Posted: Mar 21 2012 at 7:10pm | Views: 20844
RAIN founder Beatrice Castiglia-Catullo helped Parkchester eldery and is still helping the Bronx elderly.
The dainty, sharply-dressed great-grandmother is perfectly composed today, at 95 years of age.
Back in 1956, Beatrice Castiglia-Catullo was praying not to lose her mind.
The full-time nurse came home to a Parkchester apartment crammed with people who needed her care: a husband with kidney disease, and a mother-in-law dying of cancer.
"I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown," she said. "I said if only God could help me, I would for the rest of my life do his work."
Castiglia-Catullo got help from a nursing nun from Sisters Servants of Mary and a homemaker from CancerCare. Then she began working on her end of her bargain with God.
Her first big idea was that needy seniors shouldn't be alone in their homes after hospital stays. In 1964, before Medicare existed, Castiglia-Catullo was director of discharge planning at Westchester Square Hospital. She learned many discharged seniors couldn't afford home care though they desperately needed it.
"I told a doctor who was my mentor I'd like to help get some home care for them," she recalled. A patient getting a cardiogram overheard her. He was an accountant who connected the nurse to a wealthy client willing to help fund the project. “Who do I write the check to?” the client asked, and Castiglia-Catullo panicked.
"I thought, if I tell her it's not started yet, I'll never hear from her again," she said. "I looked out the window and it was raining, so I said, ‘Rain.’"
She thought up the whole name later: Regional Aid for Interim Needs, Inc.
For 28 years, the nurse funded RAIN’s home care program by hosting a weekly BINGO game. RAIN didn’t qualify for public funding as a nonprofit because it was run out of the hospital.
That changed when Castiglia-Catullo quit her job, ticked off because a doctor wanted to release a patient on a weekend, when she couldn’t arrange home care.
A week later, Parkchester General Hospital hired her, placing her office outside the hospital. That let her make RAIN a nonprofit, and it grew.
Today RAIN is the Bronx’s largest nonprofit social services agency, with 30,000 elderly clients in 25 programs It employs 1,800 people, runs 13 senior centers and three senior homes, and serves more than 1,600 hot meals a day.
Castiglia-Catullo grew up in High Bridge. She has three children, nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. She lives in Westchester County and still attends Rotary meetings in the Bronx.
She’s still got the power of persuasion. Recently, Castiglia-Catullo convinced the Bob and Dolores Hope Foundation to give RAIN $500,000 a year to expand its meal program beyond seniors.
“At 95, I just can’t seem to do enough,” she said.
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