Peggy recovered quickly and has adapted well to using a walker. “I’m completely healed. God must have been tired of hearing me moan and groan.” The Elder Service Plan staff at the Barnes, however, is all ears. “If you need something, all you have to do is ask and, boom, it’s done. The people here are fantastic! All my life I had to speak up to get something done. Here, they listen.”
BETTY DIPERRI
For Auntie Bee-Bee, it’s all about family. With 75 nieces and nephews, including four great-great nieces, Betty DiPerri’s calendar is packed with weddings, baby showers, christenings, and other family gatherings. Her pretty apartment is full of photographs of her late husband, brothers, sisters, and mother. “We were always close,” she says. “When my husband proposed, I said, ‘You want to marry me? You’re going to have to marry my whole family!’”
The next generation of DiPerris is just as close. “We’ve got a nice family. They take me out on Sundays shopping and to dinner, take care of all my paperwork. I don’t need to worry about anything!” Since moving to the Barnes School three years ago, and joining the Elder Service Plan several years before that, Betty has all the help she needs, even when her extended family can’t be there. “Everything I need is right here,” says Betty. “Doctors, nurses, physical therapists, podiatrists, social workers—they all see me here. They even come up to my apartment every day to help me take my pills in the morning and at suppertime. If I need to go to Boston Medical Center, they take me there.” Betty appreciates the conveniences, but says the best part about the staff at Barnes is that “they’re very nice to you!”
In addition to medical care and help with daily tasks, Elder Service Plan participants are socially active. When she isn't visiting family, Betty visits with friends and neighbors in the first-floor Day Center. “We’re always doing something down there: exercises, painting, parties.” While she’s made a lot of new friends at Barnes, Betty has found old friends, too. “One of my neighbors here used to be our neighbor when I was little. She was my babysitter!”
Living at the Barnes School brings back memories for Betty everywhere she looks. Like many residents, Betty was a student at the Barnes School 70 years ago. Full of light and space, the former high school has been transformed into a gracious home. With a large activities area, medical offices, a rehabilitation gym, and a scenic rooftop deck for cookouts and sunbathing, the building offers one-bedroom apartments with full baths, kitchenettes, high ceilings, and enormous windows. “I love it. It’s full of light and very quiet.” With all that space, she adds, “I drive my family crazy re-arranging my furniture.”
ANNE BOSSI
Anne Bossi would love to still be at her job as a bookkeeper, still be helping her neighbors with their shopping, and still be visiting her brother and sisters in their homes. “I was always on the go,” she says. When she developed lower back pain at the age of 55, she assumed it was from doing too much. Her neighbors urged her to see a doctor, who diagnosed spinal stenosis.
While Anne requires a wheelchair now, she’s still on the go and hasn’t stopped helping her neighbors. As a younger resident of the Barnes School PACE Center, Anne has the help she needs to help others. “Before joining the plan,” she says, “I was living at home on the third floor. My therapist suggested I look into the Elder Service Plan, even though I was only 55. I’ve lived in East Boston all my life and never knew that this service was available! From day one, I thought it was the greatest program, and should be in every state and town for the elderly or for people like me.”
Anne originally took a studio in the Elder Service Plan’s Lyman School apartments. “I went to the Adult Day Center at Lewis Mall then, and enjoyed the crafts, the entertainment, and the parties, even though I am younger than most.” When the Barnes School opened, Anne moved into a new one-bedroom, handicapped-accessible apartment. Like at Lyman, Anne can have most of her physical therapy and medical care right at Barnes. “They make it so easy to fill my prescriptions and get to my appointments,” she says. “They keep on top of everything.”
It is the Barnes School, however, that drew her. “This building is so bright and cheery,” she says. “My windows are so big; when the sun is out I don’t need to turn on the lights. We have a rooftop terrace with tables and umbrellas. In the summertime we sit up there and can see all of East Boston, the airport, harbor, and downtown. Or we sit out front on the sidewalk, like we did growing up.” Her neighbors appreciate Anne as much as she enjoys the space and their company. “Anne is always offering to help,” says Peggy Sullivan, another Barnes resident. “She even looks after my cat!” Anne says, “It’s nice here. If your neighbors don’t see you, they tap on the door to say, ‘Everything okay, Anne?’ I have neighbors here who have known me since I was born. I have a 96-year-old friend here who, God love her, goes to bingo every week. We all look out for each other.”
The community that Anne found at Barnes has become part of her family, and her family has become a part of the community. “My brother Joe, he’s a big guy, 6’5”. Every year, he’s the official Santa Claus for the Barnes School Christmas party for the residents’ grandchildren.” Her whole family gathers for holidays in her spacious apartment. “It’s nice to be able to have the relatives here,” Anne says. “We haven’t found a stair-lift yet that will let me visit them at their homes. Here we can all get together.”
For services to be covered, they must be in accordance with the care plan and approved by the interdisciplinary care team. Participants may be liable for unauthorized services. A more detailed description of the program and covered services is included in the Member Handbook/Evidence of Coverage. In some cases, there may be a monthly premium required based on your income or assets.
