New administrator takes over Floresville veterans home
By Gabriel Valdez
FLORESVILLE — When he meets for an interview about his recent appointment as administrator of the Frank M. Tejeda Texas State Veterans Home, Keith Rodgers insists on bringing along Director of Nurses Soyla Ortiz.
They were two of the original employees when the veterans home opened in December 2000.
“Six years ago I told her,” Rodgers gestured to Ortiz, “one day I’m going to be admin and you’re going to be director of nurses.”
“I thought he was crazy,” Ortiz said, laughing.
At the time, Rodgers was working in maintenance and Ortiz was a charge nurse. At first, the facility had only three residents.
“[They weren’t] used to socializing,” Ortiz says. “We were bored, so we’d say, ‘Let’s go play dominoes.’”
Rodgers and Ortiz are both longtime Floresville residents. He is a member of the Floresville Volunteer Fire Department and Wilson County Emergency Medical Services. Rodgers remembers as a young boy going over to his friends’ houses to play. He had to behave himself under the watchful eyes of parents who now serve as the dietary nutritionist and one of the nurses at the veterans home.
Over the years, Rodgers moved up the ladder. He held positions as the facility’s maintenance supervisor, in the accounting office, and as the on-site public relations representative. He held these positions close to a year and a half each.
“I am very humbled and proud to be in the position I’m in,” Rodgers, who is only 30, said. Interviewing Thursday morning, he said, “Today’s the first day I haven’t woken up and said ‘I love my job.’ Today I woke up and said, ‘Today’s Spurs Day.’”
Touchstone Communities is the corporation that operates the Tejeda veterans home and many other veterans centers in Texas and Arizona. Rodgers said that unlike many corporations these days, Touchstone is focused on finding talent in its own pool of employees. He’s proud of the loyalty the company has shown Ortiz and himself.
A year ago he underwent Touchstone’s administrator-in-training program, which required him to shadow another administrator for six months. He acted as an assistant administrator for four months after that before replacing Brian Threadgill, who was promoted three weeks ago to regional manager of eight veterans homes. Rodgers said the transition was relatively seamless.
Threadgill himself had started in a Touchstone veterans home as a waiter, earning experience later as a crisis administrator in hospitals before his very first boss, now a Touchstone vice president herself, asked him to serve as the administrator of the Tejeda veterans home.
Ortiz’s path reflects that of Rodgers and Threadgill. She started off at the Floresville nursing center doing laundry. With the encouragement and support of her friends and family, she became a nurse aide, went to nursing school and earned her degree in nursing. After that, she worked as a nurse and later a nurse supervisor before becoming unit manager of the A wing at the Tejeda veterans home. She’s been the facility’s director of nurses since last December.
Rodgers cited the environment at the Tejeda veterans home as the chief reason it has not suffered severe turnover problems, as many hospitals and nursing homes do.
“A lot of time in other communities you see other people, [the look] on their faces: ‘This is my job, I’ll put my time in,’” Rodgers said.
Like Threadgill before him, Rodgers refers to the home as a “community.” His staff is his “team.” They refer to Touchstone’s San Antonio corporate headquarters as its “community support office.”
Those aren’t just titles, Rodgers said. They’re a mentality. “If we have happy staff, they’ll be more effective,” Ortiz said.
“The high retention rate goes a long way in continuity of care,” Rodgers added.
Marketplace Ministries provides counseling for staff members. Rodgers said that across the many Touchstone homes, the ministers try to provide help in marriage counseling, job counseling, and even suicide prevention.
When asked about the Walter Reed scandal, in which a Washington, D.C., veterans facility was found to provide many of its veterans moldy, disintegrating rooms, Rodgers said, “I can’t believe that we would allow that.”
After that scandal, the Tejeda veterans home had to reassure family members. There was a scare in veterans homes across the nation, but on a tour through the Tejeda veterans home, you can see that is not the case here. An oversized wall calendar is filled up with activities for the residents; the halls, cafeteria, and rooms are clean. The physical therapy room has more than enough space to keep veterans active.
Bed-bound veterans receive sensory stimulation several times a week through hand massages, perfumes, and music. Mass is held every Monday and a Baptist service every Sunday. A barber even comes by once a week. A lot of the male residents like to keep the short, military-style haircut, Rodgers said.
The national anthem is played every morning. Ortiz said the veterans always stand and salute. Even those in wheelchairs sit as straight as they can.
Rodgers suggests that if you’re walking down the hall and the anthem starts playing, you’d better stand still before one of the veterans shouts at you to do so.
Rodgers and Threadgill started a “steak day” in November. Once a month, they grill steaks for the veterans. It may not sound like much, Rodgers said, but the veterans enjoy getting outside and enjoying, or sometimes criticizing, the steaks.
“I’m not geared to be sitting behind a desk all day,” Rodgers said. “I always try to be on the floor.”
The one thing Rodgers and Ortiz would like to see more of is visitors. “I wish people would come out more and visit more,”
Rodgers said.
He said students in particular would value the experience. “If they read history books, what you read may or may not be how it went down,” Rodgers said. “These guys were there.”
It’s valuable for the veterans to feel as if they’re still making a contribution to society, Rodgers said.
Although the veterans rarely talk about the Iraq War, many do speak at length about their own experiences.
There are a few, however, who won’t speak about these experiences and Rodgers stressed that in his job, he has to respect that.
“They witnessed things I can’t imagine and that no movie can do justice to,” he said.
Lackland Air Force Base recently brought 40 to 50 recruits to meet and speak with the veterans. It’s important for the recruits to hear what it might be like, Rodgers said, but it’s also important for the veterans to be reminded that they’re part of something greater.
Many of the veterans continued serving their country once out of the service. Rodgers said the home has welcomed residents that include the mayor who helped Texas City recover from the Texas City explosion of 1947, considered the worst industrial accident in American history, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer.
Rodgers and Ortiz are excited that nearby land in Veterans Park was recently sold by the Floresville Economic Develop-ment Corp. If the development goes through, the veterans home may see more accessible doctors’ offices and shops nearby. There has also been discussion of constructing independent living arrangements for veterans, but Rodgers said he doesn’t know of any solid developments at this point.
Rodgers and his wife, Lorelei, a schoolteacher, live in Floresville with their two sons, 3-year-old Kaleb and 1-year-old Luke.
Ortiz lives in Floresville with her husband Randy, to whom she credits a great deal of her success, and their two daughters, who are 14 and 7.