THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 24, 1995 TAG: 9506240337
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
For 16 years, all Paul Buthi had to remember his family by was a set of faded photographs, their surfaces sticky from years of handling.
For 16 years he would stare at those pictures, knowing the name of every person in them, and cry that he wanted to go home.
On Friday, he went home.
Thanks to the efforts of a Chesapeake social worker who couldn't get the image of an old man pining away for his New Jersey home out of her mind, Buthi, 70, boarded a USAir plane bound for Newark and a family he knew only from pictures.
It was October 1994 when Social Services Department employee Gerri Seid (pronounced ``said''), who screens Medicaid recipients for nursing homes, received the case file on Buthi. The file was thin, and gave no hint of the lonely world of group homes and Veterans Affairs hospitals in which Buthi had lived for the previous 15 years.
Buthi was born in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. ``Cold, it was so cold,'' he remembers. He was 5 years old when he, his three siblings and his parents moved to a farm in New Jersey.
His life was a succession of odd jobs, punctuated by a three-year stint in the Army from 1949 to 1952. It was during that Army hitch that he started having bad headaches. They eventually contributed to his discharge and worsened over the years until, sometime in the early 1970s, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He spent several years in a VA hospital in New Jersey until his condition deteriorated to the point that he needed 24-hour care.
Officials gave him a choice of three VA hospitals - one in upstate New York, another in West Virginia, or one in Hampton. He chose Hampton because it was close to the water. But he never imagined it would mean a 16-year exile from his family.
During those years, he moved several times. From the hospital to a variety of homes for adults and boarding houses, and finally to Autumn Care Nursing Home in Chesapeake.
Occasionally, he'd receive a package, a card or a letter from a sister in New Jersey or a niece in Florida. Much of the rest of his family had died.
But it was mostly a one-sided correspondence, because severe arthritis meant Buthi couldn't write letters himself.
By the time he met Seid, his possessions consisted primarily of one small suitcase and a tin box, about the size of a large envelope. In that box was all he had left of his life - his discharge papers, his photos, a couple of old bills and an old checkbook.
``I want to go home,'' he told Seid when they met, as he'd told nearly every authority figure he'd met over the years.
But this time, someone listened.
Seid was caught by the detail with which Buthi spoke of his family, by the longing in Buthi's voice and by the tears that would overcome him every time he thought of home.
Typically, once Seid finished a screening and placed a person in a nursing home, her contact with the resident ended. But this time, she couldn't let go.
She found a phone number for Buthi's sister in New Jersey, and from her, one for a niece who also lived there. They were both thrilled to hear Buthi was alive. That his disease was controlled by medication. That he could communicate. And that he wanted to go home.
Seid researched nursing homes in New Jersey and found one that would accept Buthi. Then she began the arduous task of filling out paperwork and cutting through red tape to move him to New Jersey.
In the six months it took to arrange the transfer, she visited Buthi nearly every week, bringing bags of the chocolate bars he loved. When he had to be hospitalized for tests, she kept his tin box safe on her desk. And this week, when the time came for him to leave, she pulled together a shopping bag of gaily wrapped gifts to see him into his new home.
``He just tugged at my heart strings because I can understand a person's desire to return home,'' Seid said. ``Especially when you get to his age.''
Seid's actions are not unusual for her, said her boss, Susan VanHorn. The Social Services Department has a pile of letters and cards the staff calls ``Gerri's fan mail,'' written by clients and family members she's worked with.
``She really goes the extra mile,'' VanHorn said.
Seid brushes aside such talk. She makes sure everyone knows that Buthi's transfer was not only her doing, but Autumn Care's, too.
But the nurse aide from Autumn Care who helped Seid get Buthi to the airport Friday knew better.
``You just made some Brownie points up there,'' said Carol Guthrie, pointing heavenward. She put her arm around Seid, who was crying after watching Buthi disappear into the plane.
``You don't see that very often,'' Guthrie said. ``You just don't see it that someone from a nursing home gets to go home.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by MORT FRYMAN, Staff
``He just tugged at my heart strings''
Paul Buthi greets one of the well-wishers who stopped by to say
goodbye on Friday before he boarded a plane to fly to New Jersey.
Buthi...and social worker Gerry Seid, right
by CNB