An Appreciation

By Donald Gilpin | Photography by Weronika Plohn

“America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.”

—Barack Obama

In a job that’s never been easy, nurses found themselves in March 2020 at the epicenter of a deadly pandemic, on the front lines in battling a mysterious new virus, COVID-19.

For nurses, altruism and hard work are a way of life, every single day. Princeton Magazine asked several area nurses in different fields in a variety of settings and facilities around the area to share thoughts about themselves and how they have stayed positive in facing the challenges of their profession, especially during the pandemic.

Caring, helping, teamwork, persevering, and touching people’s lives were themes that recurred over and over.

Ashley Ferrante, RN
The Pediatric Group

Ashley Ferrante has worked as a registered nurse at The Pediatric Group for 12 years. She is currently back in school to further her education and she plans to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 2023.

“I adore working with kids,” says Ferrante. “It is rewarding to provide them with medical care and watch them grow from birth to adolescence.

“Juggling family, school, work, and dealing with the anxiety of COVID can be highly stressful. I stay positive by spending my free time with family and friends. Devoting time to my garden and hiking in the woods with my fiancé and six rescue dogs are some of my favorite ways to relieve stress.”

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By Anne Levin

In a video that debuted last November, 55 people join together on Zoom to sing the song Louis Armstrong made famous, “What a Wonderful World.” Most of them suffer from aphasia, a language disorder that often develops after a stroke or brain injury. As an introduction to the song, several of the participants talk — some more haltingly than others — about the frustrations of their condition. “Aphasia is difficulty speaking,” says one. “Makes me slow,” says another. “Aphasia is lonely.” “Aphasia is complicated.” “Aphasia is not being able to talk to my children.” And so on.

But once they begin to sing, all of the hesitancy disappears. Words so difficult to speak appear to flow effortlessly when set to music. The singers are members of the International Aphasia Choir, drawn from different aphasia choirs on five continents. They are visual and aural proof of the Hans Christian Andersen quote: “Where words fail, music speaks.”

Prominent among these choirs is the Bridgewater-based Sing Aphasia, founded by Westminster Choir College graduate Gillian Velmer during her doctoral studies in speech language pathology at Kean University. As part of her doctoral program, Velmer built a website, singaphasia.com, for aphasia choir resources. During the pandemic last year, she was approached by Trent Barrick, a music therapist in Florida. He had discovered the site, and wondered if she’d be interested in helping him put together an international aphasia choir video.

Gillian Velmer

“I said yes right away. I loved the idea,” says Velmer, 34, who has a day job as a speech language pathologist in the South Plainfield Public Schools. “Aphasia can be so isolating. If you are all of a sudden not able to communicate the way you used to, it’s just devastating. And it doesn’t affect just one person. It really affects the whole family and friends and community of the person as well.”
A native of Bridgewater, Velmer has always loved to sing. At Westminster, “choir was a huge and very fulfilling part of my life,” she says. “My time there inspired me to look into the field of speech language pathology. My senior year, I had classes on anatomy and physiology of the voice, which I found so interesting.”

As a prerequisite for her master’s degree, Velmer took a course on aphasia. “That was the first time I had heard of it, or even heard the word,” she says. “But that’s not really unusual. Statistics say that less than 15 percent of Americans know about aphasia, yet nearly two million in this country are living with it. I was so fascinated by that. Somehow, doing the research and having my musical background, I thought, ‘What about music for aphasia?’ ”

Velmer made aphasia choirs around the world the topic of her master’s thesis. After earning her degree and working in public education for a few years, she returned to Kean to pursue a doctorate. “I knew I wanted to continue my research,” she says.

She began looking into the question of whether singing can help with word-finding. “Over a five-week period, we did find an improvement,” she says. “There is definitely more research needed in this area, and that’s what Sing Aphasia hopes for in the future.” more

There’s a bicycling boom going on, Princeton is at the center of the action, and there are good reasons for both of these facts.

The cycling industry was already thriving before COVID-19. Then lockdowns and anxiety over public transportation brought about a sharp increase in bike sales and repairs, as people of all ages, whether they’d ridden a bike in the last 20 years or not, were eager to get outdoors and exercise safely. They found old bikes in the garage to refurbish or headed to the bike stores.

The waiting time to buy a new bike can be as much as a full year now, as bike stores struggle to keep up with demand.

This time in the history of our planet, when concerns for the environment and a focus on personal health and wellness impact every aspect of our daily lives, seems to be particularly propitious for a sustained surge of interest in bicycling. Whether for pure fun and fresh air, for sociability, for exercise, for transport, or for commuting and working, bicycling appears to be an activity that will continue to grow.

Princeton — formerly best known as a town of scholars and educators or a bastion of American history or perhaps as an enclave of genteel elegance or a mecca for sophisticated suburban shoppers — was recently designated the most “bike-friendly” town in the state and is well poised to ride the crest of this wave of popularity. Presented with a silver-level Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) award by the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) in December 2020, Princeton is one of only six BFCs in New Jersey and the only one in the state to attain the silver level. Since 2016 Princeton had been ranked at the bronze level along with Hoboken, Lambertville, New Brunswick, Ocean City, and West Windsor.

Blessed by its geographical location and some resourceful, foresighted leaders, Princeton has been developing its Bicycle Mobility Plan for many years. Its recently upgraded Bike Boulevards provide a network of routes that connect the schools, the public library, and the downtown area to other parts of the town; with a variety of different routes ranging from a 16-mile fitness loop around the perimeter of town to the 4.5-mile town and gown loop near the center of town. The recently published Princeton Bicycle Map is available at Kopp’s and Jay’s bike shops and online on the municipal website at princetonnj.gov.

For more ambitious riders the Bike Boulevards connect with the 22-mile Lawrence Hopewell Trail, which meanders from just west of Princeton through the environs of Lawrenceville, Pennington, and Hopewell. The 77-mile Delaware & Raritan Canal Trail goes about 15 miles north from Princeton to New Brunswick, about 13 miles south to Trenton, then from Trenton about 32 miles north along the Delaware River to Frenchtown. more

Laura Huntsman, board president of Whole Earth Center.

Three Area Markets with Distinctive Personalities

By Anne Levin | Photos by Jeffrey E. Tryon

During the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were noticeable changes in the way people shopped for food. Fearful of exposure to the virus, many began to avoid big chains. Smaller, independent stores felt safer.

Three such stores in the Princeton area — Whole Earth Center, McCaffrey’s Food Market, and Pennington Quality Market — have each weathered what was hopefully the worst of COVID. These are distinctly different organizations. Whole Earth and Pennington Market are single stores; McCaffrey’s in Princeton Shopping Center is one of seven owned by the McCaffrey family. What the three companies do have in common is a focus on their local communities, and a dedication to their customers and staff who, in turn, have been exceedingly loyal.

“Our staff has been incredibly supportive,” said Jen Murray, general manager of Whole Earth Center. “We did lose a bunch of staff when it first started, but we continued to employ everybody who wanted to work. It’s a lot of heavy lifting on the team that’s here. Resiliency has been the word. We serve our community.”

“With COVID, our customers were tremendously supportive of us, and expressed appreciation for staff that continued to work despite the challenges,” said Mike Rothwell, who co-owns Pennington Quality Market with his two sisters. “It’s our staff, and the personal relationships with customers, that make us unique. And we have kept that going.”

“Overnight, our associates became something we at McCaffrey’s always knew they were – essential workers,” said Jim McCaffrey IV of the company’s response to COVID. “They came to work, day in and day out, while others were sheltering in place, to serve our customers and communities. Most importantly, they did it with a smile — behind their masks, of course.” more