Photo by Joanne Beck
Talk about dedication — as Kathy Panepento worked toward getting a comfort care home on its feet, one of its volunteer board members, Cindy Lowder, began alongside her before one was even established.
Lowder recalled how, when she was an Avon representative selling her cosmetics line, Panepento would fill her in on the pursuit for that perfect place to fill the void for a suitable hospice-type home.
“She had found the house, and she took me there one day. And she walked me through it, and I looked at it. And I looked at her, and I said, ‘You’ve got to be crazy girl. How are you ever going to get this house livable?’ It was really quite the disaster because it had been let go for quite a few years,” Lowder said to The Batavian. “But she had her dream, and she said I think we can make this work, we can make this work. And she certainly did. I mean, the house is a lovely, peaceful place now. You would never know, going through it now, what it looked like 20 — how many years? 25, 26 years?”
Not only was Lowder’s attention captured all those years ago, but so too was her heart, and she jumped on board, literally, for the next 16 years.
Even before they had the house, the first board meeting was in February of 1996, and fundraising began immediately for the legal fees to become incorporated and tax-exempt. A few months later, the board acquired a vacant home, formerly the manse for the Batavia First Presbyterian Church at 11 Liberty St., for a dollar a month rent. The church leadership had contemplated tearing the place down to make the parking lot bigger but believed in the Crossroads mission enough to make the generous offering.
Community donations of volunteer labor, including twice from local prisons, materials, services, furnishings, gardening supplies and green thumbs, remodeling, and ongoing fundraisers helped to renovate the house and grounds.
Staff was hired, volunteers were trained, the house was named, marketing had begun, and after enough funds were raised to open the doors and provide services two years later, Crossroads House accepted the first resident on Jan. 7, 1998.
“We now can provide the home-like setting to the dying while the staff and volunteers become the dying individual’s surrogate extended family in an atmosphere of love and support 24 hours a day,” Panepento said. “We are truly blessed and are deeply thankful for having such a supportive community, caring professional staff, dedicated selfless volunteers and an active working board of directors. Without all of these, Crossroads House would not be. Thank you to all of you who made my dream a reality.”
Throughout that time, there were countless fundraisers as that “disaster” turned into a warm and inviting home and haven for hundreds of terminally ill people to live out their remaining time with dignity and, oftentimes, fun, cookies, laughter, healing tears, and hugs.
After eight or so years at the nonprofit, Lowder’s own mother became a resident, which, she said, added another level of meaning to how people care and are cared for at 11 Liberty St. in Batavia.
“I always knew from a business standpoint what an asset Crossroads House was, but I learned from a very personal standpoint when my own mother passed there,” she said. “I got to be the daughter again and take take a break from the caretaker role. That is huge; that’s the best part about Crossroads House.”
Panepento’s vision reached a quarter-century marker for the site in January 2023 that she hadn’t imagined when the doors first opened, she said, and there’s a newly hired director, Tracy Ford, that she feels confident about. Throw in the fact that her husband Frank is also retiring this year — on the same day of June 28 along with his wife — and she’s actually able to let go of this place she’s held dear the last 25 years.
“I hope she does retire and let herself enjoy life. She’s such a hard worker,” Lowder said. “I think it’s going to be hard for her to distance herself from the caretaker role; it’s just her fabric. She laid down the groundwork. The house is in a good position: she has a phenomenal director. Tracy was the right person at the right time and the right place.”
Lowder loved her time on the board and believes “we made a lot of leaps and bounds” during it, she said. She wasn’t alone in thinking fondly about those early days of Crossroads. Betty James, a registered nurse, met Panepento seven years before the house was established.
“We were drawn together as good friends,” James said. “She’s a great teacher, she opened the door for me, I found my passion with hospice.”
James said that to someone who had a facial reaction of confusion about why anyone would want to work in a field of dying people. “People can’t get their head around it,” she said. “It isn't like you're happy they're dying. They don't understand that. It's just so fulfilling, and you get so close to the people. Because life is condensed at that time, they’d love to talk to somebody who cares and opens up. Sometimes they’re more comfortable talking to the staff rather than their family because they don’t want to make them cray or unhappy. I’ve got those memories, but I am not that involved in it anymore.”
James was not only present when the nonprofit was founded but also experienced divine intervention when the name Crossroads House was whispered in her ear during a lunch meeting.
Nobody else heard it, mind you, which prompts James to refer to it as a “God wink,” but the name seemed befitting of the mission and rang true in a verse of Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord, stop at the crossroads and look around you. Ask for the ancient paths, where the good ways, and walk in it. You will find rest for your souls.”
And the next two and a half decades and hundreds or thousands of volunteers and staff ever since have provided that rest for the souls that have stopped at the house.
So, what is next for Panepento?
“When growing up, I was debating whether to be a nurse or a truck driver,” she said. “And I became a nurse, but you know what, I think in my retirement, I’m gonna get my CDL license because I go and have surgeries at Cleveland Clinic and a hospital in New York City because of my rare connective tissue disorder. And after having 31 surgeries, I have to go to top-notch places for this, and many of them have these shuttle buses that go from the different areas within the main clinic … I’ve always loved driving; it’s very relaxing for me. And I said, I could do that in my retirement, and my husband goes, ‘yeah, that’s for sure. They’ll grab you because you’re a nurse.’”
On the more romantic side, she and Frank have a place at Fawn Lake in Bliss, where they plan to swim, walk, and recoup some lost time from busyness. A technology teacher at Batavia Middle School, Frank plans to retire right along with his wife on June 28, she said.
She will stay on with Crossroads as a consultant and trainer for the end-of-life doula program but has forewarned new Director Tracy Ford not to call her during the summer. That time will be spent with family, including grandsons Declan, 5, and Easton, 3.
She wants to pursue the interests she’s had little time for, such as photography, researching her ancestry, and activities other than “reading books on death and dying,” she said.
“So we’ll take the boys fishing and they’ve got tents and sleeping bags, and they want to do some camping,” she said. “And my mom is still alive; she’s 87, and so being around for her.”
Can Panepento really put her Crossroads interest on the shelf for at least the summer? It’s going to be a challenge, she said, but the natural Adirondack beauty of Fawn Lake and being a doting Oma and Pop Pop (Grandma and Grandpa), while also getting those grandparents “back into shape,” is pretty good motivation, she said.
Has there been one major accomplishment or the accumulation of people that you have helped that you feel best about?
“I think the accumulation and being the only comfort care home in Genesee County. I guess I take it for granted. I believe that every human being needs a beautiful death at the end. And, people say, ‘Well, look what you did,’ and it's like, but, you know, I had the dream, and I started it, but I have people helping. You know, it says it takes a village, and it does. We have tons of volunteers, I had many staff members that helped bring my dream to fruition. And that it continues, I had no idea we’d get up to 25 years. I just didn't even think that far,” she said. “But now what I'm happy about is bringing the end-of-life doula program in, and we're going into the community to provide end-of-life doulas in the community. And I was hoping to do that. That was one of the things I wanted to do.”
There is one regret: “I wish I would have been able to open up another comfort care home because there's not enough in Genesee County,” she said. “And maybe now, as a consultant and being on the board, we can work towards that, and maybe within five years, we'll have another one.
Photo by Howard Owens
