4 Herald - Lantern - Dispatch 21 May '86

Crest Haven Cost Up; Need Down ?

(From page 1) some repairs to reduce effluent at the county's Holmes Creek Sewage Treatment Plant, which serves Crest Haven, MacDonald said. He said he now hopes the county can advertise for bids "in the next couple months" and break ground by August. Completion is expected in two years, he said. CREST HAVEN IS FILLED, according to Ruth Ann Kozlek, director of Social Services. but the most recent admission applied only last month. She said nine have applied so far this month and there is a 40-person "waiting list" supplied by the county's two hospitals That list automatically goes to all the county's nursing homes. "We have been current for about a month," agreed Freeholder Gerald M. Thornton, who is responsible for the home. County officials said the opening of two nursing homes in the county — within a couple miles of Crest Haven — is responsible for the absence of a waiting list. Eastern Shore Nursing Home opened in Swainton with 120 beds in September. 1963. It is filled. THE NEWEST HOME. Court House Convalescent Center in Court House, accepted its first resident in January. It is half-filled, according to Karen Bayer, administrator. She said admissions are "on schedule" and the home will be "full in the next couple months." Two proposed nursing homes a mile apart in Lower Township have state Health Department certificates of need and local approvals and are awaiting CAFRA ( Coastal Area Facilities Review Act) okay from the state Department of Environmental Protection. Geriatric and Medical Centers Inc. plans a 180-bed facility in Cold Spring. Oxford Development intends a 120-bed home in North Cape May. The county's application for a state certificate of need included MacDonald's feasibility study as part of a "long-range plan" prepared by Arthur E. Brown and Associates of West Trenton. ADOPTED BY THE FREEHOLDERS April 12. 1983 — five months betore Eastern Shore opened — it cited these facts: Failed to Appear VILLAS - Henry and Nancy Needles, owners of the High Roller taxi-cab company, will be given a new court date of June 10 after failing to appear in municipal court yesterday on charges they are operating in a non-conforming zone. Failure to appear then will result in a bench warrant being issued, according to Peggy Peck of Lower Township courts. Council on Monday tabled a resolution for renewal of the Needle's license after their attorney, Frederick W. Schmidt Jr.. asked for a postponement*. , Beach Protection Bill TRENTON — A state Assembly environmental committee voted last week to release a bill that would raise an estimated $50 million a year for environmental and shore protection projects by raising the realty transfer tax by $1 for every $500 of property value. The money would be used to fund projects in the areas of beach protection, dredging, ^ flood control, state park development and the purchase of lands for recreation and conservation.

Crest Haven "consistently operates at full capacity," there had been "a trefWndous I growth" in county population of 38 percent during the 197040 decade, and a 41.8 percent growth rate in those 65 and older. , It pointed out that, while the U.S. median . age in 1900 was 30 and the state's 32.2, the county's was 37.4. And it projected the 65-plus population , would grow from 16,722 in 1980 to 27,357 in the year 2,000, a 63 percent increase. I But the state's most recent figures, dates i last November, predict the county will have 24,100 persons 65 and older in 2,000, a 44 per- , cent increase. "WE ANTICIPATE A bigger burden because of the rapid increase in elderly, particularly low-income elderly," said Thornton. "People like to come here and retire. It's a burden many other counties don't have. Thornton said Crest Haven's admissions criteria includes being "Medicaid-eligible, which means less than $1,500 in assets ( not including a home). "We take private-pay if we have beds available," he said, "but our emphasis is on those unable to pay." He said the county did "anticipate the impact of other private facilities coming on line," but suggested the difference is that they do oot welcome Medicaid patients the way the county does. Bayer, of Court House Convalescent Center, denied that. She said the home's certificate of need specifies, and state law requires, that it accept 50 percent Medicaid. "We expect 50 to 75 percent Medicaid," she said, "the same as at Eastern Shore. We know the community." She said the home receives three Medicaid patient applicants for every private one. Once the state mandates are met, she conceded, the home, with a choice between a Medicaid and a private-pay, "might take the private-pay first." "IT'S FIRST-COME, first-serve (at Crest Haven)" Thornton said, "but the priority is medical necessity." The Arthur E. Brown long-range plan pointed out that the county rejected "maintaining existing services" and "minimum levels of care" and chose, instead, "to provide geriatric care of the highest quality, to respond to developing concepts and patterns of health care, and to expand the scope of activities and services." It pointed out that people are living longer and that chronic medical conditions increase with age. And it concluded that "provision of long-term medical care for the frail elderly is fast emerging as a problem that may pose the greatest challenge to health and social policy... now and in the years ahead." According to the Brown plan: CREST HAVEN BEGAN Feb. 20. 1821, as "a system for the regulation and management of the Alms House." It gradually evolved into a working county farm "where most of the residents performed various tasks in lieu of their room and board. Residents were also hired out of local firms and businesses with their wages paid to the Alms House " « This system continued, the study said, until 1962, when the present structure was completed and its "mission changed" from county poor farm "to a health care facility where residents were admitted and cared for based on their medical needs." With the advent of Medicaid and state health care standards, the study said the facility became a licensed, 140-bed nursing home in the early 1970s with the continuing mission: "to serve all residents of the county who are in need of long-term nursing home care."

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Original Ram bo" Dod» Word

Back From 'Nam, This Rambo Sold His Guns

By E. J. DUFFY NpRTH CAPE MAY - "I'm not out to draw First Blood." said the man named Rambo from Fire Lane. "I'm a whole different character than Sylvester Stallone was in that movie," Wayne Rambo added. "I'm out to help somebody — not hurt somebody." Once an M-60 machine gunner with the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam, the ex -Army sergeant has been called "the original Rambo." But he isn't anything like Stallone's character in First Blood or its popular sequels. They're too popular for Wayne Rambo, a county native who's worked 10 years for Cape May's water department, and anybody that needs a hand. The movies and his name bring calls in the wee hours from strangers surprised to find a real Rambo listed in the phone book ; they want to talk about 'Nam, war. guns and the movies. "IT AGGRAVATES ME because I can't take the phone off the hook," Rambo explained, noting his need to keep the line open to an ailing relative. "I more or less had to live with that," he said of the calls. "My poor boys took a beating in school, though, I'll tell you, especially Johnny," Rambo said of his sons and how the Stallone movies have intruded up on their lives. Thousands of youths have been playing war in camouflague "Rambo" battle gear since seeing the movies, tossing their plastic gernades and spraying "Charlie" with simulated M-60s. "Sylvester Stallone used one of them in the movie," Rambo scoffed. "I can't, believe it. You can't hold one of those suckers in your hand. That's crazy. "I don't own a gun," he added. "I don't want any guns in my home. I sold all my guns when I came home." Rambo didn't come home from Vietnam with a swagger and bulging biceps under his triple chevrons. When his plane landed in Philadelphia, corpsmen drove him to Valley Forge Army Hospital in an ambulance. "THEN I WENT TO Walter Reed (Army Hospital)," he recalled. "That's where I got my eye." Surgeons fitted him with a glass eye to replace the real one that was gouged out by shrapnel from two mortar rounds. They exploded 1:30 p.m. March 26, 1968 while Rambo was patrolling the Saigon River. He lost half his stomach, nearly iosVhts other eye, and suffered several shrapnel wounds. "I still have a lot of that in my body," he said of the sharp metal fragments. A piece in his brain has damaged his memory, he said. "I spent a month and half in a field hospital," Rambo continued. "All I could hear was mortars going off all night. It scares the bell out of you. "B.J. Rasmussen was one of the nurses who worked on me in the field hospital, and she only lived two houses from me on York Avenue," the wounded vet said of his neighbor from West Cape May and their bizaare reunion in Vietnam. "She shaved my beard off." (NOW DIRECTOR OF nursing at Burdette Tomlin Memorial Hospital, Rasmussen is active in local Vietnam veteran affairs. She was the subject of a profile in this paper several months ago.) Unconscious for nearly three weeks, Rambo was told "I was fortunate to be alive; I think so too," he said. "At least I can laugh about it; A lot of people can't." The county plans to honor those who suffered and died in Vietnam, along with

those who have suffered and died in earlier wars, during Memorial Day services Monday at the Veteran's Cemetery, Crest Haven. * "I think it an honor," said Rambo of his selection by the Veterans' Administration to represent 'Nam vets at the ceremony. Bud Hannings, a Marine Corps recruiter Rambo met at Hidden Valley Ranch, Cold Spring, called him "the original Rambo" and thanked him "for everything you sacrificed in 'Nam" with a copy of The Internal Flag, a patriotic defense of "Old Glory" published during the Iranian hostage crisis. FRIENDLY, BUT MODEST. Rambo is just an average guy who was an average GI, though, as he tells it. "I was just a foot soldier. "I was an assistant gunner." he added. "Then, when the machine gunner was killed, I automatically became the machine gunner. "That was an M-60," he said, stressing its need for a tripod. A draftee, he was discharged a disabled veteran with two Purple Hearts and a campaign ribbon. He took basic and advanced infantry training (AIT) at Ft. Dix before assignment as a personnel carrier driver in Bomholder, Germany, with a tank brigade of the 87th Division. "That was the coldest damn spot in my life," Rambo complained, adding "then my mom passed away and I came home and got orders to Vietnam. "I had had my jungle warfare training in my AIT. That's when they taught us about all the stuff they had in Vietnam," he continued, faulting how-to instructions on fighting the Viet Cong. "That was a bunch of bull...; it was on-the-job training. "I left home when I ws 16," Rambo said of his pre-Army days. "I was in the Merchant Marine with Sun Oil Co. up in Marcus Hook (refinery. Pa.). I went to Puerto Rico — all over — then I got drafted." HE'S "BEEN CLOSE to death a couple of times since then," he said. Even after his discharge, he "had a ulcer blow up" in his stomach and he was rushed to the hospital. The physicians, he laughed, "put me on the critical list because my left (glass) eye wouldn't dilate; I have a lot of fun with it' I put it in a guy's beer once. "I try to make people laugh," Rambo added. "A lot of people walk around with their heads hung down. I try to cheer them up." He also tries to lend a helping hand when he can. Last week, he dug a drainage ditch at the First Avenue home in the floodprone Fow Tract so a West Cape May women, 85, wouldn't be trapped by water after the next storm. He and his eldest son have been doing similar work around other low-lying homes, and Ram bo's been cited by city for such dedication. "A lot of people still remember me as a paperboy." he said of those from his old neighborhood in West Cape May. He was born to a couple from there in Burdette Tomlin Memorial Hospital on Nov. 13, 1949. His dad, a retired crane operator, lives in Del Haven. His sister, Marcie Iverson, lives in Wildwood Crest. Six of his seven brothers also live in the county; Tom in West Cape May, Joe in Tuckahoe, Dennis in North Cape May, Harry in Villas, Norman and Bill in Erma. Brother Craig lives in Hawaii. Wayne Rambo and his wife, Sandra, a real estate saleswomen with Tolz, have three children: Lorie, 11; Johnny, 14; and Wayne, 15. Don't call them to talk about Rambo. They know all about him.