About the Author: Tina Raybold is the Corporate Director of Public Relations for the Masonic Villages of Pennsylvania
This morning, as I drove to work, I felt a huge surge of pride. As the sun rose over our pristine campus, I was reminded of how much it’s grown over the past 20 years since I began working at Masonic Village.
But I had a more personal reason for feeling so emotional. Riding beside me was my oldest daughter.
Fourteen years ago, she rode behind me in her car seat as I played Disney sing-along tunes on our way to drop her off at the child care center on the campus.
Today, she was wearing her Farm Market t-shirt, and I was dropping her off to work at the same place where she used to beg for a red plastic apple filled with home-made cider.
Two days from now, I’ll drop her off at the Masonic Health Care Center, where she will spend the morning volunteering to help residents. She’s very comfortable working with our elders, whom she used to call “grandmas and grandpas” when she visited as a preschooler to make crafts, sing and enjoy special snacks. She vaguely remembers visiting her grandmother and great-grandmother when they received care and resided there
In a sense, my daughter grew up here; it’s been her second home all her life.
As a child, she learned her ABCs and 123s through hands-on play in a beautiful, secure environment. She visited the ponds, walked hand-in-hand with her friends on the numerous paths to the train station, through the formal gardens, to picnics in the Veterans Grove and to the Brossman Pool where she loved to swim.
A few years from now, she dreams of having her picture taken in the formal gardens before prom.
But for now, she’s focusing on giving back for all the things this wonderful place has given her. And she continues to learn – about how to work a register, stock shelves and serve the public, as well as about numerous health care careers.
This truly is a special place – to grow, to learn and to give back. My daughter has learned lessons here she’d never find in a textbook, but that will guide her for the rest of her life. And I’m eternally grateful.
