Earlier this month a group of clients from the Cottage and Webster Court ventured down to Tennessee for a trip filled with shopping, museums and sightseeing. Taken in by the beauty of the Smokey Mountains, clients Ed, Joe and Mark expressed interest in seeing things from a bird’s eye view. In the spirit of Living the Science of Caring, our staff inquired if it were possible to get the clients, two of whom were in wheelchairs, aboard for a helicopter tour ride.

When you hear of a diva, it’s easy to envision a sassy fashionista who takes a liking to shopping, makeovers and the latest Hollywood gossip. This is true of some of the world’s most famous divas, and is also the case for Special Tree’s all women, client peer group. Appropriately named…. You guessed it, The Divas.

But this month The Divas took a break from their usual pampering and fashion filled agenda. They rolled up their sleeves and put their manicured hands to work creating holiday gifts at Special Tree’s Wabash Ceramics Studio. When the afternoon of paint and clay was over the girls felt better than after a day at the spa. After all, they had spent time in good company, were up to date on the latest, and had some holiday gifts for their friends and family in hand.

Patient with amnesia reunites with mother after 40 years
One morning last January, client David P., age 65, woke up in his room at Parkway Residence and said a word he’d been trying to remember for the past 40 years, "Yemassee!"

Yemassee was where he and his mother, Annie Mae, lived in South Carolina when he left home at age 17, and eventually served in the Korean War. A brain injury in the war wiped away the name of his hometown along with most of his memories from the past. He would spend the next 40 years trying to recall any information that would help him to find his mother.