Flashback Friday: A Heart for Service

Today’s flashback friday features Floice Meyers, who has worked for Mosaic in Beatrice for nearly 5 decades.

After her first day working at Martin Luther Home in Beatrice, Floice Meyers went home and cried.

The woman who was training her encouraged her to try it for a week.

“She said, ‘just hang in there, you’ll love it.’ And I did.”

Forty-five plus years later, Meyers still loves her job.

Meyers really wanted the job, but she was turned down the first time she applied.

“I was told I was too young,” she said. “I was 25 years old. They wanted mostly to hire people that were at least 30. They hired me at age 27 and I was the youngest they had ever hired at that time.”

She had been working in Beatrice as a meter maid but had trouble finding baby sitters during the day. The hours at Martin Luther Home (Now Mosaic in Beatrice) were more flexible.

Martin Luther Home and School was considered one of the top places in the country for children with disabilities. She remembers with pride visitors coming from all over to learn about the program.

“We would have people coming from other areas, even other countries,” she said. “They would spend six to eight weeks here learning and then go back. It was quite something.”

In more than 45 years, Meyers’s job hasn’t changed much, she said. It started with caring for children, helping them with bathing, dressing, and cleaning. Today at Mosaic, she does the same thing, but for an older population since the school program closed, a sad development for Meyers. As children began to receive education in the public school systems and the ones who lived at Martin Luther Home aged, there was no longer the need or the funds to continue the school.

Meyers’s mission through the years has been simple: Help people have the best life possible. It hasn’t always been easy and there have been some challenging days, she said, but it has always been rewarding.

“I pray a lot, and I usually pray for God to give me wisdom and strength to do the right things,” she said. “You sometimes wonder, ‘What could I have done better?’ but I was always ready to come back to work.”