it's never 2 late Young people, nursing homes and video...a winning combo! BY JACK YORK L ots of us have upsetting memories of our first childhood experiences visiting nursing homes. For me it was the "convalescent hospital," a nursing home in southern California where my grandmother lived and eventually died. I have vivid, haunting memories of the weekly visits Mom would insist I join. I loved my grandma; she was a bit eccentric but treated me like a young prince. But the woman I knew as a child had little in common with this frail, virtually unconscious person. She could barely communicate. Her white room was heartless and depressing. The facility looked horrible and smelled worse. I'd walk in and count the minutes until the ordeal was over. Those memories stay vivid in my mind to this day, and shaped my perspective of aging. Fast-forward about 50 years to the experience of high school students walking out of interactions with a memory care community in a positive frame of mind. It's thanks to an idea conceived of by a remarkable woman, Denise Rabidoux, CEO of EHM Solutions. " "She is seeing firsthand the growth of dementia within her client base and wanted to find a way to shine a light on that reality in a positive way, and get younger people involved." 34 GRAND MAY JUNE 2018 EHM's vision of senior living goes outside the box and beyond the bricks and mortar of the facility. Denise has always wanted to involve the community in projects with her residents. Those projects (as is usually the case in senior living) have a tendency to gravitate towards the more independent residents. She is seeing firsthand the growth of dementia within her client base. She wanted to find a way to shine a light on that reality in a positive way, and to get Continued on next pagehttps://www.facebook.com/GRANDmagazine/ https://www.twitter.com/grandMmagazine