PASSOVER EDITION 5781 SECTION C PAGE 24
Every year the IJN salutes people — known or obscure — who bring freedom into our lives. Passover, with its message of gratitude to G-d for our freedom, is the appropriate moment to say thank you.
Marc Penner, COVID Leadership
Shalom Park President and CEO Marc Penner spent his first two-and-a-half years there creating an atmosphere of true compassion and and mutual respect between Shalom Park’s elders and care partners — terms he instituted for residents and staff in adherence to the principles of the Eden Alternative philosophy of nursing home caregiving, which he brought to Shalom Park after decades in the field.
Penner’s hands on, open door leadership skills were really put to the test when COVID-19 first reared its ugly head in Colorado in March, 2020. Shalom Park immediately created a protective shield around its vulnerable residents and staff, managing to keep the virus out of the nursing home until late December. Shalom Park is again COVID-free, and now its COVID unit is closed.
Penner would deflect credit for mitigation of the crisis to his team. As a leader, he delegates, but also leads by example. Since Shalom Park closed its dining rooms last March, Penner, sleeves rolled up, serves breakfast on Sunday mornings to the residents as they each eat in the doorways of their own rooms. Tomorrow night, he and nursing home director Mindy Moskowitz will lead a Passover seder for the residents, reunited for the first time in a year in Shalom Park’s community room.
On top of all this, Marc Penner is a genuinely nice guy who has quietly made his mark on this community.
Larry Ambrose, Community
There is a problem with Larry Ambrose’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation group. There are not enough lifetimes to encompass all of Ambrose’s work on behalf of Denver neighborhoods! Read the list in this week’s pullout business section of all the Denver neighborhood associations, committees, advocacy groups and policy writing bodies that Ambrose has founded, led or expanded. It is not clear how one single person could have done all of this.
Not to mention, the list, long as it is, tells only half the story. It does not capture Ambrose’s love of the city, his capacity for getting things done, his astute ability to see both the details and the vision. He can tell when some would try to hide their subversion of a neighborhood vision in the details, and how others launch a vision without the necessary attention to detail to make it happen.
Ambrose has an easy way with people. He knows how to work the committees and ballot measures and objections to bad city policy and the contributions to good city policy because he knows how to work with people. Larry is steady. Clear. Unruffled. Committed. Dogged. He is there with an ever ready smile and a sense for irony.
Among Ambrose’s countless contributions are helping save the Golda Meir House, the type of commitment he picked up in Temple Emanuel in his native Pueblo and expressed via his membership in Temple Emanuel in Denver. Not bad for the first lifetime.
Lisa Thorner, Administration
“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” — Exodus 22:20.
The commandment to welcome and embrace the stranger appears 36 times in the Torah. It’s a commandment that Lisa Thorner has taken seriously every day in her role at Temple Sinai for many years as program director and now as executive director.
Thorner’s warmth and natural friendliness have served as a welcoming hug to newcomers to Temple Sinai and her native Colorado Jewish community. Her creativity in programming found its way into creating many new chavurot — small friendship groups — within Temple Sinai, enabling newcomers to the area to connect and feel part of the community. She conveys her love of the community in which she grew up to those around her.
Thorner’s devotion to the temple has remained steady through the trials and tribulations of the congregation’s growing pains. Her dedication — as well as her efficiency and tremendous institutional memory — paid off when she was rewarded several months ago with her promotion to executive director.
A single mother, Lisa Thorner sets an example for her two sons Zach and Josh, with her warmth, work ethic, caring nature — and patience. Temple Sinai and the greater Denver Jewish community are all the better for her presence.
George Gumbiner, Friendship
George Gumbiner is one of those rare people about whom it can be said that his friendship to leading institutions in our community is so ubiquitous that one cannot keep track. One suspects that Gumbiner himself cannot keep track.
We know that George was “President George” at Aish when George Bush was president. We know that George Gumbiner was deeply involved in the creation of the campus for Denver Jewish Day School. We know that he is now and has in the past taken major leadership positions at DAT. And we know that George Gumbiner is a mountain climber. He climbs them literally, and he climbs the heights of leadership figuratively — also, very quietly. He looks to do good work without leaving tracks or collecting plaques.
All this, we must say, is but one side of George’s friendship. His clients are his friends, his friends are his friends, and they are many. George’s smile and big heart are hard to resist. George is fun to be around, fun to talk to and fun to see in action.
George and his wife Sheera lived in Israel for a while, which, together with the example set by George’s father, accounts for George’s friendship for Israel. Again, it is put into play profoundly, but not loudly. Having lived through the Yom Kippur War, George “gets it” — Israel’s critical security piece. George lives and breathes it. It underlies his friendship — his motivation to sustain the Jewish community now and into the future, individually and collectively.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
