Jean Homrighausen still remembers feeling “awe, shock, joy and humility” when the Alliance for Children and Families honored her with its national “Spirit of the Alliance Award” back in 2013. But the case manager/therapist at Cleveland’s Beech Brook Center felt equally humbled when a young client called her his “Outstanding Gangsta Grandmother.”
Both are signs of the deep respect and affection felt for the woman who dresses in bright colors that accessorize a brighter smile and is known for her gritty patience in working with the most challenging clients.
“One of the gifts God’s given me,” she said, “is never to give up.”
“Ms. H,” as she is known, likely inherited that trait from her father, the Rev. Tom B. Homrighausen, a 1938 Wittenberg graduate and a Lutheran pastor so devoted to the ministry that, as a child, Jean thought he lived at church.
On a visit to a woman suffering from equally severe arthritis and mental illness in a state hospital near Massillon, Ohio, she watched as her Daddy lifted a “tiny, frail, unattractive” body on to his lap, “looked into her daunting eyes, and saw beyond the trauma and ugliness to a person deserving of dignity, care, respect and love.”
During a professional life treating young clients so disturbed and violent that many cannot control their bladders and bowels, much less their behavior, her father inspired her to “make an imprint” on lives “riddled with almost unspeakable tragedies, horrific abuse (and) sorrows.”
Enduring their sufferings with them is “kind of like when you go through a tunnel,” she explained. “If you look either way you could crash, so I keep looking ahead.”
When accepting the “Spirit of the Alliance Award,” Homrighausen showed a faith-based spirit of defiance as well.
“In our fast-paced, technologically entrenched, business-driven environment, where the treatment and care of those who are cast aside, wounded and forgotten is buried in paperwork, financial shrinkage and many other frustrating barriers,” she said, “I still stand Old School.”
Her award, like the honorary doctorate Wittenberg awarded her father in 1963, has its roots in his belief, which Homrighausen still professes: “God doesn’t give up on us -- and Christ went all the way to the cross.”
With unshakable faith, Ms. H believes she’s doing sacred work grounded in the same enduring love that sustains her and gives her clients hope, as it did the woman in her father’s arms.
“This relationship-building is the only way to transformation and healing,” she said.
That’s Old School.
