There are a number of people who have been an inspiration to me. Sometimes they are well known people, but usually they are ordinary people who do extraordinary things. From time to time I’d like to share their stories with you.
You should meet Toni. Though it’s best you don’t meet her on the job. She’s a cardiovascular nurse, a dedicated woman who took care of my brother George McIngvale while he was in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at St. Luke’s last year. She took good care of George, even coming in on her day off to check on him.
Whenever one of the family was there with George, you could count on seeing Toni. You could also count on her strength, her skill, and her caring heart.
Toni’s a true saint. She says she’s not, that you could describe her as a “hard-working mother” or a “loving parent” but anything else is an overstatement. Still, the way she does her work and treats her patients and their families is a marvel. There’s another part of Toni that earns her even more admiration. That’s what she does at home.
Even though they have five children of their own, Toni and her husband Jerald took in another six kids two years ago, the children of a relative who was having trouble.
So now there are ten children at home and one at school. The kids at home range from three years old to fifteen.
It has been two years of making adjustments. At first it seemed overwhelming, then Toni says it all started working out. It has to be tough. Toni and Jerald both work and then go home to a house with ten kids.
How do they do it?
“The secret is structure,” Toni says. “We have a work assignment sheet, family meetings, and family activities. I do a lot of multi-tasking.”
There’s one other important activity according to Toni. Prayer.
“It’s the number one thing,” she says.
There’s got to be some patience involved as well.
Toni also has a good sense of humor and a joyous nature. She credits her grandmother for a that. “She told me it costs nothing for you to have a smile, and you’ll wrinkle a lot less.”
Toni learned to make the best of what you have, a lesson she’s passing on to the children along with many others.
She’s trying “to grow them with character, to set a good example.”
This week Toni brought eight of the children to see the renovated store at 6006 North Freeway. After spending time with the kids and Toni, it’s pretty clear that she really is growing them with character.
The world needs more people like her.
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