Pioneers From the Home’s Early Days
You could say that Esther Kipple got in on the ground floor in October 1952. When the first residents checked into the “Church of the Brethren Home” (as Cross Keys Village was known), she was already there to greet and care for them. Two years later, Opal Millhimes also joined the Brethren Home staff, which numbered 15 at most. The two teenage workers were nursing aides. Recently, they sat down to talk about those early days, when “the Home” moved into the former Cross Keys Hotel – after the original farmhouse facility in Huntsdale, near Carlisle, burned down in 1951. Their reminiscences are positive after all these years, as evidenced by the fact that both ladies and their husbands are on the CKV wait list for Residential Living.
The fathers of both Esther and Opal encouraged their daughters to consider working at the new Brethren Home in Cross Keys. “I was here for about a week before any of the patients came,” Esther said. Her father, Rev. Henry Miller, had been appointed by the Church of the Brethren district to supervise the hotel’s conversion into a nursing home. “I didn’t know whether I was going to stay,” she recalls, “but in the end I did.”
“I had graduated,” Opal confides, “and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I had been thinking about going to college, but my Dad kept talking about the talented supervisor, Esther Pentz. As a newly married young woman I needed a job, and eventually I found the right one at Cross Keys.”
The memories flow back now. Those were the days when night shift hand-rolled cotton balls and boiled needles for re-use! Neither lady will ever forget “Aunt” Jenny Fritz, an original resident who had come from Huntsdale and was the first at Cross Keys to celebrate her 100th birthday. Healthcare workers sometimes lived where they worked in those days. Kipple lived in an upstairs room of the home until it was needed for a resident. At that point, the Home also rented rooms over the gas station across the street (where Sheetz is located today), and she lived there for years.
Both women eventually became LPNs and moved into supervisory positions at Cross Keys. “The nurse’s station was the old hotel’s front desk,” Opal recalls. That included a vintage safe, and she remembers the effort to memorize the tricky combination so she could lock cash payments away for the night. Volunteers were already the heart of Cross Keys. While church members regularly canned goods and provided other foodstuffs, what came out of the kitchen every day was the responsibility of staff members. “Most of the cooks were Brethren ladies who were very good cooks,” Opal chuckles, adding “…wonderful sugar cookies. The residents ate well.” Employees were given lunch at that time, so they ate well, too.
Both women took time off from employment at Cross Keys to raise families, and Millhimes also worked as a hospital nurse, but each ended up spending considerable time caring for residents at the old hotel and the modern facilities that came later. Kipple retired in 2000, nearly 50 years after that significant day in 1952. As for Esther Pentz, who supervised both Esther Kipple and Opal Millhimes when they started working, she is no longer with us but her name was given to one of our new Bridgewater Landing floor plans.
Esther Kipple remained quite visible at Cross Keys after retirement. For 20 years she accompanied the Village Choir and its Christmas and Easter cantatas, and she still is one of the organists for the Faith Community services on Sundays, more than 70 years after her involvement began at “the Home.” Opal Milhimes’ career at Cross Keys spanned decades, with breaks for family, education, and other jobs. Still, she remains a regular presence. “Hardly any time goes by that I’m not there,” she laughs. Both women note that their family members who lived at Cross Keys were extremely happy, which played a role in their joining the wait list. “My parents really liked it here,” Esther shares. “The neighbors really look after you.” “We researched all over the place,” Opal adds, “but this is the best place.”
Frank Buhrman
Retired CKV Team Member / Official CKV Volunteer-Historian