Our People - SSM Health Care

The Twins
Even before birth, the Long brothers did things together.
Kevin and Kelvin Long are identical twins, right down
to their matching glasses. They work together in environmental
services at SSM St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond
Heights, Mo., and SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s
Hospital in St. Louis, and about the only way to tell them
apart is that Kevin wears an earring in each ear and Kelvin
wears only one.
They go home together after their six-hour day shift
at St. Mary’s and sleep for six hours before returning for
a 10-hour night shift at Glennon, then back to St. Mary’s.
That’s 64 hours a week for
each spread over four days,
Mon days through Thursdays.
They spend their days
(and nights) looking down
at miles and miles of tile
floors in the two hospitals,
asking themselves if a floor
can be buffed or does it
need to be stripped and
waxed. Each square of tile
is their collective signature. “We do it right, and if we make a
mistake, we come back and fix it,” Kevin said.
Work that would exhaust most people doesn’t seem to faze
them. In fact, they’re thinking about taking on other cleaning
jobs outside the hospitals.
It’s a work ethic that came from their father, a postal worker
who did not talk much about working hard, but instilled the value
in his sons by example. “I don’t think he ever took a day’s vacation,”
Kevin remembers.
And the quality of their work is recognized by co-workers,
supervisors and patients. Pat Key, environmental
supervisor at St. Mary’s, said: “They pay attention to details, and
they are conscientious. I wish I had 10 of them.”
From left: Kelvin and Kevin Long
The Long brothers learned their job by doing it, whether it’s
deftly using their wrists to control a floor buffer that’s powerful
enough to leap out of their hands if they tried to muscle it with
their arms, or elevating the fan drying a freshly waxed floor so air
bubbles aren’t forced into the wet wax. Each element of their work
has been perfected by repetition and paying attention to finer
points like getting the right mix of floor stripper with water.
There are a few hazards. Both have fallen. “That stripper is just
like ice before you dilute it with water,” Kelvin said, laughing.
They’ve become accustomed to the eye-watering fumes from
their cleaning solutions, though they are aware others aren’t immune
to the odor’s effect and ask patients if they would be
bothered by the smell before they begin their work.
And when their work is finished, it sometimes follows them
home. They dream of working on floors in their sleep.
The Knitters
We care about you. We’re praying for you.
We’ll see you through this. This is what the
staff of the internal medicine department at
SSM St. Joseph Medical Park in St. Charles,
Mo., want their patients to know.
In 2009, the department began a prayer
shawl ministry, combining compassion
and their love of knitting to reach out to
patients having a particularly difficult
time. Two employees create the blanket at
home, offering individual prayers while they knit. Then the
other employees and physicians use their lunchtime and breaks
to affix tassels and offer their own prayers
and blessings. Since beginning their ministry,
the department has created and distributed
27 shawls, with several currently in progress.
While the staff is happy to share their
ministry, they wish only to be identified as
a department, not individually. One knitter
said simply, “Some of our patients only
identify the shawl with the person who
presented it to them. They know that there
are a lot of people behind its creation, but
they don't know who they are. And that's
OK. All they have to know is that someone cared."
Go to www.ssmpeople.com to watch Our People.
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