Walter B. Crook Administrator Mary Rose was devoted to her residents and employees
Mary Rose loved her job.
As administrator at Walter B. Crook Nursing Home in Ruleville, she spent countless hours getting to know her residents and her employees, and when COVID-19 hit the state back in mid-March, she worked even more diligently to keep the virus out of the facility.
“She lived for this place,” said Laura Bassie, a physical therapist at Walter B. Crook. “She lived her life for her own family and for the residents at Walter B. Crook. She demanded the best care for her residents.”
Mary Rose died on Monday, December 7, leaving behind a family at home in Grenada and a family of employees and residents in Ruleville.
“She was a loving person who gave her all to her job and her family,” Bassie said.
Walter B. Crook is a part of the North Sunflower Medical Center umbrella, so Mary Rose was well-known across the Ruleville campus.
“Mary Rose was such an inspiration to her staff and residents,” NSMC’s Robyn Marlow told The E-T last week. “She loved taking care of others and will be greatly missed.
Being a nursing home administrator is a tough job, as Bassie points out.
“I don’t know of a job that’s tougher,” Bassie said. “You’re having to manage residents, families and a very large group of employees, and she did it very well.”
That’s an understatement, according to those who were around her each day.
When Mary Rose arrived at work, the first place she would go was the dining hall, to talk to her residents. Then she went room-to-room.
And the residents knew when she was coming.
“She always wore the cutest shoes, and even the residents here, some of them were telling me yesterday they were going to miss hearing her shoes clicking down the hall,” Bassie said.
She didn’t just make small talk with the residents.
“She knew everything about the patients, down to the size of their underwear and their shoe sizes,” Bassie said.
Bassie said that the families of the residents all had Mary Rose’s personal cell phone number.
“That’s not something you see a lot of in nursing homes,” Bassie said.
She put as much into her employees as she did her residents, Bassie said.
“She was super fun,” she said. “She dressed up for all the occasions that we had. She was the first one to dress up. She was constantly feeding the employees back here. At Christmas, she would go home and cook all night. She would make fudge and stuff in crockpots, and she would bring it up here and feed the staff to show her appreciation.”
Mary Rose was fun, but she knew how to run a tight ship.
“She was tough now,” Bassie said. “Being an administrator, you have to be prepared to step on some toes, but it was all because of the care of the residents. She wanted the best care. She stepped on my toes before.”
With that toughness came a deep compassion and empathy for her employees and others.
“If she had an employee who was on hard times, if they couldn’t pay their utilities or something like that, she paid them,” Bassie said. “If she knew of anybody in the community or an employee that had an addiction problem, she tried to help them. She tried to get them into a rehab facility.”
A native of Grenada, Mary Rose leaves behind her husband, Mike Rose; one daughter, Jennifer Self (Shannon); one son, Jason Dotson of Grenada; two step-daughters, Jessica Springfield (Morgan) of Madison and Kristin Brock of Greenwood; three sisters Ann Ogden of Brownsville, Tenn., Sherry Fason of Stewart and Jan Mann of Houston,Miss.; one brother, Ken Arbuckle of Grenada; and seven grandchildren, Drake Dotson, Riley Dotson, Zack Dotson, Kemp Dotson, Lawson Dotson, Hayden Self and Holland Self.
She also leaves behind her Ruleville family, the residents, employees and co-workers she inspired each day.
“It’ll be hard to fill her cute shoes,” Bassie said.
