At Lunch With Bernie Bowman
Asbury Place champion
by Annette Bender
On a cold and snowy day, Bernie Bowman arrived for his lunch appointment without an overcoat. After more than 20 years in Iowa, he said, Tennessee winters just don't impress. "I took a coat in the car with me twice in the last five years and never put it on."
Bowman came here to Maryville, Tenn. in July 1998, when he became president of Asbury Centers. Currently, Asbury includes four United Methodist retirement communities located within Holston boundaries: Maryville, Kingsport, Johnson City and Wytheville.
You couldn't say that Bowman is a card-carrying member of Holston Conference. A member of the Mennonite Church, Bowman grew up in Harrisonburg, Va., where he received his undergraduate degree from Eastern Mennonite University. During his 22 years in Iowa his wife?s home state he served as leader of a Mennonite-sponsored retirement home (Pleasant View Homes in Kalona) followed by a United Methodist-related retirement community (Meth-wick in Cedar Rapids).
Bowman attended First Maryville United Methodist Church for a while, but now he and wife Carol attend New Providence Presbyterian Church in Maryville. "It's more familiar to our background than the United Methodist Church," he explains over a lunch of chicken almond soup and salad.
What's it like for a Mennonite to work with the United Methodist Church?
"I don't think much of the way you pick pastors, the way you run your organization administratively," he says. "I come from a tradition where the congregation picks their own pastor, and I still see more value in that. But I love your social ministry. The United Methodists have been leaders in that forever. And that's my sense of connection."
Bowman, age 56, came to social ministry via international relations. In the 1970s, he attended graduate school at American University in Washington, D.C., with the intention of working in foreign or diplomatic service. That's when he realized he'd rather try to "make a difference" at home rather than overseas: "I got more satisfaction out of being a bigger fish in a smaller pond than a smaller fish in a bigger pond."
In 1977, the Bowmans relocated to Iowa when Carol's mother became ill. Bernie was working as assistant manager of a lumberyard when the officers of Pleasant View Home asked him to become administrator. The job clicked for Bowman. "I enjoyed trying to organize and coordinate the efforts of many people around a common goal." In 1987, he received his master's degree in hospital and health care administration from the University of Minnesota.
Bowman is determined that Asbury Centers will thrive in a highly competitive environment, but to do that, he says, "we have a lot of fixing up and catching up to do." Some of the aging facilities not only need to be upgraded, Bowman says that health-care facilities should be downsized and independent-living and assistant-living offerings should be expanded. His goal is to have a "true continuum of care in services at each of our locations."
To advance Asbury where he thinks it should be, hard decisions sometimes have to be made. Last year Bowman oversaw the severing of Asbury's relationship with its former Chattanooga-based retirement community, now owned by Catholic-affiliated Alexian Village.
"At some point you will meet what the customer expects and demands or you will not be there," he says.
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