Home Sweet Home
Written by David Creed
Photography by Kit Noble and David Creed
Nantucket faces a pivotal vote on the future of the Our Island Home nursing facility this spring.
Norman Gauvin came to Nantucket in 1962 when he was stationed at Coast Guard Station Brant Point. When Our Island Home was built nearly two decades later at its current location on East Creek Road, he remembers looking at the nursing home with contempt. “We used to look across from the tower to this place thinking, ‘Oh my God, I am never going there,’” Gauvin said. “Now sure as s**t, here I am.”
In February, Gauvin suffered a fall in his home that caused him to break his arm. He was transported to Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where he stayed for five days before he was told he would need physical therapy. That led him to Our Island Home, where he stayed for six weeks.“
Nantucket needs this place,” Gauvin said. “We all say we’re not going to come here but we all grow old. If that day comes, it wouldn’t be fair to send us to the Cape or to go to Boston, right? We want to stay home. We're here on the island. This is our home.”
But the building is deteriorating. Our Island Home now faces a consequential vote at the May 3 Annual Town Meeting: a $100million appropriation for a new 60,000-square-foot, 45-bednursing facility at the Sherburne Commons campus off South Shore Road. If approved, the new facility—the only municipally run nursing home in the state—would then need to secure voter approval in the town election on May 20.
“If you start from the position that we’re going to take care of this segment of our community, then this is the right project,” Finance Committee member Chris Glowacki said during a February meeting. “The appropriate diligence has been done.One hundred million dollars is a big number, but that’s what itcosts to build a facility like this.”
Since 1994, some 883 people have called Our Island Home their home, according to Our Island Home administrator Peter Holden, while 98% of its residents have been islanders with families on Nantucket. Holden said when you consider the family members and friends who benefit from keeping their loved ones on-island, thousands have benefited from the facility’s services over its 45-year existence.
Some, like Gauvin, are temporary stays, while others depend on the facility as a permanent home. Phil Gallagher is one of those residents who found himself in sudden need of the facility after suffering a stroke 18 months ago. “I am physically and mentally not capable of doing what I used to be able to do,” Gallagher, a retired health insurance director, said. “I was in public health for 50 years and I love what I see here. The staff is great. I don’t know what I came inhere expecting, but I now know that I cannot live totally on my own like I used to. My body and my brain are not suited to bean independent person. That can happen to everyone.”
The Finance Committee endorsed the proposal for a new facility in February by a 6-3 vote. Peter Schaeffer, one of the six committee members to approve the proposal, said that the town has plans to convert the East Creek Road property into a new senior center, which will preserve the harbor view that the community has been hesitant about giving up in previous appropriation requests for a new nursing home.
“In reality, this building cannot be repurposed, and it was not built well to begin with,” Schaeffer said. “It’s held up over these years, but it’s not a building that we can say if we paint it and put some new walls up, everything’s going to be fine.”
The new facility would include enclosed courtyards and solar panels. Some rooms would be large enough to allow for the addition of a second bed should Our Island Home need to increase capacity. Still, it’s an expensive investment.
“This is a very expensive operation,” committee member Joseph Wright said during February’s meeting. “In a perfect world, you would do everything for everybody, but the world isn’t perfect, and the question is whether you can afford it.”
Jim Richard grew up on Nantucket and is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He checked his father into Our Island Home decades ago after his father received inadequate care off-island at another nursing facility. Richard said once his father arrived at Our Island Home, he was up walking around at the age of 97, dusting the walls just three days after being bedridden at his former nursing facility. Fast-forward to this year and Richard himself needed to be checked into Our Island Home for eight weeks following the amputation of one of his big toes due to complications from diabetes. He needed to complete eight weeks of physical therapy.
“Everybody always used to think back when I was a kid growing up here that this was the old folks home where you came to die,” Richard said. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. Anybody could end up needing this place at any time."
"Society lives and thrives through its seniors,” Richard continued. “That has been proven throughout history that if you take care of your seniors, your society will be successful.”
Bart Cosgrove took care of his husband, Thom, for as long as he could until late December of 2024.Cosgrove said it became too much for him to do on his own after Thom began to fall more frequently and had reached a point where he couldn’t remember who Cosgrove was. His husband lived at Our Island Home for a few months before passing away.
“I think we have an obligation not to turn our backs on the seniors here,” Cosgrove said. “I had mixed feelings about deciding I couldn’t take care of Thom the way he needed to be. It wasn’t until I was here that I realized while not under the best circumstances, they do an incredible job here.”
Others, such as Nina Liddle, turned to Our Island Home to take care of their mothers. Liddle is a businessowner on the island and said her mother has been at the island home for about two years. She said keeping people on-island is important to combat loneliness and improve quality of life for seniors.
“It’s so important that these people see their families or their friends,” Liddle said. “Isolation is one of the worst things in the world to do to an elderly person.”
Pat Newton, who has been a resident at Our Island Home for almost three years, said she hopes voters will try to think about how they would feel about needing to leave the island in the latter stages of their lives if a nursing home no longer exists on Nantucket.“ People who are voting for this of course are younger for the most part, but they probably don’t know that at some point they may need the nursing home,” Newton said. “Do they want to go off-island to be a resident in the nursing home, or would they like to have their family and their loved ones be able to visit them right around the corner?”
Latest Stories
