HOLYOKE — On Easter Sunday, Laurie Beaudette found herself sitting in her car crying in the Holyoke Medical Center parking lot. Inside the facility, her father, James Mandeville, was dying of COVID-19.
“I just wanted to be closer to him, even though I was outside the hospital,” Beaudette said of her father, 83, who in early April contracted the novel coronavirus at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, where he had lived for 16 years. In better times, Beaudette would play cards with her dad every night in the Soldiers’ Home. But on April 12 she found herself emailing Holyoke Medical Center’s CEO as a last resort, hoping to see her dad one more time.
Within a half hour, she received a reply. The CEO had passed her message to one of the doctors treating her father, and soon she was in full protective gear making her way to the COVID-19 unit. The experience was “freaky,” she said. She was donning an outfit that reminded her of a hazmat suit, standing in front of her unresponsive father as he lay in a negative-pressure isolation room.
It was the last time she would see her dad, who she said was her best friend. He died two days later.
“He did squeeze my hands, and I prayed for him, and cried a lot, and told him how much I loved him,” Beaudette said in an interview. “The hardest part was that I told him it was OK to let go … I knew he would hold on for my sake.”
Mandeville, a Navy veteran and Holyoke native, is one of 71 residents of the Soldiers’ Home to die after testing positive for COVID-19 amid an outbreak that has infected at least 70% of the facility’s residents and 81 employees since mid-March. Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh remains on paid suspension as state, federal and private investigators look into the causes of the crisis and how it was handled.
On Tuesday, that state’s U.S. senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, joined two other senators in calling for an investigation into the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ oversight of state-run homes for aging veterans. In a letter, the senators asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to review whether the VA has made progress on recommendations made in a 2019 report for improved oversight of state veterans’ homes. That report found that the VA did not regularly monitor the performance of the contractor that conducted inspections in the facilities.
“While VA does not supervise or control the administration of State Veterans Homes, VA pays for veterans to receive care at these facilities and is the only entity that inspects every SVH in the nation,” the senators’ letter states.
While those probes move forward, many families are left waiting for answers. Beaudette said she is closely following the various investigations. She said she believes that multiple administrators — not just Walsh — are responsible for “poor decisions” that fueled the crisis.
“I believe the veterans and the families deserve justice,” Beaudette said. “And I don’t even know how to define what justice means to me, but one thing it means is that these people who made these poor choices need to go. They need to be out of this facility.”
In the meantime, Beaudette is trying to focus on the good memories: the time her father stacked the deck during their nightly card games; his “magic touch” rocking her colicky second child to sleep every night when he was a baby; the way his face lit up when he saw his two grandsons; his love for dogs.
“I try not to dwell on those images of my father being so scared at the end of his life,” she said. “But I’m not beyond that yet. It’s really, really hard.”
A week prior, the Kapinos family of Hadley suffered a similar experience. On April 6, the daughter, son-in-law and grandson of 91-year-old Ted Kapinos paced the parking lot of the Soldiers’ Home as Kapinos’ wife of 58 years, Helen, entered the facility to say her last goodbye. Kapinos died the next day.
“My dad, first and foremost, was a character,” his daughter, Kara Kapinos, said with a laugh. “He was renowned for his sense of humor.”
Ted Kapinos, who served in the Military Police Corps during the Korean War, worked for much of his life as a trooper with the Massachusetts State Police, eventually retiring as a captain. He later served as director of security at the Springfield Library and Museums Association for more than 15 years.
“My father, as a stamp collector and traveler, knew a lot of history,” Kara Kapinos said. And when his grandson was little, she said, her father relished taking him to golf practice or doctor’s appointments. “He was all in when it came to being a grandparent, and it showed.”
Ted Kapinos arrived at the Soldiers’ Home on Jan. 26, a place where he already knew a lot of people from the different phases of his life, his daughter said. But he was on one of the dementia units that coronavirus hit first and hardest, and on March 25 his family learned that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Helen Kapinos was able to go into the home to visit her husband one last time, but Kara, her husband and son had to wait outside. Kara described the experience as “surreal” and said it was hard to not be able to comfort her dad or even joke with him in his final moments.
“We weren’t there, we couldn’t see him,” she said. “We couldn’t hold his hand, we couldn’t make fun of him.”
The state police gave Ted Kapinos a three-car escort to the cemetery, stopping outside of his house on the way to give him a final goodbye. Kara said that meant a lot, but the family hasn’t been able to follow her father’s comical instructions for his funeral: “Have a big drunk one when I go to the big barracks in the sky.”
But Kara’s mother already has a venue and polka band booked for July, and the family is hoping they can celebrate his life then. As for the circumstances of her father’s death, Kara said she has mixed feelings.
“I’m the daughter of a cop, and I’m going to wait until the evidence comes out,” she said, adding that the staff at the Soldiers’ Home provided excellent care for her father. “I can’t say enough about what care we got.”
Kara does, however, question why the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home received less money than its counterpart facility in Chelsea, despite having more veteran residents who need long-term medical care.
Beaudette had similar questions. Because her father was in the Soldiers’ Home for so long, the family grew close with his caretakers. And Beaudette remembers how work had gotten more difficult for them in recent years.
Employees who have spoken with the Gazette say that they have long complained of understaffing, which they allege contributed to the outbreak after managers consolidated units to respond to many caretakers calling out with COVID-19 symptoms.
Previous Soldiers’ Home superintendent Paul Barabani and deputy superintendent John Paradis left their positions in 2015 after repeatedly raising concerns about staffing, which they said went unheard by state officials. In their first meeting with state Secretary of Veterans Services Francisco Urena in early 2015, for example, Paradis and Barabani raised staffing as a top concern.
Instead, months later, nearly 50 nurses took early retirement as part of an incentive program meant to cut costs in state government. Mandeville said that after those positions went vacant, they were never filled — and it showed.
“Ever since then, it has progressively gone downhill,” said Beaudette. One nurse recently told her that she had almost 40 veterans on her caseload, Beaudette added.
“How can you even have a rapport with your veterans when you have to treat them like fast food,” she said. “There’s some really good people there with good hearts, but the morale has been in the gutter since that happened.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.