Step right up, readers and book lovers. Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore and Textual Apothecary, quite likely the only bookstore that crisscrosses the country, has relocated to Charm City.

This bookstore on wheels has logged more than 100,000 miles through 44 states in the last decade, putting thousands of used books in the hands of readers. Last fall, it moved its home base to Baltimore from the tiny town of Eureka, Montana (population 1,533).

The store’s purveyor, Rita Collins, 73, is a Baltimore native who hasn’t lived here since she graduated from Woodlawn High School in 1969. Now she’s rediscovering the city she left behind to go adventuring all over the U.S. and the world.

You can’t miss her white bookstore van: It’s 19-feet long with that sizable name in colorful curlicue font on the side. Inside, enter a hobbit home of books where children can sit cross-legged on a cozy rug and read whatever they find on the lower shelves. Overall, about 800 volumes sit on shelves pitched at a 15-degree angle—so the books don’t topple on the road—while overhead lights illuminate fiction, nonfiction, poetry, regional books, cookbooks, kids’ books, plus postcards, greeting cards, and artwork.

“I like to think anybody could imagine how much fun this could be,” Collins says from the community room of her new home at Roland Park Place. “If you like people, you like to drive, and you like books—those are the three things you need.”

And she loves all three.

Wherever Saint Rita’s stops, Collins finds that people still enjoy the feel of a book in their hands. Despite e-books and audiobooks, print books remain the most popular nationwide, accounting for 63 percent of book sales in the U.S. last year, according to the data-gathering platform Statista.

Mobile bookstores remain rare, however. Of 291 independent bookstores that opened in the U.S. in 2023, only nine were mobile, according to the American Booksellers Association. Mobile bookstores may be on wheels, but generally they stay in one city or geographic area, unlike Saint Rita’s, which is a genuine traveling bookstore—going anywhere and everywhere over the years.

A college dropout who went back to school to earn a doctorate, Collins has been a teacher, an artist, and a writer. At 5 feet, 4 inches, with a round face topped by a wisp of bangs and her graying hair often in pigtails or braids, she is a spritely presence brimming with creativity and curiosity. Her interests include travel, visual arts, quilting, letterpress, bookbinding, and that Baltimore specialty, crankies.

She made her first Baltimore art sale at a gallery fundraiser not even a month after returning here: a framed set of white cotton underwear stamped with the message “UNKNOT THOSE KNICKERS.” She’s done letterpress on bubble wrap and strips of old film, made skirts out of recycled cassette tapes, and created a quilt with quotations from a volatile board of health meeting during the pandemic in small-town Montana.

Creativity? “That’s my thing,” she says. “Actually, it’s everybody’s thing, but I just do it.”

Collins was Rita Chalmers when she grew up here, the middle of the five children of Margaret and William Chalmers. Her father attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and founded Yankee Engineering in Baltimore in 1946. The family lived in Catonsville and she grew up an avid reader.

Her mother would regularly take her and her siblings to the local Baltimore County Public Library branch for bags of books. “It’s just so ingrained in me,” she said. “Like, if I have 10 minutes, where’s something I can read?”

After initially dropping out of college, she headed to San Francisco. Later, she attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, a choice that spurred several life changes. Renowned for its Great Books curriculum, St. John’s was a good fit for Collins, whose questioning nature found a home there.

“I think of it as a school for readers,” she says.

She also found the man who became her husband, a premed student whose education took them to several states while Collins earned a master’s degree in special education and later a doctorate in adult education.

When the couple moved to Eureka, she taught at the area’s not-so-nearby community college. But things weren’t working. She had a 70-mile commute to her job. The marriage was coming apart. And then 9/11 prompted another life change, she says: “I was just like, you know, I’m looking elsewhere.”

For two years, elsewhere was Romania, where she taught English. Next, she spent six years teaching at Masaryk University in Brno, in the Czech Republic. Even in her Eastern European classrooms, Collins remained opened to new possibilities. What started as a simple classroom songfest in Brno, for example, turned into a student choral group that won awards and traveled to other countries.

“In the beginning, we just sang for fun, and then because Rita is Rita, she said we should sing for someone,” says Jana Pestova, then a Collins’ student and now vice principal at an elementary school in the Czech Republic. “She’s inspiring. She’s my role model,” Pestova adds. “She’s just being herself, not apologizing.”

In general, being Rita Collins means having an idea, being told it might not work, and then making it work anyway. By 2011, she was ready to come back to the U.S. and be around familiar people and places again.

“I turned 60 and I was divorced,” she says with a smile. She pondered opening a bookstore in Eureka, a town she’d grown to love.

Not enough foot traffic in such a small place, however, she learned. So, if readers wouldn’t come to the bookstore, she decided to put the bookstores on wheels and bring it to readers. It was a wild idea, with few models for such a thing.

“It sounded like a Rita idea to me,” says Lynda Young, a fellow quilter and walking partner from Eureka. “She was always the first to try something.”

Collins learned of one traveling bookstore. It was in Wales: Dylan’s Mobile Book Bus, which started in 2010 and traveled all over the United Kingdom. Collins wrote overseas to ask for tips from the owner, Jeff Towns, who named his bus for Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

Towns gave her the only advice he could think of. “I just said, ‘Find a bus, fill it with interesting books and hit the road,’” he wrote recently in an email from his home in Swansea, on the south coast of Wales.

So, Collins found a 2004 Dodge Sprinter with about 70,000 miles on the odometer, tall enough to stand in. Then she enlisted a friend to build those angled shelves.

Next, that name: Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore and Textual Apothecary. The “Rita” is not for herself, but an homage to St. Rita, a 14th century Italian known as the patroness of impossible causes—an apt choice for a far-fetched plan to put a bookstore on the road.

She wanted a long name, reminiscent of an old-time traveling medicine show. “Like a magical thing,” she says, “a name that’s long and complicated the way those names were.”

Why “textual apothecary”? “Reading can make you feel better,” Collins explains. “If you have the right book, it will do the job.”

Her first customers were in Eureka. But Collins doesn’t think small, and she soon began hauling books to readers in faraway places like Utah and California, and further still to New York City, Arkansas, and West Virginia. By 2022, her expeditions were featured on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

“IT SOUNDED LIKE A RITA IDEA TO ME… SHE WAS ALWAYS THE FIRST TO TRY SOMETHING.”

Saint Rita’s is “more than a bookstore,” says Collins’ friend Shirley Jacobs from Eureka. “It was carved out of Rita’s brain. It’s the best thing to do with your life, to create something that isn’t there.”

Jacobs, 87, went along to several bookstore stops in Washington state and Montana. While Collins sold books, Jacobs played accordion.

Collins’ inventory comes almost exclusively from donations, although sometimes she visits thrift shops or yard sales. Given her low overhead—no rent, no marketing costs, no inventory expense—she charges $7 for paperbacks and $9 for hard covers. Kids’ books are always $1. If someone comes in and finds a signed first edition of, say, an Anne Tyler book, it’s still $9, even if someone can re-sell it for far more.

“I don’t want to have to be online doing the research,” she says. “I want to be able to sell books and have conversations.”

The bookstore pays for itself most of the time. Because it travels for only part of the year, Collins doesn’t expect to make a living from it. The rest of the time she travels without the bookstore; this winter she visited Vietnam and the Czech Republic.

She doesn’t sleep in Saint Rita’s, although she could. Instead, she’s developed a network of people to stay with at almost all her stops. Last spring, she was on the road for five weeks and never booked a hotel.

“I stay with friends, and friends of friends, and sometimes it’s really removed,” she says.

Her bookstore journeys—up to seven weeks with as many as 20 scheduled stops—are mostly pleasure. (Her schedule can be found, here.)

But she’s had a few low points: breakdowns and bad weather that cause a sudden change of plans. In Spring 2023, she needed the van’s engine repaired just when she was scheduled to leave on a six-week trip from Montana to Mississippi. In that instance, she and her plucky traveling partner, Czech native Yvetta Fendrichcova, packed books into Collins’ day-to-day vehicle, her Subaru Crosstrek, and then unloaded and re-loaded at every stop. With the passenger seat pushed forward to accommodate books and luggage, her helper had to cram into the car with her feet on yet another box.

Once, a different friend traveling along started crying when the van blew a tire in South Dakota. “You either have to have a really good person or it’s better not to have anyone,” Collins notes.

A diesel spill in Idaho last spring and another fuel leak in California a few weeks later led to a major decision. She’d been traveling with the bookstore for nine years and 110,000 miles. The Sprinter van was 20 years old. She was 72.

“Either I decide I don’t want to do the business anymore or I get another van.” she recalls. “It was a big turning point.”

She didn’t hesitate. Enter her current 2023 Ford Transit 250—taller, longer, and wider than the original Saint Rita’s, with room for more books and the promise of new adventures.

Saint Rita’s Ford Transit/Baltimore era started this past December with a bookstore gig at the pop-up Birch and Pen Holiday Market in Mount Vernon and another at Peabody Heights Brewery. This spring, Collins launches a seven-week Western trip that will include the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Collins doesn’t plan to give up her magical Saint Rita’s anytime soon. Still, five years ago she began making plans for what she calls “sensible aging.”

“I really couldn’t imagine aging comfortably in Eureka,” she says, and began looking around on bookstore jaunts for a nonprofit retirement community that would allow her to walk to shops or a library—with room to park the bookstore.

Roland Park Place fit all her criteria. She waited a year and a half for an apartment to come open, and her delight in meeting people is paying dividends.

On a walk down the hall just three weeks after she moved in last October, she already knew several people by name. And neighbors were knocking on her door with bags of books.

This year we celebrate our 50th Best of Baltimore issue—our biggest and boldest yet. Subscribe before 6/20 to guarantee your copy commemorating this milestone anniversary. 

ue and Thom Rinker, age 74 and 75 respectively, were feeling very isolated in their condo in Baltimore County. “We were ready for a change,” says Sue.
“My mother had lived at a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) for 20 years and some of our friends had moved to that type of community. We really liked what a CCRC offered.”

According to seniorliving.org, a CCRC (also known as a Life Plan Community) delivers independent living and an amenity-rich lifestyle with access to onsite, higher-level care should a resident’s medical needs progress. The levels of care usually include independent, assisted, memory care, and skilled nursing as well as rehabilitation therapy on the campus. This continuum of care ensures residents that they have the comfort of remaining in the place they call home and the peace of mind that comes from knowing their future care is figured out.

“We wanted a CCRC so our two children who live in the area wouldn’t be burdened with our future healthcare,” Sue continues. “But for now, we are healthy and wanted lots of great amenities.” The Rinkers, who live at Blakehurst in Towson, say that it’s like living at a five-star resort.

Robin Somers, CEO of Broadmead, a Life Plan Community in Cockeysville, says, “Today we are seeing many of our residents coming in younger. Rather than in their 80s, they come in their 70s.”

Elizabeth O’Conner, director of marketing and sales at Blakehurst, adds that not only are residents younger, “they are very active.”

Without the drudgery of home maintenance, doing daily chores like cleaning and meal planning, and even trying to get the COVID-19 vaccine booster, there’s time for residents to be physically active and explore myriad intellectual and cultural opportunities. But for those who prefer to spend time alone or with a few friends, there’s that too.

A fitness center ranks high on must-have lists for incoming residents. In many CCRCs, residents will find state-of-the-art equipment, classes including yoga, tai chi, and aerobics, and a heated pool. Sometimes there’s even a juice bar and a spa for manicures, pedicures, and massages. Parker Williamson, 81, is an avid sailor who lives at BayWoods of Annapolis, a waterfront community. He says, “I exercise every other day, but don’t like group classes, so the personal trainer worked up a routine just for me.”

“Today’s residents want individualization,” remarks Somers.

Sharon Krulak, 79, is a new resident at Blakehurst. She’s also an artist who works in mixed-media. When the Krulaks were looking at Blakehurst, she told O’Connor, “I need a room to do my art. And they made it happen.”

At Broadmead, two residents who were trained and experienced beekeepers had a conversation with the Broadmead executive director, and the Broadmead Apiary was established in 2013. Today, there is a group of six residents who are involved. Throughout the year they inspect the beehives, feed the bees sugar syrup, and harvest the honey into jars for sale.

Usually, CCRCs have councils, committees, and their own governing body where residents can make things happen. “At Blakehurst we have 43 residential-run committees,” says Sue Rinker. “Thom is on the residents’ board and I’m on the refurbishing and jigsaw committees.”

CCRCs have concerts, guest speakers, and some arrange continuing education through Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (university-based education specifically for people 50 and older) or nearby universities. At Broadmead, they recognize artists within their community and in the greater Baltimore vicinity by having exhibits, programs, and educational outreach. This April, the Broadmead Art Council will host an exhibit of the works of Herman Maril, a Baltimore native known for painting seascapes, interiors, and landscapes. These exhibits and lectures will be open to the greater community.

Other amenities usually include endless clubs, beautiful walking trails, gardens where residents can plant vegetables and flowers, a movie theater, a library, woodworking, a beauty salon and barber shop, card and poker rooms, billiards, bocce, and a resident computer and business center. Some communities have a croquet court, a putting green, and pickleball. As most CCRCs welcome your four-legged family members, there are even dog parks. And in keeping with making life effortless, some places will deliver your incoming packages right to your door. The list of concierge services goes on, including scheduled transportation to grocery stores, shops and more. At Edenwald, a CCRC in Towson, a bus transports residents to cultural events and attractions like the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerhoff, a string quartet at Shriver Hall, and plays.

Cuisine plays an important part in daily life. The number of dining venues depends on the CCRC and so do the plans they offer. Many have a grill, café, bar, and outdoor dining. CCRCs pride themselves on having an excellent chef, offering plenty of choices on the menu, high quality ingredients, and dining experiences resembling a great restaurant.

In this area, all CCRCs are close to vibrant cities—Annapolis, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. As Parker Williamson, resident at BayWoods, says with a laugh, “What’s great is we can visit Baltimore and D.C. and take advantage of all they have to offer, but we don’t have to live there.”

The Guide to Regional Continuing Care Facilities & Senior Resources

ASBURY METHODIST VILLAGE
201 Russell Ave.
Gaithersburg, MD 20877
(301) 216-4001
asbury.org/asbury-methodist-village

ASBURY-SOLOMONS ISLAND
11100 Asbury Circle
Solomons, MD 20688
(410) 394-3000
asbury.org/asbury-solomons

BAYLEIGH CHASE
501 Dutchmans Lane
Easton, MD 21601
(410) 657-4900
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/bayleigh-chase-easton

BAYWOODS OF ANNAPOLIS
7101 Bay Front Drive
Annapolis, MD 21403
(410) 268-9222
baywoodsofannapolis.com

BEDFORD COURT
3701 International Drive
Silver Spring, MD 20906
(301) 598-2900
sunriseseniorliving.com/communities/bedford

BLAKEHURST
1055 W. Joppa Road
Towson, MD 21204
(410) 296-2900
blakehurstlcs.com

BRIGHTVIEW SENIOR LIVING
Multiple locations
(888) 566-8854
brightviewseniorliving.com

BROADMEAD
13801 York Road
Cockeysville, MD 21030
(410) 527-1900
www.broadmead.org

BROOKE GROVE
18100 Slade School Road
Sandy Spring, MD 20860
(301) 924-2811
www.bgf.org

BUCKINGHAM’S CHOICE
3200 Baker Circle
Adamstown, MD 21710
(301) 804-2159
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/buckinghams-choice-adamstown

CARROLL LUTHERAN VILLAGE
300 St. Luke Circle
Westminster, MD 21158
(410) 848-0090
clvillage.org

CHARLESTOWN RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
715 Maiden Choice Lane
Catonsville, MD 21228
(410) 405-7683
ericksonseniorliving.com/charlestown

COLLINGTON EPISCOPAL LIFE CARE COMMUNITY
10450 Lottsford Road
Mitchellville, MD 20721
(301) 925-9610
collington.kendal.org

EDENWALD
800 Southerly Road
Towson, MD 21286
(410) 339-6000
edenwald.org

ELIZABETH COONEY CARE NETWORK
1107 Kenilworth Drive, Ste. 200
Towson, MD 21204
(410) 323-1700
Elizabethcooneyagency.com

FAHRNEY-KEEDY
8507 Mapleville Road
Boonsboro, MD 21713-1818
(301) 733-6284
fkhv.org

FAIRHAVEN
7200 Third Ave.
Sykesville, MD 21784
(410) 892-1946
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/fairhaven-sykesville

FRIENDS HOUSE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
17340 Quaker Lane
Sandy Spring, MD 20860
(301) 924-5100
friendshouse.com

GINGER COVE ANNAPOLIS LIFE CARE
4000 River Crescent Drive
Annapolis, MD 21401
(410) 266-7300
gingercove.com

GLEN MEADOWS RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
11630 Glen Arm Road
Glen Arm, MD 21057
(410) 592-5310
presbyterianseniorliving.org/glen-meadows-retirement-community

GOODWILL RETIREMENT VILLAGE
891 Dorsey Hotel Road
Grantsville, MD 21536
(301) 895-5194
goodwillhome.org

HARMONY AT WALDORF
11239 Berry Road
Waldorf, MD 20603
(240) 270-2759
harmonyseniorservices.com/senior-living/md/waldorf/berry-road

HERON POINT OF CHESTERTOWN
501 Campus Ave.
Chestertown, MD 21620
(443) 214-3605
actsretirement.org/communities/maryland/heron-point-of-chestertown

HOMEWOOD AT FREDERICK
7407 Willow Road
Frederick, MD 21702
(301) 644-5600
homewoodfrederick.com

HOMEWOOD AT WILLIAMSPORT
16505 Virginia Ave.
Williamsport, MD 21795
(301) 582-1472
homewoodwilliamsport.com

INGLESIDE AT KING FARM
701 King Farm Blvd.
Rockville, Maryland 20850
(240) 557-8791
inglesideonline.org/ingleside-king-farm

LEISURE CARE: THE LANDING OF SILVER SPRINGS
13908 New Hampshire Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(301) 388-7700
leisurecare.com/our-communities/landing-of-silver-spring

LUTHERAN VILLAGE AT MILLER’S GRANT
9000 Fathers Legacy
Ellicott City, MD 21042
(410) 465-2005
millersgrant.org

MAPLEWOOD PARK PLACE
9707 Old Georgetown Road
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 571-7444
maplewoodparkplace.com

MARYLAND MASONIC HOMES
300 International Circle
Cockeysville, MD 21030
(410) 527-1111
mdmasonichomes.com

MERCY RIDGE
2525 Pot Spring Road
Timonium, MD 21093
(410) 561-0200
mercyridge.com

NORTH OAKS
725 Mount Wilson Lane
Pikesville, MD 21208
(410) 484-7300
northoaksseniorliving.com

RIDERWOOD VILLAGE
3140 Gracefield Road
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(301) 701-4076
ericksonseniorliving.com/riderwood

ROLAND PARK PLACE
830 W. 40th St.
Baltimore, MD 21211
(410) 243-5700
rolandparkplace.org

THE RESIDENCES AT VANTAGE POINT
5400 Vantage Point Road
Columbia, MD 21044
(410) 964-5454
vantagepointresidences.org

OAK CREST VILLAGE
8800 Walther Blvd.
Parkville, MD 21234
(410) 405-7419
ericksonseniorliving.com/oak-crest

ORTHOPAEDIC ASSOCIATES OF CENTRAL MARYLAND
Six locations in the area
(410) 644-1880
mdbonedocs.com

RECORD STREET HOME–HOME OF THE AGED
115 Record St.
Frederick, MD 21701
(301) 663-6822
recordstreethome.org

THE VILLAGE AT AUGSBURG
6811 Campfield Road
Baltimore, MD 21207
(410) 834-4143
thevillageataugsburg.org

THE VILLAGE AT ROCKVILLE
9701 Veirs Drive
Rockville, MD 20850
(301) 424-9560
thevillageatrockville.org

WECARE
1852 Reisterstown Road
Pikesville, MD 21208
(410) 602-3993
wecarepds.com

WILLOW VALLEY
600 Willow Valley Sq.
Lancaster, PA 17602
(717) 464-6800
willowvalleycommunities.org

Loretta Schaeffer took her nightly meals in Roland Park Place’s dining room for granted. Since moving into the continuing care retirement community (CCRC) nearly two years ago, the 84-year-old had gotten into the routine of eating breakfast and lunch in her apartment, and then joining fellow residents for dinner.

Moving out of the four-story home she and her late husband shared in Washington, D.C. and into the Roland Park community had been difficult for Schaeffer, and chatting with other seniors at the dinner table every night helped her feel less lonely in this unfamiliar city.

So when Roland Park Place announced in mid-March that, in order to protect its residents and staff from the rapidly spreading coronavirus, it was closing its doors to visitors as well as cancelling all group gatherings, Schaeffer was devastated.

“When they closed the dining areas, that fell on me like a ton of bricks,” she says. “I never realized how important those dinners were to me until now.”

Within the past few weeks, COVID-19, which has proven especially dangerous to the elderly and immunocompromised, has ravaged senior-living communities, with confirmed cases reported in more than 90 nursing homes and long-term care centers across the state. In early April, Gov. Larry Hogan announced the formation of “strike teams” that will bring triage, emergency care, and equipment to overburdened nursing homes to help them fight back against the outbreak that has infected nearly 7,000 people in Maryland.

But while state and health officials scramble to save the elderly residents who have contracted the novel virus and protect those who haven’t, the seniors quarantined inside local care communities, as well as their families and staff members, are struggling to make sense of this new, isolated reality.

“Life has completely changed, and, no matter your age, we are all worried and frustrated,” Schaeffer says. “I think clamping down on visitors and activities early has protected [Roland Park Place] so far, but the terrible effect is that it’s lonely and sad and scary.”

After the Maryland Department of Health issued a recommendation for long-term and continuing care communities to start implementing infection control measures, the majority of the state’s senior-care centers did just that. One by one, communities began restricting visitation, calling off group activities, adding sanitizing stations, and, in some instances, monitoring the temperatures of residents and staff.

Roland Park Place President Sam Guedoaur says the pressure to find and implement new safety measures—such as RPP’s new policy of limiting elevator rides to two people—is constant. “Every single day we come up with a new way to minimize the spread of the virus,” Guedoaur says. “We have to be diligent and continue to have strict measures to keep the residents and staff safe.”

And with families unable to visit their loved ones, the burden has fallen on the community’s staff members to care for nursing-home residents through this outbreak.

“The residents, the families, and the staff are really counting on each other to stay safe and healthy,” says Amber Knabe, the director of sales and marketing at Symphony Manor Assisted Living. “With how contagious everything is, it may be inevitable that the virus comes through [here], but if it does, we want to know that our team did everything possible to keep our families safe.”

Although most residents and their families understand why these social-distancing directives are necessary, not knowing when they’ll see their loved ones again has been a hard pill to swallow. Darlene Schafer, whose mother, Patricia, lives at Brightview Perry Hall, says that even though she’s confident that the independent-living facility is making appropriate safety precautions, it’s impossible not to worry.

“The reality is that I don’t know when I’m going to see my mother again,” says the Anne Arundel County resident. “We don’t know when this will end or when it’ll be safe to spend time with her again, so this is our new normal.”

To keep residents and their families connected during this lockdown period, local CCRC’s have had to get creative. Some communities have asked staff members to become de-facto technicians for residents who need help setting up Facetime and Zoom, while others, such as Springwell Senior Living Community in Mt. Washington, coordinated with less-able residents and their families to hold regular video calls on the center’s iPads.

When the staff at Symphony Manor realized how long it could be before residents can interact with their families again, the Roland Park community converted two of its lobby windows into “window visit stations.” At a designated time, residents can sit on their side of the glass—adorned with posters that read “We’re All in This Together!”—and wave to their loved ones seated on chairs in the grass.

“Some families have even made signs and stood on the front lawn so that their relatives can see them,” Knabe says. “We want [the residents] to know that people are thinking of them.”

And while the CCRC’s have had to put their scheduled programming on hold, many places have pivoted their activities in hopes of keeping residents active and engaged. Instead of game nights in the recreation room, residents play in their doorways against people down the hall. In place of a jam-packed fitness class, residents attend classes limited to five people. Some centers have even started initiatives inspired by the pandemic, such as a hand-washing poster competition, which Schaeffer entered with a rhyming poem about proper scrubbing technique.

When Darren McDonnell learned that Roland Park Place could no longer bring in entertainment for the residents due to the shutdown, the marketing associate decided to fill in. On St. Patrick’s Day, McDonnell, a longtime entertainer, brought a sound system into the facility’s courtyard and started singing, and it didn’t take long before residents went out onto their balconies to watch the performance. Now, by popular demand, McDonnell performs everything from Frank Sinatra classics to Broadway tunes twice a week, encouraging residents to send in song requests.

“It’s something that I can do to help the residents stay connected and give them something to look forward to,” McDonnell says.” I hope it lifts their spirits a little bit.”

As the weeks of quarantine turn into months, there’s still so much uncertainty surrounding what the next phase of the coronavirus outbreak will look like for nursing home residents and staff members. Sue Gelston, whose mother, Brenda, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and lives in Springwell’s memory care unit, says that she anticipates the restrictions on senior-living communities will last longer than the state’s stay-at-home directives.

“Whenever the day comes when stores start to reopen and things start to go back to normal, the unit that my mom is in is still not going to be the same,” Gelston says. “The people there are so compromised that I think they will have to keep a lot of these procedures in place, even if the state says they can open the doors again.”

Until Schaeffer can hug her daughters or grandchildren again, she’s trying to stay motivated and busy. She talks with her family daily, practices her homework for her weekly balance class (35 sit-stands, with no hands), and exercises by climbing her building’s stairs while wearing a mask. But she says it’s hard to be positive when so many things, including the little things she took for granted, will be different when this is all over.

“I’m not worried about me or my savings—I’m worried about the world,” she says. “My children, my grandchildren, their future. I’m worried about that.”