A Mission of Choice With almost 40 million Americans hitting the age 65 by 2010, it would be easy to attribute Sunrise’s expansion to demographics. But Terry, the company’s chief cultural officer, says this would be an incorrect assumption. “Over the years, people have said our decisions are driven by demographics, but that’s not the case,” she says. “We are still about the same thing that we have always been – providing more choices for seniors and their families.”
Those who work closest to the Klaassens say this talk about their mission of providing more choices to seniors is not just lip service. “When they talk about improving senior living, they mean it,” says Monica Brandes, a senior vice president with Bank of America. “One thing that stands out is when you ask them about their business. They will spend 20 minutes telling you about the importance of the dignity and care of their residents. Then if you ask again about the business side, they will say, ‘Oh yeah, we are doing pretty well.’ “
Both Terry and Paul had first-hand knowledge of senior care through volunteering and family experiences. When Terry was 15, her mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. The family didn’t like the institutional feel of nursing homes and felt they had no choice but to care for her at home. This placed quite a burden on Terry, who was her mother’s primary caregiver. Paul was exposed to the other side of senior care in his native Netherlands, where he watched his two grandmothers live their final years in what he describes as a warm, homelike environment. In The Netherlands there are choices for seniors, explains Terry. “Having choices allows family members to be in control of their own destiny and feel like they are doing the best things for their loved ones.”
Seeing the advantages of the Dutch senior care system and the flaws in the American nursing home model, the young couple decided they wanted to change things. In 1981, Paul and Terry, 25 and 27 at the time, sold their first house and used the $16,000 profit to buy an old, boarded-up nursing home. For the first year, the Klaassens lived in the home, bathing, caring, and cooking for their first 25 residents. This first year set the basis for the company’s culture that still exists more than 20 years later. “We learned a lot about the services that assisted living needs to provide and how important the family was in the whole process,” Paul says.
