8 | OCTOBER 27 • 2022 

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 11

E

ighteen years ago, Beverly King 
began working at Jewish Family 
Service. This week, she’ll retire. 
Bev is the second most important 
person at JFS (along with all her col-
leagues who help others). The most 
important person at JFS is the person 
who Bev is privileged to 
help.
I tell stories about 
Jewish Family Service to 
those who care to listen, 
lean in and “invest.” The 
majority of what JFS 
does, over the last 15 
years, is helping older 
adults to age in place. Therefore, when 
I talk about JFS, I talk about serving 
Bubbies and Zaydies. 
I make up stories about not-too-fic-
titious adult children who call 
Jhelp from Chicago, have big jobs, 
and “mom’s being discharged from 
Beaumont tomorrow and you have 
to help. My brother can’t come in from 
Seattle, and I can’t get away either. My 
sister lives in Commerce, and all she 
cares about is mom’s money. We need 
help. Can you do that?” 
I then say something like, “Of course! 
That’s what we do. That’s Bev King’s job 
… to get mom tucked back in at home.”
Beverly King has been my go-to “post-
er child” Geriatric Care Manager for well 
over 10 years. But what is this “tucked 
in” stuff that she does?
One person that Bev has helped (I’ll 
call him “Ronald”) doesn’t have anybody 
to help him. By the way, an overwhelm-
ing majority of the older adults JFS 
helps are Jewish, with the overwhelming 
majority of them being Holocaust survi-
vors. Ronald is neither. He’s an African 
American man who called JFS, and JFS 
is the best provider for him and he’s 
been lucky to have Bev in his corner. 
Bev’s helped him get COVID 
Emergency Rental Assistance, helped 
with problems he’s had with the 
Department of Human Services, as well 
as with Social Security problems. She 

helped Ronald move to Jewish Senior 
Life’s Prentis Apartments. 
At one point, Ronald needed help 
because he lost his money orders, which 
he used to pay his rent. Bev read lots of 
fine print and helped recover the money. 
Bev has lots of tools, many of them tech-
nical ways to access services and entitle-
ments. 
Bev was recently helping someone 
(I’ll call her “Shirley”) who was severely 
depressed. Among the many services 
Bev and her JFS colleagues were putting 
in place, Bev mentioned to her super-
visor that she had taken Shirley to get 
her nails done. Debra (the supervisor) 
remarked, “Well, aren’t you the ‘old-fash-
ioned’ social worker!” This was high 
praise. Some of the tools Bev uses aren’t 
taught in school but come from wisdom 
and experience. A trip to the nail salon 
can go a long way.

BEV AND HENRY
Right before Bev arrived at JFS, the 
Jewish community got some funding to 
set up preventative, community-based 

programming in and around the old 
JCC in Oak Park, called Supportive 
Communities (SC). One of the hubs of 
this activity was at Lincoln Towers. At 
some point, Becky Eizen, a staffer in SC 
(currently Becky Eizen is JFS’ Resource 
Center Director), referred someone (I’ll 
call him “Henry”) who needed more 
intensive help. Bev became his Geriatric 
Care Manager. Like so many, Henry 
had no one. But now he, too, had Bev.
Henry was living with a roommate 
who wasn’t paying. Bev stood in a long 
line in the winter’s bitter cold to get 
Henry a “Section 8” voucher and then 
successfully advocated with Lincoln 
Towers to accept it, allowing him to 
live on his own. Bev helped Henry to 
get on Medicaid. In the heat of many 
summers, Bev had to have talks with 
Henry about taking showers because 
he didn’t smell good. At some point 
in time, Bev vowed to Henry’s mother 
(deceased at the time), from her heart, 
that she would take care of her son. 
Among the many thank-you notes that 
Bev has kept over these last 18 years are 
“Mother’s Day” cards from Henry to Bev. 
Bev would accompany Henry to health 
care appointments because he couldn’t 
navigate these on his own. During the 
pandemic, Henry took a turn for the 
worse and was admitted to a nursing 
home. Bev talked about visiting him 
there, standing outside of his window 
(because of COVID measures), in the 
cold, talking to him for the last time. 
Henry couldn’t muster any words, except 
“Beverly,” over and over. She heard the 
appreciation and peace in this utterance. 
All of the tools Bev uses are delivered 
with compassion. 
Like many people who work at Jewish 
Family Service, Beverly King is not 
Jewish. Bev did this work elsewhere 
before but left because of some bad 
behavior at the top of the workplace. 
As a person of faith, she was drawn to 
a faith-based organization, but frankly 
didn’t know much about the Jewish com-
munity. Most of the probably 1,000 or so 

Perry Ohren

guest column
Socks and Batteries

Beverly King 
and Perry Ohren

