The community that supported Thompson's personal care home looked back with current and former staff to those early days as Northern Spirit Manor celebrated its 10th anniversary on Feb. 17, a little over a decade after its official opening on Feb. 9, 2007.
Wayne Hall, who was a member of the committee that helped raised the community's share of the construction costs, remembered that it seemed like a daunting task at first.
"They wanted me to work on a committee to raise $300,000 so that we could have a care home in Thompson," he said. "From that point it looked like $300,000 was a whole lot of money. They said, well you've got five years to do it. I thought, well, maybe we can get it done in five years."
As it turned out, the community's passion for the project was much greater than the committee anticipated.
"We received donations every day," Hall said. "Some donations were from companies that could afford to give us a fairly good donation. I remember getting a donation from a lady that was on a pension and it was a donation that she could afford. That took us one year and 20 days to raise that money and that is not because we ran faster, were any smarter or are any better than anyone else. It was because the citizens in this community wanted this establishment so badly that they were willing to do anything to get it and they did it. I'm very proud of Thompsonites for what they did. We kind of caught the government a little bit with their pants down because they didn't put a shovel in the ground for three years."
Betsy Wrana, who served as the personal care home's first manager when it opened 10 years ago remembered realizing that the project was truly Thompson's when a staff member said the building was a little dirty and that there was no toilet paper in the weeks leading up to its opening.
"It was at that moment that I was able to smile and say, 'I have to tell everybody here that we're it,'" she said. "Nobody's buying our toilet paper for us, nobody's cleaning the kitchen, nobody's doing the charts for the patients, no one's getting the meds ready. It's all up to us to get everything organized before the resident come and it was like looking at deer in the headlights."
Now, she says, current manager Kristyn Wickdahl and the her staff have continued the original vision of Northern Spirit Manor as a place to call home, that was part of the community and provided holistic care
“They continued that tone throughout and continue to do some pretty amazing things in this home,” said Wrana.
Sya Gregovski, who co-chaired the fundraising committee with Hall, says the process didn’t always go smoothly, that it took nearly five years for construction to start and that compromises had to be made along the way.
“In 2004 it was very tense,” she recalled. “They cut us back. They cut back 4,000 square feet out of the home.”
That reduced the number of residents it could accommodate by over half.
“We were very discouraged,” Gregovski said. “We kept trying because we knew we were so close.
Norman Regional Health Authority CEO Helga Bryant said the care home’s success is a reflection of the community’s determination to create it and see it live up to its potential.
“The community built this building and to hear the stories about the fundraising and what happened 10 years ago is just really amazing,” she said. “The staff are so committed, the community is so committed to the service and the philosophy of this home and the residents just love living here and really do consider it their home.”
