Legacy of Dr. Bert Nash lives on through the work of the community mental health center
Thirty-five years ago, there was a changing of the guard at the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center.
Janette Snyder resigned as the Bert Nash Center’s director when her husband, a history professor, took a position at Louisiana State University. Snyder was the first woman to serve in the director’s role at Bert Nash.
Another woman – Sandra Shaw, who took over on an interim basis – succeeded Snyder in 1978.
A year later, Shaw became the permanent director, a position she held until her retirement in 2001.
“It’s hard to believe all of those years have passed,” said Snyder, now 82, who lives with her husband, Henry, in Kensington, Calif.
Bert Nash, the community mental health center, celebrated its 63rd birthday July 5. While Dr. Bert Nash, the man whose vision inspired the community to dedicate a mental health center in his name, would have been 115 years old this year. He was born in 1898.
A lot has changed in the field of mental health since Dr. Nash’s untimely death of a brain hemorrhage in 1947 at the age of 48.
Those changes include deinstitutionalization, the trend toward community-based services and the integration with general health care.
At the same time, a lot has changed in the daily operation of the Bert Nash Center since it began delivering services in 1950.
For starters, most of the staff is based out of the Community Health Facility, which opened in 1999. Construction of the building, at 200 Maine Street, across from the hospital, was financed by the city of Lawrence and Douglas County. Bert Nash shares the three-story facility with the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department and the Visiting Nurses Association.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the Bert Nash Center’s unwavering commitment to provide leading-edge mental health services to the residents of Douglas County.
When Beth Ankerholz started working at the Bert Nash Center in 1989 – she will celebrate her 24th year at the center on July 17 – the staff, which was much smaller back then, was spread out between three buildings.
“We had maybe 40 employees when I started,maybe 50, that was everybody,”Ankerholz said. At that time, the Bert Nash Center had offices located in the west wing of the old Lawrence Memorial Hospital, which has since been torn down, at the Charltonanley Insurance building at Eighth and New Hampshire, and in the former Local Burger building at 714 Vermont.
In August 1999, the Bert Nash staff moved into the new Community Health Facility. “We were all excited about being under one roof,” Ankerholz said.
Twenty years earlier, when Loraine Herndon started working at the Bert Nash Center, the staff was housed in a two-story house south of the old hospital at Fourth and Maine.
“I was interviewed by the entire staff in the living room of the house,” said Herndon, who is a senior adult outpatient therapist. “It was a group interview. There were 25 or 30 people in the room that day, or at least it felt like it. It was very intimidating. I told them at the end of the interview they had made it fairly painless, which I appreciated.”
Herndon, who did her graduate work at the University of Kansas and her post-grad training at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, knew of the Bert Nash Center by reputation.
“I had only heard good things about the staff,” Herndon said. “Everyone I knew thought very highly of the Bert Nash Center.”
While accommodations may have been cramped in the old house, Herndon enjoyed the camaraderie among the staff.
“There was a wonderful feeling of community and people were really eager to learn,” Herndon said. “It was a time of a lot of excitement in the sense of research and education opportunities.”
Rewind to the late 1960s, and Janette Snyder has similar recollections of what it was like to work at the Bert Nash Center.
“It was a time when there were a lot of changes going on,” Snyder said. “It was a time when there were a lot of opportunities.”
One of those opportunities for Snyder occurred in 1967. That’s when the director’s job at the Bert Nash Center opened up. She decided to pursue the position. However, she remembers, there was a question of whether a woman could do the job.
“I said, ‘Well, let’s try it,'” Snyder said. “I don’t think they were sure what to do with me.” What they decided to do was hire her.
Looking back, Henry Snyder expressed gratitude for the support his wife received from community leaders.
“Art Heck (county commissioner) was particularly supportive of the center and of Janette,” Henry Snyder said. “And Don Metzler (city commissioner and mayor) was tremendously supportive.”
While funding has always been a challenge, community support has played a vital role in the Bert Nash Center from the beginning. After the death of the Bert Nash Center’s namesake, it was the community’s support for continuing the pioneering work of Dr. Nash that was the impetus for founding a mental health clinic in the first place. The community has continued to support the mental health center throughout its history.
“One of the things that made the center blossom was we had great support from the city and county,” Janette Snyder said.
She actually served two stints as director of the Bert Nash Center, from 1967 to 1969 and from 1972 to 1978, which were interrupted when she accompanied her husband, a history professor, on sabbatical to England.
When Janette Snyder left the Bert Nash Center for good, she had no doubt who her successor should be – Sandra Shaw.
“Janette had hired Sandy and then recommended her to succeed her,” Henry Snyder said. “They got along very well together.”
The Bert Nash Center’s staff was located in the two-story house at Fourth and Maine during Janette Snyder’s tenure, but before she left she put plans into motion for the move into the wing at the old hospital.
“I was there at a time when things were really changing,” Janette Snyder said. “It was a very exciting time.” Loraine Herndon was on the Bert Nash Center staff in 1981 during the move into the wing at the old hospital. “I was part of that transition,” Herndon said.
Like Janette Snyder, Herndon has had two stints at the Bert Nash Center, with more than a 20-year span in between.
After working at a psychiatric hospital in Dallas and then in private practice, Herndon returned to the Bert Nash Center in 2004.
“I felt like I was coming home,” she said.
“I could not believe it when I heard there were about 180 people on staff,” Herndon said. “The changes were like a shock. It was like someone splashed cold water on my face.”
Besides being surprised by the growth of the center in terms of staff and space, Herndon was happy to see other ways the Bert Nash Center had expanded.
“I was real pleased to see we were in the schools and we have branch offices (in Eudora and Baldwin),” Herndon said. “It felt like the Bert Nash Center had integrated even more into the community.”
Herndon was also pleased to find the culture at the Bert Nash Center was still the same.
“The diversity of clients is one of the things that attracted me to Bert Nash in the 1970s, and that’s true now,” Herndon said. “And I found the same supportive atmosphere as far as doing my work. The support for doing good therapy is still a high value here.”
Beth Ankerholz noticed something unique about the Bert Nash Center from the start. In fact, she noticed something unique about the person who interviewed her – Sandra Shaw.
“Sandra was perpetually late, so I’m sitting there waiting and I finally see Sandra stroll in. I was getting kind of irritated at this point, but she takes me back for the interview and, no kidding, in like five minutes, I thought I want to work for this woman,” Ankerholz said. “That’s how she got away with always being late, because the reason she was always late is whomever she was with at the moment she made you feel like you were the only person in the world and you had her undivided attention.”
Ankerholz was sold on working at the Bert Nash Center from the start.
“The mission of the center and the important work they were doing just solidified my thinking that I wanted to be a part of that,” Ankerholz said.
She was also sold on working for Shaw.
“We had a connection right away. The more she described what the job entailed and the opportunity to work with her, I swear, I knew this was going to be the last place I ever worked,” Ankerholz said.
And she was right.
When Ankerholz was hired, she was the executive assistant to Shaw. She later became administrative services director.
“Sandra liked to call me her case manager. She had me get involved in everything. I learned about this business from the top down. Eventually, that put me in charge of human resources, finance, accounts receivable and IT, such as it was at the time,” Ankerholz said.
She eventually had to scale back on her duties because they were too much for one person to manage. When David Johnson became CEO in 2001, after Shaw’s retirement, he asked Ankerholz to focus on one area, either finance or IT. Today, she is the information technology and office support director. When Ankerholz was hired in 1989, she was one of the first administrative staff members to have a computer. Now, there are about 170 computers for Bert Nash Center staff.
“IT grew exponentially when we moved into this building,” Ankerholz said. “The evolution of electronic communication, as well as electronic health records, is probably the biggest shift I have been involved in.”
During her 24 years at the Bert Nash Center, Ankerholz has worked for two CEOs – Shaw and Johnson.
“They had different management styles,” Ankerholz said. “But both styles served them well, and the Bert Nash Center flourished under both styles.”
Shaw died of lung cancer in 2010 at the age of 69.
“It was a huge loss,” Ankerholz said. “I feel her here every day. Her fingerprints on this place are amazing, and always will be, as far as I’m concerned.” But her legacy lives on.
Just like the legacy of Dr. Nash.
