Jan. 2010

The warmth inside Hamaspik of Orange County’s Admin/Day Hab building contrasted strongly with the bone-chilling cold outside on Tuesday, December 29, 2009, as David Jolly, Orange County Commissioner of Social Services, paid his first-ever visit to Hamaspik of Orange County.

The Commissioner had been planning to attend the building’s grand opening and ribbon-cutting event two months prior, but was unable to make it due to last-minute concerns.

However, Jolly did express desire to compensate for the missed event—a desire that came to fruition with a personal visit, tour and luncheon as year 2009 came to a close.

The event began at 11:00 a.m. as a select group of staffers from Hamaspik of Orange and Rockland hurriedly dashed from their parked vehicles to escape the biting wind. Commissioner Jolly, who had arrived a few moments earlier, was greeted by Executive Director Meyer Wertheimer at the front entrance, and a walking tour began.

Trailed by a cluster of Hamaspik staffers, Mr. Wertheimer showed the Commissioner around the first floor, where Hamaspik of Orange County maintains its Day Hab program spread across several spacious, brightly lit activity rooms.

The entourage’s first stop was a room in which higher-functioning consumers stopped scrutinizing their math workbooks to greet their visitors. “Hi! I’m David!” said the affable Commissioner, himself an experienced family crisis professional, to one young man. “Nice to meet you!”

The scene was repeated in the next several rooms, where consumers of various levels of function reacted happily and excitedly to their guests, readily displaying their handiwork.

Having popped in on the entire Day Hab wing across the entire first floor, the group then boarded the cavernous elevator to the third floor. The doors slid open to reveal an enormous banner draped across the picture windows overlooking the building’s front walkway.

The banner read: “Hamaspik of Orange County Welcomes David Jolly, Commissioner of Social Services, Orange County, December 29, 2009”. “Oh, wow!” Jolly reacted in pleasant surprise.

The event had originally called for the banner to be mounted outdoors, across and above the building’s main entrance. However, due to the prohibitive outdoor temperatures (the mercury was well below 20 degrees Fahrenheit at the time), the banner and its concomitant group photos were moved to the building’s toasty interior.

After a group of camaraderie-building group shots were snapped, the entourage of 20-plus Hamaspik staffers trickled after the Commissioner and Mr. Wertheimer as they began visiting the third-floor administrative workspaces.

Stepping onto the floor, the Commissioner found himself speaking to Mrs. Perry Zelik, a Hamaspik of Orange County MSC Supervisor. Mrs. Zelik introduced herself and the Coordinators of the Early Intervention Department, and the Commissioner and hosts moved from cubicle to cubicle, striking up several friendly conversations.

In one such dialog, a brief chat about Early Intervention, the Commissioner shared that veteran EI professional Sharon Jolly of Sharon Jolly & Associates LLC in Highland Mills, New York, was actually his own esteemed mother. Hamaspik has used EI evaluators from the private firm on numerous occasions, Mrs. Zelik informed the Commissioner.

At a second cubicle, just-promoted Director of Early Intervention Mrs. Leah Klar, a longtime Hamaspik of Orange County employee, described how Hamaspik encourages appropriate Medicaid consumers to purchase and use private insurance plans as well. “We saved the County 1.5 million dollars,” Mrs. Klar informed the Commissioner, citing one consumer in particular.

After touring the workspaces and briefly passing through a section of the floor still under construction, the Commissioner and the crowd made their way back down a hall to a corner conference room, where an elegant lunch had been set up.

The 20-plus attendees took their seats around the three tables as emcee Mendy Hecht, Editor of the Hamaspik Gazette, formally began the proceedings.

“I’m not going to speak for very long,” quipped Hecht, setting a formal but friendly tone. “It’ll just seem like it.”

After another icebreaker that had the crowd laughing, the emcee recited an English translation of an ancient Hebrew prayer traditionally recited upon the visit of government leaders. The prayer, adapted for today’s times, solicited G-d’s blessings for several public servants from U.S. President Barack Obama on down to Commissioner Jolly.

The translation was followed by a cantorial rendition in the original Hebrew by Mendel Rosenfeld, Hamaspik of Orange County Family Care Liaison—and a professionally trained chazzan, or cantor.


By way of an amusing anecdote, Hecht then introduced a short but informative and inspiring video about Hamaspik and what it does.

Visiting a restaurant with his mother, a little boy was asked by a waiter what he’d like. The child requested four frankfurters with all the trimmings but his mother, with a knowing look, instructed the waiter to bring him a bowl of mashed potatoes instead. The mother was horrified when the waiter returned with the frankfurters—but the child was elated. “Look, Mom!” he said. “He thinks I’m real!”

The point, Hecht elaborated, was that “at Hamaspik, our consumers are real, and their needs are real”—a corporate philosophy that was communicated by the ten minutes of footage showing Hamaspik consumers, mostly group home residents, lovingly cared for.

“Wasn’t that a great video?” Hecht asked after it ended. “I could watch it all day… But there’s one thing better than that video: the real thing.”

Hecht then introduced “the father of Hamaspik,” Executive Director Mr. Meyer Wertheimer, to share a few words.

In his brief comments, Mr. Wertheimer touched upon the scope and range of Hamaspik’s services, pointing out that through referrals from the Orange County Dept. of Social Services, its Access to Home program had helped consumers in Montgomery, Otisville, Port Jarvis, Port Jervis, Newburgh, New Windsor and Warwick.

“Since we have a unified mission and we want to be on the same page,” concluded Mr. Wertheimer, “we want to make sure that you’re not just on the same page, but on the same time and same minute, every minute of the day.” He then presented Commissioner Jolly with Hamaspik’s token of appreciation for his visit: an elegant wood and brass desk clock crowned with a personalized message.

Commissioner Jolly then shared a few personal words with the crowd.

“I bring my best from the County Executive, Edward A. Diana,” he began. “It was a real wonderful opportunity I got here today to meet some of the people you serve.”

Touching briefly on the two organizations’ shared mission, the Commissioner said that his mission was to determine what consumers need and get them what they need. “That’s our job. And that’s the job I know you’re doing here every day,” he concluded. “You’re looking at everybody individually and you’re talking to them about what their needs are.”

Hecht wrapped up the event by sharing one last anecdote—one that he had actually personally overheard on his first day on the job. A government official, once visiting Hamaspik’s Dinev Inzerheim ICF just adjacent to the Admin/Day Hab Building, remarked that the bed linens in one consumer’s bedroom were the same as the ones she had in her own home. “That’s the idea,” her host tellingly replied, highlighting Hamaspik’s uncompromising treatment of consumers as the full-fledged members of the community that they are.

The Commissioner was thanked once again for his visit, and the crowd slowly broke up and headed to the rest of their day. For Orange County participants, that meant merely walking back to their offices a few paces away. For Hamaspik employees from Rockland County, that meant a brief 30-minute drive back to Monsey. But all of them came away with one thing: a renewed sense of pride in their mission, backed no less by the partnership and support of the Orange County Department of Social Services.

As the Commissioner himself put it, “You should be very proud, and that’s really why I wanted to come visit today—to tell you how proud I am of you and the work that Hamaspik does both in Orange and in Rockland County.”