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McGaffee reflects on 40 years of employment at Tuff Home in Hills

Lead Summary
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By
Lori Sorenson

At 19, Glenda McGaffee remembers not liking her new job at the Tuff Home in Hills.
"I hated it," she said. "I hated all the old people."
McGaffee said it didn't take long to like her job and love the people — her co-workers and the residents and their families.
This week McGaffee will observe her 40th anniversary of working at the Tuff Home, and she said it's a good time to reflect back on her career.
“I grew to love it through the years,” she said Friday when asked about her 40-year job. “I love the elderly. If you can make their day brighter, then you've done your job.”
Part of that commitment comes from the time her own mother, Henrietta Wassenaar, spent at the Tuff Home while McGaffee worked there.
“It occurred to me that we should think of all the residents as if they're our parents or grandparents,” she said.
And this, she said, is what also makes it hard to say good-bye to residents when they pass away.
“They become your family, and you become their family,” McGaffee said. “The residents see you more than they see their own relatives.”
Further compounding losses, she said, is the fact that residents' family members stop visiting Tuff after their loved ones pass away.
“That's the hardest part about saying good-bye — you don't see their families anymore either,” she said.
When McGaffee started at the Tuff Home in 1976, it was a part-time job.
She was already a columnist for the Hills Crescent, and her neighbor, Judy Jacobson, encouraged her to apply for an opening in the activities department helping residents with arts and crafts.
In the years since then, her job changed from activities to office work to social services and back to activities, and she worked under (and helped train) several different administrators. 
Rosella Metzger, who recently retired from 40 years in the Tuff Home dietary department, thinks of McGaffee as her "roomy," since the two women shared office space and knew each other so well.
“She has a good work ethic and a friendliness about her,” Metzger said. “We got to be pretty close.”
Metzger said she, like McGaffee, developed a unique perspective on aging after working so long in a nursing home.
“You don't think you're getting older, but you realize it when you start seeing people you know become residents,” Metzger said.
“It's amazing how many people we worked with who became residents and then passed on.”
McGaffee said her job makes her appreciate her own good health. “The older I get, the more I appreciate that I'm able to get up in the morning and do what I want to do,” she said.
Most of her 40 years at the Tuff Home McGaffee worked full time, until she recently went half time in order to pursue her job at the Crescent.
"I'm so glad I started that job," she said. "It's a different world I get to see out there, other than the residents and my co-workers at Tuff. And at the same time, the residents and people at the Tuff Home have a lot to share with the Crescent, too."
McGaffee will host a small anniversary celebration at the Tuff Home at 3 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 14. Cake and coffee will be served.

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