wfn.org | Organization honors leader for work in elderly care

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March 8, 2004  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
7 E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL{096}

NOTE: This report may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #095.

By Amy Green*
 
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - As a United Methodist leader in care for the
elderly, Howard Washburn was involved in setting up Medicare and other
federal programs that respond to aging-related needs.

In recognition of his work, Washburn received the Olin E. Oeschger Memorial
Award from the United Methodist Association of Health and Welfare Ministries
on March 5. 
 
Washburn, 81, received the award at the association's national conference in
Nashville. The award is named for the first general secretary of the
organization that later became the United Methodist Association of Health and
Welfare Ministries, a network of health and welfare organizations.
 
"Nationally and within the United Methodist Church, Howard Washburn has been
a visionary pioneer in long-term care and has devoted his life toward
improving faith-related long-term care," said the Rev. Mearle Griffith, the
association's president and chief executive officer. 
 
Washburn helped found the American Association of Homes and Services to the
Aging, a national association of nonprofit retirement homes. As a
representative of that organization, he worked with the federal government to
develop Medicare and was twice invited to the White House when President
Johnson signed legislation addressing aging into law. 
 
He served under President Nixon in the 1971 White House Conference on Aging,
and he served on the Housing and Urban Development Council on Housing for the
Elderly. 
 
Washburn also was director of services to the aging for the General Board of
Hospitals and Homes, which would become the United Methodist Association when
the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in
1968.
 
"He was a mentor to a lot of us in the field," said Ken Weber, chairman of
the United Methodist Association board of directors. 
 
As a trustee in the 1950s for the Homes of New Jersey, a multi-community
Methodist retirement complex headquartered in Neptune, N.J., Washburn was a
pioneer in establishing retirement communities that deliver different levels
of care based on patients' needs, Weber said. The communities, which allow
some patients to live more independently than others if they are able, are
commonplace now.
 
Washburn served as pastor of churches in Iowa, New Jersey and Kansas. He also
served four years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II,
participating in seven invasions in the South Pacific.
 
He now lives in Lebanon, Ohio, where he continues to work as a consultant to
the Otterbein Homes retirement community. 
 
"I'm very honored and quite humbled," he said about receiving the award.
"Many of the things that I accomplished happened many years ago. It's an
honor, I think, that (the association) remembered."

# # #

*Green is a freelance journalist based in Nashville, Tenn.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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