A Final Stop for Well-Heeled
By Thomas Goldsmith, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Sep. 13–For decades, spending one’s latter days at the Mayview Convalescent Center has been part of a prestigious old-Raleigh progression. The saga might have started with a birth at the old Mary Elizabeth Hospital on Wake Forest Road, elementary school at Wiley or Murphy, worship at a venerable downtown church, high school at Broughton or St. Mary’s, years away at college, then a return to join the Junior League and the Carolina Country Club.
Then as now, Mayview was often the final home for older members of old-line Raleigh families.
On Wednesday, more than 100 residents, relatives, staff members and supporters attended an outdoor lunch to celebrate the Raleigh institution’s 50th anniversary.
The Tomlinson family has operated the nursing home in the same location for five decades.
Travis Tomlinson Sr., Raleigh’s mayor from 1965 to 1969 and still on the scene, converted a 1920s-era tuberculosis sanitarium in the Five Points neighborhood near Glenwood Avenue and opened Mayview in 1957. His sons, Travis Tomlinson Jr. and Parker Tomlinson, run it today.
“We’ve had people that wanted us to build other facilities just like Mayview,” Parker Tomlinson said Wednesday. “They wanted us to do the same thing, like a cookie-cutter, across the country. We felt like we wanted to keep it a family operation.”
Among current residents is former Sen. Jesse Helms, who has vascular dementia; his wife, Dot, lives next door at Glen Laurel, an independent living center also owned and run by the Tomlinsons.
Mayview’s stability and long track record make it an anomaly at a time when many centers see frequent changes of ownership. Its long history of being family-run is increasingly rare, as homes more and more become part of national and regional chains.
“I do think people just like working for a family-owned organization,” said Lynn Haines, Mayview’s director of nursing. “The family is on site and accessible — you don’t have corporate layers.”
Haines said staff members are paid a competitive salary but nothing far outside the industry norm.
Still, two-thirds of staff members have worked at the home for longer than five years — a significant number given that many homes see a 100-percent annual turnover rate in care staff.
Academic studies have shown that worker satisfaction and workplace mobility rival money as factors that make long-term care employees stay.
“I’d like to go to Mayview,” said Sylvia Weaver, 71, the longest-tenured member of Wake County’s nursing home advisory committee.
But it offers care that not everyone can afford. Parker Tomlinson said the home charges rates of $150 to $200 a day, and most Mayview residents pay out of pocket.
Government-funded Medicaid slots are often allotted to residents whose assets have run out.
“It’s a lot less expensive than if you have to have a nurse 24 hours a day at home,” Parker Tomlinson said.
The family has had queries about selling Mayview and Glen Laurel, which sit on 14 acres on Whitaker Mill Road, Parker Tomlinson said. But they have no plans to sell.
That is good news for patients such as Katie Currie, who arrived at Mayview in January at age 103. She initially moved in to battle a bout of pneumonia — and won.
Now 104 and as sharp as ever — “I don’t take any medicine,” said the Scotland County native — Currie was among those from Raleigh and beyond celebrating a long life Wednesday.
“I like it fine here,” Currie said. “They all know who I am.”
LEARN MORE — For more information on nursing homes by name, zip code, city, county or state, visit www.medicare.gov/NHCompare.
Staff writer Thomas Goldsmith can be reached at 829-8929 or at thomas.goldsmith@newsobserver.com.
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