Journey to life, stories to tell
Bridgman, MI- Each of our lives is like a book with many chapters. When reading a book, we sometimes skip to the final chapter to see how it ends.
In life, however, there is no skipping ahead. Each new chapter is uniquely intertwined with the previous chapters.
Ten years ago, I was finishing off several chapters of a rising crescendo in my life, directly linked to my career.
After serving as CEO at a hospital in Louisiana, I spent a decade as the longest-tenured CEO at the Adventist Hospital in Brunswick, Maine. This was a wonderful chapter of my life.
A bucket-list desire for overseas service led me to the Guam SDA Clinic, where I became CEO in 2012. Although Guam is a U.S. territory, its tropical location gives it the feel of a foreign paradise. Serving at the clinic was an enjoyable chapter of my life.
In 2015, I started a new chapter as interim CEO of Guam Memorial Hospital. This chapter began drawing to a close at 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 11, 2016. I received a phone call that morning from the GMH public relations director, telling me that I was the headline in Guam's daily newspapers, reporting a salacious tale about me. I knew that had come from those in the hospital and the governor's office who desperately wanted to get rid of me. Within hours, I was out as CEO, ending the chapter of my life at the hospital in Guam.
I returned to the mainland to begin my next chapter and, foolishly, thought that my background, job skills and healthcare experience could help me find a job in the industry where I had successfully worked for three and a half decades.Thanks to Google and the gossipy side of human nature, no one wanted to hire me.
To pay the rent, I signed on as an Uber driver in Portland, Maine, a job that only required a cell phone, a driver's license and a vehicle with gas in the tank.
I quickly learned to navigate the Uber App and began experiencing some uniquely wonderful rides. Some riders even became friends. There was Deepak, a BBC and NPR journalist, and Duane and Michele from my old stomping grounds in the 313. All are great friends to this day.
In 2017, I was invited back to Guam to help celebrate the SDA Clinic anniversary. At that time, my good friend Meilou asked me to contact the Pacific Island Times.
In early 2018, the Pacific Island Times interviewed me and published my story, revealing what had really caused the demise of my career at GMH.
Shortly after my story was published, a gentleman named Troy Torres came forward and told the Guam Daily Post that he had managed the PR campaign in the governor's office to get rid of me. This was the boldest act of courage I had ever seen. What character did this take to publicly admit you had wrongly and intentionally hurt someone's career?
My Uber experiences became incredibly fascinating to me, inspiring me to write stories about them. I began sending these stories via email to a number of people, including Mar-Vic, who subsequently invited me to contribute a monthly column about my experiences and the life lessons I had acquired.
Through all these difficult times, my wife Sharon never lost faith in me. Her support for me was unwavering. In 2018, however, she was diagnosed with dementia. As her condition advanced, I became her full-time caregiver, which prompted me to stop driving with Uber in 2020.
In 2022, I reconnected with Tim Dockerty, CEO of Dockerty Healthcare, in Michigan. The Dockerty family had been friends with my family. My mother had been one of the first residents at their Woodland Terrace Assisted Living community in Bridgman, MI.
During our conversations, Tim learned about my wife's dementia and I learned about the staffing shortage at Dockerty Healthcare. Their staffing needs were so severe that they were at risk of denying service to seniors in need at their eight locations in Western Michigan.
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I suggested recruiting senior living attendants from Guam. The recruiting trip was successful. Troy Torres, who now runs Kandit News, helped with the job fair announcement.
One of the applicants was Vincent, who had experience recruiting young people in the Mariana Islands for senior living positions in the U.S. Tim hired him on the spot. Within two weeks, Devon and two other young people were in Bridgman working full-time, helping seniors at Woodland Terrace with the basics of daily living.
As I had been praying for a pathway to help manage Sharon's dementia, the door opened for us to move to an Independent Living apartment at Woodland Terrace in Bridgman in the later part of 2022. Here, advanced memory care services would be available when needed.
In May 2024, Sharon's dementia progressed to the point where advanced memory care services were needed. She was admitted to Lilac Court, the Memory Care Unit on the campus of Woodland Terrace.
A caregiver at Lilac Court who successfully and lovingly assisted with Sharon's transition to memory care was Lani, from Guam. Sharon is now tenderly cared for by the staff, including Nick, Teisha, Lee, and Showmy from the Northern Mariana Islands. How neat is that!
This year the Pacific Island Times is celebrating its 10th anniversary. It has helped me develop my writing skills and has had a real, positive impact on my life.
Some chapters of my life have not been written. However, the best chapter so far is the one "From CEO To Uber Driver."
Theodore Lewis is the former CEO of Guam Memorial Hospital and has a healthcare consulting business in Bridgman, MI. He is collecting stories about lessons learned in life and can be reached at theodorelewis@yahoo.com.
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