LAHARPE — Friends are rallying once again in support of Ramona Jeffers, who has suffered a lifetime worth of heartbreak over the past few months.
Jeffers, 68, was one of the 38 displaced nursing home residents at Yates Center Health and Rehab, when it was swept up in a raging wildfire the afternoon of March 14.
She has since been relocated to a nursing home in Neodesha, as were others from the Yates Center facility.
“Her roommate was at Yates Center, too, so she still has a familiar face,” reports longtime friend Larry Laird, who finds himself once again drumming up local support for Jeffers.
“All these people are limited with what they have, anyway,” Laird said.
Upon a recent visit to Neodesha, Laird said he was greeted by Jeffers with a smile.
“Yes, I lost it all,” she told him. “But I’m alive.”
Attempts to speak with Jeffers were unsuccessful because nursing home administrators have asked media to refrain from talking with nursing home staff or residents in the aftermath of the Yates Center fire.
JEFFERS was a longtime LaHarpe resident, along with husband Gale, but was relocated briefly to the Yates Center nursing home less than a year ago for rehabilitation after falling and breaking her hip.
After she recovered, Jeffers returned home to LaHarpe, before suffering a heart attack the last week of January, which sent her to a Kansas City hospital.
It was while Ramona was in Kansas City that a house fire swept through the Jeffers’s LaHarpe home in the early morning hours of Jan. 27.
The house was fully engulfed when firefighters arrived.
Gale Jeffers, along with the couple’s two cats, perished in the blaze. Ramona was still in the hospital.
When Ramona was notified of the fire that destroyed her home, she still expressed a desire to return “home.”
When pressed further about what she meant, she explained she wanted to return to Yates Center, Laird recalled.
“She loved it there,” he said. “She loved the people. That’s where she wanted to be all along.”
