What makes you happy?: Seniors find happiness in faith and family

By Mary Ann Wyand

Second of two parts

Happiness is where you find it, St. Augustine Home for the Aged resident Ruth Cunningham explained. She has found happiness living at the Little Sisters of the Poor home in Indianapolis for eight years.

During World War II, Cunningham served as a pharmacist’s mate in the U.S. Coast Guard at the Manhattan Beach Base in Brooklyn, N.Y., from 1946 to 1948.

She met her former husband, Gene, while serving in the Coast Guard and they were married after the war. He became a doctor and they moved to Indianapolis with their five children in 1958.

Ten years later, their marriage ended in divorce and she worked in a variety of jobs, including several medical research positions, until her retirement in 1983.

Her oldest son, James, who was a space artist with the Smithsonian Institution, died in a helicopter crash in 1991 so she knows the pain of grieving the death of a child.

“You can still be happy even if you have problems,” Cunningham said. “We have to have the help of God Almighty. Without his help, I don’t think I could have made it … or been able to be happy [again].”

St. Augustine Home resident Bob Hassett moved to Indianapolis in 1965 and worked as a lawyer for the Indiana Attorney General for 26 years.

“That was the happiest overall span of my life and career,” Hassett said, “working for the taxpayers, serving the people. There are no better clients in the world than the people of Indiana.”

Formerly a member of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis, Hassett has lived at the Little Sisters’ home since 2004 and keeps busy with volunteer activities there.

“I don’t have a family of my own,” Hassett said. “This is my family here. These people are all my brothers and sisters. … We break bread together.”

Hassett said he believes that “happiness is—so far as I am able to do with God’s help—conforming my will, my heart and my mind with God—the Creator, Redeemer [and] Savior of all of us.

“… Prayer is very important to me,” he said, “and I find here at St. Augustine’s [Home] a wonderful forum, a venue, for being a person of prayer. We’ve got a chapel here. It’s open almost all day and all night, I think. We have a chaplain. We have daily Mass and we have the presence of the Blessed Sacrament here all the time. It doesn’t get any better than that, and I really, really love this place.”

Hassett said participating in Mass is one of “the top places” where he is happiest.

People can find happiness in life, he explained, if they learn to know God and themselves.

“I think if they can bring themselves to recognize who they are,” he said, they will be happy.

“Both of those questions we were asked in catechism class in the first grade, I think,” Hassett said. “ ‘Who are you? Why are you here? Where did you come from? Where are you going? What’s your purpose here in this world?’

“If a person starts from that and gets to realize that God is really the ultimate end of our lives—he started our lives and he will be the end of our lives,” Hassett said, “then we want to go to him in the best possible posture we can.

“Just looking at it from a purely afterlife thought, how will he look at us?” Hassett explained. “I do not want to hear him say, ‘Depart from me. I don’t know you.’ I want to hear him say, ‘Welcome, good and faithful servant.’ That’s what all of us should hope for—to hear those words. … Nothing can compare with those words, ‘Depart from me.’ But those other words, ‘Welcome, good and faithful servant—enjoy the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ It doesn’t get any better than that. That’s got to be the end of everything.”

Hassett volunteered as the wedding coordinator at St. John the Evangelist Parish at the request of Father Thomas Murphy, who was the pastor at the time.

“That came to be a funny thing,” he said. “I’ve never been married. ... I said, ‘Sure, I’ll try anything.’ I coordinated 200 weddings there from about 1996 for about 10 years. That was a lot of fun. I heard all the ‘dos and the don’ts.’ It was just wonderful. It was a real trip.”

Hassett said one of his happiest memories dates back to Aug. 15, 1995, the feast of the Assumption, when he helped an elderly, apparently homeless, man who was wearing a heavy coat on a downtown street on a very hot summer day.

“I thought, ‘I don’t want any part of this,’ ” he recalled after noticing the man trying to hitch a ride. “I proceeded to drive away and then suddenly, for no reason at all except it was a grace from God, found myself saying, ‘Dear God, if you want me to help that man, cause me to leave this highway at the next exit and go back.’ I found myself turning off the highway and driving back, and he was still there.”

The man needed a ride to Ann Arbor, Mich., so Hassett drove him to the Greyhound Bus Depot in West Lafayette, Ind., and bought him a bus ticket to Michigan.

“I put him on the bus there and gave him some money,” Hassett said. “I never had such a wonderful feeling in all my life of helping somebody. God said, ‘Love your neighbor.’ Who’s your neighbor? Anybody who is in trouble is your neighbor.”

At the bus depot, he said, the man looked at him with tears in his eyes and asked, “Why are you doing this?”

Hassett told the man that he was helping him “for Jesus,” and the man started crying.

“I looked over at the ticket clerk, who was looking at both of us, and tears came into his eyes and then into my own eyes,” Hassett said. “It was a moment of grace. I think God holds out these wonderful opportunities to help people to all of us.”

St. Augustine Home resident Helen Marsh worked as a licensed practical nurse with the Little Sisters in Indianapolis during the early 1970s.

Marsh, who also experienced divorce, has three sons, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She moved to the Little Sisters’ home last May.

“When I worked here, I just couldn’t get over the beautiful care they gave the residents,” Marsh said. “I told a Little Sister, ‘You just give excellent care to these people.’ And she said, ‘We do it all as unto the Lord.’ So she really didn’t even take my thank you. That’s what they do. They take care of the elderly and do a wonderful job of it. Little did I know at age 35 that I would ever be 75 and would be living here.”

Marsh said she enjoys living at St. Augustine Home and helping the Little Sisters as a volunteer.

“I love it here,” she said. “It’s like heaven on Earth. I have never, ever been so affected by the kindness and mercy of these sisters that run this place. I really feel like we are on holy ground.

“And while I’m waiting my old age out to go to heaven—because I do believe that the Lord, Jesus Christ, is very important in my life—what a wonderful place, what a wonderful atmosphere, to be until you are whisked away into his presence,” Marsh said. “These sisters are the kindest, sweetest and most considerate women. … I’m very impressed, and I wouldn’t trade places with anybody.”

Marsh said happiness means “having a personal relationship with the Lord, Jesus Christ, and reading the Bible” as well as helping others.

As a nurse, she recalled, “It always said in the Bible to me, ‘If you give a cup of water in my name, the Lord would honor that.’ So I always remembered that whatever we do to the least of them, we are doing it unto our heavenly Father, and that’s made my career of 32 years of being a nurse very meaningful.”

Marsh, who is a member of the Baptist faith, said “knowing the Lord” is the best answer to the question of how to be happy.

“It’s important to try to encourage people that there is something besides just what is on this planet Earth,” she said. “There is a hereafter. There is hope.”

St. Paul Hermitage resident Alma Zimmerman, a longtime member of St. Roch Parish in Indianapolis, moved to the retirement community operated by the Sisters of St. Benedict of Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove last year.

Zimmerman and her late husband, Gervase, raised seven children.

“Getting our children raised made me happy,” she said. “I wanted to live long enough to raise them and I did.”

Now she is enjoying her leisure time—especially playing cards—with her new friends at the hermitage.

“I think happiness is family, of course, and getting along with people,” she said. “We have church here.

“But I think you can get blue at the holidays when they’re over,” Zimmerman said. “I guess because you’re so excited about them coming and then you miss them.”

When you feel sad, she said, “Do something for someone,” and you will feel happy again.

Her friend, longtime Our Lady of the Greenwood parishioner Edith Speth, moved to the St. Paul Hermitage in March of 2006.

Speth and her late husband, Leonard, raised four children. He died 18 years ago. She also has 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

“Happiness is having friends and being with people,” Speth said, “and I can worship daily here.”

The birth of their children made her happy, she said. After they were grown and her husband died, she didn’t like living alone.

“I’m so glad to be with people here,” Speth said. “I was too lonely in my home with nobody around. I love it here. You need God and friends to be happy.” †