Leon The Doorman

Leon Kaluza was a patient care aide and administrative assistant for 29 years at the McLean long-term care community until his passing this week from the cancer he quipped was his space invader. I came to know Leon when I interned here in the 90s and later when he helped one of my relatives. He had curly black hair and a speckled gray beard at the time and most days at work he wore a mustard colored jacket, even indoors, always fidgeting with the zipper. “I’m chill,” he’d say. I would smile. Leon’s folks migrated to the states from Poland in 1912. They taught him polish and good manners, that’s what Leon would say. They called him Levon when he was a kid, in many ways the polar opposite of Elton John’s “Levon.” Leon didn’t count his money, as he didn’t have much to count, and while he once told me that his job at that nursing home was very repetitive, even mundane by job standards, he thrived and loved the routine unlike Levon in that song—holding doors for people, sitting with patients as he sorted through mail, and playing chess or his little ukulele bedside. It was the same thing every day in the same place. A place people would go to die. “You know we didn’t always have automatic door openers, you’d hold the door and walk the folks in, all the way until they’re comfortable,” he’d say. Leon didn’t show up in the financials, he wasn’t treating patients or bringing in new residents, but he was showing up for those families. “A lot of them ask me if we’re doing the right thing, and I tell them I will make them happy. That it will be better.” Legend has it that many of the terminal patients Leon sang to ended up getting discharged back home and some would drink their water because Leon made a game out of it. He’d sing “Hey Hey Sokoly,” a Polish folk song. “It’s about freedom … my mom sang it to me. These patients smile hearing it. They feel better. And every time I say Sokoly, they’d have to drink up.” It’s hard to measure Leon’s value. But I feel like it’s people like him whose everyday work should be counted differently, maybe paid differently. It’s simple folks who show up for work, remember their roots, don’t ask for much, and somehow just connect with people in their toughest times. Leon got close to a lot of patients over the years, and lost many of them, but somehow that was a lot better than the alternative. We could stand to give folks like Leon more credit, something to bring them into the field and keep them there. If I’m right, Leon wouldn’t take the credit which is of course one of the best things about this 5’2” son of polish immigrants. He’d just laugh and pat you on the shoulder and say, “oh no, I’m fine, you okay?”