14
May 2017
Community
www.GilbertSunNews.com
Margaret Shahan: a life in Gilbert BY DAVID M. BROWN
Margaret V. (Stewart) Shahan died February 28, 2017. She was 99. A native Arizonan, Shahan was born December 31, 1917, at the family home in Gilbert where she lived all her life. Her husband of 69 years, James ‘Jimmie’ M. Shahan, was a farmer and died nine years ago. Her parents were Olin P. Stewart and Rita M. Stewart (Allen). Glenn Stewart, Helen Clark, Alhoa Mae Hanson and Elaine Stewart were her siblings. “Margaret’s mother died when she was 14, so she became the mother of the Pop Stewart family at that time,” recalled Dale Hallock, a friend who came to Gilbert in 1936 as an 18-month-old and later served as mayor, July 1, 1971 to June 14, 1976. “Her mother’s death was drowning in the Salt River near Blue Point, when she slipped off a rock in the fast-moving water.” One son, Darrel, died before Shahan,
and children, J. Michael (Sid) and Kelley Shahan, are Gilbert residents. Another daughter, Rita Powers, lives in Prescott Valley, and daughter-in-law Judith Shahan, Darrel’s wife, is in Chandler. She had seven grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. Her father, Olin, was “a very good farmer,” Hallock said. He built the family home in 1900, just two years before the town’s eponymous founder, William “Bobby” Gilbert, donated land for a rail siding to the Arizona Eastern Railway, which was building a line from Phoenix to Florence. The town of Gilbert grew from that, incorporating July 6, 1920. “After Olin died, Margaret and Jimmie purchased the farm from the estate and, for his adult life, farmed the land just north of Warner Road and backing up to the Consolidated Canal,” said Hallock, who met Shahan in 1968 but knew of her
years before through her husband. With Gilbert thriving, the Town Council approved a strip annexation of 53 square miles of county land in the 1970s when Hallock was mayor. But Margaret and Jimmie resisted becoming part of the expanded town. “I had not one word of discord from her or Jimmie,” said Hallock, who volunteers at the Gilbert Historical Museum, where, in 2010, he helped Margaret write the history of the Shahan family in Gilbert. Today’s municipal complex is across the street from the couple’s rural homestead in a small county island on south Gilbert Road. In the Shahans’ old age, they sold the remaining land, which is now utilized for retail, multilevel apartments and a movie theater. “Margaret was a very fastidious lady,” Hallock said, “and was always seen as a beautiful woman.”
Margaret Shahan, a lifetime resident of Gilbert who passed recently, has written the story of her family’s history.
Brown is an East Valley-based writer. Read more of his work at azwriter.com.
Nurses seek site to care for drug-addicted newborns BY SRIANTHI PERERA
As a neonatal nurse practitioner in a large medical center in the East Valley, Tara Sundem has seen too many babies having tremors, seizures, stiff limbs, difficulty sleeping and vomiting. These are the tiniest victims of the drug abuse epidemic sweeping the country. Their symptoms are of the neonatal abstinence syndrome – a condition experienced by an infant after birth due to sudden discontinuation of exposure to certain drugs, such as opioids, used by the mother during pregnancy. In July 2015, the Arizona Department of Health Services stated that the rate of the syndrome has increased by 235 percent from 2008 and 27 percent since 2013. “I live in the East Valley and I think that it’s a clean-cut area; and I always thought the downtown or the west side is associated with drug use. But it’s happening here, too,” said Sundem, a Gilbert resident. On any given week, there are more than a dozen babies in withdrawal in East Valley hospitals. “Five or six years ago, we would see one or two patients a month,” she said. “Now we see six to eight cases a day.” Sundem, together with fellow neonatal nurse practitioner Kelly Woody of Ahwatukee Foothills, is establishing an outpatient recovery center for such babies in the Valley. It would provide a therapeutic and inviting environment of short-term
medical care to the infants and their families as well as offer non-judgmental support, education and counseling. The Technical Assistance Partnership of Arizona, which helps nonprofits be successful, is helping with a business plan and making connections. The two nurses have also enlisted the support of Melissa Delaney, who is adept at fundraising, while healthcare finance expert Antoinette Sheen is helping them navigate the rules, laws and regulations for establishing a new healthcare provider and providing guidance on the financial plan. Hushabye Nursery will be modeled on a similar recovery center in West Virginia called Lily’s Place. There’s just one other facility in Seattle, which is centered more on foster care. Although the syndrome has skyrocketed around the country, there are only two facilities exclusively devoted to the care of these babies. With a business plan ready, the nurses are looking for a site to be donated to the cause. There’s an empty state medical facility in Phoenix, but 18 other nonprofits are in the running to obtain it. Ideally, the facility for Hushabye Nursery should be about 9,000 square feet, Sundem said, and have space to host 12 beds and the possibility of increasing it to 16 beds in the future. It would employ about 25 people, recruit volunteers and partner with community organizations. The center would
Neonatal nurse practitioners Kelly Woody, left, and Tara Sundem are concerned about the increased number of infants born with drugs in their system and have a plan to help.
also look into forming contracts with local nursing schools that could send its students for clinical experience. Funding for Hushabye Nursery is going to be sought initially from private sources and fundraising. A local philanthropic organization has expressed interest in helping, as well. Once the facility is up and running, organizers plan to get reimbursement from the state’s Medicaid Agency, the Arizona Heath Care Cost Containment System. Sundem and Woody believe that taking the babies out of a stimulating neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital, where they’re usually placed, would be helpful for them. The neonatal unit is usually a high-
energy place with bright lights, beeping monitors and heightened activity, and is designed to take care of premature babies and babies with heart and respiratory problems, Sundem said. “Essentially, the babies with the syndrome are healthy, big babies that are having to withdraw. They need a quiet, homelike environment that’s dark, with very minimal stimulation,” she said. In Arizona, babies are given morphine to aid in the withdrawal process. While a healthy baby goes home within 48 hours, a drug-addicted baby needs about eight weeks to recover. “When they withdraw, it’s hard, it’s see
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