Friday, June 20, 2014
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Professional musician Todd Cutshaw looked through his Wizard of Oz songbook before he began playing.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Professional musician Todd Cutshaw played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on the piano during the Family Night event at Shepherd of the Valley Boardman Campus.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Residents and their families filled up Shepherd of the Valley Boardman Campus' dining room for the Family Night event.
By TIM CLEVELAND
To celebrate National Nursing Home Week, Shepherd of the Valley Boardman Campus decided to do a theme called “There’s No Place Like Home,” based on the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”
“It’s National Nursing Home Week and we decided to do ‘There’s No Place Like Home,’ the ‘Wizard of Oz’ theme,” said SOV Boardman administrator Robyn Musgrove. ‘It’s not the normal nursing home theme but we wanted to do something a little bit different and for me personally, this is my favorite movie. I found that it was really fitting to have no place like home theme in a nursing home because this is everybody’s home.”
National Nursing Home Week ran from May 12-16. For May 12, Shepherd and its 75 residents and their families were entertained by professional musician Todd Cutshaw of Warren.
“He’s going to play the score from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and a lot of these folks grew up watching and listening to the music from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” Musgrove said. “I think it’s very fitting for all these folks.”
“Tonight we’re going to be doing some songs from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and everything else will be requests; anything from probably the ‘20s to the ‘70s,” Cutshaw said.
Cutshaw said he is no stranger to playing at Shepherd of the Valley campuses.
“I play here regularly, every couple months,” said Cutshaw, who has been playing professionally since he was in his late teens. “I play at all the Shepherd of the Valleys in the area and probably about 30 nursing homes/assisted living care centers within an hour of here.
“I travel two or three weeks out of the month and play shows in different cities.”
The residents and their families who attended got to eat apple pie and drink tea. Musgrove said the pie tied into “The Wizard of Oz” movie.
“Whenever Dorothy discovered the Tin Man, he’s underneath the apple tree,” she said. “We’re doing a lot with apples this week. We’re eating apple pie tonight, tomorrow for the staff we’re having some sort of an apple dessert baking contest and Wednesday the residents are going to sit around and watch the staff have an apple pie eating contest. Every year it’s tradition here at Shepherd that they do some sort of a eating contest. The residents get to sit around and laugh at the staff as they eat apple pie.”
Each resident also received tiny baskets with cookies inside in the shapes of Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Toto.