Community joins to craft holiday wishes for North Huntingdon care home residents

A spur-of-the-moment idea has turned into a heartwarming project for a North Huntingdon woman who wanted to show some holiday love to residents at a township nursing home.

It has come together quickly for Debbie Polczynski who enlisted help in the last few days of friends, family, the Norwin girls basketball team and Norwin Christian Church to make 120 ornaments for the residents of Transitions Healthcare.

“I’m so thrilled that people are so willing to do this,” she said.

The ornaments are created by Polczynski’s husband Andrew who cut wood branches into slices. Their daughter Mara drills a hole into the slice so it can be hung and off they go to community volunteers.

“We literally hand them a wooden slab and say be creative,” Polczynski said. “It’s everybody’s own rendition of what they would want to see on an ornament.”

So far, ornaments have been decorated with holiday words or phrases, Santa Claus, a snowman and the Grinch. Polczynski hopes to collect them all this weekend and deliver them to Transitions early next week. Life enrichment director Marsha Kirker-Bozich said the ornaments will be handed out to residents during a Dec. 23 parade through the halls with Santa Claus.

Staff members will sing carols and hand out gifts, snacks and treats, she said.

“We’ve been blessed with the community supporting us, especially at the holidays,” Kirker-Bozich said. “It’s terrible for the residents not to be able to see their families.”

Visitation at long-term care facilities has been restricted since March in an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Residents at Transitions have been able to have window visits with their families and talk by video, but it’s not the same.

The special community touch from Polczynski will go a long way toward reminding the residents that they are loved from the outside.

“I think it’ll really cheer them up, just to remind them people are thinking of them,” Kirker-Bozich said.