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Hatboro Nursing Director Leaves 40-Year Legacy

Longtime leader of group-home network retires after decades on job.

In the past 43 years, hundreds of people dealing with mental and physical disabilities have passed through the doors of facilities run by Lynch Homes — and all have in some way been touched by Evelyn Lynch.

After more than four decades as the director of nursing at the expansive residential-housing network, Lynch, a longtime Hatboro resident, recently entered retirement, leaving the business to which she devoted her entire adult life.

The operation was founded in 1934 by Blanche and Thomas Lynch, the parents of Lynch’s husband Henry, who took in and cared for children dealing with an array of medical conditions, at a Willow Grove-based home.

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After Lynch married into the family, she and her husband signed on to assist with the family business in 1969.

At the time, Lynch had been working as a pediatric nurse for about two years, a career that was motivated by her own healthcare experience. 

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“I had my tonsils taken out in high school and was so surprised and inspired by the nurses who took care of me for that one overnight hospital visit, and I started to think about nursing as a career,” she said. “So I went into nursing and I have never once regretted it.”

She graduated from what was then a diploma program at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and later went back to earn her bachelor of science in nursing from Penn.

After a number of years at the helm of the family business, Lynch and her husband were asked by the state to launch Pennsylvania’s first group home for people with disabilities, a setting in which the residents would be supervised and cared for by a non-nursing professional.

“It was revolutionary at the time because most people thought that people with these disabilities could only be cared for in a nursing home or hospital,” she said. “It was a change in care, and I got very involved in figuring out the procedures for non-nurse care for people with disabilities and getting it all off the ground.”

The first such home opened in the late ’70s in Willow Grove and set the stage for an explosion of growth over the next few decades.

The business now operates more than 60 homes in Montgomery, Chester, Delaware and Bucks counties — housing about 240 residents — as well as a nursing facility in Gwynedd Valley and day programs in Montgomery and Chester counties for both Lynch Homes residents and non-residential participants.

Most of the residents are severely or profoundly handicapped, many are non-verbal and non-ambulatory and they deal with issues like blindness, deafness, seizure disorders or cerebral palsy, as well as psychiatric conditions like bipolar disorder and depression. While they are monitored by non-nurse staff, a nurse is on call around the clock.

When Lynch’s husband retired last year, the company was sold to human-services agency KenCrest Centers.

As director of nursing, Lynch focused mainly on the expansive Montgomery County network, which includes a number of homes in the Hatboro-Horsham area, and spearheaded the establishment of homes in the other counties, especially important as state institutions shuttered over the years.

Among her responsibilities, Lynch supervised four full-time nurses, oversaw staff training, advocated for the diverse needs of the patients and coordinated medication delivery and monitoring.

Lynch said she and her husband worked closely with the families of clients to ensure they were confident in the care of their loved ones.

“A lot of parents who had had their kids in institutions were worried about safety and also felt that a group home might not be safe so at times it took some convincing to show them that this was a safe place,” she said. “That’s a very real concern in some places but, now as I’m retiring, I’ve talked to some families that we’ve served 25 or 30 years, and they’re happy that their loved ones came to stay with us.”

One such parent is Kate Birdsall, who has two sons who were diagnosed with mental retardation and autism.

“They treat all of their clients with love, dignity and respect,” Birdsall said. “Not every parent who has a child in a group home feels at ease but I have always felt without a worry in the world because they take such good care of all of their clients.”

Her older son, Chuck, came to Lynch Homes from the now-shuttered institution Pennhurst in the 1970s and said Lynch “went the extra mile” to work with him, helping him to overcome trust issues he developed from negative experiences he had at institutions. 

When Chuck died, Birdsall said both Lynch and her husband were at his bedside.

Her younger son, Peter, now 50, lived in a Lynch Home in Horsham before moving to Wyncote.

“I know that he’ll be seeing his doctors, getting his physicals, that he’ll be taken care of in an emergency,” she said. “It’s so nice to have peace of mind. Lyn is such a lovely, lovely lady and will be terribly missed, but what Lyn and Henry have established will last because they’ve hired the right people who believe in the same things they do.”

Pat Lorenz, a nurse at Lynch Homes for 12 years who will take over as director of nursing, said that she has “big shoes to fill” but will use the lessons Lynch imparted to all the staffers to do so.

“You can’t learn 43 years right away but we’re going to take all she taught us and run with it,” Lorenz said.

Lorenz said Lynch showed the nurses that it’s important to err on the side of caution — to send a client to the emergency room if a problem arises. She also kept up-to-date on the latest medications and fervently researched all of their side effects, Lorenz said.

Her interactions with the clients and their families were also teaching moments.

“She just generates warmth, and everyone gravitates toward her. She asks personal questions about the families and really gets to know them,” she added.

Lynch said she’s confident the business is being left in capable hands.

“I’ve been blessed by being able to work with extraordinary people,” she said. “People who work in this field need to have a great deal of patience and compassion and a great work ethic. Putting your heart and soul into this work can really have an impact on others, and I think the staff should remember just how important they are and how important their work is.”

Lynch, 66, said she’s looking forward to spending more time with her husband, three children and three, soon-to-be-four, grandchildren, as her second daughter is expecting any day.

The added time with her family will help her ease into retirement and temper the separation from her lifetime of work with Lynch Homes.

“It’s going to be hard because this has been my life, my identity, for so many years, but I think I’ll be focusing on this new baby and our other grandkids this summer so it’ll be a good distraction,” she said. “You only have one live to live as far as I know, so I figured that, after working 45 years, it was time to get out and have some fun. I’m comfortable with our nursing staff and know they’re going to continue to keep the business strong into the future.”

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