Long-term care admin shares life lessons in essay collection

Jun. 2—During free time from his job as a long-term care facility administrator, Tom Goeritz started writing personal essays in 2020.

His initial goal was to compile 10 to 15 essays to leave as a legacy, documenting various episodes and memories throughout his life. At the time, he had no intention of writing a book.

Yet the more he wrote, the more he realized how much he had to say.

"I thought somebody someday might like it," he said during an interview in Mankato. "Then as I went along I started coming up with more topics and more topics and talked to friends and they said 'You oughta write a book.'"

A book still wasn't what he had in mind. Only once he got to 40 or 50 stories did he start considering publishing his collection.

His completed book, "A Bucket of Frogs," features 70 of his essays. From stories about making a fort in a haystack when he was a kid to his first job cleaning bullheads for anglers in his hometown to sky diving at age 40, he aimed for each essay to leave the reader with a message about life.

"It's about sharing life's adventures and the lessons learned," he said. "Some are from when I was 12 and some from when I was 65."

Goeritz, 72, is actually older than many of the residents at St. John's Lutheran Home in Springfield, the long-term face facility he's led during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also has an extensive medical history of his own, surviving cancer and a brain tumor.

He found out he had soft tissue sarcoma on his arm about 22 years ago when he was 50. Forty radiation treatments and a surgery to treat it left him without some function in his arm and hand.

The brain tumor diagnosis came about four years ago. Goeritz was working at St. John's one day and started feeling dizzy and a little off balance.

His doctor ordered an MRI, which found a non-cancerous tumor at the base of his brain. The surgery to remove it was complicated, he said, and he now can't hear out of his left ear because the surgeon nicked a nerve during it.

A setback, to be sure, although Goeritz said he just feels blessed to be alive.

"I'm 72 and kicking," he said. "Not bad at all."

Goeritz grew up in Morristown helping out at his father's grocery store. After working through college at Mankato State University, he worked through graduate school to earn his MBA from St. Thomas University.

His career in senior housing spans about 40 years, along with experience running hospitals and clinics. Goeritz said he was originally hired to work at St. John's in Springfield for four months, but he was going on four years in the role as of April. He planned to stay around on an interim basis after May.

He called the period during which he worked on the essays the most challenging of his 40-year career.

"You always have challenges, but COVID-19 was something none of us expected," he said.

COVID-19 hit long-term care facilities hard across the state early in the pandemic. Due to their age and medical conditions, nursing home and assisted living residents were the most vulnerable Minnesotans to the contagious and deadly illness.

From Springfield, Goeritz was open about the challenges leadership and staff faced keeping residents safe. He later shared vaccine progress among staff, and how staff shortages made for a trying time in the industry.

His open-book approach to his job is evident in his writing.

Writing, in turn, offered him an outlet from a stressful time to be working in long-term care.

It helped that he has such a variety of life experiences. Goeritz can tell tales from his days piloting planes, auctioneering, preaching, teaching and more.

He held a meet-and-greet for his book in St. James in late April, and planned to hold more.

When he's met with groups so far, he's enjoyed hearing how his stories start conversations about their similar memories from childhood.

"It makes me feel even better because it brings out some thoughts in people," he said. "It seems to wake them up."

His message to other new writers? First, recognize you have a story worth sharing, then motivate yourself.

"I don't know anybody who doesn't have a life story," he said. "Some are a lot more adventuresome than others, but most of us do have a story."

For more information, go to www.tomgoeritz.com.

Follow Brian Arola @BrianArola