SWAMPSCOTT — Jeff Gopen said when he made the decision to give 90 beds from the Jewish Rehabilitation Center to a Catholic-order nursing home, it was about one non-profit helping another in the interest of senior health care.
Around the same time that the JRC in Swampscott closed to re- open as the Aviv Center for Living in Peabody, the Don Orione Home in East Boston, owned by the Sons of the Divine Providence, was looking for electronic beds for its patients. Gopen, Aviv’s executive director, said Don Orione reached out to inquire if they could purchase a few beds, since their nursing home had only a few among the rest of their hand crank, decade-old beds. Instead, Aviv gave to Don Orione 90 mechanical beds in addition to bedroom furnishings for 90 bedrooms, plus kitchen equipment and common living area furnishings like couches and chairs.
“I think really what matters is we are all in health care. We all believe in the care and compassion for the community we serve,” said Gopen. “It wasn’t relevant to denomination or culture. What was relevant was the need, such a need and a void in current equipment that we felt compelled that it was a great fit.”
Tony Cerasuolo, an owner of Orient Heights Senior Living, the management company of Don Orione, said the transaction “very generous.” In exchange for the furniture, Don Orione donated $15,000 to the Aviv Foundation.
Cerasuolo said the Don Orione had limited funds and was hoping, at best, to purchase “only a few beds.” He estimated that the value of the 90 beds would have been about $180,000, and in addition to the furnishings, about $300,000.
“I wish I could say it was my smooth negotiating, but it was one non-profit helping another,” said Cerasuolo. “A lot of this they did out of the goodness of their hearts.”
The move to bring the beds from the boarded-up JRC in Swampscott to East Boston was scheduled for today at 8 a.m. Gopen said the remaining furniture and equipment at the facility will be donated and shipped to impoverished communities in Africa, where he said some of the JRC employees were from, before the building is sold.
“We were in the position to pay it forward,” said Gopen.
Kait Taylor can be reached at [email protected].
